Todays Prompt:
Todays Prompt:Inch by Inch
Choose an inch of space anywhere around you: the sole of your
shoe, the rusted headlight of an abandoned car, that weathered and
broken thumb your grandfather used to pry open the back fence.
Write about that inch. As poets we often become overwhelmed by the
big picture. We seek to conquer love, injustice, and the meaning of
meaning. Take a step back. Focus the scope of your poetry. Writing
about a single drop of rain can tell us the most about the sky
above.
Making the Ordinary Extraordinary with Philip LevinePhillip
Levine often uses ordinary, every day objects and images to create
poems with deeper meanings. In the two poems we are going to look
at, he uses these items for symbols. In Milkweed, Levine uses this
ordinary plant as a symbol to make a deeper point about life and
letting go. In The Poem of Chalk, Levine uses chalk as a symbol to
make a deeper point about aging and death. Now its your turn, pick
an ordinary, every day item and use it as a symbol for something
deeper or as an extended metaphor.
Literary Terms Review:symbol (sim-bol): a symbol is a word or
object that stands for another word or object. The object or word
can be seen with the eye or not visible. For example a dove stands
for Peace. The dove can be seen and peace cannot.
metaphor (met-AH-for) [from the Gk. carrying one place to
another]: a type of figurative language in which a statement is
made that says that one thing is something else but, literally, it
is not. In connecting one object, event, or place, to another, a
metaphor can uncover new and intriguing qualities of the original
thing that we may not normally notice or even consider important.
Metaphoric language is used in order to realize a new and different
meaning. As an effect, a metaphor functions primarily to increase
stylistic colorfulness and variety. Metaphor is a great contributor
to poetry when the reader understands a likeness between two
essentially different things.
MilkweedRemember how unimportant they seemed, growing loosely in
the open fields we crossed on the way to school. We would carve
wooden swords and slash at the luscious trunks until the white milk
started and then flowed. Then we'd go on to the long day after day
of the History of History or the tables of numbers and order as the
clock slowly paid out the moments. The windows went dark first with
rain and then snow, and then the days, then the years ran together
and not one mattered more than another, and not one mattered. Two
days ago I walked the empty woods, bent over, crunching through oak
leaves, asking myself questions without answers. From somewhere a
froth of seeds drifted by touched with gold in the last light of a
lost day, going with the wind as they always did.
The Poem of ChalkText is on your handout. Follow along with the
audio of Philip Levine reading.
"The Poem of Chalk" by Philip LevinePhilip LevinePoem of the Day
from Poetryfoundation.org2009Podcast218893.55eng - iTunPGAP0eng -
iTunNORM 000001A8 00000000 00002498 00000000 0002D0D0 00000000
00006B7C 00000000 00000187 00000000eng - iTunSMPB 00000000 00000210
00000730 0000000000934040 00000000 001AB179 00000000 00000000
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000eng - Philip Levine introduces
and reads his poem "The Poem of Chalk." Recorded in a New York City
studio on September 13th, 2007.