ENAM 170 Workshop Exercise

2/24 New York School of Poets Exercise (inspired by former 170-er and now faculty and poet, Stacie Cassarino) This exercise was dreamed up by our course tutors.

Prompt:

1. Write a question.

2. Write down the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the following:
Day of the week
Time of day
Painter
Color
Fruit
Body part
Room
Means of transportation
Shape
Article of clothing
Plant
Country
Song lyrics
Street name
Emotion
Animal
Children’s toy
Historical event
Rock group
City
Saying
Landmark
Element
Metal
Smell
Thing you find in a hardware store
Musical instrument

3. Another question.

In five minutes, write a poem opening with the first question, closing with the second question and including as many of the responses to the words as possible. Think about how to get from the first question to the second.
My result:

Camus to Sisyphus

Why does the owl sit in our tree
on Tuesday at 3:00
of all things, in the day

Why does Klimt
throw teal grapefruits against the window
in Prague
while he rides the train to visit
his mother?

Why does the street sign
hit your shoes with sadness as you push
your burden up Elm Street?
Hey, don’t walk on the grass,
it’s cheating.
Rather, play the viola with burning tires.

Why does Canada’s arm
slap down across the border
as though it holds some kind of rosy oval
yardstick?

Does it know something we don’t?

Desert Dreams, An Image-Only Story

Fire

My sweet daughters, both of fiery spirit

Like their mother, love to argue for argument’s sake.

They fly to flame. No, rather, they put bellows to cinder.

They can’t help themselves. In some places, it is unseemly.

Surprising.

Cruel even.

In our home it is high art.

We have, after all, been brought up to spar

as though lighting the warming evening fire–

All of us on our Irish side

On the historian’s side–

Valuing the slow burn of a perfectly

Wrought argument

As it throws sparks

Across the table at hapless

Guest, sibling or

parent

Igniting idea, conviction,

passion.

Metal

On perfect Maine mornings, my dad and I would awaken even before the sun and head to the lake. As we rowed into the uneasy pre-dawn dark, Alamoosook felt leaden beneath our oars. We rarely said a word, listening instead to loon and owl, to oars clunking against the gunnel.

One morning, as the sun coppered the lake, we turned wearily back to shore, empty-handed, having forgotten freshwater tackle. As we rowed, huge fish surfaced to the sunrise: trout and bass. Fishhawks plummeted repeatedly to pull with silver talons the shimmery flanks of plump fish from the molten waters.

Pillow

Okay,

I admit it.

So sue me.

I have a thing about pillows. My pillows. My pill-ow-s.

I sleep with five, sometimes six: the three I’ve had for over thirty years, soft, airy down so light that together they make up one standard hotel beast. Their covers are faded nearly golden, their cases I choose carefully–deep colors, smooth and cool to the touch.

Don’t ever EVER think about messing with them. Don’t ever think about borrowing one. Looking at them is okay, I guess.

I have plenty of extras for husband, children, pets, guests. But not these. Nuh-uh. Hands off.

Hair

For a time, everyone had long hair. Mine was at least to my waist. So was my oldest brother’s. My other brother did the fro thing as his puffed out as it grew. Short hair was unthinkable. Bizarre. Signaled your support for Nixon or suburban life or the establishment.

But then my boyfriend with the flowy hair showed up one summer day, completely shorn, buzz-style. And instead of bell bottoms and a fringed jacket, he wore skinny pants and high-top Converse. Appalled, I found myself pulling away although I sensed that my response meant something not so nice– about me.

Green

In 1968 we boarded the Bergensford, a Norwegian ship filled with smorgasbord and people. I spent the passage vaguely ill, uneasy, trailing my older brothers. One brother, 16, fell in love with gorgeous Benta; one brother, 14, fell in love with physics experienced as he hung from our porthole palm outstretched with ping-pong balls that would be sucked up to the top deck where they bounced around, a new kind of rain. And then the hurricane hit. One brother, 16, turned green and cabin-bound and one brother, 14, turned Houdini, escaping to stand at the rail, buffeted, magic, half human.

Blisters

The summer after sophomore year in college, I lived in a toolshed with neither electricity nor plumbing on the coast of Maine with a couple of hippie girls. We worked for a freakish antique dealer who specialized in fixing up second-rate junk and selling it to tourists as treasures. We couldn’t believe the prices people shelled out for our “art.” From various parts of an old school bus we found ingenious ways to restore broken furniture scavenged at the local dump. We spent the days blistering old paint from dressers, inserting bus seats into chair bottoms, patching, covering, faking, fooling.

Transitions

I’ve always loved the edges of things, the cusp, the in-between-ness of borders and transitions. Perhaps it has to do with being born on March 21, spring announced but not felt in the north, Aries with a dash of Pisces. Perhaps it has to do with growing up female in a boys’ school or spending summers on the brink of the Atlantic, next stop Europe. Perhaps it has to do with reading too much nineteenth-century literature as a teen, or living in England in 1968 or France in 1974 or Ireland in 1998. These spaces hint at hope and possibility.

Wednesday

With no classes Wednesday afternoons, the entire school took to the fields, the athletes playing starring roles, the duffers, well, duffing. With so few girls enrolled at that time, we all made the team no matter our skill or interest. I even swam for a season on the boys’ JV, to the disgust of blue-blood rivals. It was all a bit awkward those first years. Late-spring Wednesdays, though, allowed an illusion of rightness when after lacrosse, we would leap from the big stone bridge into the river, reaching down, even we girls, to the prep-school-perfect past of Phinneas and Gene.