Two slogans of poetry I’d like you to all think about:
Slogan #1: Good poetry SHOWS rather than TELLS.
Examples:
- “I’m so sad” TELLS us how the speaker feels.
- “My tears ooze out slowly like blood from a wound” SHOWS us how the speaker feels.
Slogan #2: Poets often structure their poems so that the FORM REFLECTS the CONTENT.
Examples:
- The author of “Seal” structures his poem in a streamlined shape, suggesting the smooth movements of seals through water.
- The author of “Seal” also uses a waltz beat to suggest the gracefulness and smoothness of seals.
Now, let’s look at some poems that violate these two slogans (in other words, they tell rather than show and don’t have a form that reflects their content) and other poems that adapt these two slogans.
Examples of Poem Assignment #5:
The “F” version
SHAME
Shame is supreme ugliness, she said.
Who cares what you say? I answered.
Get a life, you loser.
The “D” version
SHAME
Shame is green.
It sounds loud.
It looks ugly.
It smells nasty.
It tastes like sour milk.
It makes me feel horrible.
The “C” version
SHAME
Shame is grey.
It tastes like macaroni and cheese.
It looks like cockroaches in my bathroom.
It smells like body odor.
It sounds like a teacher screaming at me.
It makes me feel like a dunce.
The “B-”/C+ version
SHAME
Shame lives in muted light.
It sounds like a whimper
and feels like a punch.
It looks like a shadow
and tastes like bile.
It makes me feel like
dying.
The “B” version
SHAME
Shame hides in muted light.
It sounds like a whimpering child
and feels like a hurtful punch.
It looks like an obscured shadow
and tastes like bitter bile.
Shame makes me feel like
dying.
The B+ version
SHAME
Shame hides in muted light.
It sounds like a vulnerable whimper
and feels like a sucker punch.
Shame shrinks into the corner
like a disappearing shadow
and stings the tongue with bitter bile.
It makes me feel like crawling into a hole
and
dying.
The “A” version
SHAME
Shame is the blackness of an unlit room.
It’s the silence of repeated failure
and the stab of a jeering sneer.
It’s a splintered hole kicked in a filthy wall,
a drunken slap across a downturned face,
the taste of dirty rot scraped off a garbage can.
Shame makes me want to sink into the mud
of a deep, dark pit
where nobody
can ever find me.