Week 5 - March 5
The
Children of Odin
1. Begin with
Kennings
Each person reads a kenning from second column, then its meaning
from first column For example:
axe blood-ember
battle spear-din
blood slaughter-dew
blood battle-sweat
death sleep-of-the-sword
Then everyone
makes one up --- and shares
2. Exploration
of The Children of Odin by Padraic Colum
Colum cleans up so Loki is NOT tied up with the bowels of his
son) (so Loki is NOT impregnated by the stallion Svadilfare and
does not give birth to a pony)
Once there
was another Sun and another Moon (5) imagining ANOTHER
Always there had been a war between the Giants and the Gods (5)
In Asgard there was a Garden and in the Garden, there grew a tree
(10)
…and they no longer walked lightly (17)
Loki the mischief maker vs. Odin the wanderer
The children
of Loki and the witch Angerboda were not as the children of men.
They were formless as water is or air or fire is formless (128)
The twilight
of the Gods/death of Odin
3. Exploration
of Ash: Poems from Norse Mythology
a. Creation
myths (1-10) "We know the end, we know too much to hope"
*
"Our present shimmered, without the disease
of history or tomorrow's grim convolutions"
b. Odin and Valhalla (16-20)
c. "Frey's Longing" - "what do immortals know
of urgency?" *
d. "What I want is a myth in my arms" *
"Concerning Sigurd's Appearance: A Sodomite Fantasy"
(77-79)
e. Stories: "Thor Fishes for the Midgard Serpent"
(45-47) *
"Balder" (54-56) "no one, god or man, is loved
enough" *
Brynhild vs. Gudrun ( 87-93)
f. Apocalypse
"Surt" -"This is fire's freedom/to ravish the
world" (117-119) *
"Ashes" (120-121)
"The Dews of Morning" "beauty begins anew with
us" (122-123)
4. What would
you give up for wisdom? - ala Odin's sacrifice of right eye and
being tied to Ygradrassil for nine days
I ween
that I hung on the windry tree
Hung there for nights full nine
Poem
assignment: verses 1-2
What
would you give up for wisdom
With the spear I was wounded and offered I was
To Othin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs.
Voluspo
(Poetic Edda 1-27) "would you know yet more?"
1. Group tasks
a. Make
up your own proverb, inspired by those in Hovamol (compare Book
of Solomon) page35/121-43/131 53&54 "I rede…."
b. Make
up you your own boast -and end with "What didst thou the
while?" (when we gather again near end of class, each group
will give its boast and turn to next group and ask "What
didst thou the while?")
c. Come
up with a charm to cure/solve, ward off evils of a "poetic
problem" - inspired by
A third
I know if great is my need
Of fetters to hold my foe;
Blunt do I make mine enemy's blade
Nor bites his sword or staff…
A fifth I know if I see from afar
An arrow fly 'gainst the folk;
It flies not so swift that I stop it not,
If ever my eyes behold it.
d. aAter
looking at what you are pulled to and what might need work in
each poem of each small workshop participant add a kenning somewhere
in the poem
2. End with "I rede the, Loddiferm and hear thou my rede
(53-60) choral reading - reading only circled parts
1. In a
poem explore what you'd give up for wisdom
2. Imagine your own apocalyptic vision -and the new world created
after (inspired by Voluspo 24-27) and "Surt" (in Ash)
Read
Carol Duffy's The World's Wife (click
here to buy it online)
