and she's whining again

Prose for Poets. I'm actually taking a class titled Prose for Poets. It's required, for the poets. We read prose (shocking), our prof tells us why it's good prose (not helping), and now we're supposed to write a 10-ish page prose "montage."

Yeah.

Here's my problem: Out of the four students in the class, two are prose writers taking the class for elective credit and one is doing cross-genre work. Which leaves little old me as the only non-prose-writing writer. I've tried to communicate this to the prof, but I'm not sure he even knows we're in the classroom with him. (Geniuses can get away with that, can't they?)

Tomorrow I'm supposed to turn in a draft. I have maybe 700 words. It's this weird essay-poetry hybrid on (shocker) Barnett Newman's Adam and Eve paintings and the creation myth and my relationship issues. Now I need, oh, a few thousand more words. But I've written out on Newman and creation. At least for this piece. Since it's "montage," I can piece disparate things together, but I want there to be something holding them together.

Here's my idea. And right now, it's not working.

Part of the A/E essay is a poem I wrote that begins "We met in an orange tree. In an oak tree where you held an orange. You held an orange. . . "

Anyway. I'm thinking of using the end of Frank O'Hara's "Why I Am Not a Painter" poem, meaning a collection of essays that aren't about oranges, but use orange at some point in time. Is this too weird?

Maybe I should sleep on it.

Note: I just had the thought that I could use the first line "I am not a painter, I am a poet" as the title for the Newman piece, and then use other lines for the other pieces. I'm overthinking this assignment. . .