English 609: Poetry Writing

September 28

What's due today:

Suggestions for finding Sestina end-words

  • Random words from dictionary
  • Finding six words from the same context (e.g. X files, video games, cartoons, painting, opera, menus, bible, advertising, car repair manual, cookbook, food group, etc.)
  • six cognates (for example, the words helmet, hell, hall, hull, hole, cover, colon, color, conceal, apocalypse, eucalyptus, holster, occult, cellar, housing, and supercilious all come from the same Indo-European root--see Etymology online for etymologies and roots) and this poem for an example of a poem that uses roots

What's due next class:

Lux, New & Selected, Sections "The Drowned River" and "Split Horizon"

Online "St Crispin's Day" speech by Shakespeare (and hear Kenneth Branagh say it); Coleridge, Frost at Midnight; Browning, "The Bishop Orders his Tomb;" Frost, "Mending Wall""Home Burial"; "Birches*," Stevens, "Idea of Order at Key West*," Wilbur, "Lying*," Stafford "Traveling," Merrill "Charles on Fire, Rich "Living in Sin,*" Nemerov, Gyroscope, Stanford, Private Autumn

Writing Homework: Write a sestina