Such luck! Taking a poetry class with Lynn Levin, who teaches at both Drexel and Penn. She's written 6 books, including the one we used as a guide....
It was most helpful!
Lynn told us she is a compulsive note-taker, as I scribbled away. She toured Old Friends cemetery where race horses are buried. She took notes on one Ruhlman, who was buried there. His claim to fame? He was a mean horse. And, in 5 lines she told us that.
The form Ruhlman was written in is called:
Cinquain. It was invented by an American poet oddly-named Adelaide Crapsey.
Syllables in each line are:
2
4
6
8
2
How, I wondered, am I ever going to write a poem with those syllables?
Lynn made it easy for us. We interviewed our neighbor, asking certain questions, and then coming up with a cinquain about them!
I learned the terms "enjambment" - the thought runs onto the next line - Good notetaking, Ruthie! - and "caesura" - a stop in the middle of a line - using a punctuation mark.
Here are my two poems about Paula:
Paula
did you see the size of her ring? Don't look
now. She's eating salmon, spitting
out bones.
Paula,
purple nails flail,
eating pecan-crusted
salmon, softly spitting bones
alone.
Lynn said - and this is SO interesting! - that every poem should contain a little bit of violence and some element of gravity.
Lynn gave us a gift at the start of the class. She piled poetry magazines on the table and we could take whatever we wanted. I took the famous Ploughshares - as hard to get into as the New Yorker. I'll add it to my bedtime reading pile.
Another 'prompt' was to write an Unanswerable Letter. I got two 'cards' from Paula. I must include the words in my Letter. See if you can guess what the words were.
LETTER TO WALT WHITMAN
White lace, white sandals,
a gown that glowed beneath
the noonday sun in Central Park
That, Dear Walt, was Dan & Hannah's
Wedding. Everyone was there, except
the New York Times. Huge rocks, boulders
really, coughed up from the depths of the
earth, housing children gaming for a peek.
Before we were all born, bears roamed free,
their marriage consummated while naked,
no finery needed.
DEAR DAN AND HANNAH
Talk about the best day of our lives!
For years, my darlings, all I could say
was "Dan and Hannah's Wedding."
Were you there?
The soft sands of Cape May
the ocean's ebb and flow
soundless, then louder, a growl like
a big black bear
How, indeed, did the bear
mar your union?
Our assignment for next week is to "swipe a line" from another poem and make that be the title of our own poem.
In Ploughshares, I read: Let me practice silence with you.
It's from the poem "I Like to Live with Hermits" by Nicholas Samaras.
I sure have a lot of catching up to do with modern poets.
St. Louis, Missouri, she said. Takes one to know one, said the girl from Cleveland, Ohio.
The Poetry Workshop is a two-parter. Darn! I can't come next Thursday b/c I'm taking a bus trip to Baltimore, courtesy of the Cheltenham Adult Evening School.
We'll view the American Visionary Museum - one of my favorites - and another one whose name I can't remember.
In my stead, my writer friend Carly Brown will attend the workshop.
Pictures please!
The four of us didn't realize, until it was time to go, that we're all Jewish.
I told the group I'd written a poem "Passover Fantasy" about the reconstitution of my family. Here, I immodestly post it.
PASSOVER FANTASY
She
has stopped making seder.
mother
dines alone, breaking the
matzoh
in pieces.
The
table is bare.
house
silent but for the
often
ferocious winds of
April
that sound like
the
children fighting.
Her
potato flour sponge-cake
gobbled
by all, even the
white
dog named Triscuit,
and
that black-haired husband
of
hers who died, bald
from
the radiation, at fifty nine.
Let’s
bring them back.
Can
you see them running home?
Back
to this huge six-bedroom house
lawn
fertilized by Juan
and
his team of matadors,
the
kids in the backyard
playing
duck- duck- goose
laughter
spilling over to the
Austins in the back – we
weren’t supposed
to
let them hear us curse – their tomatoes and
cornstalks
reminded mom of the trip she
took
to Amish country as a girl.
With
a whistle Lynn
brings us together
We
crowd around the long table
and
view ourselves in the mirror
daddy’s
nose always looks crooked
my
long brown hair parted on the wrong side
grape
juice for the minors
Manichewitz
for the majors
Aunt
Ethel arrives, her death will bring us
a
fortune, my house, Donna’s condo,
I
sat in the largesse of her lap
and
fondled her tiny red-nailed fingers
her
amber bracelet
smelled
her thinning hair
like
mine in latter days.
L’il
brother David reclines in his
chair,
silent by age six,
speaks
with his Polaroid,
the
only way he can view us
before
his overdose at twenty-eight.
My
two Mommies, as I once called them,
serve
the feast after prayers and handwashing
and
hiding of the afikomen
by
now we are tired, the brisket and onions
only
make me sleepier
I
go up to my room for a little nap
and
hear the sounds of my family downstairs.
Unforgettable
sounds amid the clatter of
dishes
and putting into the dishwasher
the
parade of the sparkling clean water
from
the one-faucet sink
I
hear them all, all the sounds,
the
laughter, the bark of the dog,
the
snap of the Polaroid,
even
now, even now
alone
in another room,
forty-five
years away
waiting
for sleep to come.
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