Week 2: Form

This Week

Please come to class on Monday having read pages 348-351 of the text book and Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (Let Me Not To the Marriage of True Minds).


For Wednesday read pages 388-95 and be ready to discuss poetic form in general and the poems "We Real Cool" and "landscape: 1" in particular.

For Friday we'll keep talking about form, and we'll be thinking especially about how to write an essay about poetic form. We'll work toward writing essays on the haikus and limericks on pages 398-400, so come to class with essay ideas ready.

Journal Activities

Poetry is an especially useful place to begin thinking about form in literature, because the form of poetry is so unlike the form of casual writing or conversation. Whether in poetry, in fiction, in non-fiction or even in conversation, however, form contributes to meaning. A writer's use of form is always deliberate, never arbitrary, even if the writer doesn't know the terms to describe the form. No one has ever accidentally written a haiku when she intended to write a limerick, or accidentally written a limerick when he meant to write a story. Form is also one of the least subjective parts about literature. The subjectivity of literature is one of the things that excites some readers and frustrates others. Some of us love the way a poem can mean different things to different people. Others just want to know the right answer! Form is a part of literature for which there are often objective right answers. That makes it a good place to start. It gives us firm footing, so that once we understand form we will always be able to say something intelligent and correct about a poem; it also gives us the necessary roots so that we don't end up drifting away into hot air.

As you complete your journal activities this week, whether you choose the creative or the critical option, please try to think critically about the relationship of form to content.

Choose either the creative OR the critical option to complete.

Creative

1. Write an original haiku. Remember the rules of the form, not only the rhythmic rules (three lines, following a syllable pattern of five, seven, five), but also the conventions of content (nature imagery, allusion to a season).

2. Write an original limerick. Remember the rules of both meter and rhyme scheme (five lines, anapestic, a a b b a rhyme scheme).

3. Write a brief reflection on how the form of your writing influenced your content.

Critical

1. In a few paragraphs, analyse the form of Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool." You may wish to answer some or all of the questions posed about the poem on p. 395-396.

2. In a few paragraphs, analyse the relationship of form to content in bp Nichol's "landscape: 1."

Looking Ahead to Next Week

Next week we will be continuing our discussion of form, and starting to think about poetic language. Please come to class on Monday having read McMahan's "Writing about Poetic Language," (370-381), Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?" (374) and Wordsworth's "Nuns Fret Not" (394-395).

Good luck with your writing and enjoy your reading!