Poem Of Modelness

October Walks

Cold and windy October Days
Chilly walks Chilly talks

Lauren, a blast from
My past.
Strolls languidly next to me
Holding onto the leash of her
Hound dog

Actually Leonardo (woof woof)
Does most of the walking.
Pulling and tugging on the leash.
Hurrying Lauren and I down the block.
Stopping it seems
To sniff the rapidly changing trees
Or corner bush that catches his fancy
Ahh, contentment in October.

Could this day get any
Better? Of course Lauren replies
She lights up a Camel Light takes a drag
And passes it to me.

The smoke gusts in the October winds.
We walk, we talk
Sharing the smoke
Sharing the beautiful October day.

I decided to write the modeling poem in the style of Frank O’Hara and his classic “Lunch Poems”. Lauren (a good friend of mine) was out walking her dog and I decided to join her. For me it seemed like a great time to get some inspiration and write the poem. I used the poem “A step away from them” by O’Hara as one of my sources. I really enjoyed the way he was able to make the reader feel just as if that person was walking next to O’Hara and experiencing all the different bits and pieces that make his poems so relatable. Unfortuanlly for me I did not see anyone else on our walk besides Lauren and Leonardo so those are the only other people/ pets that are mentioned in my poem. I didn’t want to copy completely off of O’Hara so I had already decided that while it might make writing the poem easier if I wrote the poem about going to Mr. Smiths café or some other kind of eatery, instead I just wanted to take a slice out of my day, time that I usually spend doing just another normal every day thing. Creating a poem out of a trivial task for me is the essence of O’Haras work. He would just write his compelling poems about small jaunts he would go on, say to lunch (aka lunch poems) or about the interesting people that he would pass or talk to throughout the course of the day.
Another aspect of O’Haras work that I enjoyed would be when he refers to name brand items. For example in his poem when he references back to Coca-Cola instead of saying soda or pop or whatever they called that stuff back then. I tried to do the same in my poem when I wrote about what brand of cigarettes versus just writing out cigarettes or ciggys or whatever. O’Hara often also refers back to the weather of the particular day he was experiencing. Again I tried to recreate that in my poem by writing about what month it was and how windy it actually was. I tried to show this when I wrote about the smoke being caught up in the wind, also near the start of my poem I mention that it was a cold and windy day. The only thing I wish that would have happened differently in my poem could maybe have been the introduction of some other person. However the sidewalk was empty, and all the neighbors were shut up inside their own warm houses. All in all I think I enjoyed working on this poem, I think my favorite thing was waiting for a good time/inspiration to write this poem about. I had no faith in my ability to mirror Berryman, (way to difficult to write about mr. bones and such) but I am happy with the way the poem turned out and look forward to writing more poems in the style like O’Hara does in his Lunch Poems.

Blog 10/26/08

Class on Friday was a bit of a surprise, not only did we have a guest student (the potential graduate dude) but we also had a actually poet laureate read to our class. Maybe the best thing about that poet was the fact that He was your (Lee Ann Roripaugh) dad! So that was pretty cool. I wish he would have told more stories about you growing up, I really enjoyed the “icebox” poem story. That is a great way to get into poetry and it is a even better way to be able to acknowledge that you’ve been published. In particular i enjoyed his Yellow Willow poem, with his great explanation that the willow looked like it needed a poem written about it. At least I think that is how he got his inspiration for the poem. I first thought that maybe his book title “Learn to Love the haze” was a bunch of poems about the drug culture (60’s maybe?) but upon actually hearing some of his poems I think I will have to change my mind about that.
The modeling poem is due this Monday. I at first was fairly hesitant as what type of author I was going to emulate but after looking at the two separate styles, John Berryman vs. Frank O’Hara I had to go with the lunch poems. I don’t know what it is about O’Hara and his poetry but for me it seemed really accessible. The pacing of the various poems seemed fluid, and he didn’t seem to have any weird pauses or breaths in his writing. For me that is a deal breaker, if I can’t read the poem and “hear” the pauses it throws me off and I end up reading the poem five more times trying to figure out the breaks and pauses. I have found that if I am struggling with the pacing of the poem, that it helps reading the poem out loud either to myself or to the potted green plant I have in my room. He never complains about the poems so that is a plus. One of the things I enjoy most about your (lee ann) teaching methods is the excellent control you have when you read the poems out loud in class. I always feel like I am butchering the poems when I read them out loud, and for me it can ruin the poem if it is being read in a particularly bad way or in a way that doesn’t utilize the pauses as well as you do. Sometimes the loudest part of a poem can be when nothing is said. Pretty deep stuff.
Seriously though, your dad was awesome, and it was great to be able to listen to him and his particular style of poetry. I think you definitely should bring in outside readers as often as you can, that is just the best way to experience the different types of poetry in my humble opinion. Oh yeah, and I lost my cell phone downtown on Saturday night, so if anybody finds it (it is a cell phone with buttons on it) please don’t try to call me, instead just mail it to me.

Ps. Do you think we are going to touch on or look at Charles Bukowski at all? He is one of my favorite poets and I am pretty sure he could be considered confessional.

Blog 6

Reading Mr. John Berrymans dream song poems, I was again struck by how often some of the best of the contemporary poets had such life changing events coupled with very hard times dealing with depression. I do not know what it is about depression that seems to motivate those poets into writing the great works that they have written, but I do wish that it didn’t take such tragic events to get the great texts that they have produced. In particular his dream song number 153 in which he writes about being angry at the god who in his words “has wrecked this generation.” He lists the names of many poets, about five in all that ended up either taking their own lives or otherwise dying in a tragic manner. Such as Randall Jarrell who was in a car accident that was more than a little suspicious. For me one of the more tragic aspects of this poem is how John Berryman eventually ended up committing suicide. He did this by jumping off of a bridge in Minneapolis after struggling with alcoholism and depression. A line from that particular poem that stuck with me “We suffer on, a day, a day, a day.” For me this is very poignant. I really feel that for many of those poets they did suffer on, day after day, until they decided to finally take that fatal step and end their own lives. I wonder if any of those great poets could have been saved if they would have had access to modern medicine. Or would that very same modern medicine rob from them the genius that set them apart from the rest of the flock.

Another aspect of Berryman’s poetry that interested me is his frequent references to a Henry. Henry apparently is a white man who like Berryman seems to suffer from some sort of irreversible loss. While Berryman’s loss can be traced to the tragic suicide of his father, I am not sure if Berryman ever acknowledges what tragedy befell Henry. Henry also has a friend often referred to as a Mr. Bones. While Henry was a fictional character I believe that he helps to mirror some of the very real feelings that Berryman was struggling with on a day to day basis as he himself aged. I was impressed by how strictly all of his poems followed along with his scheme. All of them seem to follow a pattern of six-line stanza that employs lines one two four and five in pentameter and lines three and six in trimeter. All in all Berryman wrote many great dream poems, unfortuanlly like to many poets in the past and even up to today he was driven to end his own life prematurely before he could publish more work other than his Dream Songs.

Blog 4

This year marks the fifth year that I have attended this prestigious university. For some odd reason each and every year the University of South Dakota raises the amount of green backs required of me to keep going here. But do I complain? Of course not, because with all of those tuitation hikes we have been assured that the University would spend the money on the best of student services. What services you might ask, well let me tell you. For starters wrap your mind around this. Division One. BOOYAH! That’s right we are now considered a Division One school, for starters that means we get to compete against those darn Jack Rabbits over in Brookings. Before we made the change to Division One I believe that the vast majority of students at USD felt like the change to Division One needed to be made to keep the school able to recruit as many new and incoming freshman as possible. They made the change to Division One, since then we have been getting a new Business School, a new Medical Facility, and even a brand new Student Center. I have even been hearing wild rumors regarding a new and improved athletic facility to take the place of the dome. I have even heard that the new athletic facility will have a ice hockey rink, this might even allow the University to raise up the hockeys team expectations and finally fully support them. It might also allow for maybe drunken ice skating. That is when you get really drunk and attempt to ice skate with your buddies. Maybe even play a game of ice ball, or ice broom, or really pretty much any kind of fun ice battle game.
Homecoming is coming up, or as the locals/ students / everybody calls it, “D-Days.” Now I think that stands for Dakota Days; and it is usually a pretty good time. The week is a lot better for those of us who are over the age of twenty one, it is a little safer walking the streets inebriated if you have permission from the state to drink legally. The bars do get way to crowded for my taste; all the alumni come down to watch the football game and that really makes the bar crowd a hellava lot older. Grey hairs all over the place, cougars, cougars and more cougars. That week should be a challenging one regardless because of the tests I will be having that week. You would think that teachers would know that it is probably one of the worst times of the year for studying or testing or even quizzes for that matter. However I am looking forward to that guest speaker that Lee Anne is bringing down. It is always fun to hear great poetry from different sides of the country. I hope that we get some speakers in who read and or write in a style similar to Charles Bukowski, in fact I hope we get to read him sometime this semester as I believe that his style is very confessional in form.