“Poetry Poster” Proposal

Eve Revisited

By Alison Hawthorne Deming

 

Pomegranates fell from the trees

in our sleep. If we stayed

in the sun too long

there were aloes

to cool the burn.

Henbane for predators

and succulents when the rain was scarce.

 

There was no glorified past

to point the way

true and natural

for the sexes to meet.

He kept looking to the heavens

as if the answer were anywhere

but here. I was so bored

with our goodness

I couldn’t suck the juice

from one more pear.

 

It’s here, I kept telling him,

here, rooted in the soil

like every other tree

you know. And I wove us

a bed of its uppermost branches.

 

Deming, Alison. “Eve Revisited.” The Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Web. 28 Feb. 2013

I think this poem is nice to make a poster even before I read it thoroughly. That’s because the total length of the poem and the length of each line are short. When I looked at the poetry posters models online, I found that many of the posters chose quite long poems, which make me unwilling to read carefully. The purpose of poetry posters is to combine the art of poetry with other elements, rather than to simply pile texts together with glaring images or other things. So in my opinion, short poems are more suitable than long ones because they are easier to be properly arranged. And I found it even better for a poster because its theme is about love. Love is the eternal theme for all kinds of art, that is to say this poem has a very large range of readers. If the poem is made to be a poster, it has a large population of audience, anyone with has experienced love and waiting could be its audience. And it can evoke resonance within the poem and its audience and within the audience. I decide to use pictures of imageries in the poem, such as a woman, a plant, not limiting to a tree, but something growing lonely but tough, and images connected with heartbroken, disappointment, waiting, and longing for love. I think it’s a good idea to focus on the last stanza and emphasize the words “here” which have already been emphasized in the original poem since this part is the climax and essence of the poem. Other parts might be in smaller font size, but also need deliberate dispose. This poem is highly emotional-sensitive, so every detail should be handled carefully and designed beautifully.

“Poetry Poster” – Review of Models

1. http://www.broadsidedpress.org/bsides/2009/50-Origins.pdf
This one is the one I consider the best. At the first glance, the picture grabbed my attention. The pattern of growth rings is captivating and makes me want to see more about the poster. The poem on it is short and is arranged in short lines and is left justified. This arrangement makes the poem look neat and tidy. And the typeface for most part of the poem is Garamond, which is easy to read and not too formal, perfectly fit the style of the poem. And there is another thing worth mentioning.  There is a leading word or phrase in every two stanzas. I don’t know if they belong to the original poem, but they fit well in the overall layout. They each takes a separate line and is in the middle of that line. And all of the leading words and phrases are italics. All these efforts dedicate to emphasizing these words. I found that if we connect these phrases together, it appears to look like a person, who looks forward to the future, keeps saying yes. It brings a sense of romance and combining with the whole poem, the overall feeling is great. Now look back to the picture. In the poem, the author mentioned words about the olive tree several times, so the choose of growth rings is quite corresponding with the poem’s theme. The rare brown in the picture imitates the color of trunk, also adds a sense of steady and deep. The title of the poem has background color of brown, which is the same as the one in the picture. This layout makes the entirety harmonious. Generally speaking, this poster is a outstanding one of simple style.

2. http://poeticjourneys.uconn.edu/gallery2010-2011.php#10
This poster is the one I consider the weakest. I feel uncomfortable at the first glance I see it. The composer might try to create strong contrast. However, the black background color and the white texts make the poem hard to read. And the font size is way too small, which made the texts even harder to be recognized. Actually, the only part that I can read is the one on the right side of the poster, “Like the skull of a king, I am white with the fear of it”, because it is much bigger. However, even this part is not that easy to read because it’s all in uppercase. The sentence is too long for uppercases. The composer could have used other means to emphasis this part of the poem, such as using a decorative typefaces, using bold, and using “small caps” indicated in WOVENText, which is a combination of usual capital letter and small capital letters. On the aspect of arrangement, I think it is weird to right justified. Most readers are used to left justified texts. Plus the strong contrast between the background and text, the unusual overall layout creates an awkward feeling. At the bottom part of the texts, there are three lines on the right of the right justified texts. Although I admit that the design of dislocation is creative and nice, it creates confusion of the reading sequence. I usually think appropriate blanks benefits the layout of works. However, in this poster, the texts are not placed very appropriate, the orderly margin at the right of the main body makes the blank meaningless and boring. This poster would be much better if it is revised carefully.

“First Recitation” Reflection

1. In the first recitation, the poem I chose is Japan by Billy Collins. This poem was a spirit-orientated poem, by which I mean that it needed deeper comprehension, appreciation and imagination. It was also beautiful and peaceful. So I decided to use a piece of  music as the background.  Coincidentally, the poem mentioned piano, thus I picked a smoothing piano solo. Since the inspiration of the poem is the author’s favorite haiku, I printed the haiku out, making paper tapes and passed them out to everyone so that my audience could have some background of the poem and comprehend the author’s emotion in the poem. I recited the poem in a soft voice and slow pace. The second stanza made an analogy between the feeling of reciting the poem and the feeling of eating a perfect grape again and again. Even if it was easy to understand, the audience needed time to imagine and appreciate. So I made my pace particularly slow here. When I said, “I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf”, I tapped lightly on the floor. And I looked down at the floor to imitate the movement of the author when it came to “when the dog looks up at me, I kneel down on the floor”. I fastened my pace a little bit when I recited the middle part of the poem until the last two stanzas. I considered the last two stanzas the most beautiful part of the whole poem, so I paused several times during this part to allow my audience had sufficient time enjoying it. I also made very nice eye contact with my audience. I looked in their eyes and tempted to pour my comprehension to the poem and emotion to them. However, I still had some defects. This was a morning recitation and many people were sleepy at that time. My pace might be too slow to arouse attention to my recitation. And at first, I was so nervous that I forgot my words and caused an awkward pause. When I rehearsed, my pace fitted the tempo of the music so that the climax of the poem is anastomotic with that of the music. However, I failed to do so during the recitation. Although the music was gentle and its climax was not so obvious, the miss of pace influenced the overall quality of recitation.

“Where I Come From” Reflection

1. This poem is to express my feeling of leaving home. The first version used short sentences that make the audience feel my urgent emotion of missing home and desire to go back there. However, the final draft not only used short sentences but also the long ones. The alternation between short and long sentences simulated gasps when people have strong emotion fluctuations. So the final draft made the purpose of the poem more explicit. The both drafts switched between the first and third person. However, when I switched back from the third person to the first, I wrote, ”and that is I”. The audiences are cleverer than I think, so I didn’t have to say it out since it is a poem. So I didn’t say it out in the third draft but mentioned “heart” both at the beginning of the third and first person stanzas to indicate these two people were the same one actually instead.
2. In the poem, I separated it into five stanzas. Each stanza has its own theme. The first stanza, as the beginning, explained the initial situation between my parents and I, and accounted for the reason why I was eager to leave home. The second stanza described the time when I finally leave home and the happiness that I enjoyed. It works as a transition from the past to the present in the overall poem so it has an important function but should not take too much space. Thus I made it rather short and concise. The content in the third stanza is a new beginning, the beginning of my life far from home, and the beginning of my nostalgia. The fourth stanza is the climax of the poem and need sufficient contents to induce the climax naturally. That’s why the fourth stanza is the longest one among the five and each line in it is comparatively long. The last stanza carried on the nostalgia as well as concluded the whole poem. So I assigned it similar characteristics as the second stanza, short and concise. In total, I separated the stanzas according to the contents and arranged the lengths of them according to both their contents and the functions they have in the whole poem.
3. During the process of writing this poem, I found it hard to describe the feeling that I was most familiar with because there were too many memories connected with it. So I thought back carefully when it was quiet around so that I could concentrate to myself. I think this is a repeat-worth process because it really helps to come up with some ideas and figure out the most important ones. And it also helps to improve the overall quality of my work after I finish the draft. Secondly, I read many poems of the similar theme when I was composing the poem, by both famous poets and peers. It is worth repeating because I can really learn lots of things from reading works by others, not only inspirations, but also the skills of writing and some other things. And my peers and I talked about each other’s poems and give reflections for each other. It’s nice to have ideas from peers since we can know what others want to see in our works. And it is definitely what I will do in the future when working on important tasks.

“First Recitation” Planning

In the first recitation, I chose “Japan” by Billy Collins. I found it in our poetry textbook, where there were lots of nice poems. I chose this poem because this reminds me of the time when I recited poems in high school, so it’s theme is what I was familiar with. And the depiction of the scenes of the author reading his favorite haiku is vivid and interesting.

I found out the haiku the author mentioned in the poem. It was so short that I didn’t really realize that it was a poem. I tried to comprehend its inner spirit by reading it out several times. After this process, it was easier to understand the emotion the author buried in the poem and helped me to interpret the poem. Basically, my preparation strategy for the recitation is reading the poem out over and over. Since it’s a comparatively long poem, reading iteratively greatly helps to recite it. And I found that every time I read it, something new popped up in my mind, sometimes new understanding of the poem, sometimes ideas about performance. Another strategy is to find the connections between each stanza. The connections can make me think of the next stanza when I read one stanza. By combining these connections, I can recite the poem continuously. There is a lingering charm in this poem, so when I recite it, I need to be in a peaceful and somewhat long-drawn-out tone. And I think some etherealizing music will make the recitation stronger in effect. Maybe I will use some background pictures too.

In fact, I’m a little bit nervous about the recitation for two reasons. The first is that I’ve always had a stage-fright and the second is that I’m not very confident in reciting the whole poem proficiently. To overcome them, I will need to practice over and over and put all my heart into it. I believe I will have a wonderful experience!

“Poetry @ Tech Review”-Newbern, Veach and Ward

Actually it’s not the first time I attend poetry reading like this. But last time I was a little bit late, so I hadn’t enough time to really enjoy it. This time I listened to the reading with my heart at the very beginning, so the experience is different from last time. At first, I was somewhat disappointed because the first poet Laura Newbern failed to grab my attention. Her voice was very low and I could just hear her. Maybe because of her poems were not so straightforward, I couldn’t catch her well. Comparing with her, I prefer the last two poets, Dan Veach and Thom Ward. I personally liked the second poet, Dan Veach, best, for his writing styles. However, in the aspect of recitation, I thought both of them did a great job of delivering the poems to the audience. They read their poems at appropriate volumes and pronounced clearly, so that the audience could easily hear them. They also did a nice job interacting with the audience. Their tone was relaxed and delightful. And the appropriate standstills they allowed the audience to digest and appreciate what they had just heard. Their poems were easy to understand and to resonate with. I could feel part of the emotions the author had had when he was creating the work. Maybe Laura Newbern could read louder and clearer and communicate more with the crowd. Overall, I enjoyed this poetry reading and gained some experience from the poets on poetry recitation and I liked the poems as well. I think I will be pleased to have other chances to attend activities like this.

“Where I Come From” Final Draft

12：30 AM

12:30 am.

The girl had tears on her face

staring at the infinite dome out of the window.

The moonlight was so cold,

as cold as her heart.

Hours ago she shut her door

separated herself from her parents.

They were devils in her eyes.

Why did they refused her

even if she just wanted to go to the movie with friends.

Study, study, study,

She didn’t hate to study

But she did hate her parents keeping saying it.

Would it be the spell that she could never get rid of?

Nonsense!

She swore to leave, swore to be free

Her day would come.

 

1348 days

have passed since that night.

She’s at the airport

can’t wait to fly across an ocean and a continent

Turning over a new page of life,

far, far away,

from home.

Everything‘s so good

All her dreams come true

Her day has come!

 

12:30 am.

The moonlight illuminates my face,

so soft

that it softens my heart,

the one that used to be cold.

Looking up into the sky,

I suddenly remember that

the bright moon is the meaning of my name.

Oh, my parents gave me such a name,

such a beautiful one.

Oh, why do I think of them?

it’s not good!

 

Mother’s face appears from nowhere.

She’s attentively cooking for me.

Adding ingredients, tasting, adding, and tasting

she thoroughly carries out the principle of trial and error.

All she does was only to copy the taste

I have praised last time at the restaurant.

Father’s voice sounds.

“Why do you always make me worry about you?”

“Eat on time, sleep on time and study more!”

Strict is the word for him, but he cares me the most.

Oh, memory floods, smothering me,

Bad, bad, bad.

All right, I miss them!

 

I know they are the same as me

I’m eager to fly home

but I just can’t do it right now.

Don’t be worry, don’t be sad.

I promise, I swear

I’ll take care of myself

and live a wonderful life.

One day, I’ll get home

Saying, “Hey, I’m back.”