Week 1: Poetry & Sonnets

               This week in Creative Writing we went over some sonnets and poems. We first studied several poems written by a variety of authors in a variety of styles. Some of the poems were darker and morbid like "Where it Passes Untouchable". In this poem the author seems to be talking about a murder and says that "Blood powdered my fingers, speckled my cuffs. There were also poems that talked about things like the ocean and were able to make it come alive. In "Geology of Water" the author does just that when he says things like "plates shifting in their cobalt sleep".
               One of my favorite poems from this handout was "The Scent of Verbana" by Hinako Abe. This poem was really well written and very interesting. The pyramid shape it is in immediately caught my eye, it also looks like an hourglass. The other thing I love about this poem is that it is unpredictable. For instance, when the author talks about how the other person will be in a metal coffin being pulled up a hill by dogs.
               The other packet we discussed in class was the one about sonnets. These also had a variety of authors the most famous of them being Shakespeare and Ted Berrigan. Both of these authors had very different styles mainly due to the fact they were written in completely different time periods. My favorite Shakespeare Sonnet we read was 118. In this sonnet I thought it was very interesting how he framed the whole thing around the stomach and appetite and sickness. He used words like sweetness, ills, sick, poison, sweetness, palate, appetite and other words to illustrate this.
               Some of the other sonnets we were given were written by Ted Berrigan. We noticed in class that sonnet XV was actually written to be read first line then last line then second line then second to last line, and so on and so forth. I wouldn't have noticed this unless we had in class. It made the sonnet make complete sense and I actually enjoyed it then .