Writing Seminar Pieces

In the writing seminar this week and last week, my favorite pieces were the creative ones, and will be the ones that I share, with brief explanations preceding. Please remember that these are mostly unpolished works.

On the first day, we wrote poems describing where we were from, or what or life was like back home:

Where I’m from,

Home is many places

 

Winding Dirt Roads in the woods,

The sand dune that seems to shrink every year,

Train whistles serenading me to sleep

Family gathered round the fireplace

This is my cabin home

 

Twenty skaters moving as one

Bleary-eyed at five am

Shivering as the coach yells, “again!”

Striving to create beauty from exhaustion

This is my skating home

 

Squabbling with my brother

Sharing with my sister

Pancakes for breakfast

And hugs every night

 

This is my family,

My home.

On Thursday the 30th, we wrote an ordinary narrative about a typical school day. Then we chose three places to add exploratory footnotes that went off on tangents. The third step was to add a footnote to one of the three footnotes. It was crazy, but very fun:

                                                                    My Daily Routine

During the school year in high school, my day was very predictable. At exactly 7am my alarm clock would ring. I would stagger into the bathroom, put in my contacts, and attempt to keep my eyes open. Then I would get dressed, beautify myself, make my bag lunch,[1] eat breakfast, brush my teeth, and head to school, always in that exact order.[2] Upon arrival I would stop at my locker to exchange coat for books and head to class.

            After school I would head straight to the Wendy’s parking lot where I met my carpool, and ride for an hour to the rink for practice.[3] The next two to five hours were spent with my synchronized skating team, struggling to forge twenty girls into one, completely synchronized being. Exhausted I would return home, shower, squeeze in some homework, and fall into bed, hoping to sleep long enough to thwart my alarm clock.

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[1] Brown paper bags and I have never gotten along. At my school, everyone used brown bags, but they were very unkind to my poor sandwich. There is no possible way to fit both my applesauce cup and my sandwich into the bag without ending up with a squashed and soggy mess.

[2] I established my routine freshman year, and it’s interesting that I was so dependent on it. If I ever went out of order, it felt weird, whereas later in the day I scorned unvarying routine as boring, unimaginative, and plodding. I tried to include variety in my day-to-day activities, but for some reason, the morning was the exception. Perhaps it is because I function at such a low level at that hour, so the routine enabled me to be productive while my mind remained in a zombie-like state.

·      When I was a child, I was able to bound out of bed, excited and ready for the day to come. As I have grown, I have become more and more reluctant to leave the comfort of my bed. Perhaps it is because my warm blankets are so much more enticing than Pre-Calc.

[3] That hour always seemed much longer than it actually was. Every day my teammate and her mom had something different to argue about. They yelled, insulted, interrupted, and refused to listen to each other. Those rides gave me a new appreciation for my own relationship with my mother, which is so much closer. We’ve always been able to talk to each other, and we both know how to argue respectively. 

On Friday the 31st we described what we could see out of an assigned window pane, then turned it into a poem:

Narrative:

             I am looking out into a courtyard. Mostly I see a building and patio floor, with a potted plant, a wound up hose attached to the wall, and part of a tree, in the middle. I see lots of straight, symmetrical lines – even the shadow forms a clear triangle on the wall. It is a very warm view – the building and patio are yellow and dusty red, and the sun is shining – everything is bright. It seems very alive and inviting until the tree is considered. There is almost no wind – it is very still, and the leaves have a scorched, parched look, as though longing for a long drink from the hose that is its companion. Over the top of the courtyard, I can see the tops of trees looking brilliantly green, vivid and sparkling with lofe, mocking the poor tree that has been alienated from its kind.

 Poem:

A Courtyard.

A potted plant and a wound-up hose.

Straight, symmetrical lines

The shadow a clear triangle on the wall.

 

A warm scene,

Yellow and dusty red.

The sun is shining in.

Everything is bright, alive –

 

Except the tree.

Scorched,

Parched,

Alone.

Longing for a drink,

Alienated from its kind.

 

Yesterday, Monday the 3rd, we took a field trip to the library in the morning. There we were given a library orientation speech, and then we were given a list of things we needed to find or record, including excerpts from the speech, the definition of plagairism, book titles, titles of encyclopedias, and more. then we listed them in any order to create a 'found' poem:

Metacrawler

LexisNexis

“I’m here to answer your research questions”

 

The Wall Street Journal

The Christian Science Monitor

Foreign Affairs

Vogue

“To use and pass off as one’s own”

 

Shakespeare’s Kitchen

The Starbucks Experience

The Value of a Dollar

“The password is ten zeroes”

 

Playground on the River

101 Ideas for a Rainy Day

The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales

Humorous Quotations

That afternoon, after break, we came back to find brown paper grocery bags on our desks. Inside was an object. We scattered, and our task was to describe the object in a poem without saying what it was, or letting anyone else see it. Afterwards we shared our poems and guessed what each other's objects were:

 

Come inside my life.

It is a quiet one.

I myself am silent.

I am smooth, cylindrical, and cream-colored.

My smell is reminiscent of bug-repellant.

 

From the outside, I am still.

Inside, I am waiting.

Waiting to be used.

I am a tool of sorts, though a decorative one.

My purpose is to safely sustain and contain light.

When used, my surroundings become soft and intimate.

 

I have seen celebrations of all kinds:

Birthdays, anniversaries, accomplishments.

I have seen nights only,

The end of an outdoor party.

Romantic couples,

Frustrated families when I am the only resource,

But mostly I have seen my cupboard,

Where I wait.

This afternoon, at the end of our day, we were each handed a jellybean while we closed our eyes. we were told to eat it without looking at it, and then to write about where eating it took us:

This jellybean, which is a very artificially grape flavor, takes me instantly to my grandparents’ house on Easter. I am eating jellybeans, waiting for the egg hunt to begin. My cousins and siblings and I wait impatiently in the kitchen, while Grandpa finishes hiding the eggs in the living room. I have never been a big fan of jellybeans. I only ate them on Easter, so there is a strong memory association. I remember getting a head start because I was the youngest, and I remember that he always hid them in the same places. After a few years, I knew to look in the potted plant and in the lamp where the light bulb would be.