Poetry

We start this semester of creative writing with poetry. Playing with words is important; relishing the the way they feel in our mouths, how they sound to our ears, matters to a writer. Especially a writer of poetry.

The first task was to create Dadaist poetry, because it is all about the sound and the feel, with no meaning attached. It is pure playing with phonemes. And so we started there.

Our next task was the sonnet. 14 lines, ab ab structure, iambic pentameter. It sounds much simpler than it is, though perhaps it doesn’t sound simple at all.

When it comes to unfamiliar structures and forms, modeling matters. And so we started a draft of a class sonnet. The way this works is someone calls out a topic (I do like a noisy classroom; it sounds like engagement and learning…plus I show them the Girl Scout “quiet sign” for when I need their attention, and am always delighted when it works), then we start building it, line by line.

We didn’t manage to finish the Sonnet to Cthulhu, much less revise and refine it, but perhaps one of us will get around to it.

Stay tuned for more student sonnets.

— xoxo Baker