3rd Quarter

Thematic Focus: Using a natural or domestic image to explore a divine or abstract idea.

Forms: Sonnets (specifically alternating between tetrameter and trimeter)

Inspiration: Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, George Herbert

Original Works:

INSERT ONCE COMPLETED

2nd Quarter

Thematic Focus: Romantic Love and Loss

Forms: Villanelles, Spenserian Stanza, Sestina

Inspiration: Elizabeth Bishop: "One Art", Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Adonais", John Milton: "Lycidas", etc.

Original Works:

I took the ending lines of Adonias, a Sestina, and formed by own stanza using them:

A sweet scent brings him molded into thought.

He hums a tune that makes me smile—sweet sound

Like sizzles on a pan that morning sought.

With his sweatshirt on and my hair unbound

Did the church we had built burn to the ground.

The ashes of our love, which kindled day,

Lays lifeless while his laugh like thunder moans

In dreams as an unquiet slumber lay

On autumn leaves sobbing in their dismay.

I drew inspiration for my next original poem by creating a few lines with a blackout poem of Lycidas:

I then wrote my own Villanelle:

A Slice of Me and You

It smells like charring strings and your perfume—

A medley of roses and rusting chime,

As we slow dance inside this burning room.

The string quartet is screaming our life tune,

Like our first fight or maybe my first lie.

So I smell the charred strings and your perfume.

All the guests want a slice of me and you.

They are getting hungry (quick, pour the wine!)

So they’ll sway with the flames in the ballroom.

You were all I could see that afternoon,

Melting white lace begging to be untied.

It reeked of roses and a sweating groom.

I can’t seem to hold you like I want to

and sweaty palms keep you from being mine.

I cling to our dance in the burning room.

You made love you, want you—I do—so true.

With your eyes on mine, our hands intertwined.

But it smells like charring strings and perfume.

Dear, we’re slow dancing in a burning room.

1st Quarter

Thematic Focus: The fall of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden

Forms: English and Petrarchan Sonnets

Inspiration: John Keats, John Milton: "Paradise Lost", Donald Justice: "The Wall", Gerald Stern: "The Expulsion", etc

Original work:

I wrote three sonnets from the first person perspective of Eve, which proved to be a strikingly personal way to throw myself deep into the narrative. The first sonnet is set in the form of an English sonnet, as Eve begins to realize flaws in the perfection of Eden. The second sonnet is a Petrarchan sonnet that shows Eve succumbing to her own temptations and convincing Adam to follow her to where they can both pursue their earthy desires to sin. The third sonnet, set on earth and without rhyme scheme, is about the trying experiences of human life where Eve, now surrounded by the pain in the world, is ultimately drawn back to the beauty of The Garden. I intentionally wrote the set in iambic pentameter and paid close attention to melodic devices in order to translate the project into music, so I could portray the sonnets through the artistic representation of dance. The accumulative project became something that was entirely my own; my idea, my writing, my voice, my choreography, my dancing.

Sleeping At Last

Painted portrait skies sigh breaths of relief,

Tainting humming trees with melting sun kissed

Breeze, that sounds sweeping praises of belief.

The landscape doesn’t know what they have missed.

The fulfillment this place offers your soul,

Is like rain on hot days, fills hands you cup,

Rinsing stains, can’t make you whole.

Adam, it is the time that you give up.

The birds, they’re ringing rounds of singing sounds

of wake up! But I have been told of

The treasures sleep can hold from its dark hounds;

You cannot see the truth while we’re above.

Landscapes dance the tune that plays within them,

But singing just one song is to condemn.

The morning call brings in the sweeping sound,

Of angels and their wings, like rising sun.

The guardians give no consent to run

To indulgent orchids, sins burial ground.

Ripe rounds of tangy red are crisply bound;

Too sweet the taste to stop once you’ve begun,

Adam, they’re nothing that you’ve know, try one;

Inside you is a hunger to be found.

With each bite, can you feel our chains are freed,

Which held our wills confined behind this door.

This goodness here will follow us— eat fast;

What is outside can satisfy all needs.

Hold my hand, we’ll fall to a place with more.

A surrender so sweet, sleeping at last.

We are walking on worn shoes and blistered feet,

Stumbling down dark paths, arms stretched out in front,

Braced, as we’re dragged around each corner,

Like puppets pulled by relentless passions.

But the red we have craved is hidden here

In the darkness, where our demons can play

Within the winding tunnels of our souls;

A war that drills holes in my guilty heart.

But in the dark I can see shining stars,

Like windows of heaven, my eyes wide in

Mystify, the shine of God’s love seems like

Such amazing wonder—like coming home.

Failings of human life guide me and you

Back to the garden where our souls first grew.