The first classroom lecture I gave consisted of rules for writing a pantoum, each of my MFA cohorts using a headline from The National Enquirer as their starting point. Not the loftiest wisdom, but it got us writing on a Wednesday afternoon. That period of my pedagogy was bookended by mentors Kate Bernheimer and Alison Deming alongside the lesson plan where Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” assisted a discussion on first-person narration, Debbie Harry’s sixteen uses of I working to my advantage. We’ll return to the song’s phrase “love’s true bluish light” a few ideas from now—zaniness courting intricacy, my early poetry prompts. Example:
I relate to Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s "The Mascot of Beavercreek High Breaks Her Silence", having dressed as a Thin Mint Cookie with day-old stubble. She does an excellent job incorporating jargon we’d associate with the life and times of a high school mascot—from the expected: cheerleaders and sports teams, to the sublime: “the dark netting of my mouth.” There’s energy and revelation in the use of lists, particularly the first and fourth stanzas. One of the more successful pivots happens in stanza four where we shift from Homecoming to jacaranda bloom—frivolity to science—then mascot relegated to attic photograph (stanza five).
Write a poem from a mascot worker’s point of view. The highs, lows, and physical inaccuracies (my Thin Mint Cookie costume had four-fingered gloves; everyone knows a Velcro dessert has five). Halfway through, shift to lamentation about a past relationship then pivot back so you close with the mascot. Enlighten us.
Diligent much? My error, and this was one of my less verbose exercises, was cramming literary analyses into prompts not realizing their off-putting potential where introductory-level courses were concerned. In 2020, I considered how best to distill seven years of school in graduate writing programs, rethinking the poetry aspects of my teaching philosophy. I arrived at The Layers Five: Observation, Sound, Image, Memory, and Surprise, each offering a distinct window into how poems are read and made. The Layers are blueprints. Professorly thinking, the cardboard tube. These poems, their paperweights:
Susan Blackwell Ramsey, my last hometown mentor in Michigan, and Farid Matuk, my dissertation chair at the University of Arizona, gave assignments in the form of emailing them observations as adjective-, abstraction-, and adverb-free as possible. Here are a few items I sent, the proper noun lover in me having a field day:
• We found the time capsule, never buried, next to a tennis racket, the McEnroe of it peeling at the neck.
• My hygienist, the one who sounds like Gillian Anderson, compliments the teeth.
• Elderly man on my left, accompanied by middle-aged son in flip-flops and sweats; Pops
has Nike tennis shoes, and, are those parachute pants?
The third bullet point falls short (elderly, middle-aged), but these sentence-writing tasks elevated how I observed, specificity tuning the radio tower that is W-PŌM. Following Susan and Farid’s examples, my students email me seven observation sentences three times a semester. These sentences consist of such natural or humanmade comings and goings as birds in migration, construction debris, and flyers taped to lampposts. It’s amazing how often a draft begins simply by taking in your surroundings, which is why I encourage these sentences’ absorptions into their work. When in doubt, let observation co-author the poem. Alen Hamza’s “Summertime in Dalmatia” expertly transcribes noticing as praxis:
Two women drink midday beer and complain about the lack of vanilla
ice cream cones at the corner store.
The smell of fried fish and olive-drizzled chard nips the noses of soccer-
enchanted kids.
An old man tames a pipe, two shirtless men play chess,
five handle the cards with tongue-licked fingers.
Like sporadic protocols of lazy nations, seagulls patrol the skies and
determine the quota of the day’s catch.
A woman puts a crate of freshly picked figs on a sun-inflamed bench to dry.
Her husband goes trash bin to trash bin in search of plastic and cans.
The grown son trims his toenails under a tamarind tree.
The man fond of his bicycle buys groceries, tells the lady at the checkout:
I don’t understand life, I got married late.
Fires ravage Turkey and fire-fighting aircraft are sent to help.
The locals are proud.
It is Saturday, the wedding day. The guests go to the groom’s, then the bride’s,
then the church, then the reception hall. The minimum gift is one hundred euros.
Tourists stalk the promenade, taking pictures of a blue 1984 Renault 4.
The pizzeria on the south side of town has new, oil-resistant tablecloths. It
employs two waiters and one waitress.
The post office is closed.
What do we* see? Soccer-enchanted kids.
An old man taming a pipe.
Two shirtless men playing chess.
Freshly picked figs on a sun-inflamed bench.
A blue 1984 Renault 4.
The pizzeria’s new, oil-resistant tablecloths.
A closed post office.
Other?
*For discussion purposes, we encompasses reader and poem’s populace alike.
What do we hear? Complaining.
Rustling trash.
Toenails being clipped.
Conversation between strangers.
Tourists and their cameras.
Seagulls.
Aircraft.
Other?
What do we smell? Fried fish and olive-drizzled chard.
Tobacco.
Trash.
Pizzeria scents.
Other?
What do we touch? Chess pieces.
Deck of cards.
Crate of figs.
Hot bench.
Bag of groceries (how heavy is it?).
Wedding money.
Camera buttons.
Slick tablecloths.
Menus.
Undeliverable mail.
Other?
What do we taste? Beer.
Bland ice cream cones.
Fish.
Chard.
Pipe lip.
Other?
Observation allows for associative continuance. We bite into “freshly picked figs,” their seeds granules that distract our teeth. I crunch the fish’s fried coating, contrast it with my habit of depleting a jar of cocktail sauce in a single meal. Were those groceries loaded upside down like my elbow macaroni purchase this afternoon, its barcode given Rorschach reign? Does this stamp go unpurchased due to weekend closure? Observation, ever the generator.
