Author Archives: wtronrud

For this last blog post, discuss a moment from Citizen that interests you or  confuses you. Use evidence and analyze and wonder about this moment. Draw connections between Rankine and at lease one other poem/poet we’ve read this semester explaining said connection. Use … Continue reading →

The nature of  Ancestry is a very lyrical one.  It is different then lineage in that it is more subjective, it is not only bestowed upon the person but also the persons choice. Ancestry implies a certain familial closeness, yet … Continue reading →

The three poems you are responsible for each deal with ideas of ancestry in some form. While Knight wrote his poem in the late 1960s from prison, Patricia Smith is a poet who is writing now. Although both write in the … Continue reading →

In reading Perelman’s Chronic Meanings one is able to grasp this idea of the “new sentence”. Throughout the poem we see Perelman avoiding any consistent narrative. Weather it be ending every line with a period or ending them abruptly with … Continue reading →

Use the background/information on the “new sentence” with which to discuss one of three poems you’ve been asked to read. How is this poem using “new sentences”? What do you see as a central tension or problem in this poem, … Continue reading →

Dictee means “dictation” or “to write down what is dictated” in French. The overall book is divided in nine sections referencing the nine muses of classical Greece, each one about a different woman in history. We are reading the section … Continue reading →

Put Rich’s “North America Time” and Lorde’s “Sisters in Arms” in conversation with each other around one of the questions below. Both poems are personal lyrics, where the I is of the poet. Use evidence from each poem and ask two … Continue reading →

Choose either Plath or Rich’s poem(s) to discuss further. What is the relationship that is formed between the speaker and destruction? What imagery is important to this? Finally, where does this relationship break down, fall apart, or move towards resolution? … Continue reading →

Choose one. 1. In Part I, Ginsberg writes, “[T]o recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with / shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the … Continue reading →

After reading and annotating Ginsberg’s “Howl,” choose 3-4 consecutive lines that you think are important to the poem as a whole. Introduce these lines, and articulate what you find interesting, compelling, strange, etc. about them. What kind of imagery, rhythm, … Continue reading →