SLEEPING ON THE WING Assignment No. 1: Walt Whitman

Read the poetry available at the hyperlink below. Then, after reading the directions that follow, write your own poem.

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http://www.blackcatpoems.com/w/song_of_myself.html

“Write a poem that is a song of yourself, a celebration of yourself. In ordinary life, we are constantly made aware of the limitations of our powers. In this poem forget the limitations. Write as if you actually are the way Whitman imagined that you are. Write as if you were all of life, as if you were everywhere and in all time and were everyone and everything--seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding, being everything that there is. It may help to begin your lines with the words ‘I am’ or ‘I see’ or ‘I hear’ or ‘I know.’ Imagine yourself in many different places, including some you’ve never really been in--on a sinking ship, walking through the desert, in a burning building, at the battle of the Alamo, floating down a river. You might try, at least for part of your poem, putting a different place in every line. Say what you see and do there. Try using long lines, lines that give you space enough to describe in detail exactly who you are and what you see and hear and know. Be boastful and bold. Try making the poem very long. Let your poem keep changing its subject as it goes along, as Whitman’s poem does. You will probably find, after you write it, that it all goes together in a way you wouldn’t have expected.”

--from Sleeping on the Wing, by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell (Vintage, 1981).