Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Poetry Classroom: Iowa Tocatta

By David Clark Wright 6 Comments

Welcome to this month’s poetry classroom, with poet and professor David Wright. We invite you to respond to the poems we’ll share here—their forms, images, sounds, meanings, surprises—ask questions of David and each other, and write your own poems along the way.



Iowa (Toccata)

Variable clouds, modulating hills,
          Lakota language for prairie grasses:
          not cattail, not undulant sea.
Utopia in the fields—colony of furniture,
          gathering of kitsch and handiwork.
Loss sounds like a native translation of a hymn:
          Oh God, in a rabbit skin,
          Oh God who is a hawk coming to rest
                    on a moraine above a scored
                    and crosshatched silver field.

Photo by cwwycoff1, via Flickr. Poem by David Wright, author of A Liturgy for Stones.

_____

Discussion Questions:

1. A toccata is a fast-moving piece of music. Is this poem in any way like a toccata?

2. The poem begins in a way that almost sounds like a weather report. If Iowa was a weather report in this poem, what would it forecast?

3. Is Iowa something you would generally associate with classical music? What comes of making such an association in this poem?

Browse poets and poems
Browse music
Browse more music poems

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
David Clark Wright
Latest posts by David Clark Wright (see all)
  • Poetry Classroom: Four Sarabandes—Yo-Yo Ma - September 30, 2013
  • Poetry Classroom: Kansas - September 23, 2013
  • Poetry Classroom: Iowa Tocatta - September 16, 2013

Filed Under: Americana Poems, Blog, Music Poems, Poems, poetry, Poetry Classroom, poetry teaching resources

Try Every Day Poems...

Comments

  1. Maureen Doallas says

    September 16, 2013 at 11:03 am

    Love this line: “Loss sounds like a native translation of a hymn”. It contains what is both universal and particular.

    I also like, again, the wordplay, as in that use of the term “toccata” with its additional aspect of the virtuosic, here applied to Iowa, which the poem defines after three lines as “Utopia in the fields” and then quickly negates with “colony of furniture, / gathering of kitsch and handiwork”. Something transformative is occurring.

    That use of the comma after the first “Oh God” and its absence in the second mention I also note.

    Reply
  2. Elizabeth W. Marshall says

    September 16, 2013 at 1:19 pm

    The poem seems nothing like a toccata. The use of not back to back seems, among other word combinations, to put the breaks on, to drag the pace.” “Loss sounds” does not flow quickly from the reading lips of the mind.

    If Iowa were a weather report it would call for a weather patterns of sameness thought he poem starts with the word variable. And there would be storms, as indicated by the word loss. The writer may or may not intend that linkage but I as a reader link loss and death and storms.

    There is the same juxtaposing of opposites in using a toccata in the title of a downbeat and slowly unfolding poem as using Classical in association with Iowa. Nothing against Iowa ( JDL et al) but my mind doesn’t do rapid linking between those two words.

    Additionally using a hawk, bird of prey, gives me another glimpse of loss of death. And rocks (moraine) I associate with “life-lessness”.

    Beautifully crafted piece.

    Reply
  3. dw says

    September 16, 2013 at 2:18 pm

    Thanks, Maureen and Elizabeth, for these reactions to the poem. A bit of context may add to the conversation. This is one section of a longer meditation on Bach and driving called “Tocatta, Adagio & Fugue for the Prairie States,” part of the manuscript all these poems have come from.

    It is hard, I think, to hear how Bach fits in a place like the midwest, like rural Iowa. But there you are, driving down the road and he’s there on your radio (or in your head).

    dw

    Reply
    • Elizabeth W. Marshall says

      September 16, 2013 at 2:25 pm

      Thank you DW. I would be interested in reading the longer piece from which this comes. I have read this poem maybe 10 times to glean intended meaning. I may be over or under reaching. My apologies if I missed the mark entirely.

      Reply
  4. Sarah Murray says

    September 16, 2013 at 10:39 pm

    I’m mostly just a poetry enthusiast, but I love this piece. It strikes me as very freestyle reminiscint and then suddenly, bypasses the expected into a complicated rhythm condensed into two sentences. “Oh God, in a rabbit skin..” and ends with a slow resolve, that paints a picture that sounds like a hard earned love of home.

    Thank you for this.

    Reply
  5. Linda Reid says

    January 2, 2014 at 6:46 pm

    Love the flow of words in the poem.
    Also like the photona lot.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”
  • Bethany R. on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy