POETRY 1 February 25, 28, 28
Defining poetry / What might we take away from these few weeks reading and thinking about poems?
We'll begin today by looking at a few of history's greatest definitions of poetry before trying to come up with one of our own.
Poems: Billy Collins, "Introduction to Poetry" and Eve Merriam, "How to Eat a Poem"
MAIN TOPICS TODAY: DEFINING POETRY / DIFFERENCES BETWEEN POETRY AND PROSE
POETRY 2 march 1, 1, 2
Sections 1 and 4, while I am out, please complete the following tasks:
(1) Read the two poems we did not get to the other day: “Introduction to Poetry” and “How to Eat a Poem”. Your sub will have hard copies to give each of you. In the margin of each poem, please put into your own words the advice that the speaker of each poem has for approaching a poem. How is each poem’s approach to poetry different? We will go through this in class next time.
(2) Read “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home.” Your sub will have a hard copy to give each of you. This is a poem all about how poets have a knack to take an everyday thing and make it foreign or strange, to make us look at something another way. In other words, a poem often says something differently to make us see something differently. In the margin next to each thing the poet describes strangely, write what is actually being described.
(3) In the margin of the poem, write a poem of at least 5 lines that says something differently to make me see that thing or those things differently. Make strange to me an everyday thing I take for granted.
POETRY 3 march 2, 3, 4
Today we’ll continue defining poetry. I’ll then give a little advice for reading poetry, beginning with what we mean by a paraphrase, the first step in thinking about a new poem.
Poems about memories of fathers: “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays”
MAIN TOPICS TODAY: APPROACHING A NEW POEM / PARAPHRASING
POETRY 4 march 4, 4, 7
Today we’ll continue to work on your ¶ comparing “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays.” We’ll also look at another pair of poems that are thematically linked, “A Barred Owl” and “The History Teacher”.
POETRY 5 march 8, 8, 9
(1) Today we’ll introduce the sonnet form and look at the following two examples:
John Keats, “When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Mezzo Cammin”
Today we’ll talk about form and rhyme; we’ll introduce meter. We’ll write a few sentences defining what the two poems have in common.
MAIN TOPIC TODAY: RHYME, FORM, STRUCTURE
POETRY 6 march 9, 10, 10
Today we’ll look at some common figures of speech and then turn to your text book to think about why poets use figures at all. Remember that figures of speech are meant to make poems more concrete not abstract as most students seem to think.
Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son”
Alice Walker, “Women”
MAIN TOPIC TODAY: FIGURES OF SPEECH
POETRY 7 march 21, 21, 22
Today I’ll introduce meter, using 3 of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
MAIN TOPIC TODAY: METER
POETRY 8 march 22, 23, 24
Today we’ll practice a poem pair comparison, using Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” and John Updike’s “Ex-Basketball Player”.
POETRY 9 march 24, 24, 25
Today, while I’m out with the hockey team, you’ll take the period to work on another set of sentence patterns. When you finish, you’ll be able to work on your poetry project.
POETRY 10 march 28, 28, 29
Tennyson’s “Ulysses”
POETRY 11 march 29, 30, 30
Poetry Review
POETRY TEST march 31, 31, April 1
what's due?
February 24, 24, 25 — Homer’s Odyssey Test
March 4 — Homer’s Odyssey Documentary
March 31, April 1 — Poetry Test
April 11 — Poetry Project
text to buy now
STUDYING poetry
Essays on poetic theory (Make Aristotle, Horace, Sidney, Keats, and Shelley a priority)
ENJOYING POETRY
Compilation by Maria Popova at BP
Brian Cranston reads Shelley's "Ozymandias"
DOCS TO HAVE HANDY
Essay Writing Process (“Sonny’s Blues”)
enjoying literature
“In the realm of narrative psychology, a person’s life story is not a Wikipedia biography of the facts and events of a life, but rather the way a person integrates those facts and events internally—picks them apart and weaves them back together to make meaning. This narrative becomes a form of identity, in which the things someone chooses to include in the story, and the way she tells it, can both reflect and shape who she is. A life story doesn’t just say what happened, it says why it was important, what it means for who the person is, for who they’ll become, and for what happens next.”
