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Where to Begin

Where to Begin. William Stafford. A Course in Creative Writing They want a wilderness with a map but how about errors that give a new start ? or leaves that are edging into the light? or the many places a road can't find? Maybe there's a land where you have to sing

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Where to Begin

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  1. Where to Begin

  2. William Stafford A Course in Creative Writing They want a wilderness with a map but how about errors that give a new start? or leaves that are edging into the light? or the many places a road can't find? Maybe there's a land where you have to sing to explain anything: you blow a little whistle just right and the next tree you meet is itself. (And many a tree is not there yet.) Things come toward you when you walk. You go along singing a song that says where you are going becomes its own because you start. You blow a little whistle And a world begins under the map.

  3. Billy Collins Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

  4. Consider… • Robert Frost: “I have not started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.” • Some element of the unexpected • Must avoid cliché: • A trite, overused expression. Language that is already tired from overuse (327). • Watch for form, rhyme, leading you on… • Poets rarely begin with more than an idea, a phrase, a hunch, and image… • John Ashberry: “Poetry is mostly hunches…”

  5. How it comes… • John Keats: “…if poetry come not as naturally as the leaves to tree, it had better not come at all.” • Text: “Poems that ought to be wonderful are often a mess, while those dashed off in a moment of insight sometimes turn out to be far better…” • You will spend more time working on the “bad” poems than the “good” poems • All part of the process…

  6. Off to a good start… • The “muse” is fickle • Make your own inspiration… • Do not start your poem the night before it is due • Do not start your poem the night before it is due • Do not start your poem the night before it is due • “Poet” • “one who arranges thoughts and images in an artful way” • Like furniture makers; apprentices; athletes… • You must practice, practice, practice…

  7. Automatic Writing • 7 minutes • Let’s read: Page 12, paragraph 3 • “Some beginning… • Let’s read: Page 13, paragraph 5 • “In the long run, the only real way to become a poet is to keep writing poems—lots of them, most of which you’ll end up throwing away. Some of those you show to other people; others are never read by anyone but you. Sooner or later, something worthwhile is bound to appear on the page, and once your train yourself to write consistently, you will begin to distinguish the good poems from the bad” (14).

  8. Shelley • “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they are not familiar” (15).

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