Day One
Friday August 23
Today was the first day I was able to get work done for the independent study! The first thing I did was I planned out a general schedule for my days during this three-week period, which was a morning reading period (to research and read writers, and figure out what form I wanted to pursue that day), followed by around twenty minutes to a half-hour of brainstorming topics and ideas for my poem that day, and the rest of the day writing, until around 1:30, where I would try to edit, tie up loose ends, and work on my blog.
I decided for my first poem to take on sonnets; sonnets have had continuing relevance throughout the entirety of poetry’s existence, but I haven’t seen them as much in this recent era. I knew of a sonnet writer who l liked to read, Marilyn Hacker, so I decided to go through her work to see how she utilizes the form to her advantage and to enhance the quality of her work. I also brainstormed for a while for possible overall themes of my collection, and I decided to expand upon something I had begun to write about a bit consistently before, with that being the concept of suburbia, with intersections of different topics as well (youth, love, confusion, femininity, etc.). I’ve also been trying to explore the same topic through photography recently, which gives me some inspiration as to what I aim to frame the story of my work as, in addition to having a collection of other photographer’s work to inspire me too.
For the poem I wrote today, I decided to learn a little more about sonnets before writing; I had written a sonnet I enjoyed for my English 3 class, but that was a Shakespearean sonnet with rigid meter, and I wasn’t as used to the more modern, less structured type that we can see now. A traditional definition of a sonnet has fourteen lines and specific rhyme schemes as according to their style (Petrarchan, English, etc.), but I noticed that many of Hacker’s poems did not reflect much these definitions, while still maintaining the distinct feel of a sonnet. A stretched sonnet, as I learned, was one that was typically longer than this fourteen-line limit, and I figured that she rather fit that version, and decided too to go about a more unconventional route, as she had. Another aspect of sonnets in general is typically having one subject, and then some kind of turn at the end; I decided for the poem to take one singular aspect of suburbia, my theme, that being the last day of summer, and writing something off of that, which I did (excerpt included below).
Day Two
Monday August 26
Today I decided to do something different from my normal style; a long, paragraph-like type of prose, instead of anything with the usual breaks the return key gives most poems. I chose this mainly being inspired by the writer Hanif Abdurraqib, poet and music critic (and native Ohioan) whose collection The Crown Ain’t Worth Much I recently read. Here’s a sample of a poem with this sort of layout he’s written:
Today I decided to do something different from my normal style; a long, paragraph-like type of prose, instead of anything with the usual breaks the return key gives most poems. I chose this mainly being inspired by the writer Hanif Abdurraqib, poet and music critic (and native Ohioan) whose collection The Crown Ain’t Worth Much I recently read. Here’s a sample of a poem with this sort of layout he’s written:
Something he also does in a lot of his poems is have the title of the poem both function as a title and as the first line; he does this in a lot of his poems, with some examples being:
which was something I had never seen before, and thought would be interesting to try out. As a writer, he sticks to a lot of similar themes in his work, some being living while Black, death, and music, and I think it's interesting how many completely distinct variations he can have on the same themes.
The poem I wrote was a paragraph sized poem that followed many of the aspects Abdurraqib includes in his work; I covered the single event of driving home from work at night through downtown Maumee, positioned the title as the first line of the song, and transitioned the poem into some other themes I like to write about.
The entire experience of writing like this isn't one I'm used to; almost every poem I've written has been in the very typical format of:
enter words
enter more words
etc,
although I would put them into stanzas sometimes and write within those constraints, but writing like this has given me a new perspective on creative limitations and how far I'm actually able to go with what I make. I never would've thought a year or two ago I'd be formatting my poems like this, but it was actually surprisingly easy and fun to do. Here's an excerpt of the poem:
The entire experience of writing like this isn't one I'm used to; almost every poem I've written has been in the very typical format of:
enter words
enter more words
etc,
although I would put them into stanzas sometimes and write within those constraints, but writing like this has given me a new perspective on creative limitations and how far I'm actually able to go with what I make. I never would've thought a year or two ago I'd be formatting my poems like this, but it was actually surprisingly easy and fun to do. Here's an excerpt of the poem:
I think one thing I could work on is making it sound a little less stream of consciousness and a little more put-together, but I was going for a stream of consciousness feel in the first place, so I think it’s about balancing that tone and a clear vision. I would also consider going about it with actual sentences and not one long run-on (or multiple sets of run-ons).
Day Three
Tuesday August 27
Today I decided to go into a type of poetry I definitely hadn’t approached on my own before: the sijo. I’d worked with it in middle school on a poetry assignment, but I hadn’t gone to it by myself since then. The first thing I did was go read up on the history; as with many forms of poetry, the sijo was originally intended to be sung, and many of the themes of sijos are similar to haikus in that they often relate to nature, spirituality, and peace. They, along with the more famous Japanese styles, both evolved from Chinese poetry, but the Korean sijo actually has more years on the haiku and tanka, being introduced during the Goryeo Dynasty and gaining prominence during the Joseon Dynasty. Originally it was a form exclusive to the upper class and with limited themes (all within Confucian beliefs and ideals, and also written in Chinese, which most of the non-ruling class would not have known), but during the 18th century, the sijo transformed into something much more accessible to the public. The sijo typically has three lines, each 14-16 syllables, with a total of 44-46 syllables. Though they’re originally written in three lines, modern ones are sometimes written in six.
I then began to read some examples of famous sijos to gain an idea of what I’d be doing; I ran some ones by the famous poet Hwang Jini, including this one:
And I always went through quite a few modern ones to see how the ones written in English would work. In sijos, the first line is also usually the story or idea of the poem, the second being a “turn”, and the third providing closure to the rest of it.
I decided to write a few to get the hang of writing in that form, and here’s one of those:
It doesn’t have the “turn” in it, so I kept writing more of them until I got comfortable with it and could start planning out what I would do with it. Here are some that I ended up with as the day went on:
This ended up being a lot more fun than I anticipated; having your language confined to certain amounts of syllables and lines makes you think very differently about how you’re going to choose what words you use. There’s a lot of creativity to be had, and such confinement makes you really narrow down the story of what you’re going to write, and subsequently what type of language or tone you want to have. I think I’d like to write like this for fun in the future—it really seems like a good exercise, and especially is good when you don’t have enough inspiration for a full length, multiple stanza-ed poem.
Day Four
Wednesday August 28
I’m personally not very big on meter; I tend to touch contemporary poets much more frequently than I do poets from before the twentieth century, so I’m not as accustomed to older styles of writing, or certain formats. I’d only really done so for class—we had done sonnets and odes, and I was alright with iambic pentameter, but there are some other forms I’ve never gone into much, one of those being villanelles. I wanted to try villanelles because I remember that the other English class had tried them and our class didn’t, so I looked over my friends’ and thought that they looked fun, and decided to pursue them more during this.
The most famous villanelle I know is probably “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. A villanelle consists of nineteen lines, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. It is structured as five tercets and a quatrain after; the first and third lines of the first tercet are “repeated alternately in the in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines.” Another way of denoting the form s this: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2. The origin of the villanelle is as a dance-song in Italy and Spain, and it flourished during the Renaissance, but was less structured than what we know it as today.
I’m personally not very big on meter; I tend to touch contemporary poets much more frequently than I do poets from before the twentieth century, so I’m not as accustomed to older styles of writing, or certain formats. I’d only really done so for class—we had done sonnets and odes, and I was alright with iambic pentameter, but there are some other forms I’ve never gone into much, one of those being villanelles. I wanted to try villanelles because I remember that the other English class had tried them and our class didn’t, so I looked over my friends’ and thought that they looked fun, and decided to pursue them more during this.
The most famous villanelle I know is probably “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. A villanelle consists of nineteen lines, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. It is structured as five tercets and a quatrain after; the first and third lines of the first tercet are “repeated alternately in the in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines.” Another way of denoting the form s this: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2. The origin of the villanelle is as a dance-song in Italy and Spain, and it flourished during the Renaissance, but was less structured than what we know it as today.
To be honest, these were more difficult than I had anticipated. I’m used to writing a certain way, one that involves a lot more freedom with line breaks and rhythm, and I was absolutely not as familiar with writing with rhymes and meter. I’m not too big on choosing my language based on how they sound fitted into a meter, and therefore the words I chose sound a lot more basic than what I usually do and the entire thing sounds pretty stunted. I think I’m going to have to go back and either revise this poem or perhaps write a new one in it’s place, because I’m not entirely satisfied with how it turned out, but I decided to finish it anyways because they’re both a lot of energy to write and it’s better to have one complete poem that I can go back on later and work through.
Day Five
Thursday August 29
Today I decided to take a break from writing (perhaps the villanelles tired me out a bit) and work on both editing and reading today instead, since I hadn’t gotten a chance to really go deeper into a lot of poets rather than just look at some within the style I was to study. I picked some of my favorite poets to go into, and tried to go deep into some more that I hadn’t found before; I like to go on different journals online, whether it be Adroit, Sooth Swarm, Blueshift, or any other. I hadn’t gotten the chance to peruse their sites in quite a while because I’ve been swamped with commitments, both this summer and through the past year, and so there was a lot I had to catch up on.
Here are some of my favorites below:
Today I decided to take a break from writing (perhaps the villanelles tired me out a bit) and work on both editing and reading today instead, since I hadn’t gotten a chance to really go deeper into a lot of poets rather than just look at some within the style I was to study. I picked some of my favorite poets to go into, and tried to go deep into some more that I hadn’t found before; I like to go on different journals online, whether it be Adroit, Sooth Swarm, Blueshift, or any other. I hadn’t gotten the chance to peruse their sites in quite a while because I’ve been swamped with commitments, both this summer and through the past year, and so there was a lot I had to catch up on.
Here are some of my favorites below:
I feel like just the first sentence sets up the poem to be impactful: bone, then the threading of one's own body to an animal's, to a country, to a family. I love when any piece of writing is able to handle violence into something skillful and palatable, and the references to blood and death aren't so prominent as to overpower you, but rather to stitch together a creature that takes form in your mind. The canyon of association that the writer sets up between a country that is hers and not at the same time, what she says she does about it.
The intersection between different aspects of existence I thought was particularly interesting in this poem. One of my favorite things about (many) poems is irregular language; "Every bride is a basket / we fill with fresh eggs." "swallowing fish bones will / grow a girl in me." (one example I always think of is "I anglerfish. I terrify. I skin-search / at the bottom of the pool." from Christina Im's Necessary Roughness, published in Adroit.) How she harnesses the disgust often felt by outsiders at certain cultural practices and combines it with her own sexuality, equates herself to the object of disgust, how she bears the ride through her existence. Any line of this poem I could pick out and use as an example of efficacious and engaging prose, whether it be "Mine of a prayer / arrowheaded in silence" or "Daughterhood is something like dogness / in that we eat what is fed" or "Be the son in my lineage of losses."
Reading favorites of mine and new finds always renews my motivation to write anything, and it worked particularly in this case; now I have some new ideas I want to try out, and different directions I want to go in in terms of writing. Some other pieces I read and didn't mention were "Ignition" by Helli Fang, "Magnitude" by Rona Wang (prose, but one of my favorites, and fits well with my theme), "matrimony / matriarchy" by Yujane Chen, "Duende" by Tracy K. Smith, "Perihelion: A History of Touch" by Franny Choi, "A New National Anthem" and "How To Triumph Like A Girl" by Ada Limón, and many more.