Anandita

Q1) Read 'Learning the Poetic Line: How line breaks shape meaning' by Rebecca Hazelton - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70144/learning-the-poetic-line. Write two poems where each poem has at least two deliberate line-breaks using any of the "Wagner’s six S’s: speed, sound, syntax, surprise, sense, and space." In a small note after each poem, explain your usages of these line-breaks.

1)(Untitled-as of yet)

My grandmother’s wail

travels through

the house like a nerve

Disorder; is shaking

The ground beneath our feet, making

Chaos, she breathes

-and then a sneeze.

But what does one do.

One shakes the head

Looks away

Has tea

What do you do with an old person’s misery?

I think my grandmother needs a swing

Outside of this house, this city

Maybe in the half suspended space

Of feet and ground

And the illusion of sky

She can be happy again.

Note: One of the examples Rebecca Hazelton uses in her essay is the poem Homeland Security, by Geoffrey Brock is the use of enjambment to introduce multiple meanings to a sentence within the poem. I have attempted to introduce this in this poem in the first paragraph by “the house like a nerve”, where the house itself may be read as a nerve, a bundle of nerves closely knit, suffocating fibers. One can read this as representing the grandmother’s mind, or even the house itself as an entity contributing to her mind in its present condition, or the house rendered with tension, like a nerve, due to her condition. This is further attempted in the next line, beginning with “Disorder” where the idea of disorder may be read by itself or in conjunction with the previous tension of “nerve”. In separating the two I have attempted to enhance their own separate meanings. Subsequently, even in “Chaos, she breathes” I have attempted to introduce a confusion between who is being referred to- the house or the grandmother. I have attempted to introduce surprise through the last line in this stanza, through “sneeze”.

In the next paragraph, I have attempted to emphasize the tension generated by the last line (“What does one do with an old person’s misery?”) by breaking down a seamless action in-person (looking away, sipping tea) into its isolated components.  

I’m very unsatisfied with the ending. Would be very grateful if someone could give me advice on how to make it better.

2)A Lofty Pronunciation

9:05 AM: my heels are cracked with mud

I know i shouldn’t have worn those shoes

In this city

They eat into my feet like teeth.

9:04 AM: You tell me you’re going to Bombay                                                     

Need a break, you say,

Say you’ll be back soon

Enough. you’ll forget. I’m tired

You promised to call.  

                                                    (I promise to not pick up)

9:10 am: My name on the teacher’s throat always sits

Like a question

Of course, I am quieter than the lizard, slithering

Across the room’s perimeter

I’m wizening

to its p(l)ace

In the world.

This reptilian mammoth with its eyes

Wide, darting and alive

I suppose this is how all things are to be

A dis-pro-por-tion-ate  evolutionary scheme

I try to pep-talk myself out of hate.

9:16 AM: the eyes in class wander, curious, cruel,  towards me

I answer attendance

The class talks of surprise  

                                                (suppress? surplus? simile?saline?slime?)

Tension

           (Salience?)

Syntax.

They too once went to primary school,

I say to myself.

Later that day: When I get home,

My mother and I visit the city.

But there’s so much traffic, we forget where we’re going

I check the temperature in Bombay.

And I suppose, this, this is all there is

Wide, pockmarked face, anxiety,

A life slithering across a page

And your eyes

Wide, darting

alive.  

Note: I wanted to introduce a duality in meaning in the first paragraph, between “you say” to its subsequent line break, “say you’ll be back soon”. By this I wished to infuse a wishfulness, a secret desire on the part of the voice in the poem, which would have not been possible if I had made it merely, “You say you’ll be back soon”.

I attempted to use line breaks chaotically in this poem, through the brackets, as a means of introducing a second narrative voice to the poem, an inner voice of the speaker. To enhance this effect, I have therefore used the alliterative ‘s’ in the third bracket, as a means of sound, to indicate a wild, intuitive associative-ness that contrasts itself with the words surprise, tension and syntax, spelled out in the page, but still reiterates the ‘s’ sound to maintain an auditory assonance and linkage to the words “surprise, tension, syntax”, and at the same time contrast the orderliness of the meanings of the non-bracketed words, to the bracketed words. This is similar to one of the poems Rebecca Hazleton’s essay, entitled “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” by Robert Siken, where Siken uses the ‘sh’ sound to enhance sexual suggestion. Over here, I attempt to make a contrast between the two narrative voices in the poem by contrasting the elements in the brackets with the orderly world of "syntax, tension and surprise".

In the stanza beginning with “9:10 AM” I attempt to create a link between the speaker in the poem and the lizard by the sound similarity between “slithering” and “wizening”. Enjambment is used here when the line breaks off at “I’m wizening” to hint at a fusing, a use of pathetic fallacy, by the speaker towards the lizard, and the ambiguity is attempted to be brought out by the line break.

Towards the end I have attempted to introduce a tension by introducing the line break at “darting”. The phrase is used a second time over here, so  I tried to attempt a starkness, made possible if the word “alive” was in the next sentence, alone.

About rhymes: I tried to introduce a verbal echo to “evolutionary scheme” with “things to be” to introduce something more rhythmic as the poem turns more grim.

As with the previous poem, I'm not very pleased at the ending. Would appreciate advice about the same. Apologies for the inordinately long “short note”.

Q2)Read Mark Doty's 'The Tremendous Fish' about the art of description in poetry - http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_doty.php. Choose any two objects in your field of vision. A window, a person, an animal, a tree, a knife, a vehicle etc.. Write two poems that rely primarily on describing these two objects respectively.

The Clock

The thrum of day

Gives way to navel-gazing

Lambent dullness:

Abound and plush.

My eyes move to the clock

The needle walks

Across its yellowed surface

Hesitant, stuttering (Second guessing?)

The clock stutters on itself.

Does it lie? Does it laugh?

At our attempt to make time two-dimensional

Is it foolish to try?

Numbers stare, open spaces

Like eyes, fatigued

Of another day, another lesson.

For years it has made time

For countless classes

Dead-lines

Assignments

This marker of time

This Father Time

One must ask

Does time ever tire?

I tried to write a somewhat humorous poem on a lamp I purchased while also retaining some of the elements Doty described in his essay.

The Lamp

As a bare minimum effort at decoration
And a vociferous espousal by my friend
On a particularly hazy Friday night
We all give in to the trend.
..

Each illuminated bulb dances
a magnum opus of civilization
look at me- ephemeral and everlasting
Observe my glorious pixelation.
See my brilliant incandescent dance
Fluorescent- flourishing into a rainbow
Painting acrylic dreams
Venetian rivers  and boats
Bottles of wine, opened
for your hallowed "good times"
Notice my trail following the end of the room

Every speck I’ll optimize
…

It gives in a month later
To not-much  surprise
The lamp fades

Into a small box of junk

A  fool’s errand- now realized.

Q3)  Write two poems that are triggered by news events within the last six months.    

1)

"The bald ibis is waiting for the war to end in Syria before it migrates."

When will the bald ibis return to Damascus ? 

Will it come when all that remains 

In Syria, is a sea of plastic, 

A biography of dried blood and stone? 

When will the bald ibis return to Damascus?

Will it come as a ghost? 

Will it look over Syria 

In a waking nightmare, 

Will it lose its skin, 

Will it settle on a cedar tree 

Gasp and gawk, slip 

Crashing, and say 

"Take this. This is the soot of me." 

Will it wonder

When will I return to Damascus ? 

Note: this poem is based on an article I read recently, about the constant state of war in Syria leading to the near-extinction of the bald ibis, a migratory bird that used to come to Syria but has ceased to. 

2)Urban Naxal 

Whose nation 

Whose politics 

Whose gender 

Whose language 

Whose art 

Whose love?

Whose news 

Whose economy 

Whose black money 

Whose रोटी, कपड़ा और मकान

Whose love jihad? 

Whose half-Maoist conspiracy

Who determines a country 

And its enemies? 

Who should? 

Who can? 

#metoourbannaxal 

 Till the page bleeds, 

But not the citizen 

#metoourbannaxal 

Till your villainy ceases 

But not our fundamental rights 

#metoourbannaxal

On Tue 25 Sep, 2018, 9:55 PM Anandita Thakur, <athakur.17@stu.aud.ac.in> wrote:

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8766048628550470654#allposts