This course will provide an introduction to fiction ...



Poetry Workshop Responses

The writing workshop has a relatively short history in the grand scheme of academia, appearing first at the University of Iowa in 1936. Since that time, writing workshops and degree programs have proliferated across the United States, with creative writing majors and non-majors alike enrolling for these dynamic and challenging courses.

The Association of Writers and Writing Programs or AWP () was founded in 1967 to encourage literary talent and growth, and to set hallmarks and guidelines for successful writing workshops and creative writing programs. One of the hallmarks of a successful creative writing workshop is a rigorous curriculum that includes the use of literary terms in a workshop setting. This helps the workshop maintain its focus on the craft of writing. For those of you who wish to continue your study of creative writing, you should study the AWP website and become familiar with its resources, services, and philosophies.

Professors of creative writing can structure their courses in endless ways, but they all wish to achieve similar goals. One of the main goals of the poetry workshop is to allow students to learn the literary craft of poetry from the inside out: reinforcing key concepts by practicing them. A student learns about synecdoche by writing synecdoche. A student learns what a sestina is by writing a sestina. Another goal of the poetry workshop is to highlight the importance of revision and editorial input to the revision process. Students bring working drafts of their writing to the classroom for feedback. They then take that feedback and use it to make substantial revisions.

In this writing workshop my focus is on the close study of writing using literary terms and techniques. In my 14 years of teaching, I have come to the conclusion that to be confident readers and writers, students must be empowered to discuss their reading and writing the same way experts do: with specific literary terms that show an understanding of poetry as craft. For that reason, I ask for peer responses that transcend emotional reactions (we’ll do that too, though less so) and focus instead on educated and studied responses to the craft of the work.

Writing workshops can become what they weren’t meant to be: counseling sessions, self-esteem camp, debate grounds for personal taste, or “easy A” fluff courses. While I don’t mind if these are fringe benefits, they must not be the main goal. Instead, the main goals of my courses are that you feel a new love for literature because you understand it better, you learn to see writing as a craft not an accident, and you view poetry as an art and not as an exercise in self-expression.

Another main purpose of the writing workshop is to gather with a community of writers to receive input on your work so that you may revise it for an audience. Therefore, I advise that you do not bring in work that you do not wish to revise or that you already feel is completed and you don’t want to change. Also, don’t bring in any work that is intended as a personal form of self-expression. Instead, bring in the work you would like to improve for an audience. By doing so, you will benefit greatly from this community of friendly, interested writers.

Your workshop responses will appear in list form in the text of a Blackboard message. Please proofread carefully. View this as a polished quiz. Please follow these instructions and answer the questions using examples from the poem and literary terms. I have provided an example.

READ the poem once silently, then read it once aloud. Then answer the following questions.

Titles: How does the title relate to the poem? What work does the title do?

First Line: Is the first line interesting? Does it make you want to read on?

Last Line: Is the last line interesting? Does it surprise and delight you?

Characters: Define and describe the speaker and his/her voice. Who else is in the poem & what is the relationship to the speaker? How are they characterized?

Setting: Where does the poem take place? When does it happen? What details of setting are missing? What description could be added?

Theme: What is the poem about? What types of conflict occur in the poem? What happens in the poem? Consider the plot or basic design of the action. How are the dramatized conflicts or themes introduced, sustained, resolved, etc.?

Tone: What is the author’s attitude towards the subject, or, what is the tone of the poem? List some words that show the tone. What would happen to the poem if the tone were changed?

Structure: Is the poem in sections? Equal lines within stanzas? Consistent line length? How do line breaks function? Is there a better structure for the poem? Does the poem represent a particular form (sonnet, sestina, etc.)? Does the poem present any unique variations from the traditional structure of that form?

Imagery: What are the concrete images in the poem (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures)? Describe any moments where the poem explains emotions instead of evoking them. Make a list of the concrete language and the abstract language in the poem. Could it be more balanced?

Figurative Language: Describe the figurative language in the poem, using the following bulleted list as a reference. How many types of figurative language does the poem employ? Could it use more? Which figurative language works best in the poem?

•        metaphor—implied comparison between two unlike things

•        simile—expressed comparison between two unlike things

•        personification—giving the attributes of a human to an animal or object

•        apostrophe—addressing someone absent or dead

•        synecdoche—using the part for the whole

•        metonymy—use of something closely related for the actual thing

•        allegory—a narrative that has a second meaning beneath the surface

•        paradox—an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless true

•        allusion—reference to something in literature or history

Musical Devices: Describe the musical devices in the poem, using the following bulleted list as a reference. If the poem uses rhyme and meter, does it follow the patterns it sets up for itself? Is the pattern too restrictive? Is the pattern implemented well? If the poem is in free verse, do the line breaks make sense? Do the lines work individually?

•        alliteration—the repetition of initial consonant sounds

•        assonance—repetition of vowel sounds

•        consonance—repetition of consonant sounds

•  trite rhyme—rhyming with words that have been over-used

•        internal rhyme—one or more rhyming words within the line

•        slant rhyme—words with similarity

Purpose: What is the poem’s purpose? How fully has it been accomplished? How important is this purpose? Is it fresh?

High Points vs. Low Points: Is the poem too sentimental? Too didactic? Does it earn its tone? Do you care about the speaker, the characters, the theme? What is your personal opinion/reaction to the poem?

Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.

In the failing light, the old grandmother

sits in the kitchen with the child

beside the Little Marvel Stove,

reading the jokes from the almanac,

laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears

and the rain that beats on the roof of the house

were both foretold by the almanac,

but only known to a grandmother.

The iron kettle sings on the stove.

She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child

is watching the teakettle's small hard tears

dance like mad on the hot black stove,

the way the rain must dance on the house.

Tidying up, the old grandmother

hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac

hovers half open above the child,

hovers above the old grandmother

and her teacup full of dark brown tears.

She shivers and says she thinks the house

feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.

I know what I know, says the almanac.

With crayons the child draws a rigid house

and a winding pathway. Then the child

puts in a man with buttons like tears

and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother

busies herself about the stove,

the little moons fall down like tears

from between the pages of the almanac

into the flower bed the child

has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.

The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove

and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Titles: The title is a single word that describes the formal structure of the poem. The title does the work of warning the reader beforehand that the poem is written in form. It also takes an ironic distance from the deeper theme of the poem, which is a complex relationship between daughter and granddaughter.

First Line: The first line makes me want to read on because it gives details of setting (it is September, in a house) and it gives sensory detail (rain.) I want to know what happens next.

Last Line: The use of the word inscrutable makes the last line surprising an delightful. It makes me wonder, why is the house inscrutable? Is the child’s life inscrutable? It is also descriptive and it shows a tangible action: the child drawing.

Characters: The speaker is a detached third person narrator. The other characters in the poem are the grandmother, the granddaughter, and even the stove and the almanac become living characters in the poem. The grandmother is characterized as a sensible, hardworking type who makes the tea and tidies up. The granddaughter is characterized as a dissatisfied dreamer.

Setting: The poem takes place in the rain in September in a domestic setting. It is chilly out, and the stove warms the house a bit.

Theme: The main conflict in the poem is between the grandmother’s practical nature and the child’s dissatisfaction with her life—especially with the rigid structure represented by the information in the almanac. The poem describes a short scene at tea time in the kitchen of a house during a rain storm. The theme is dramatized by showing the grandmother repeating tasks and the child crying and wanting something more.

Tone: The tone of the poem is a quiet, calm recounting of a conflict with no easy resolution. Words such as rain, failing, old, tears, beats, mad, hovers, shivers, rigid, inscrutable create show that there is a certain level of discontent.

Structure: The poem is a classic sestina.

Imagery: The poem uses many images to evoke emotion such as the rain like tears, putting wood on the stove, a flower bed the child has carefully built. Concrete language is: rain, light, kitchen, stove, almanac, tears, roof, kettle, bread, tea, teakettle, string, bird, wood, crayons, pathway, man, buttons, moons, flower bed. Abstract language is: none.

Figurative Language: The poem uses personification “the iron kettle sings” metaphor “the teakettles small hard tears” and “time to plant tears” simile “with buttons like tears”

Musical Devices: The poem does not draw heavily from musical devices, though there are many phrases that use assonance “rain falls” or consonance “time to plant tears.”

Purpose: The purpose of the poem is to show the conflict between a child and a grandmother and to illuminate the domestic life of people stuck in a situation over which they have little control.

High Points vs. Low Points: This is one of my favorite poems. The images and the figurative language, especially the use of the word tears in myriad ways, offer many pay-offs to the reader.

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