After Robinson Jeffers: Poetic Function and Avoiding Affectation

In the introduction to Rock and Hawk: Selected Shorter Poems of Robinson Jeffers, it says Jeffers believed that “poetry’s function is to be an intensification of life, not a refuge from it… It must be rhythmic, and must deal with permanent things, and must avoid affectation.”
 
What is permanent?  What is impermanent?  Write a poem that explores these questions and focuses on the juxtaposition of impermanence with permanence.

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After W.S. Merwin: Questions and Answers

Write poem that responds to any or some or all of the questions Merwin asks in “Questions to Tourists Stopped by a Pineapple Field” or “What Is Modern?”; or like Merwin write a poem that consists entirely of questions.

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After W.S. Merwin: Senses and Places

In “St. Vincent’s” Merwin writes of the hospitals that he’s lived across the street from for years but whose ambulances he’s “learned not to hear.” Use a poem to look again, harder, at a daily sight, sound, presence, feeling, place, event, practice, or situation to which you’ve learned not to pay attention.

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After Theodore Roethke: Natureless Poetry

In “Dolor,” Roethke writes of “Desolation in immaculate public places, / Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard, / The unalterable pathos of basic and pitcher, / Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma, / Endless duplication of lives and objects.”

Write a poem WITHOUT nature; about a scene, an event, an object, or a place that defies nature, opposes it, ignores it, or violates it in some way.

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