First Day of workshop: Read the syllabus!

Poems to read:
The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop
Refrigerator, 1957 by Thomas Lux
Persimmons by Li-Young Lee
Why I Am Not A Painter by Frank O'Hara
Country Fair by Charles Simic
The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

Feel free to also read random poems out of your book or poems off of these websites on your own. The more you read, the more you will learn.

For Tuesday, write an OBJECT POEM, which is a poem about an object. Pick any object, and be as descriptive of that object as you want. Use CONCRETE SPECIFIC NOUNS (table, wall, argyle socks, etc.). For the purpose of this exercise Do not use any abstract nouns (happiness, joy, etc.) Make 23 copies of your poem into lecture on Tuesday.

I will also assign your critique partners on this webpage over the weekend.

If the page looks the same by then, your computer may be showing you an old copy of this webpage. To refresh the computer's memory, hit the SHIFT key and click on RELOAD.

Also: go to the CLASS E-MAILS page and make sure your e-mail address and link are listed correctly.

Burning Shit at An Khe

into that pit I had to climb down with a rake and matches; eventually you had to do something because it just kept piling up and it wasn't our country it wasn't our air thick with the sick smoke so another soldier and I lifted the shelter off its blocks to expose the home-made toilets: fifty-five gallon drums cut in half with crude wood seats that splintered we soaked the piles in fuel oil and lit the stuff and tried to keep the fire burning to take my first turn I paid some kid a care package of booze from home I'd walked past the burning once and gagged the whole heart of myself-- it smelled like the world was on fire but when my turn came again there was no one so I stuffed cotton up my nose and marched up that hill we poured and poured until it burned and black smoke curdled but the fire went out heavy artillery hammered the evening away in the distance Vietnamese laundry women watched from a safe place laughing I'd grunted out eight months of jungle and thought I had a grip on things but we flipped the coin and I lost and climbed down into my fellow soldier' shit and began to sink and didn't stop until I was deep to my knees liftships cut the air above me the hacking blast of their blades ripped dust in swirls so every time I tried to light a match it died and it all came down on me the stink and the heat and the worthlessness until I slipped and climbed out of that hole and ran past the olive drab tents and trucks and clothes and everything green as far from the shit as the fading light allowed only now I can't fly I lay down in it and finger paint the words of who I am across my chest until I'm covered and there's only one smell one word

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;