Agenda
1. Word of the week
2. Pass back work/discuss expectations for work
3. Poetry Prompt
4. Workshop time
*YOU MUST WORKSHOP WITH SOMEONE NEW. If you have been working with one other person, you could merge with another pair...
Homework: Read pgs 23-43 of Collins (Should already be done.)
Choose 1-2 poems to comment on. Post on the blog. Respond to each other.
*You will need 3-5 workshopped/polished poems by Friday.
Ashley Lawson
ReplyDeleteMy favorite poem out of this section is A History of Weather. I like how Collins took history and wrote a poem about it, something so simple, and made it creative. Not only did he mention something from history, he described the weather that may have been, or may not have been during that era. For example, he said, “the rain that fell on battlefields/ and the winds that attended beheadings, coronations,” (Collins 26). This would most likely be around the French Revolution or Elizabethan Era when beheadings were the immediate death sentence. He also refers to the Middle and Dark ages and alludes all the way back to Noah’s Ark and the Garden of Eden.
Similarly, his poem The History Teacher denotes periods in the past creatively. Collins puts a twist on the subject, as well as the words or names of those specific periods like the Ice Age, the Stone Age, the Spanish Inquisition, the War of Roses, and the Boer War, to make his poem creative. For instance, “The Stone Age became the Gravel age, / named after the long driveways of the time. / The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions…” (38). Not only did this entertain me, it inspired me. I caught myself saying, “I would like to try to write a poem like that.”
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ReplyDeleteMariah Gonzalez
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite poems in the section entitled, Questions About Angels, is Forgetfulness. I absolutely adore this poem. My favorite thing about this piece is the fact that I am able to connect with it so much. In particular, I relate to the fact of forgetting simple things, such as dates, stories and capitals. Rather than forgetting whole ideas, I seem to forget little details; something that this poem demonstrates wonderfully. I like the line of “Whatever is it you are struggling to remember it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.” To me, this line resembles how individuals store information until they need to make room for something else to remember. Once something is forgotten, many people are unable to remember it fully; leaving out details or slightly changing what has been pushed out of their mind. Although it is no longer “poised on the tip of your tongue,” the information is not even stored away in your mind anymore, the fact or story not being important enough to remember/save. In my opinion, this act relates to the whole idea of life constantly changing, along with there always being something new and more important to learn/know.
Angela Rollins
ReplyDeleteIn The Man On the Moon, by Billy Collins, Collins describes the change in perspective with time. As a child, he saw the "man on the moon" as a cold and scary figure. Later, when he himself is alone on a drive and now understands deeper things such as love and isolation, he views the moon in a much more poetic way. The man on the moon is in love with the earth, stuck to watch her from afar. His mouth is "open as if he had just broken into song." Unlike the cold image Collins had originally felt toward the shape, he now feels it is lost in love. Though a very simply written poem, what sticks with me is the idea that time and experience can change your perspective so much. At an innocent and ignorant standpoint, the Man on the Moon was seemingly strange. As a man, driving alone and probably a bit lonely himself, Collins suddenly could understand the Man on the Moon a bit more, at least enough to give him a little more thought and depth.
My favorite poem of the bunch is Purity. I love how the structure of his poem systematically broke down, and reassembled the human body, clothes, flesh body, but in the context of composing a poem. The imagery was thoughtful but relevant and appropriate. Collins often writes in steps like that I’ve noticed, and I think it works to his advantage (this is probably why he does it). The best stanza is “I am concentration itself: I exist in a universe where there is nothing but sex, death and typewriting.” I think the metaphor in the beginning is strong and poetically blunt. He is the purest form of concentration: itself. Everything seems so simple and obvious in that line, which reflects the title, Purity. The motif of arrangement, and assembly is present in the poem. Most obviously through both Collins’s description of taking off the different parts of his body, but also in the last stanza, where Collins describes “stone walls, farmhouses and frozen ponds all perfectly arranged like words in a famous sonnet,” where he makes another reference to arrangement, and the simplistic ease everything, from writing a poem to the layout of a countryside, can be achieved with. I thought this poem was brilliant, the images captivating, and the everything else perfect and pure.
ReplyDeleteGracie Elliott
I really liked "The History Teacher;" it was one of the first poems in this collection that made me appreciate the subtleties of Collins' humor. Collins' strength as a poet lies in his specificity, and in "The History Teacher," he uses this to his advantage--"The History Teacher" chronicles an incompetent history teacher, and thus involves many specific historical allusions, including ones to the "Ice Age," the "Spanish Inquisition," and the "War of the Roses." The poem also employs irony--the history teacher fabricates and dumbs down his lessons to "protect his students' innocence," yet these students are not innocent--they "torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses."
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed "The Dead," one of Collins' shorter poems. I've noticed that many of Collins' poems in this collection are one page or longer, and that they sometimes employ the same image, just restated, over and over. I've found Collins' poems to be more effective--they make use of his matter-of-fact style to convey a succint, concise message. "The Dead" offers two very strong images: the dead (the whole collection has the common thread of angels, death, the past, and the afterlife) rowing in a "glass-bottom boats," and the dead as "parents," waiting for the living below to "close our eyes" each time we look at them. I like this image of the dead as parents, and especially as parents trying to keep us unaware of their constant presence and their activity. It gives the impression that the dead are always with us, always watching, yet wish us to go on with our everyday lives rather than looking for them.
I really enjoyed Advice to Writers and Nostalgia, to state it simply. I do like Billy Collins' work, and I am particularly fond of his line breaking--not too dramatic but simple and articulate. Advice to Writers has that classic feel to it, and I have seen it several times before. It is one of the poems given to young writers time and time again, and I appreciate it every time. It connects its outdoor and earthy imagery straight to syllables and writing, as well as using cleanliness and scrubbing to tie back to refining work and going deeper than the first layer of dirt. Nostalgia reads much like a humorous, fun poem, but by the end the kicker comes in, stretching toward the uncertain future and thinking about "a dance whose name we can only guess." It pokes fun at the incessant nostalgia every generation seems to feel about the past as well as reveals Collins' own view on nostalgia. Very lovely poems.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite poems in this section is “Purity.” As I read Billy Collins’ work, I can’t help but to put it in prose and read it as if were a story. His simplistic style of writing is becoming more appealing. Although his poems are straight-forward, he still uses solid images. One line from this poem that really stuck out to me was ‘Then I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair / I slide it off my bones like a silken garment.’ He uses very distinct motifs, and the repetition of the organs and flesh separates this poem from others in the book. The way he divided this poem into stanzas also seemed perfect to me.
ReplyDeleteAnother poem I liked in this section was “A History of Weather.” It seemed pretty clever to me that he used so many allusions and added a touch of nature. These are the poems that usually grab my attention; the ones with heavy imagery of everything that is outside your window. This poem was one to open my eyes, and made me think about using historical elements to write a poem. It also requires you to do some sort of research and make sure your knowledge of history is correct. Collins’ third stanza is seemed the most poetic to me: ‘The snow flurries of Victorian London will be surveyed / along with the gales that blew off Renaissance caps. / The tornadoes of the Middle Ages will be explicated / and the long, overcast days of the Dark Ages. / There will be a section on the frozen nights of antiquity / and on the heat that shimmered in the deserts of the Bible.’
My favorite poem by far was "The Man in the Moon." I don't think it's a terribly original poem, but it's comforting in a way that I really like about Billy Collins. I also love the moon as a subject, because I think moonlight is one of the coolest light sources there is if I were to rank light sources, and this poem accentuates that. It also is nostalgic because when I was much younger, I used to read this book titled "The Moon Man," that was all about the moon coming alive at night and its adventures with a lonely city, looking over water and interacting with cats. I even made a painting of that moon man that I put over my bed, and another one for my parents. He was a figure of both comfort and wonder. So it's always refreshing to see a new image of the moon to connect with, in this case a young man: "And when he comes into full view over open fields / he looks like a young man who has fallen in love / with the dark earth." That image is very beautiful to me, of the young man of the moon in love with the earth, because it is simultaneously such a mythical thing and such a seemingly real thing, one that drips of both imagery and awe. And then the final image, of the moon with "his round mouth open / as if he had just broken into song" is a fitting ending. The night is associated with silence a lot, as is the moon: it is just the guardian of the night, watching over us all. But when it's in love, it sings: and we all listen to its silent song.
ReplyDeleteLatin for "go with me," Vade Mecum is a poem that stood out--mostly because of its short length. In this second part of his collection, this was one of his shortest poems and it stuck with me because of that. It is direct, Collins' last line "when you cut me out of my life / and paste me in that book you always carry." It ends on a sweet note--you feel as a reader the meaning behind the words and the gentle yearning the voice in the poem wants to be with the person wherever they go. And the narrator of this poem wants to in such a way where it isn't an incessant or annoying following, but a benign sort of way where he simply hitches a ride in what he/she loves so much--being their book. It's cute. I really liked it.
ReplyDeleteI liked the poem A History Of Weather. I found that the way it goes through all the ages was really cool and inspiring. I especially liked the parts about Noahs Arc and the Medieval Ages because those sections were about times that are very interesting to me. I thought the way Collins tied weather as a constant throughout history was a really great idea. the beheading part was particularly well-written, with a great image.
ReplyDeleteI also loved the poem The Moon Man. I have a deep love and respect for the moon, and all that it stands for. The way Collins described the moon, was something that I had never thought of before. making the moon into a metaphorical man? It's a really great idea. Along with Gus, I absolutely adore the section about the Moon being a man that is in love with the Earth. I think this is a great metaphor for the moon, because in a way, it is true.
The most interesting poem that I read what entitled Purity. I think that this poem was so different than any other peom that I have ever read. The imagery of this was amazing in my opinion. There wasn't a point in the poem that I didn't have a picture of what was happening in my head. I understand the idea of wanting to be pure in order to write poems, but I also think that it was taken to the extreme a little. Taking off your skin and removing your organs. I had a vidid image in my head of that but it was cartoon like and I think that took away from the seriousness of the poem. Besides the imagery that the poem brought, I didn't get much else out of it. I think that Collin's should have made is message of what exactly he wanted the poem to be about a little more clear. Honestly, I'm not a fan of Collins. Personally his writing is not my taste or style. I will say that his imagery is very good though but his messages are too unclear for me.
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