For this week, of course, the challenge continued to be ModPo. We began with Ruth Lechlitner and Genevieve Taggart, and then proceeded to Harlem Renaissance poets Countee Cullen and Claude
McKay. And Gwendolyn Brooks.
Next we went in a slightly different, rather Anti-modernist direction with Robert Frost’s Mending Wall. We watched a YouTube discussion about that with Bob Perelman, Rachel Blau Du Plessis, John Timpane and Taije Silverman, ably hosted by Professor Al Filreis.
I haven’t quite finished up Week 5 yet, as I still have two videos to watch. One is a discussion of Richard Wilbur‘s Cottage Street, 1953 and then X.J. Kennedy‘s ekphrastic poem on Duchamp’s painting by the same name, Nude Descending a Staircase.
This is the stone wall at Frost’s farm in Derry, New Hampshire, which he described in “Mending Wall.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But I have done Wilbur’s The Death of a Toad, (1950).
Looking forward to the coming week as we begin to look at The Beats.
Also this week I am restarting the Complete Health Improvement Program, CHIP, originated by Dr. Hans Diehl. Need a refresher, and need to be more focused this time around.
Haven’t managed to keep up with The Southeast Review’s 30-day Regimen, but that will be waiting for me when I am done the ModPo course. Then it will be time to get back to my own writing!
Related articles
- ModPo Class: Week 5 (and more) (poetrycurator.wordpress.com)
It took me most of 2 weeks to get all the way through week 4! Then I blasted through 5 and I am now happily deep in the Beats.
I keep telling myself I am going to get to a point where I can read ahead… but real life intervenes. I was done except for the last two videos on Thursday. Then ended up out all day Friday, all day Saturday, and most of yesterday. Good stuff, writing stuff, and a reading by finalists in the Archibald Lampman award, but then too tired to get my brain back in a poetry groove.
THIS WEEK! I am hoping, although will be out three nights. So must use my daytime hours well.
But it is such a great course, isn’t it? Carol