| 1. | Perhaps at their own risk, "Self" and "The Last Angel Poem" respond to aspects of the contemporary poetic scene. You might try taking on poetry itself as a way of defining your aesthetic. To this end, I ask my own creative writing students to write a poem in response to one of the following topics at the beginning of the semester:
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| a) | Define your Muse: Who or what would your muse be? Lawrence Raab’s "The Bad Muse," begins, "Calm down. No one’s listening." A bad muse, indeed. You could write a direct address to your muse, or you could describe your muse, or you could write a persona poem in which your muse speaks to you (or to your audience). |
| b) | Define your Reader: Donald Barthelme once said that he imagined his audience to be exceptionally intelligent and very good-looking. In "Selecting a Reader," Ted Kooser envisions a beautiful young woman who would put his back on the shelf and spend her money on getting her raincoat cleaned instead. Who is your ideal reader? What would you say to this person? |
| c) | How to Read Your Poet: Give your would-be readers instructions about finding their way in your world. |
| d) | What Your Poem Can Do: Write a brag poem. For example: "My poem can rip that smile right off your face/correct your vision/and save the world. . . ." |
| e) | What Every Poem Needs: Marilyn Nelson begins "Fish Poem," with the lines:
Every poem
worth its salt
should have its own fish.
Write a poem in which you explore what you think every poem needs. This assignment is meant to be a further exploration of what’s important to you poetically. It’s also an invitation to wild freedom, to serious playfulness. Perhaps it will occur to you to write, "Every poem needs rat vomit." Well, okay. But does this mean something? Maybe it does. Maybe you’re trying to make a point about including the ugliness of the world. Maybe you really don’t like "genteel" poems that seem to you rarified or pretentious. Surprise yourself; then consider the implications of your choice. Does it have any resonance, any juice? Include whatever you like: eyes, feet, a lie, a small gray cat . . . . |
| f) | What Every Poem Needs to Get Rid Of: This is a variation on the previous theme. One could argue that "The Last Angel Poem" suggests bidding adieu to the whole angel enterprise in verse. In terms of your own poetry or poetry in general, what would you like to see dumped in the trash?
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| 2. | A List Poem. A number of pieces in Bad Judgment, including the title poem, might be categorized as list poems. Try writing your own catalogue. You might employ a refrain ("I have known" or "I have seen" or "I want to know") and/or list under a particular category (The Zoo, Purple, The Way Girls Move). A catalogue should build by accretion and perhaps employ juxtapositions in interesting ways. For the poem to work, the items in your list need to be pretty engaging: surprising assertions, startling yet "right" images, etc. You also will want to think about how to end your list (because it could go on forever).
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| 3. | Arguably, Bad Judgment is a mix of rants and praises. Write your own poem of complaint or celebration:
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| a) | A Celebration. Obviously, "In Praise of My Young Husband" is a poem of thanksgiving. Try celebrating something even more unusual than a young husband. Think of Clifton’s "Homage to My Hips" or Sexton’s "In Praise of My Uterus" or Mary Campbell’s "The Loneliness of Men Bathing," which begins, "No one bothers to imagine men in baths." Celebrate the unexpected. Rather than writing "Ode to Autumn Leaves," something which most of us already regard as objects of beauty, you could write "Ode to Boredom," thus applauding that which is not usually appreciated.
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| b) | A Condemnation. Again, don’t round up the usual suspects: think of something unusual to condemn. For example, you might write "A Pox upon Apologies." Along these lines, I once wrote a poem titled "Against Virtue."
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| 4. | "For Lynda" is both an elegy and a verse epistle. Try your hand at variation on one of these types of poems.
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| a) | An Elegy. Since elegies are such heavy biscuits, in terms of subject matter and the weight of tradition, try writing an elegy for something rather than for someone, such as Dugan’s "Elegy for a Puritan Conscience." Compose an elegy for Past Boyfriends, for the Twentieth Century, for your Misspent Youth, etc. |
| b) | A verse epistle or a poem in the guise of a letter, such as Ben Jonson’s "Inviting a Friend to Supper." This also could be a dramatic monologue like Adrienne Rich’s "Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff." The letter form gives the poem an intimacy and conversational tone, but don’t restrict yourself to writing to a person. You could write to one of your body parts or to the pigeons outside your window.
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| 5) | Deader than a Doornail. In "My Summer as a Bride" I employ the language of bridal magazines and in "Beyond the Power of Positive Thinking" the formulations common to New Age self-help books. Try writing a poem that plays with "unpoetic" language, perhaps the clichés or jargon that characterize a specific subculture, such as e-mail or the corporate world. See if you can find what is poetic about this language, if you can enliven it through your own arrangement. Or you might try mixing levels of diction, different types of language, to see what sort of internal dialogue your poem can develop. |
