Amy Gestler, "In Perpetual Spring"

Here.

e.e. cummings, "[in Just-]"

At the Foundation.

Additional Note #1 Winners:

Books and Stuff
Vivir, Sonar, Leer
I Spilled Ink Across Our Pages
Let's Get Rich and Give Everybody Nice Sweaters
Much Madness is Divinest Sense

Lisa Olstein, "Dear One Who Has Been Absent this Long While"

At the Foundation.

Note #1 peer review winners:

No Such Thing as an Ordinary Cat

Book About a Book

Organized Chaos

The Dancer's Mind

Another Twist, Another Turn

Winners are relieved of the burden of taking this week's Etymology exam, or of dropping their lowest score at the end of the quarter. 

Spring Poems Week: Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Spring"

This week, poems of spring.  Today, Millay, here.

Exercise #3 Teenreads.  You have the option of either writing a book review or a poem/book trailer.  Let's figure out just what our book reviews should look like.  Visit Teenreads and browse their reviews.  Read at least three, but more if you like, and then compose a brief observational blog post, titled "Exercise #3" and labeled "exercise," that discusses what you think the elements of a book review need to be.  What do the three or so reviews that you read have in common?  What seem to be the parts of these reviews? 

Your post only needs to list the three reviews you read and then number at least three "elements," or "requirements" of what you think a review needs to have.  Due today.

Dean Young, "Luciferin"

Today's (neo) surrealist "love" poem: at The Foundation.

Peer review today for Note #1:

Visit and read a handful of Notes from a class one period earlier than yours (1,2, or 4).  Read at least four.  As you read, consider their claim, their supporting examples, and their discussion/analysis of tone or them.  Then, provide at least one piece of positive feedback and one critical suggestion for improvement.  Consider the "common errors" handout we used when suggesting changes.

When you have finished leaving your comments, write the names of the four blogs you read on a piece of paper, circle your favorite, and leave it in the basket on the counter over by the heroes.

"Hello," Benjamin Peret

"Hello"

My airplane in flames my castle flooded with Rhenish wine
my black iris ghetto my crystal ear
my rock hurtling down the cliff to smash the country policeman
my opal snail my air mosquito
my quilt of birds of paradise my hair of black foam
my tomb burst open my red grasshopper rain
my flying island my turquoise grape
my wreck of cars mad and careful my wild flowerbed
my pistil of dandelion projected in my eye
my tulip onion in the brain
my gazelle wandering off in some moviehouse
my casket of sun my volcano fruit
my laugh like a hidden pool where distraught prophets drown
my flood of blackcurrant my nightshade butterfly
my blue waterfall like a tidal wave making springtime
my coral revolver's mouth drawing me like a gleaming well
glassy as the mirror where you watch the hummingbirds of your gaze escaping
lost in a linen show framed with mummies
I love you

--Benjamin Peret

Peret with the a few of the other titans of Surrealism: Breton, Eluard, Tzara.

A painting by his wife, Remedios Varo.

"I Said it to You," Paul Eluard

I said it to you for the clouds
I said it to you for the tree of the sea
For each wave for the birds in the leaves
For the pebbles of sound
For familiar hands

For the eye that becomes landscape or face
And sleep returns it the heaven of its colour
For all that night drank
For the network of roads
For the open window for a bare forehead
I said it to you for your thoughts for your words

Every caress every trust survives. 

--Paul Eluard

Today: Anthology Work Day

Friday: Note  #1 due.  Post Note #1 to your blog by the beginning of school.  It can be a close-reading of any type of artifact, not just a prose passage.  Consider looking at a scene from a film, a painting, a poem, or, if you've found one, a passage of prose.  Label your post "Anthology."

"Paris in Wartime," Paul Eluard

"Paris in Wartime"

Animals coming down from the suburbs aflame
Birds agitating murderous feathers,
A terrible sky, clouds that are bare,
To that one statue, all year long, bring praise.

Beautiful is the living statue of love,
O noontime snow, bellies warm in the sun,
O flames of sleep on an angelic face,
On all of the nights, on each and every face.

Silence.  Resounding silence of her dreams
Caresses the horizon.  Her dreams are ours.
From the blade of her sword, forced to desire's hands,
Tempests intoxicate the world set free.

--Paul Eluard

Exercise 2: Analysis Scavenger Hunt

For today, you and your peers were to compose a brief analytical response to one of our excerpts.  Chances are good that many of these responses exhibit a turn of phrase that counts as one of the "common weaknesses" that frequently appear in rough draft writing.

For Exercise #2, scan the blogs of your peers, from any of our three classes, and try to find at least three of these so-called "common errors." When you find one, simply copy the weak sentence into a blog post and identify the number of the error it is an example of, like so:

          (1) He uses words like “If I must die, O let us nobly die.”

Please don't identify the blog where you found your examples; no need to call people out.

In addition, quickly name and link to the blog post of the best, most authoritative credible response that you come across in your browsing.  Oh, and why not leave a comment or two on the blogs you find that do a nice job?  People will like hearing from you.

Please title this post "Exercise 2" and label it "Exercise."

"Infinitive"

To die there, oh lovely spark to die there
to see clouds melting like snow and echo
origins of the sun of white poor as Job's turkey
not yet to die and see the shadow lasting still
to be born with the fire and not to die
to embrace and kiss fleeting love the unpolished sky
to attain the heights abandon ship
and who knows discover what I love
omit to transmit my name to future years
to laugh in the stormy hours to sleep at the foot of a pine
thanks to the stars like a spectacle
and to die what I love at the edge of flames.

--Robert Desnos

Exercise 1

For Tuesday, select any any of the other three passages from our initial collection and compose a single paragraph of analysis of its language.  Use the language and structure we have practiced in class, incorporating at least three partial quotations.

Due by the beginning of school on Tuesday.  Please title the post "Exercise 1" and label it as "Exercise."

The Final Concept: "Directory," by Robert Fitterman

Again, at The Poetry Foundation.

Describing (Observing) Diction: Samples and an Exercise

Looking at the McCarthy sample from Blood Meridian, we can describe his language a lot of different ways.  Below are a few possibilities.

Notice that all of the following are merely descriptive; they only observe or describe his style and don't try to draw any inferences about what literary effects his style causes.  For that reason, I like to refer to this kind of claim as a "left side" claim:

McCarthy’s language in this passage is both elegant and sensuous.

McCarthy writes with a sensuous elegance.

McCarthy’s prose is heavy with portentous imagery and an ornate, almost archaic diction.

McCarthy’s style has a rustic, atmospheric elegance to it.

McCarthy’s diction is as vast and wild as it is darkly ornate.

This passage from Blood Meridian revels in a dark and antiquated sensuous elegance.

McCarthy is dark, antiquated, sensually elegant.  

Develop your own left side claims for the two remaining prose excerpts from our original samples and post them both to the online "sandbox" I put together here: No White Flarf.  To help think of useful adjectives, consider referring to the "Words that Describe" handout on our Notes page.

After you have posted your claims, I'd like you to browse our class blogs to see what themes people have chosen for their anthologies, and I would like you to suggest, in comments, at least three possible artifacts to them.

"Am I Emo?" Gary Sullivan

A Flarfist poem composed entirely of Google searches, not results, that include both the words "emo" and "poetry."  Collected by the author. Read by the author, at the Poetry Foundation (at 27:23)

Anthology: Theme Statement

I'm planning to focus my anthology work this semester around the general theme of Winter. It's a season that seems to provoke a wide range of emotional responses from people--we love it, hate it, get weary of it.

I have a few ideas about the texts that I will collect for it, but a lot is up in the air, still.  I'm thinking of the final scene from Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, with the snow slowly covering up the dying hero.  I'm also thinking of the Richard Wilbur poem "Year's End," because of the way that it depicts that muffling, room-like atmosphere that is snow at night on a quiet street, if that makes sense.  Lots of possibilities. I'm also thinking of the Christmas morning scene from A Christmas Story and probably a scene from the Laura Ingalls Wilder novel A Long Snowy Winter.

"The Great Order of the Universe," Christian Bok

At the Poetry Foundation.

Conceptual Poetry: "The Day," Kenneth Goldsmith

at the Poetry Foundation.

Don't forget to put some thought into a theme for your Q4 Anthology.

And your reading goals, too: make them specific and personally challenging.

Flarf v. Conceptualism Week

Today, more Flarf.

Q4 Reading Goals: Mr. Hill

My personal reading goals for the 4th quarter of this school year:

1. Read at least 200 pages a week.
2. Read at least 2,000 pages in total.
3. Finish George Eliot's Daniel Deronda by spring break.
4. Read a poem to at least five different dogs, no more than one dog per week.  Must be documented on film or video.
5. Re-read at least one novel.
6. Read at least 100 pages from a novel from four different centuries. 
7. Copy at least 15 poems to my poetry anthology.
8. Read at least one popular fiction novel.
9. Read at least one short story collection.
10. At least three days a week, spend at least 15 minutes reading out loud.

Introduction to Flarf: "Pizza Kitty"

From "Pizza Kitty," Rodney Koeneke

Kitty Goes Postal--
wants pizza.
Kitty has hat & cape and looks
like a magician . . .

BAD KITTY LIST, FOOD RELATED
_____will not use my ninja kitty paw strike
_____naked on sofa with rapidly-cooling pizza
_____monster clowns with KITTY-FACES!

Just had the stupidest idea--
Make KITTY order pizza!
The kitty brings the pizza on its
paw, possibly
cold pizza

Send kind and healing thoughts
to Pizza Kitty
one sick kitty
cute blonde baffled pizza delivery . . .

Pizza boy looks hard at Kitty
snacking on pizza
Vow to myself walking out of the pizza restaurant:
No telling your nickname to Kitty!

Super Kitty Cat Pics Archives
Asleep :.: Fishy Fountains [1] Delivery Boys [3] :. .:
Expensive Kitty Bed [3] :. .: :. .: Pizza

:. .: DEPENDS ON WHETHER I
CATCH THE SCENT OF PIZZA!!! :. .:

"Wrist-wrestling Father," Orval Lund

"Wrist-wrestling Father," Orval Lund

On the maple wood we placed our elbows
and gripped hands, the object to bend
the other's arm to the kitchen table.
We flexed our arms and waited for the sign.

I once shot a wild goose.
I once stood not twenty feet from a buck deer unnoticed.
I've seen a woods full of pink lady slippers.
I once caught a 19-inch trout on a tiny fly.
I've seen the Pacific, I've seen the Atlantic,
I've watched whales in each.

I once heard Lenny Bruce tell jokes.
I've seen Sandy Koufax pitch a baseball.
I've heard Paul Desmond play the saxophone.
I've been to London to see the Queen.
I've had dinner with a Nobel Prize poet.

I wrote a poem once with every word but one just right.
I've fathered two fine sons
and loved the same woman for twenty-five years.

But I've never been more amazed
than when I snapped my father's arm down to the table.

Orval Lund

"Praise," Laurie Lamon

Found here.

"Scarecrow on Fire," Dean Young

Dean Young, "Scarecrow on Fire."

"Romantic Moments," Tony Hoagland

Read on video by the crazed-looking Tony Hoagland himself.

"Afraid So," Jeanne Marie Beaumont

At The Writer's Almanac.

"Pursuit," Stephen Dobyns

at The Writer's Almanac.