Blog Ideas for Week Three

Blog Ideas for Week Three

Critical/Reflective Entry Ideas

1. Which poem in this week’s packet is your favorite or least favorite? Why? What elements of stanzas or meter influence your opinion?

2. Significantly change the stanzas in a poem in the packet (split quatrains into couplets, combine couplets into quatrains, etc). What changes about the nature of the poem when you make these stanza changes? What are the advantages and disadvantages of these changes? (Be sure to post the original poem and your changes with this entry.)

3. Take a poem you’ve written and cast it in at least three different types of stanzas. Which one do you like best? Why? Which one is the least effective? Why? (Post your favorite version.)

4. Choose a particular meter and use it to write an 8-10 line poem entitled “Wrecked Bird.” Then, pick a new meter and write an 8-10 line poem using the same title. Did either meter work better? Why do you think that is? Can you combine aspects of the two poems (and lose the meter, if you want) into a good single poem? (Feel free to change the title at this point.)

5. Research one of the types of stanzas a bit more and post some facts about it. What did you find surprising in your research? Feel free to also post a list of your resources, in case a classmate wants to learn more.

Free Entry Ideas

1. Write a poem that explores your answer to one of the following questions. (You don’t have to mention the actual question in the poem.)
a. What if everyone’s goal in life was to be as lazy as possible?
b. What if you had to move to a new state each year?
c. What if you were lying in bed one night and your bed started talking to you?

2. Take one of your poems that you think just “doesn’t sound right.” Scan it, marking each stress and counting feet. Standardize the lines by giving all of them the same number of stresses and feet. That is, write an accentual-syllabic (see packet for a review of this, if you need to). Does this rhythm help the poem? Post the original and the revision.

3. Make a list of words and phrases in each type of foot (iamb, trochee, dactyl, anapest, spondee; see examples in the packet). It will probably take you a minute to get each list started, but once you start hearing the beats, it will be easier.