Handmade Responses to Bob Hicok’s

“For three whose response was yes”

Examples from students in ENG 2328: Introduction to Literature

and Creative Writingcollected 09/06/2011

My Papa’s WaltzThe whiskey on your breathCould make a small boy dizzy;But I hung on like death:Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pansSlid from the kitchen shelf;My mother's countenanceCould not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wristWas battered on one knuckle;At every step you missedMy right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my headWith a palm caked hard by dirt,Then waltzed me off to bedStill clinging to your shirt. Theodore Roethke

For three whose reflex was yes Nobody I know is a god. A mother and sonfall into the river’s million hands, the river’ssmash and grab. They go under, climb the ropelesswater up, wave, open their mouths and screamwet silences as they slide back under.A man jumps in to save them, leaves the edgeas a needle into the river’s muddy sinews, a womanjumps in to save his vanishing and the motherand son and is stripped by the flood, her pantsdrowning right beside her, another man jumps into save them all and a woman jumps in after himto save them all plus one, cars arrive and peopleget out and leap into the river, the river’s being filledwith whatever’s in their pockets and their handsand their eyes, with nickels and dollar billsand bibles and sunsets, the beautiful brush strokesof this beautifully dying day, people pilelike a river inside the river, they keep comingand diving in, they keep feeding their breathto the water, which is less, which is thinned,until the mother and son rise on a moundof strangers and dead, the sun warming them, blessingtheir faces slowly dry.

Bob Hicok

Portrait

Portrait

Timeline

Portrait

Comic & Timeline

Portrait

Portrait

See-saw

Multi-Variable Graph & Freytag’s Pyramid Plot Line