English 3 - shakespeare
wednesday, february 6 (3)
Vocabulary Quiz, Units 9-10
After the quiz we’ll practice imitating professional sentence examples.
thursday, february 7 (green)
Today we’ll look at a bunch of sample poem comparisons from my previous students to get you ready for that portion of your final poetry project.
monday, february 11 (4)
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience
These poems can be found in Volume D of your anthology, though I’ll provide copies of the poems in class.
wednesday, february 13 (6)
An introduction to Romantic Ideals; The poems of William Wordsworth
“We Are Seven” (D-278)
“Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (D-288)
“I wandered lonely as a cloud” (D-334)
“The Solitary Reaper” (D-342)
“The world is too much with us” (D-347)
thursday, february 14 (7)
The poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“The Eolian Harp” (D-439)
“Kubla Khan” (D-459)
“Frost at Midnight” (D-477)
wednesday, february 20 (1)
The poems of Byron, Shelley, and Clare
Byron, “She walks in beauty” (D-617)
Byron, “So, we’ll go no more a roving” (D-620)
Shelley, “Ozymandias” (D-776)
Clare, “I Am” (D-881)
friday, february 22 (3)
Today is a work day, a chance for you to show me portions of your final poetry project.
monday, february 25 (4)
Finish BOOT CAMP #2. Today you’ll also have a chance to share some of the poems from your portfolio.
wednesday, february 27 (6)
The poems of John Keats, Day 1
“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art” (D-922)
“La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad” (D-923)
“To Autumn” (D-951)
thursday, february 28 (7)
The poems of John Keats, Day 2
“Ode to a Nightingale” (D-927)
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” (D-930)
“Ode on Melancholy” (D-931)
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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9 (1)
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", Archibald Macleish, "Ars Poetica", Wallace Stevens, "Of Modern Poetry", and Howard Nemerov, "Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry"
MAIN TOPICS TODAY: DEFINING POETRY / DIFFERENCES BETWEEN POETRY AND PROSE
HOMEWORK: By our next class, write a five-line poem about poetry. No further direction than that.
friday, JANUARY 11 (3)
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.
We’ll then work through Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays,” not found in your anthology because it’s not British. But it’s a poem with which I always like to begin a poetry unit.
MAIN TOPICS TODAY: APPROACHING A NEW POEM / PARAPHRASING
HOMEWORK: By our next class, write a five-line poem about your life.
MONDAY, JANUARY 14 (4)
One way poems are different from prose is that they have a unit of measurement prose does not: the LINE. Both prose and poetry have the WORD, the SENTENCE, and the STANZA/PARAGRAPH. But poetry also has the LINE, which is not always used to convey meaning but to call attention to something else, quite often RHYTHM, which can also convey emotion. Today we’ll look at Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” in conjunction with Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” to compare the subject of FATHERS AND SONS and to think about rhythm and the unit of the line.
MAIN TOPICS FOR TODAY: RHYTHM / UNITS OF MEANING
HOMEWORK: Finish your ¶ comparing “My Papa’s Waltz” and “Those Winter Sundays”.
wednesday, JANUARY 16 (6)
Sound conveys meaning. That may seem obvious, but don’t mistake what I mean—It’s not the words that sounds form I refer to, it’s the sounds themselves. Poets play with sound to heighten or emphasize the ideas the poems convey. We’ll talk today about rhyme and other sound devices poets use to convey meaning. We’ll use the following poems to illustrate:
John Keats, “When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Mezzo Cammin”
MAIN TOPIC TODAY: SOUND
THURSDAY, JANUARY 17 (7)
Today we’ll look at Richard Wright’s poem, “Between the World and Me” in order to understand the difference between subject and theme. Then we’ll work to revise your comparison ¶.
MAIN TOPICS TODAY: SUBJECT / THEME and FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 22 (1)
Reading and Understanding Poetry GROUP QUEST: Wilbur and Collins Poems
thursday, JANUARY 24 (3)
English Renaissance Poetry Day 1: Introduction to the time period, the major poets, and 3 related poems
Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” (B-1126)
Sir Walter Raleigh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” (B-1024)
John Donne, “The Bait” (B-1384)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25 (4)
English Renaissance Poetry Day 2: The Sonnet and a few by Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney, “Astrophil and Stella” 1 and 72 (B-1084-1096)
tuesday, JANUARY 29 (6)
Set Poetry Assignment; English Renaissance Poetry Day 3: Shakespeare Sonnets
William Shakespeare, Sonnets 18, 20, 73, 94, 130, 138 (B-1172-1184)
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 30 (7)
English Renaissance Poetry Day 4: Love and Lust
John Donne, “The Flea” (B-1373)
John Donne, “The Good Morrow” (B-1373)
Robert Herrick, “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” (B-1762)
Robert Herrick, “Corinna’s Going A-Maying” (B-1760)
Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress” (B-1796)
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1 (1)
English Renaissance Poetry QUEST
what's due?
Tuesday, January 22 - Reading and Understanding Poetry QUEST
Tuesday, January 22 - Revision of Hayden/Roethke Comparison
Friday, February 1 - English Renaissance Poetry QUEST
Wednesday, February 6 - Vocabulary Quiz, Units 9-10
Monday, February 25 - Final Poetry Assignment
Thursday, March 7 - Romantic Poetry QUEST
current text to bring daily
Most of the poems we’ll read in this unit are found in one of the volumes of the anthology. I’ll provide to you in class a paper copy of the poems out of copyright, but you are always welcome to use your volumes instead. I’ll indicate in and on which volume and page each poem can be found.
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"
ONGOING EXTRA CREDIT
Required reading can at times feel like drudgery. And while it's important to do the reading I set for the class, I fully recognize that you'd rather have a say in what it is we read. Unfortunately the freshman curriculum has little student choice built in, so your ongoing extra credit gives you the opportunity to read an outside text in your own time at some point during the semester. I'm very happy to reward you with additional course credit if you take it upon yourself to read a text outside of class and meet with me to discuss it. A few things:
(1) This must be a text you've never read before.
(2) It should be imaginative and of recognized literary merit. The text must be approved beforehand.
(3) The amount of credit awarded is variable depending on the chosen text and how our follow up conversation goes.
(4) While you may read as much as you'd like, I will only award extra credit once per semester.
enjoying literature
Literature's emotional lessons
Authors on the power of literature
How reading makes us more human
STUDYING LITERATURE
"6 reading habits from Harvard"
Achebe, "The Truth of Fiction"
Questions for analyzing novels
Poetry videos
