Persona (3.16.20)

All, regarding this week’s project, let’s not stress ourselves about having anything ready for Wednesday, necessarily, though if you find you have extra home time this week due to social distancing (oh, dear, new vocabulary!) then get busy.  As you write a draft that you’re comfortable sharing, email it to me and I will post it here where others can read and add comments.

Regarding commenting: please, no rewriting of anyone’s work.  If you have a question about a poem, a line, an image, a structure, a word’s meaning, a word choice, etc., then put the question to the group without further comment.  This will help the author to reflect more productively on revision.

I will record each poem you send to me and post to the blog as well, so everyone, author included, can get a soundscape of the work.

Here’s the approach Bob has suggested:

Choose a speaker you’d like to explore through a poem—not “yourself”

(whoever that is), or at least not your “whole self.”

(I think the point here is to take on a persona, adopt a “mask”

and not write from a perspective that strikes you or your reader as

“the real me speaking directly to the reader.”)

Develop a single event or moment—an action, something observed,

a reflection upon some thought or fact—that is important

to the speaker of your poem; then center

the poem in that moment, on that reflection.

Try to get into your speaker enough

to develop the rhythms, cadences, pitch,

stresses and so on of that character’s voice; let these factors

influence the rhythm and form/structure of the poem.

Ideas and examples:

I am thinking you could try writing a poem

from the perspective of a much younger you or,

alternatively, a much older you.

You might write a poem that adopts an animal persona,

a fictional character, a historical figure,

an inanimate object!