Natasha Trethewey Is One Smart Lady

Natasha Trethewey’s reading at the H. Bruce McEver Poetry Reading offers more than poetry. She puts the poems in context by offering background about the topics in the poems as well as her experiences that helped the poems come about. Her first poem about forgotten soldiers uses rhyme and short lines to convey a haunting tale.


 A common theme in her work is race. She uses her poetry as political commentary. She discusses her family and miscegenation, which turns her life into poetry into political activism. She is also the current U. S. Poet Laureate.

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Yusef Komunyakaa: More Than Simply Fun To Say

Yusef Komunyakaa uses his own history to develop his poetry. His intonation and timing at the reading for the PoetryEverywhere project create an inviting scene and a haunting tale. His poetry uses detailed imagery of war to shock and to tell the truth. "Facing It" encompasses both literal and figurative meaning, intermixing them to the point of confusion. Reality is questionable, yet very certain.
Komunyakaa is another contemporary poet. He, too, fits into other "categories" of poets. Where does he fall and why?

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Fantastic Ekphrastic

 John Coltrane plays jazz. Jazz is cool. John Coltrane is cool.

That perhaps makes Harper cool, too. Harper's poems, like several poems from previous weeks as well as many, many, many poems in existence, are influenced by music.

Art influences art quite often. Graham uses visual art as an inspiration for her writing. Klimt was part of the art nouveau movement, which rebelled against traditionalist styles. His most famous painting is probably "The Kiss." Graham uses words instead of paint to convey similar ideas that the visual artist have.

Do Now:
Click on Comments. Discuss your feelings about ekphrastic poetry.  Remember to sign your comment.

Planes Trains and Automobiles

A found poem is a poem that presents itself to the poet. That means the poet sees a word, a phrase, or a sentence that sparks a poem. The poem usually takes that word, phrase, or sentence as its own. In any other kind of writing, that's called plagiarism. In poetry, it's called art.

 Kenneth Koch's poem is a found poem based on a sign he saw. The speaker tumbles from that sign to all other parts of life, discussing hidden aspects of life and the ones that shine through.

 Probably with this poem in mind, I saw a sign in a photograph my friend sent to me a few years back, and then wrote my own found poem:

 Active Railway  
Sign Beside The Rails Somewhere On The East Coast: Do Not Trespass: Walking Or Standing On This Bridge Exposes You To The Deadly Possibility Of Being Struck By A Fast Moving Train  

The boys put on their wetsuits. The law says they are men, but they have young hearts and minds set on jumping. They want the rush of the twenty foot drop. They want the thrill of a big splash. They want to play chicken on the tracks with the train at first and then with the third rail on the second dive, after they’ve been soaked through and climbed back up, having survived the first fall out.

 -- Christina M. Rau

This found poem is one of few prose poems I have written.

But back to Koch. His poem has no stanza breaks and the line lengths are pretty much the same throughout. Listen to his cadence as he reads. Notice where he breathes. Listen with your eyes closed. Then listen again as you read along. This experience in listening should offer some insight into what he was thinking as he wrote the poem.

Do Now:
Click Comments.  Discuss the way the poem sounds as well as it looks.  What do you think of found poetry? Sign your first name and last initial.

Welcome Wagon

This is me enjoying poetry.

Hello, poetry lovers. Yes, if you are in ENG 265, you are a poetry lover. If you don't love poetry yet, you will by the end of the semester. Even if by the end of the semester you still do not like poetry, simply pretend that you do. Humor me.

The writing here is a little less formal than those explications and paragraphs you have to write on Blackboard. Even so, remember to use proper Standard English language in your comments. Until the next assignment, happy poetry reading!  

Do Now: Click on Comments. Write your ideas of what you expect to read and what you hope to learn in this course. Sign your comment with your first name and last initial. DO NOT USE YOUR LAST NAME.