Week 2-1

What is a poem?

In a Station of the Metro Ezra Pound

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Trees at Night Helene Johnson

Slim Sentinels
Stretching lacy arms
About a slumbrous moon;

Black quivering
Silhouettes,
Tremulous,
Stencilled on the petal
Of a bluebell;

Ink sputtered
On a robin’s breast;

The jagged rent
Of mountains
Reflected in a
Stilly sleeping lake;

Fragile pinnacles
Of fairy castles;

Torn webs of shadows;

And
Printed ’gainst the sky—
The trembling beauty
Of an urgent pine.

Try it yourself!

Write your own short (2-3 line) description of trees at night by using a "visual rhyme"--another visual image that connects or resonates with the image of trees against the night sky.

For Thursday:

• Read & annotate Ch. 2 of The Elements of Creative Writing on Canvas
• Make a poem out of images