unit 3: lyric poetry 1

MEETING 1: from prose to poetry — Santiago baca’s “Green chile” and blanco’s “mother country”

What is a lyric poem? How does poetry differ from prose? These are the two questions we’ll try to answer today, diving into two poems: Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Green Chile” and Richard Blanco’s “Mother Country”.

Homework: Read Richard Blanco’s “Shaving”. Mark it up as we did in class. What two associations do you make in response to the prompt at the top of the page? No need to write a thesis; just identify the complexity.

Read the essays I provided as a handout.

MEETING 2: interlude—vocabulary and essays

MEETING 3: IDENTIFYING SHIFTS WITH RICHARD WILBUR

In today’s class, after we review “Shaving,” we’ll look at 2 poems from 20th-C American poet Richard Wilbur: “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” and “Advice to a Prophet”. Our goal in both poems is to identify tonal shifts and purposeful movements on the part of the speaker.

“Plato, St. Teresa, and the rest of us in our degree have known that it is painful to return to the cave, to the earth, to the quotidian; Augustine says it is love that brings us back.”

— Richard Wilbur

We’re going to travel lightly for now in terms of literary terminology, sticking just to structure, tone, diction, and syntax, as well as imagery and figurative language.

“Love Calls Us to the Things of This World”

“Advice to a Prophet”

We’ll work “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” together as a group; you’ll tackle “Advice to a Prophet” in a small group; then, for homework, you’ll read “The Writer” and “The Death of a Toad” on your own.

Homework: Read “The Writer” and “The Death of a Toad”. Mark it up as we did in class, identifying any tonal shifts and movements in the poem. On the bottom of the page, write a thesis for a poetry analysis responding to the following prompt: Explain how formal elements, such as structure, tone, syntax, diction, and imagery reveal the speaker’s COMPLEX response to (1) his role as a father and (2) the death of the toad.

meeting 4: Wilbur, “the writer”, “death of a toad”; poetry mcq

Sit in your CHAVRUSA.

The main business of the day: “Death of a Toad” and “The Writer”. How did you do with your two poetry analysis thesis statements? Wherein lies the complex response in each poem? Share with your chavrusa.

We’re going to use “The Writer” to introduce poetry MCQs. I have a set of questions on each of Wilbur’s poems that you and your chavrusa can struggle through together. We’ll go over the answers afterward.

Let’s check in about your short story process essay at the very end of class.