Richard Greenfield's Tracer

Richard Greenfield, unfortunately, wasn't able to answer the questions I presented to him, but there are a variety of online sources that may help you when engaging his work. Check out the following reviews, etc. that address some poetic concerns found within Tracer:

http://quarterlyconversation.com/tracer-by-richard-greenfield

http://bostonreview.net/BR35.4/eason_micro.php

http://www.prickofthespindle.com/reviews/3.3/_small_presses/greenfield/tracer.htm

http://www.jerrymagazine.com/works/i-tracer-i-by-richard-greenfield

http://reconfigurations.blogspot.com/2009/11/jess-wigent-review-of-greenfields.html

Finally, below are two videos of Greenfield reading some poems from Tracer during a book tour. He prefaces these selections with some explanatory statements that might be helpful:

UPDATE: 11.08.11

For next class period, please read Richard Greenfield's Tracer. As I mentioned in class, this will be the most difficult (and longest) book we'll read this semester, so please begin early (i.e. now). After reading Greenfield's collection, please write a one-page, single-spaced review of the book. As a reminder, focus on an elements (or elements) in Kinzie, such line breaks, syntax, diction, tropes, or rhetoric/voice, quoting her when necessary, then use specific examples from the poem you're assigned to demonstrate how they function. Finally, explain those elements's overall effect on that poem. Hard-copies of your reviews will be due in class on Monday. Below is the list of poem assignments:

Miranada: "Guideline"

Kelly: "Two Reports"

Matthew Carter: "Last of the Butterflies"

Matthew Chanlynn: "Actuary"

Kimberly: "Artificial"

Katlin: "Annals"

Samual: "Tacit Rainbow"

Alyssa: "Sale"

David: "Was It / It Was"

Taylor: "The Future"

Jennifer: "The Sign"

Jessica: "Eris"

Ashley: "The Session"

Rachel: "Sublimity Will Not Be the End"

Hailey: "Rapier/Ravine"

Lindsay: "Speaking For"

Hanna: "Bastion"

Luke: "Maverick"

Joseph: "Newness"

Also, we will meet this Saturday evening for the Clean Part Reading Series. Below is the notice from the Clean Part blog. More information can be found here:

On Saturday, November 12, please join us at 7 pm to hear Lily Brown and Elisa Gabbert read for The Clean Part. Free and open to the public, drop by Drift Station Gallery, located at 1746 N Street in downtown Lincoln (corner of 18th St.), to hear some wonderful poetry and win some November-ish raffle prizes! See you soon!

As with the previous event, you will need to write a one-page, single-spaced response to the event, focusing on a particular image, phrase, or poem that you found compelling, unique, or troubling and discuss its effect on the poem, reading, or yourself. Do not provide, merely, a narrative of the evening. Reading responses will be due, via email, on Wednesday, November 16th.

Also, David, Taylor, and Jennifer, please email me poems to be work-shopped by tomorrow evening so I can get them to your classmates as earlier as possible. As a reminder to all, make sure you've commented on your peer's poems thoroughly and before class, focusing on the concepts we've covered in Kinzie.

Finally, everyone should be actively working on selecting the five poems you'll want to include into your portfolio and revising them extensively.

UPDATE: 11.06.11

As a reminder (I mentioned this during class and it's also on the syllabus), you are to have the chapter "Rhetoric and Speech" and "Rhythm as Combination" in A Poet's Guide to Poetry (pages 187-214) read for class and ready to discuss.

Also, we will be work-shopping poems by Kim and Samual in tomorrow's class, both of which you've previously received and should have already commented on. An email has been sent to you with Alie's poem; please comment on it. We're going to try hard to get all three work-shopped in tomorrow's class session.

An additional note about workshops: Please, when discussing your peer's poems, focus on line breaks and half-meaning, syntactical structures and the manner in which they are dispersed across lines, the use of diction, the implementation of tropes, and the rhetoric of the speaker of the poem. Moreover, when offering you peers feedback, speak of/about the poems using the language and terms we've read in Kinzie. Not only will this demonstrate to me that you're reading and comprehending the texts, but it will provide us with a common language and clearly identifiable ways in which to assess the general merits of the poems we work-shop.