Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry

Scott Wiggerman (Editor)

Description

Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry is an exciting collection from poets who teach both in and outside academia. Fifty-eight poets in various stages of their careers have contributed sixty-one exercises ranging from quick and simple to involved and multi-layered. In seven chapters, ranging from "Springboards to Imagination" to "Chancing the Accidental" to "Complicating the Poem," each exercise includes not only clear step-by-step instructions, but numerous poems that exemplify the successful completion of the exercise. Wingbeats, edited by Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen, includes exercises for working in pairs and/or groups, for incorporating research and/or the Internet, for writing outdoors, for creating a hands-on experience. Of course, traditional poetic techniques covering metaphor, persona, forms, and revision are also included. Wingbeats is destined to become a standard instructional book in every poet's library.

Contributors: Rosa Alcalá, Wendy Barker, Ellen Bass, Tara Betts, Catherine Bowman, Susan Briante, Sharon Bridgforth, Nathan Brown, Jenny Browne, Andrea Hollander Budy, Lisa D. Chavez, Alison T. Cimino, Cathryn Cofell, Sarah Cortez, Bruce Covey, Oliver de la Paz, Lori Desrosiers, Cyra S. Dumitru, Blas Falconer, Annie Finch, Gretchen Fletcher, Madelyn Garner, Barbara Hamby, Carol Hamilton, Penny Harter, Kurt Heinzelman, Jane Hilberry, Karla Huston, David Kirby, Laurie Kutchins, Ellaraine Lockie, Ed Madden, Anne McCrady, Robert McDowell, Ray McManus, David Meischen, Harryette Mullen, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Hoa Nguyen, Naomi Shihab Nye, Katherine Durham Oldmixon, Kathleen Peirce, Georgia A. Popoff, Patty Seyburn, Ravi Shankar, Shoshauna Shy, Patricia Smith, Jessamyn Johnston Smyth, Bruce Snider, Lisa Russ Spaar, Susan Terris, Lewis Turco, Andrea L. Watson, Afaa Michael Weaver, William Wenthe, Scott Wiggerman, Abe Louise Young, Matthew Zapruder

Sujets

• Poetry
• American

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780984039906
• Langue: English

Extrait

WINGBEATS:
Exercises & Practice in Poetry
 

 
Edited by
Scott Wiggerman &
David Meischen
 
Dos Gatos Press
 
Austin, Texas
 


 
Wingbeats:
Exercises & Practice in Poetry
© 2011, Dos Gatos Press
ISBN–13: 9780984039906
 
Published in eBook format by Dos Gatos Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior permission from the publisher and the copyright owner, except by reviewers who wish to quote brief passages.
 
 
The editors wish to thank Fred Courtright, Ann Farrar, and Kris Marshall for advice and assistance as regards permissions issues; Kristee Humphrey and Judy Jensen for critiquing our page layout during the early stages; Kathryn Rogers and Diane LaGrone for their meticulous attention during a final proofreading; the poets who generously allowed their poems to be used as examples in the Wingbeats exercises; and—most important—the teaching poets who submitted exercises for this book.
 
 
First Edition
 
 
Cover Design: Kristee Humphrey
 
 
Dos Gatos Press
1310 Crestwood Rd.
Austin, TX 78722
www.dosgatospress.org
 


 
Imagination grows by exercise.
W. Somerset Maugham
 
I have no fancy ideas about poetry. It doesn’t come to you on the
wings of a dove. It’s something you have to work hard at.
Louise Bogan
Preface
Each fall since 2005, we have hosted a series of readings that feature poets from the Texas Poetry Calendar, the initial impetus for the creation of Dos Gatos Press. After the first couple of years, everywhere we went, we recognized other poets and they recognized us; we realized that Dos Gatos Press was supporting a state-wide community of poets outside the enclaves of the Texas cities and towns where these poets resided. We also recognized in each other a hunger for poetry, a desire as writers to get better and better at our craft. Without fail, the poets we meet are eager to try new approaches to the written word.
A book of poetry writing exercises was a logical next step. We reached out to a network of poets all over the country: poets we’d met at various readings, conferences, and workshops; poets we’d read and admired in a variety of journals and anthologies; poets we’d encountered solely through social media and e-mail. We wrote to poets with advanced degrees who teach at colleges and universities, as well as poets, many self-taught, who teach poetic craft outside academia—journal editors, publishers, those involved with writers’ and artists’ organizations. A wonderfully diverse group replied in the affirmative, and by the fall of 2010, we had begun to assemble, edit, and organize a wide-ranging collection of exercises from teaching poets around the country.
The best compliment we could offer our contributors is that, over and over as the exercises arrived, we said to each other, “I can’t wait to try this one.” In fact, we did not wait! We tested a couple dozen of the exercises over the past year—and were delighted with the results. In workshops, Scott has used several already—with resounding success—with participants at various skill levels, from high school students to practiced poets. These include Ravi Shankar’s infinitely adaptable “A Manipulated Fourteen-Line Poem,” Abe Louise Young’s collaborative “Birds in the Classroom,” and Susan Terris’ quick and enjoyable “Seven (or Ten) Line Poem.” For those exercises we didn’t have time to try, we often recruited other writers for test runs; several of the example poems found in this book are from our recruits, while others are from the poets who wrote the exercises—or from their students and acquaintances.
Wingbeats is founded on the belief that every practitioner of a craft needs regular exercise in that craft and that each of us has something to learn by trying the exercises others have discovered and refined. Not every exercise will lead to a finished poem, and some, like Annie Finch’s “Compass of Poetics,” are not meant to. No exercise is foolproof; what works for one person won’t necessarily work for another. We have our favorites, and you’ll soon have yours. But we do believe that you will gain something from each of these exercises—at a minimum, an appreciation for the numerous ways poems can be approached, developed, and shaped.
Turn the page, then, and browse our table of contents. It represents one set of categories, but keep in mind that many of the exercises could readily fall under more than one chapter heading. Most of them, for example, could have been placed in “Exploring the Senses,” and there’s often a fine line between “Chancing the Accidental” and “Complicating the Poem.” With these issues in mind, we developed an alternate table of contents to provide other ways of accessing the Wingbeats exercises.
Which exercise titles excite you? Turn to those pages. Browse some more. Try an exercise you can’t resist: Jenny Browne’s “Love Letter to a Stranger.” Try something unusual, adventurous, outside your comfort zone: Bruce Covey’s “Two Sides of the Same Coil: Blending Google Sculpting and Automatism.” Try a collaboration with another poet or poets as outlined in Gretchen Fletcher’s “Entering the Conversation of Poetry.” Get out art supplies and try a hands-on exercise like Jane Hilberry’s “Meeting Your Muse.” Explore a new form, as Rosa Alcalá does in “A Walking Petrarchan Sonnet.” Push yourself with Patricia Smith’s powerful but disturbing “Dressing.” Or try a new approach to revision, as Laurie Kutchins does in “Scissors & Gluesticks: Re-Visioning the Poem.”
Make this book your own. Tweak. Adapt. Combine elements from two or more exercises: Naomi Shihab Nye’s “New Combinations: Nouns and Verbs” with Andrea Hollander Budy’s “The Postcard Poem” or Anne McCrady’s “Speaking the Unspoken” with William Wenthe’s “Stretching the Sentence.” Most of all, have fun!
Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen
 
Alternate Table of Contents
Working in Pairs
Meeting Your Muse ~ Jane Hilberry
Scissors & Gluesticks: Re-Visioning the Poem ~ Laurie Kutchins
Over My Dead Body: Exquisite Corpse ~ Cathryn Cofell with Karla Huston
Thrift Shop: Giving and Getting, a Collaboration ~ Karla Huston with Cathryn Cofell
Entering the Conversation of Poetry ~ Gretchen Fletcher
Line-Finding ~ Kathleen Peirce
Two Sides of the Same Coil: Blending Google Sculpting and Automatism ~ Bruce Covey
Seven (or Ten) Line Poem ~ Susan Terris
A Manipulated Fourteen-Line Poem ~ Ravi Shankar
 
Working in Groups
The Word List: Your Assignment, Should You Choose to Accept It ~ Ellen Bass
Metaphor: Popcorn, Popcorn, Leaping Loud ~ Carol Hamilton
Birds in the Classroom ~ Abe Louise Young
Thirteen (Give or Take) Ways (of Seeing): A Study in Scrutiny ~ Patty Seyburn
Over My Dead Body: Exquisite Corpse ~ Cathryn Cofell with Karla Huston
Entering the Conversation of Poetry ~ Gretchen Fletcher
Diction Translations ~ Susan Briante
Line-Finding ~ Kathleen Peirce
The Bop ~ Afaa Michael Weaver
Seven (or Ten) Line Poem ~ Susan Terris
My Mother’s Clothes ~ Jane Hilberry
Teaching Imagination ~ Blas Falconer
Shapeshifting Poems: The Power of Transformation ~ Lisa D. Chavez
A Manipulated Fourteen-Line Poem ~ Ravi Shankar
 
List-Making
Listing: Side to Side, Top to Bottom ~ Nathan Brown
The Word List: Your Assignment, Should You Choose to Accept It ~ Ellen Bass
Thesaurus Is Not a Four-Letter Word ~ Ellaraine Lockie
Twenty Ideas for Titles to Pique the Curiosity of Poetry Editors ~ Susan Terris
The Notebook Poem ~ Bruce Snider
The Abecedarian Corset ~ Barbara Hamby
Hand and Divination ~ Alison T. Cimino
Teaching Imagination ~ Blas Falconer
The Bermuda Triangle ~ Catherine Bowman
Three-Day Defamiliarization ~ Matthew Zapruder
Mind Is Shapely ~ Hoa Nguyen
The Braid and the Bits Journal ~ David Kirby
 
Hands-On Exercises
Meeting Your Muse ~ Jane Hilberry
Compass of Poetics ~ Annie Finc h
The Mind’s Eye: Listening as Seeing ~ Cyra S. Dumitru  
Metaphor: Popcorn, Popcorn, Leaping Loud ~ Carol Hamilton
Birds in the Classroom ~ Abe Louise Young
Thirteen (Give or Take) Ways (of Seeing): A Study in Scrutiny ~ Patty Seyburn
Let’s Take It Outside ~ Ray McManus with Ed Madden
New Combinations: Nouns and Verbs ~ Naomi Shihab Nye
Scissors & Gluesticks: Re-Visioning the Poem ~ Laurie Kutchins
Two Wrongs Make a Right: Revision through Recycling ~ Scott Wiggerman
Line-Finding ~ Kathleen Peirce
Rebirthing the Words: Crafting a Cento ~ Scott Wiggerman
Hand and Divination ~ Alison T. Cimino
Shapeshifting Poems: The Power of Transformation ~ Lisa D. Chavez
 
Getting Outside
The Mind’s Eye: Listening as Seeing ~ Cyra S. Dumitru
Lyrical Bees: Writing Poems Inspired by Biology ~ Katherine Durham Oldmixon
Let’s Take It Outside ~ Ray McManus with Ed Madden
A Walking Petrarchan Sonnet ~ Rosa Alcalá
Three-Day Defamiliarization ~ Matthew Zapruder
 
Mining Memories
Listing: Side to Side, Top to Bottom ~ Nathan Brown
Place Picture Poems ~ Lori Desrosiers
My Summer Vacation: “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then” ~ Ed Madden with Ray McManus
The Notebook Poem ~ Bruce Snider
The Pie Plate: Serving Up a Slice of Travel through the Haibun ~ Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Speaking the Unspoken ~ Anne McCrady
Finding Voice ~ Sharon Bridgforth
Tales from the Bathroom: The Curious Path to a Poem ~ Georgia A. Popoff
My Mother’s Clothes ~ Jane Hilberry
Dressing ~ Patricia Smith
Rube Goldberg Poems ~ Oliver de la Paz
 
Voice or Persona
Writing Play ~ Robert McDowell
Birds in the Classroom ~ Abe Louise Young
The Window Poem ~ Kurt Heinzelman
Ways of Looking ~ Tara Betts
Diction Translations ~ Susan Briante
The Bop ~ Afaa Michael Weaver
The Postcard Poem ~ Andrea Hollander Budy
Finding Voice ~ Sharon Bridgforth
Love Letter to a Stranger ~ Jenny Browne
Dressing ~ Patricia Smith
The Self-Portrait Poem: Facebooking in the Vale of Soul-Makin