In a lecture on Zen Buddhism, Shunryu Suzuki explained, “In beginner’s mind we have many possibilities, but in expert mind there is not much possibility.”1 As a writer, I am pleased by this notion; it seems true that every time I sit down to write, I am thumping across the field (sometimes battlefield) of the imagination’s possibilities, where I’ll encounter—in some order—both the oh! of wonder and the oh! of frustration.2 Each time I sit down to write, I am learning to write.
I suspect it is imperative that we student-teachers of writing engage our “beginner’s mind” as we encourage our students to do the same. One simple way educators can do this is to offer—and to ask students to bring—a variety of readings to class. Readings that reflect a range of stylistic tendencies and engage a number of preoccupations allow students to see not only potential forms for their work but also mark your workshop/classroom as a space that honors and is respectful of pluralistic vision and voices. By showing students that both style and subject can be explored in a number of ways, you might offer students one of the few spaces where they feel safe experimenting with their writing. This seemingly small thing can have enormously positive effects as students develop their unique voices and preoccupations.
The following exercise, which I’ve often called a “Cookbook Model,” is meant to help both new and established poets by allowing them to escape—for a short time—preoccupations with intention and perfection, as well as anxieties about influence. I’ve found this exercise is particularly successful with new writers who are unsure about “where to begin” and with those more experienced writers who have reached a roadblock in their work (by helping them to “walk around the block”). The exercise can work for reader-writers of all ages; you’ll just need to vary the initial “readings” you offer your students. You can adapt this exercise as well for fiction courses by asking students to complete “cookbook models” of particular sentences or paragraphs. The beauty of this exercise, as you will see, is that often two poems (or two interesting prose fragments) result from it. It also encourages students to read closely and to demonstrate what they’re attending to as they read.
The Cookbook Model3
Poems are made from words, and often we think of words as familiar territory. In this three part exercise, you’re asked to:
- review all of the poems that are attached and select one poem that you appreciate or enjoy the most;
- consider what you appreciate about the poem; and
- de-familiarize and reacquaint yourself with the poem by walking through its landscape and creating a “recipe” for it.
1) Begin by reading the attached poems4. I recommend reading them aloud, more than once.
2) Select one poem that you like more than the others. Type out a brief paragraph explaining—beyond the subject of the poem—what appeals to you about the poem (rhythms, sounds, images, line breaks, etc. Be as particular as possible in your explanation).
3) Develop and type out a model of the poem. This model has two parts:
- The first part is the recipe.
- The second part is the poem based on the recipe.
All parts of the assignment should be typed and will be collected [at a future date].
Sample Poem and Model:5
The Cook Book model is a dissection of the syntax, statements, observations, and line breaks of the poem that you prefer. Don’t concern yourself with the content. The content is what you’ll provide later (in Mad Lib fashion).
For instance, look at this poem by Frank O’Hara and the cookbook model and poem that follow it. The cookbook employs two steps: first you create a recipe, and then you fill the recipe with your own words and subjects.
Original Poem by Frank O’Hara6:
To My Mother
Oh Witness! to be sure,
you are gone in your velvet sleeve,
and I am riding in a gray car
through the suburbs of my nose.
Have you escaped your impatience?
I am guilty and the sky is blue
as a restaurant full of tapioca
and isn’t it ordinary?
Like the many famous things
that are called “stuff” somewhere
And are on maps with their bloody veins,
I mean, highways somewhere.
Have you escaped yet? If you
haven’t I hope you’ve killed someone,
or suicide’s grown curious of someone,
or someone’s accidentally died.
Step 1: writing the recipe
Title:
- a dedication
Stanza 1:
- Invocation/exclamation about the person followed by affirmation
- Statement of his/her location (perhaps use article of clothing)
- Statement of personal location (a mode of transport)
- Where are you traveling? (make it correspond to a part of your body)
Stanza 2:
- Ask the person a question about one of their qualities that you dislike
- Identify yourself as a feeling, make a mundane observation about the color of some bit of nature
- Use a simile that compares the color to a man-made place that is identified with food
- Ask a rhetorical question that reflects boredom
Stanza 3:
- Make a vague simile/comparison to the subject of your rhetorical question
- Modify the abstraction/vagueness with another name
- Give the abstraction a location and describe what it looks like
- Apologize for what you’ve just said, rename the abstraction and offer it a new, vague location
Stanza 4:
- Ask the subject a yes/no question regarding emotional circumstance; begin with “If…” then make an absurd wish for the subject
- Qualify the wish using much of the original language of the wish
- Modify the wish again, using much of the original language
- Modify the original wish one more time
Step 2: Building a poem using the model/recipe
(Please note: your poems should not use the same phrasing as the original poem)
To Bailey (a departed fish)
Mute, beautiful! Surely you
weren’t meant to be blue and in a pipe
with your red tail-fan. I am pacing the empty
living room beside the highway of my heart.
Have you stopped, unblinking against the rocks?
I am less sad than yesterday, and the leaves have turned
rust-red as swing-sets abandoned for lemonade.
Has the night ended?
Like the many things closed,
things blind or sleeping,
things underground and fist-less,
I should have said “marigolds waiting for spring.”
Are you there yet? If not I wish you
left toward the ocean and its coral,
or that the ocean and coral turn to you,
or that you hadn’t left.
Once students have completed a draft of the poem, I suggest that they modify and edit the poem that they’ve produced (the excellent thing about a recipe is that you can vary and modify it to suit your tastes). At this point, I also stress that their new allegiance should rest with the poem that they’ve created; they should edit and make it the best poem possible, without regard for the recipe.
Sources & Notes
1. Shunryu Zuzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (PDF) (Accessed August 29, 2009)
2. Though I’ll claim this occupation, I like to think that we’re all beginners. Fact: If the chronological history of earth was represented using a roll of toilet paper that is 400 squares in length—with each square measuring approximately 11 centimeters—then I have been learning to write a poem for approximately .0000141 centimeters (rounding up), which is a somewhat invisible percent of the earth’s time. I have also been teaching others to write for .000012 centimeters, an even smaller percent of invisible earth time. To figure out the limited representation of toilet-paper time you’ve been writing/teaching, go here.
3. Note to Instructors: At the earliest levels, i.e. elementary school, you can walk students through the cookbook model as an in-class exercise by focusing on one poem. It may make the most sense, in that instance, to use this as a group exercise. Write the original poem on the board, and then have the group build a collaborative “recipe,” which you will also write on the board. Questions like: “now what happens in this line (of the original poem)?” can guide them through building the recipe for a new poem and collaboratively creating (in “exquisite corpse” fashion) a new poem.
4. Note to Instructors: The attached poems should reflect a range of styles (narrative, lyrical, meditative, associative, experimental, formal rhyme/meter, etc.). When I used this exercise recently, with college students, I included poems by: Frank O’Hara, Elizabeth Alexander, Ray Gonzalez, Harryette Mullen, Brenda Hillman, Li Young Lee, CD Wright, Mary Jo Bang, Larry Levis, and Maura Stanton.
5. It is imperative that you offer your students an example of how this works.
6. Frank O’Hara, “To My Mother,” The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara (Ed. Donald Allen. Berkeley: UC Press, 1995), 160.
