This blog was born to provide an out-of-classroom communicative space wherein my colleagues can share ideas pertaining to David Lehman's course, "Poetry & Ideas."
Okay, here's one from last night (feel free to edit/leave feedback):
Leagues of Thieves
The leagues of Hivites and Israelites harbored both their sons of vice. The beautiful act of multiplication was mistranslated by Shechem, the traitor. He had done the daughter of Jacob and Leah (named Dinah), the dirtiest deed expected of a rogue. Commit a crime he did to her and tribe alike: he begged their permission to commit to her providing an ass for an ass and promised to circumcise all the men in his land, which manifested a deal of glass.
Commit a crime to him they did their deed as it came to pass with sword in hand and not out of mind they could get the act of Shechem fondling Dinah's mole. You think revenge may appease Jacob and you have not a clew. Some brethren brought their swords with them and every man they slew for all that anger feeds are desert fires and vice for vice transpires. The laws of justice do not cease for multiplieth Jacob's grief for losing his daughter's purity and counted each his sons a thief.
This prose poem is from the assignment where we choose a paragraph from Emerson's essay and keep the first and last word of each sentence.
Favor The Professional In Us / Tell Us What You See
We are killer whales and have no friends. We alphabetize post-it notes and our beliefs in Fordism we will never let go. We sell gin flowers at after-school programs and then leave so princes can go in. We've written a book of countries, throw erasers at hot-pink mariners, and live like it's 1997, though we are old. We eat bagels that taste like the Aegean Sea; they're omnipresent. We often forget how lovely the marbles looked yesterday. We brought home a box of stick figures again. We produce butterfly children who ride camels (in saying this do we appear vain?) The birthday magicians give us animal masks for evermore. We are not strangers in the White Mountain Forest although in Maine they think of us as ruins. Neither the rocks nor the accountants are afraid of the wards.
Yay for all the poetry! Now how do we get this to be on the main page where it belongs?? I couldn't manage a prose poem, so here's one from the prospective of Lot's Wife I wrote a few weeks ago:
The Strangers
You offered them, my butter-skinned daughters, those dancing, slight silvered girls, free in youth and wild without men. Their toes dug into the dirt when they stood and leaned to kiss you. One had hair like her mother's, one like back-lit wheat fields, one had smooth hands, one taut legs like a goat's, one was beautiful naked.
I was already a pillar of salt, tomb of dry winds, coarse tears without water's relief. And it wasn't for looking back, but for wishing you had stayed in that ash-ravaged plain to die alone in fire and because Yaweh is a god of fathers.
3 comments:
Okay, here's one from last night (feel free to edit/leave feedback):
Leagues of Thieves
The leagues of Hivites and Israelites harbored both their sons of vice.
The beautiful act of multiplication was mistranslated by Shechem, the traitor.
He had done the daughter of Jacob and Leah (named Dinah), the dirtiest deed expected of a rogue.
Commit a crime he did to her and tribe alike: he begged their permission to commit to her providing an ass for an ass and promised to circumcise all the men in his land, which manifested a deal of glass.
Commit a crime to him they did their deed as it came to pass with sword in hand and not out of mind they could get the act of Shechem fondling Dinah's mole.
You think revenge may appease Jacob and you have not a clew.
Some brethren brought their swords with them and every man they slew for all that anger feeds are desert fires and vice for vice transpires.
The laws of justice do not cease for multiplieth Jacob's grief for losing his daughter's purity and counted each his sons a thief.
Lia
Lia, I enjoyed your poem.
This prose poem is from the assignment where we choose a paragraph from Emerson's essay and keep the first and last word of each sentence.
Favor The Professional In Us / Tell Us What You See
We are killer whales and have no friends. We alphabetize post-it notes and our beliefs in Fordism we will never let go. We sell gin flowers at after-school programs and then leave so princes can go in. We've written a book of countries, throw erasers at hot-pink mariners, and live like it's 1997, though we are old. We eat bagels that taste like the Aegean Sea; they're omnipresent. We often forget how lovely the marbles looked yesterday. We brought home a box of stick figures again. We produce butterfly children who ride camels (in saying this do we appear vain?) The birthday magicians give us animal masks for evermore. We are not strangers in the White Mountain Forest although in Maine they think of us as ruins. Neither the rocks nor the accountants are afraid of the wards.
Alina
Yay for all the poetry! Now how do we get this to be on the main page where it belongs?? I couldn't manage a prose poem, so here's one from the prospective of Lot's Wife I wrote a few weeks ago:
The Strangers
You offered them, my butter-skinned
daughters, those dancing, slight
silvered girls, free in youth
and wild without men.
Their toes dug into the dirt when they
stood and leaned to kiss you.
One had hair like her mother's,
one like back-lit wheat fields,
one had smooth hands,
one taut legs like a goat's,
one was beautiful naked.
I was already a pillar of salt,
tomb of dry winds, coarse tears
without water's relief.
And it wasn't for looking back, but for
wishing you had stayed in that
ash-ravaged plain to die alone in fire
and because Yaweh is a god of fathers.
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