Revisions

Hey all,

I am posting my first Kangaroo Sequins poem! It is the second draft of a poem inspired by reading up on Plate-Tectonics.

Here it goes:

Plate-Tectonics
By: Joshua Kohler

When the Earth shakes with fury,
The sidewalk cracks like chips,
We Find safety in odd places,
Faith put in supports holding memories
Of ancient heights; scars of old.

Here we rest as telephone poles snap,
Twigs under the weight of some newborn giant
Stumbling on interior designed homes
Before venturing downtown, to work where
Buildings fall into heaps of wrecks.

Dust clogs the the air with questions;
Looking toward a vacant sky,
Why does it hurt so much?

But nothing provides solace for the girl without
A home, a family to whisper in her ear,
Ease her pain, stop tears forming rivers
On the broken stone which run and run and run.

Comments welcome!!

Josh

Advanced Creative Writing-Poetry, Spring '07

Poets & Poetry Readers,

This winter/spring has seen the Advanced Poetry Writing class (a.k.a., Clark U's English 208) produce some interesting work. We've written poems on movies and misheard lyrics, memory and imitation. The Maine poet, Wes McNair, was with us in March and did a live-stream audio session with us on "The Use of the Line in Free Verse." He followed this with a Q & A hour. All was wonderfully productive with students asking interesting and prepared questions, and Wes being his wonderfully wise and entertaining self.

As a class, we read through three very different books of poetry: Wes McNair's The Ghost of You and Me, Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End and Rachel Zucker's Eating in the Underworld. I was interested in the way that all of these get at memory and narrative in fantastically different ways--from narrative poems to the surreal to poems written in fragmented notes and diary entries. The students then chose a poem from one of these books to imitate. What follows on this blog are some of those imitations along with other revised poems. With any technological luck (or just the help of Anthony Helm, our tech genius), we will also post audio recordings of students reading their imitation poem along with the model poem. Standby...! Our hope is to explore the relationship between our writings and our readings out loud. You all, our unknown but hopefully, gracious audience, can be the judge of that. We welcome your thoughtful comments.

Help us celebrate the end of this semester by reading and listening to some of our poems. It's been a good time: productive, thoughtful, creative. We've also had some laughs.

Happy April,

Lea Graham
Poet in Residence
English Department
Clark University
Worcester, MA