More Poetry Fun

For my creative writing class, we have to thumb through our text book, Poets of the New Century, and select different poets whose work we are drawn to and really like, and write one page (single-spaced, size 12 Times New Roman font) responses that analyze the pieces and describe why you are drawn to them.

One of the poets who really struck me was Billy Collins. There are five of his pieces in the anthology, all of them so wonderful that, if it were practical, I would post them all for you. Instead, I will just post one, Genius, and then give you links to the rest to read at your leisure.

Genius

is standing by the stove in a bathrobe
stirring the soup with a long wooden spoon.

Earlier in the afternoon he was busy
in the margins of a heavy book

and tonight he will step inside a molecule
or wade into the deep pool of calculus.

But now there is only the pot of vegetable soup,
the circling of the spoon,

the easy rotation of the wrist
and the aroma of onion, bay, and rosemary -

just the kind of moment when a brainstorm
might roll in over the ridge of the valley.

Not when you are holding your head in your hands,
but when you are cutting carrots,

troweling soil into a clay pot,
or washing a glass in the sink,

You look up and see a cloud in the window,
and then there is only you,

the glass underwater, and the cloud -
now clearly in the shape of an astonishing idea.

The rest of the poems are as follows:
The Country, a lovely poem of a mouse and his interactions with a match.
Absence, an anthropomorphic look at chess pieces.
Velocity, the thoughts of a wannabe journalist
and Today, a perfect spring day with a twist.

My Latest Assignment for ENG 307

For my ENG 307 class (Creative Writing II with Kevin Stein, the IL Poet Laureate!!) we were assigned to follow Jim Simmerman's "Twenty Little Poetry Projects" to create our own poem, using Simmerman's poem "Moon Go Away, I Don't Love You No More" as an example. I really liked mine, so I posted it for all to read. Enjoy.

Remembrance With a Cup of Tea

Laughter is the music of wind chimes
wafting in the breeze of the solstice morning.

A laughter so rotund, so robust it cannot squeeze
out the French doors to your backyard patio and Gerber daisy garden.
Their magenta petals glisten in the morning dew, spewing
rosy pinches of light into the air of daybreak.

Air that feels soft like the cotton that
fills your mouth when you’re nervous,
similar to the unbearable terror that you felt
in Mrs. Vandernaald-Johnson’s speech class
when you still lived in Muscatine.

Mr. Macabobby not Mrs. Vandernaald-Johnson.

The books in the family library sat
gathering inches of dander-filled dust
overlooked by the “overpaid, worthless, bumbling” maid, Juanita
much to the dismay of my rich, unappreciative
proverbial, cackling evil step-mother.

The very same who refused to allow
any of us to let our freak flags fly,
her personality dry due
to repeated bleaching of her naturally mousy hair.

I would build my house out of chocolate
if I lived in Alaska and got out of this place
my younger sister would tell me each time “the witch”
would press the immense desert of our patience.

We were as happy as a freshly stubbed toe in that house,
so we drifted out into the night air,
quietly floating above the clouds,
amongst the stars that tasted sweet like sugar granules.

Missy Lou and her sister
starring as Peter Pan and Wendy Darling:

We know that growing up is something
only the foolish do in their spare time.

On nights it rained, the puncturing droplets
poked holes in our imaginations in the midst of our dreams
of a candy-coated wonderland. The sugary sweet aroma
sliding into our nostrils and straight down to our stomachs
filling us more than a Thanksgiving meal.

Our thoughts would have another day to wait so our souls could rest.

Tu ausencia me devora entero el corazón---
screams embraced us with bony arms
while the portraits on the walls covered their ears,
shifting their gaze the other way

The achromatic a cappella raining down on us,
flooding out the burgeoning gardens of our thoughts.