Calisthenic, Week 11

Lexical Accretion (p 208)

The day is good for a West Moreland stroll
the day is good for skipping the toll
the day seems good for skipping, or
trolling, because each day is good
when rolling, rolling; rolling is good
for loose-leaf tobacco, loose dough,
dogs in dirt or horses in dirt, and now
it's a good day for a ride on a horse
or a ride down Moreland Avenue
is good if you want to skip the toll
is good if this morning you broke a bowl
is good when there's nowhere else to go
there's nowhere to go to score your goal
whatever that may  be, wherever that
may be; maybe forever you'll skip
the toll of tobacco, lungs rolled in dirt

Response 2, Week 11

Response to Ben's "Free Write 1, Week 10"

Ben,
I enjoy the theme to this poem. It's like the demonstration presentations I had to do in high school (and again in Public Speaking): first you do this, here's why you do this, etc. The structure itself may benefit from experimentation though. Many of your lines are very long, going all the way to the margin. Others ("to clay", "cigarettes, and "Such is life") are cut extremely short. I don't get the feeling that these break choices are actively helping the piece. And watch your grammar: "malleable", "an unreasonable", "taken seriously", and at the end, "too much...too little."

Free Entry, Week 11

(coffee shop, rainy day)
words cross air, repetitive like bricks, as a man in an orange fleece jacket tries to speak over the racket of blenders, ice, various unknown others. his tennis shoes do not intrigue me, sporting their own announcement. Nike and I complete it, Just do it. clearing away newspapers, books--all those novels: Kings, Grishams, Roberts--I set out a soft notebook. black dragon oolong tea, with a distinctive aroma that tea drinkers from around the world can recognize. "Just a green tea" she asks, and a toddler in a blue cap waddles under the table. the grey backdrop to the trees. I walk through miniscule droplets, brings up a memory where I sit at my kitchen table with lights off, staring into rain: gutter-spout gushes and occasional light-flashes, the silencing blanketed onto us: thunder and water, thunder and water.

Sign Inventory, Week 11

"The Striking Blondes" by Kate Northrop

-three stanzas
-first stanza made up of sentence spanning three lines, each which end at the margin with no apparent "line break", much like prose
-2nd stanza formed much like first, but is a question containing a colon and a semicolon in the middle of the second and third lines, respectively
-third stanza: seven lines, 2 questions, 2 sentences, also prose-like
-second to last line ends with a period at the margin (no enjambent)
-last line: one full sentence
-first stanzas begin with "they" and later refer to "us"
-last stanza begins with "we" and seems a primarily "us"-centered stanza, with references to "them"

Junkyard Quote 4, Week 11

"How do we chart that accumulative ruin?" -this was in my notebook from the day Amy Pence came, but I don't remember specifically who said it

Junkyard Quote 3, Week 11

"it percolated in the discourse" -Dr. Donohoe

(what a good verb)

Junkyard Quote 2, Week 11

"the world started revolving at a different pace in another direction" -a friend in an email