Middle Season #15 2025

 

When form becomes content

 From Claude. 

The concept of form becoming content is beautifully illustrated in Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art." Here's how you can teach this to your students:

**In "One Art," the form IS the meaning:**

The poem is a villanelle, and the form's cyclical repetitions accentuate the mounting tension as the speaker attempts to anesthetize themselves from grief [](https://poemanalysis.com/elizabeth-bishop/one-art/). The villanelle's rigid structure—with its obsessive repetition of two key lines—mirrors the speaker's desperate attempt to convince herself that loss is manageable.

**Key teaching points:**

1. **Repetition as Obsession**: Bishop emphasizes the inevitability of loss by setting up a rigid structure, then repeatedly breaking it [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Art). The repeated refrain "The art of losing isn't hard to master" becomes increasingly hollow with each repetition, showing how the speaker is trying to convince herself of something that isn't true.

2. **Form Breaking Down**: Just as the speaker's emotional control deteriorates, Bishop subtly breaks the villanelle's rules—using slant rhymes, altering syllable counts, and changing the final refrain to include "(Write it!)" in parentheses, showing the speaker's desperate self-command.

**Other examples for your students:**

- **Sonnets about constraint**: When poets write about forbidden love in sonnet form, the 14-line limit mirrors the relationship's constraints

- **Free verse poems about freedom**: Breaking away from traditional forms can embody themes of liberation or rebellion

- **Pantoums about cycles**: The circular structure of pantoums (where lines repeat in a pattern) works perfectly for poems about recurring trauma, obsessive thoughts, or natural cycles

The key insight for students is that poets don't just choose forms randomly—they select structures that amplify and embody their themes, making the poem's architecture part of its argument.

How is your heart doing, at this very moment?

In Standing at the Edge, Joan Halifax cites a long passage from Omid Saf, director of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center.

In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they're doing, you ask: In Arabic, Kayf haal-ik?... how is your haal?  What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one's heart. In reality, we ask, "How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?" When I ask "How are you?" that is really what I want to know.

I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul.

Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you're more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.

Prosody Teaching Lists for High School Students

 Claude:

# Prosody Teaching Lists for High School Students

## Top 5 Things to Know About the Definition of Prosody

1. **Prosody is the "music" of language** - It's all about rhythm, stress, and sound patterns in both everyday speech and poetry. When you emphasize different words in "I didn't say she stole the money," the meaning changes completely depending on which word you stress - that's prosody in action.

2. **It exists everywhere, not just in poetry** - Every time you speak, you're using prosodic patterns. The way your voice rises at the end of a question, how you pause for emphasis, or speed up when excited - that's all prosody in action.

3. **In poetry, prosody becomes intentional and structured** - Poets deliberately craft patterns of meter, rhyme, rhythm, and sound to create specific effects. What happens naturally in speech becomes a conscious artistic tool.

4. **Prosody includes both sound and silence** - It's not just about stressed syllables and rhymes, but also about pauses, line breaks, breathing spaces, and the rhythm created by what's NOT said.

5. **Different languages have different prosodic rules** - English poetry often focuses on stress patterns (iambic pentameter), while other languages might emphasize syllable count, tonal patterns, or different rhythmic structures.

## Top 5 Ways Understanding Prosody Can Help You Understand Poetry Better

1. **You'll hear the poet's emotional state** - Fast, choppy rhythms might show anxiety or excitement, while slow, regular meters might create calm or sadness. The sound patterns often mirror the speaker's psychological state.

2. **You'll catch emphasis and meaning** - Poets use stressed syllables, rhyme, and rhythm to highlight important words and ideas. Understanding prosody helps you identify what the poet wants you to pay attention to.

3. **You'll appreciate how form reinforces content** - Like in Bishop's "One Art," where the repetitive villanelle form mirrors obsessive thoughts about loss. The structure becomes part of the poem's argument.

4. **You'll understand why poems sound "right" or "wrong"** - When a poem feels awkward or flows beautifully, prosody explains why. Poets break or follow rhythmic patterns for specific effects.

5. **You'll connect with the poem's physical experience** - Poetry is meant to be felt in your body - in your breathing, heartbeat, and speech rhythms. Understanding prosody helps you experience poems, not just analyze them intellectually.

10 Things from Madison Memorial Day 2025

 Jennie and I did a pre-summer break trip to Madison over the Memorial Day Weekend.  Here are 10 Highlights.

1. Bach Concert at First Unitarian Church by FLW
2. Bach Concert at First Unitarian Church by FLW
3. UW Arboretum
4. Book Store: The Book Deal
5. Farmers Market at Edgewood High School
6. Picnic at James Madison Park with supplies from Willy Street Coop
7. Dotty Dumpling's Dowry in Madison for excellent burgers
8. Wildwood Cafe in Stoughton for brunch
9. Sustaining breakfast at Fairfield Inn in Verona
10. Coop Finds
1. JG finds this sparkling water:
2. Sweet potato hand black bean salad with chipotle
3. Coffee from Wonderstate: 

Improved Weekly Running Structure

Claude Chat about building workout: 

Your current approach is solid for maintaining fitness, but you can definitely optimize it for better health benefits, stress relief, and even some performance gains. The key is adding variety to work different energy systems and give your body different types of beneficial stress.  Here's how I'd suggest evolving your running pattern:

## Improved Weekly Running Structure

### Run #1: Easy/Recovery Run (2.5-3 miles)

- **Pace**: 8:45-9:15 (30-60 seconds slower than current)

- **Effort**: Conversational pace - you should be able to chat easily

- **Purpose**: Active recovery, stress relief, building aerobic base

- **Feel**: Should feel refreshing, not draining

### Run #2: Tempo/Steady Run (3 miles)

- **Pace**: 7:45-8:00 (15-30 seconds faster than current)

- **Effort**: Comfortably hard - can speak in short phrases

- **Purpose**: Improves your lactate threshold and running efficiency

- **Structure**: 10-minute easy warm-up, 15-20 minutes at tempo pace, 5-minute easy cool-down

### Run #3: Long Easy Run (3.5-4 miles)

- **Pace**: 8:30-9:00 (similar to or slower than current)

- **Effort**: Easy and relaxed

- **Purpose**: Builds endurance, burns fat, great for stress relief

- **Feel**: Should feel meditative and sustainable

## Why This Pattern Works Better

**Stress Relief**: The easy runs become truly restorative rather than always pushing. Many people find the longer, slower runs almost meditative.

**Health Benefits**: You're training different energy systems - aerobic base building (easy runs), metabolic efficiency (tempo), and endurance (long run).

**Prevents Plateaus**: Your body adapts to the same stimulus quickly. This variety keeps challenging different systems.

**Reduces Injury Risk**: The easy runs help with recovery while the harder effort is structured and purposeful rather than randomly grinding.

## Implementation Strategy

**Week 1-2**: Just slow down one of your current runs to make it truly easy. Get used to running slower on purpose.

**Week 3-4**: Add the tempo structure to one run. Start with just 10-12 minutes at the faster pace.

**Week 5-6**: Extend your longest run by 0.5 miles and keep it easy.

## Additional Benefits You'll Notice

**Better Sleep**: The varied stress loads actually help regulate your nervous system better than always running at the same moderate intensity.

**More Energy**: The easy runs will start to feel rejuvenating rather than depleting.

**Natural Speed**: Your current 8:15 pace will start to feel easier, and you might find you can hold 8:00 without extra effort.

**Mental Health**: The longer easy runs can become a form of moving meditation - great for processing stress.

The key mindset shift is realizing that running easier on some days actually makes you fitter overall. Most recreational runners (myself included for years) make the mistake of running every workout at that "comfortably uncomfortable" pace you're currently doing.

Does this approach appeal to you? The hardest part is usually convincing yourself to run slower on the easy days, but that's where a lot of the health and stress-relief benefits come from.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Complete Body Workout Plan - 3x Per Week

 I can definitely help you create a balanced workout plan that complements your running routine. Given your goals of strength, mobility, and balance, plus your current fitness level, I think a 3x per week approach would work well to start - it gives you recovery days and fits nicely with your running schedule.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

# Complete Body Workout Plan - 3x Per Week

## Schedule Overview

- **Frequency**: 3 times per week (e.g., Monday, Wednesday, Friday)

- **Duration**: 30-45 minutes per session

- **Equipment**: Dumbbells, kettlebells, pull-up bar, yoga mat

## Workout Structure

Each session includes:

1. **Warm-up** (5 minutes)

2. **Strength Training** (20-25 minutes)

3. **Yoga/Mobility** (10-15 minutes)

---

## The 10 Core Exercises

### Upper Body Strength

1. **Pull-ups/Assisted Pull-ups**

   - 3 sets of 5-8 reps (use resistance band or chair for assistance if needed)

   - Builds back, biceps, and grip strength

2. **Dumbbell Chest Press** (lying on floor)

   - 3 sets of 8-12 reps

   - Targets chest, shoulders, triceps

3. **Dumbbell Rows** (single-arm, bent over)

   - 3 sets of 8-10 per arm

   - Strengthens back and improves posture

### Lower Body Power

4. **Goblet Squats** (holding dumbbell or kettlebell)

   - 3 sets of 10-15 reps

   - Full-body movement, great for runners

5. **Single-Leg Romanian Deadlifts** (with dumbbell)

   - 3 sets of 6-8 per leg

   - Builds hamstring strength and balance

6. **Kettlebell Swings**

   - 3 sets of 15-20 reps

   - Power, cardio, and posterior chain strength

### Core & Stability

7. **Plank to Push-up**

   - 3 sets of 5-8 reps

   - Core stability and upper body strength

8. **Single-Leg Glute Bridges**

   - 3 sets of 8-10 per leg

   - Hip stability crucial for runners

### Balance & Mobility

9. **Warrior III to Standing Forward Fold Flow**

   - 3 sets of 5 per leg

   - Balance, flexibility, and mindful movement

10. **Turkish Get-up** (modified with light weight)

    - 2 sets of 3-5 per side

    - Ultimate full-body integration exercise

---

## Sample Weekly Schedule

### Monday & Friday: Full Routine

Complete all 10 exercises as listed above

### Wednesday: Active Recovery Focus

- Lighter weights (reduce by 20-30%)

- Focus more on yoga flows and mobility

- Add extra balance challenges (close eyes during single-leg exercises)

---

## Progression Guidelines

### Weeks 1-2: Foundation

- Focus on form over weight

- Start with bodyweight or light weights

- Master the movement patterns

### Weeks 3-4: Building

- Increase weights by 5-10%

- Add complexity (longer holds, slower tempo)

### Weeks 5-6: Integration

- Combine exercises into flows

- Increase yoga portion to 15-20 minutes

- Consider adding a 4th workout day

---

## Yoga Sequence (10-15 minutes post-workout)

1. **Child's Pose** (1 minute) - decompress spine

2. **Cat-Cow Stretches** (1 minute) - spinal mobility

3. **Downward Dog to Low Lunge Flow** (2 minutes each side) - hip flexors and calves

4. **Seated Spinal Twist** (1 minute each side) - thoracic mobility

5. **Pigeon Pose** (2 minutes each side) - hip opening for runners

6. **Legs Up the Wall** or **Corpse Pose** (3-5 minutes) - recovery and integration

---

## Tips for Success

### Form First

- Start with lighter weights and perfect your technique

- Quality over quantity every time

### Listen to Your Body

- If something feels uncomfortable (not just challenging), modify it

- Some muscle soreness is normal; joint pain is not

### Complement Your Running

- Do strength training on your easier running days when possible

- The yoga portion will help with running recovery

### Track Progress

- Note weights used and reps completed

- Focus on how you feel - energy, balance, strength in daily activities

### Modifications

- **Pull-ups too hard?** Use resistance bands or do inverted rows under a table

- **Turkish get-ups complex?** Break them into components and practice each part

- **Balance challenging?** Use a wall or chair for support initially

---

## Recovery Notes

- Aim for at least one full rest day between strength sessions

- Your running days can serve as active recovery

- Prioritize sleep and hydration for optimal results

- Consider adding a weekly massage or foam rolling session

This plan is designed specifically for your needs as a runner looking to build strength, mobility, and balance. The 10 exercises hit all major movement patterns and muscle groups while being practical with your equipment.

A few key points about this approach:

**Why 3x per week works well for you**: It allows adequate recovery between sessions, fits around your running schedule, and prevents overtraining as you're adding new stress to your body.

**The exercise selection** targets common runner weak spots - glutes, hips, core stability, and upper body strength that often gets neglected. The single-leg exercises are particularly valuable for runners since they improve balance and address any strength imbalances between legs.

**Progression is built in** - you can start conservative and build up. The yoga component will really help with recovery from both running and strength training.

Would you like me to adjust anything about the plan? For example, if certain exercises feel too challenging or if you'd prefer to emphasize certain areas more than others, I can modify it. Also, once you get comfortable with this routine (after 4-6 weeks), we can look at ways to progress or add variety.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Keeping the devil down in the hole

Steep Street by Wayne Thiebaud 1989 - AIC link

From James Clear

Musician Nick Cave on cynicism and hopefulness:

“Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils. I know this because much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent…

Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like… keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.”

Source: ​The Red Hand Files, Issue #190

The book's prosodic rules

Yoshisuke Funasaka, My space and my dimension - M543. 2004, woodcut, 59 x 56 cm. (
Via Library of Congress)

From the author section of Best American Poetry of 2024, from Maggie Milner about her poem Couples

These poems have been excerpted from a book-length, narrative poem about love, queerness, heartbreak, and constraint. The book's prosodic rules, based on a loose interpretation of the heroic couplet, formalize the speaker's competing obsessions with control and submission. In this sense, it is a poem explicitly interested in dualities -- not only those thematic binaries related to gender and romantic coupledom, but also those that haunt and animate all makers of poems: verse and prose; constraint and freedom, lyric and narrative, me and you.

I ask Claude to explain prosodic rules: 

 In this context, "prosodic rules" refers to the formal structural constraints that govern how the poem sounds and is organized rhythmically and metrically. Prosody encompasses the patterns of stress, rhythm, meter, and sound in poetry.

The author is explaining that their book-length poem follows specific formal rules loosely based on the heroic couplet (traditionally, pairs of rhyming lines in iambic pentameter). These self-imposed structural constraints aren't just technical choices—they're thematically meaningful, mirroring the speaker's psychological preoccupations with "control and submission."

The paragraph suggests that by choosing to work within these formal limitations, the poet is enacting the very tensions the poem explores. Just as the speaker grapples with wanting both control and surrender in relationships, the poet simultaneously constrains themselves with formal rules while finding creative freedom within those boundaries.

This creates a meta-textual layer where the poem's form becomes part of its content—the prosodic rules don't just contain the poem's meaning, they embody it. The formal structure itself becomes a way of exploring the dualities the poem investigates: the tension between restriction and liberation, between imposed order and creative expression.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Couplets by Maggie Milner

Images via Flickr.

from Couplets  (excerpt published in n+1)

by Maggie Milner

 Her job was taking other people’s prose and coaxing

it to coherency. Mine was coaching

young people to translate life experience
to prose. But our own story made no sense

to me and twisted up whenever I tried
writing it. On the bus ride

to her building, I listened to Liz Phair,
Irma Thomas, and an outfit from Montclair

that she and I both loved, of a genre
halfway between emo and Americana,

like the lovechild of Bright Eyes and Loretta Lynn.
So much from that time is still so redolent

of nervousness and sex—her sandalwood cologne
and reading H.D. on her phone,

and crying in the mezzanine
at BAM and on a bench in Fort Greene

Park, and the sticky Ottolenghi cake we made (“no butter”),
and juices from an app. Rebecca West. The comforter

we patched to stop it drowning us
in goose-down every night. Soylent. Cunnilingus.

Saraghina, before all the Sturm und Drang.
The quaver in her voice when she first sang

the song that afterward became
the anthem of our romance, named

after a book of letters named after a fervid,
almost painful shade of red.

---

That fall, I’d rush out of her bed to catch
the seven o’clock train to the college

I taught composition at—
supporting claims, active voice, citation format.

The difference between summary and analysis
was a large part of the syllabus,

so much so you could say the line between
them was the joist on which the whole semester leaned.

I think I really liked the teaching,
with its emphasis on logic and “slow reading:”

another cornerstone of the curriculum
but also a constraint I’d always suffered from,

having no other choice. Before that, I had only
ever taught poetry

(which had no claim to usefulness, alas—
though it allowed me to give out more As),

and in my current role felt duty-bound
to teach my students everything I wished I’d found

out about at their age: Evidence
must precede argument. Verbs are the heaviest

lifters. Change is constant and inexorable.
The Oxford comma isn’t really optional.

You will fall in love. The relationship
will end, though not at the same instant

as the love. Some version of this will continue,
maybe forever, happening to you.

Restate your thesis in the final paragraph.
You can fuck up and still be fine—remember that.

Always include a bibliography.
Don’t promise your life to anybody.

---

Now and then, I’d get the strange impression
that she was me. A stab of chthonic recognition

would set off a little spasm in my eye.
Sometimes from far away I’d spy

her slanted walk or messy hair and every muscle
in my body would contract. At school,

while my students bent over their exams,
I’d scroll through photos on her Instagram,

the fabric growing damp between my legs
where her finger liked to press

itself inside me like a key. An undiscovered
ancestor. An eidolon. An isomer.

And an uncanny sense of unity,
to love in her what had always seemed deformity

in me. To yield. To feel the snugness of the fit.
To turn the lock. To hear the little click.

---

Cold, ecstatic—walking through the breezeway
to the perfume shop where I was a habitué

that year, which sold fragrances with biomes as their names,
insisting that the body was a place

where events occurred, rather than a thing
to which they happened (to say nothing

of the cause of such events)—and buying one
that advertised itself as woodland—“bosky,” “sylvan,”

some tree-ish word—and name-dropped Judith Butler on the label,
misting my nape with it and feeling sexual

and unashamed, like a beautiful deciduous slut
of language . . . Oh, I know how ridiculous what

it was I thought in that moment—I am my own husband—
but I couldn’t stop, I felt that way: bonded

to myself by my authority alone.
No one beside me. No one on the phone.

And going home, writing what I’d seen and heard,
adding detail—deepening the hue—switching a word

to change or nix a sound, feeling my tongue exult
in flights by which experience might vault

beyond the mind, become an externality . . .
Like cells, it’s still miraculous to me.

Love found me twice, at once. If it never
happens again I’ll still be luckier

than the moon. Breathing, typing these lines,
texting a friend, checking the time,

thinking it wouldn’t always be like this,
but still, sometimes, it was.    It is.

---

Then I was the only person in my bed,
though other people’s words ran through my head

and kept me company. One was Vivian Gornick,
who demanded: Put romantic

love at the center of a novel today,
and who could be persuaded

that in its pursuit the characters are
going to get to something large?

She argued that in modern life
we buy neither the plotline of the happy wife

nor the one where women “self-discover,”
so to speak, by dint of some new lover—

we’re too atomized, our institutions too
clearly corrupt. Everything we do

we think we have to do ourselves. But she
was speaking about prose, and the theory

that characters should actualize,
rather than transform as many times

as time allows, as is the case in verse,
where there are barely any characters

at all. In poetry then, let me say that love
has been, above all things, the engine of

self-knowledge in my life—and even after everything
is still what makes the rest worth suffering.

Excerpted from COUPLETS: A Love Story. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. © 2023 by Maggie Millner. All rights reserved.