COURSE :Introduction To Literature

DEPARTMENT : ENGLISH

PROFESSOR : WATERS

Lecture3 : Lovesong

View the Power Point Presentation of the Lecture

Okay hi I’m Nancy Roberts and this is a poem I wrote as an assignment for a reading a group of us were doing at Barnes & Noble on the rather unlikely poetic topic of returning to school that Fall but I wanted to be in this reading so I wrote the kind of poem that seems to work the best for me when I’m in a hurry and I have no idea what to write about and it’s a sestina which uses 6 words and 6 stanzas in different and then a 7th stanza that uses again all the words it’s a form that was invented way back like in the 16th century and it was fun to write and I’m calling it “Love Song to My Students.” There you are hunched over that blank page not even a good hangover to light the way to one great idea. You’re stuck in a crazy choked up space in your mind. If it doesn’t help to drink coffee smoke another pack how ‘bout this? Open your eyes and see what’s merely there, the eyes on the wings of that dead moth, the blank astonishment of a white towel, the snarl of smoke it is perhaps not very profound to light on the every day edges of your mind. It’s so simple, so dumb, it’s crazy but I tell you good writers are crazy about just that sort of thing. Their eyes are watching birds and puddles never mind what everyone says to fill in the blanks. The landscape of a poet is so nearby it’s light years away from the smoke and mirrors of what they try to sell us. Smoke signals rise highest from the fires we fan in a crazy place of rocks and river and sage. A light zone of stars kindles behind our eyes not fully awake we walk like children in the blank blessed field of night washed mind. I know how it feels to claw in the mind desperate for inspiration in the din of smoke to feel as negatively incapable as a blank slate. It seems more than a little crazy to chase down even a speck of truth. Your eyes hurt from it. You try to be cynical, light on your feet. You work for that carefree light touch a clever twist, a joke. How hard it is to mind so very much. I tell you there’s a way to rest your eyes, I’ve learned that much. It won’t go up in smoke all this depth you feel if you just forget your crazy ambition a little while and jot down say the blank eyes like blue smoke in your mirror the light slicing orange peels onto your bed. The mind-numbing complexity of old wallpaper, the crazy blank smile of your dog.