Bennington/Workshop/Revision

AGENDA:

Submit poetry or prose to BENNINGTON (Extra credit classwork grade)

Continue workshop

Work on revisions and portfolio

Workshop Ekphrastic poetry

AGENDA:

Workshop Ekphrastic poems and others

Learning the poetic line

READ:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70144/learning-the-poetic-line

Richard Wilbur /Bennington entries

AGENDA:

Work on revising poem assignments and portfolios

Workshop--period 2

Enter  Bennington contest

READ:

Richard Wilbur:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/obituaries/richard-wilbur-poet-laureate-and-pulitzer-winner-dies-at-96.html

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/richard-wilbur 

Advice to a Prophet

By Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,   

Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,

Not proclaiming our fall but begging us

In God’s name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,   

The long numbers that rocket the mind;

Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,   

Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.   

How should we dream of this place without us?—

The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,   

A stone look on the stone’s face?

Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive   

Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost

How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,   

How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip   

Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,

The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,

The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn

As Xanthus once, its gliding trout

Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without   

The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?   

Ask us, prophet, how we shall call

Our natures forth when that live tongue is all

Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean   

Horse of our courage, in which beheld

The singing locust of the soul unshelled,

And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose   

Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding   

Whether there shall be lofty or long standing   

When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.

*What does the allusion to Xanthus represent?

Workshop/Continue working on portfolios

AGENDA:

1. Workshop poems

2. Continue revising drafts and working on portfolio

Ekphrastic Poetry with Historic Photos

AGENDA:

Work on poetry assignments and revising work in portfolio.  Select a poem for workshop on Monday and give it to Ms. Gamzon.

Ekphrastic Poem--Historic Photography
"The Buttonhook"
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/teach-poem

Find a photo that represents a moment in history.  Make a list of descriptive details.  What was that moment in history like?  How did the photo capture it?  Is that moment in history personally relevant?  Create a poem about the photo.

Some websites to explore:

http://www.boredpanda.com/historic-photos/

http://pulptastic.com/40-rare-historical-photographs-must-see/

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/

http://www.boredpanda.com/must-see-historic-moments/

Annie Edison Taylor, the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, 1901

Revise and Complete Portfolio/ Scholastic

Strictly Speaking

 

David Rivard

There is the question
of bearing witness, of being yourself seen
by yourself, & seen clearly, cleanly,
without weapon or bible in hand;
as this was the wish,
the sturdy & not-so-secret wish
of those who named us—

 

our parents wanted us to be
known to ourselves without confusion:
without judgment,
sans suffering. Never force it,
they said, always find it.

 

OK, strictly speaking, that’s not entirely true.
My particular, sole, insistent, moody mother & father
probably never thought much about it at all.
Those two anxious citizens,
they were never exemplars of patience.
The weightlessness of detachment & acceptance
as I think of it now
would have frightened them—
for good reason.

 

If you could see these words
I’m speaking to you tonight printed on a page
as typeface & magnified x 500
you would feel just how ragged & coarse
they really are, heavy.

 

Well, playing the part of a butterfly
must be tiring, right?
I’m happier being the old ox, right?

 

On some plane of existence
these two scraps are all my news:
where the mess is
that’s where my heart is.

Nikki Giovanni-- Poem about Childhood

AGENDA:
Interview:
https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2017/06/01/newsmaker-nikki-giovanni/

Interview:
https://onbeing.org/programs/nikki-giovanni-soul-food-sex-and-space-aug2017/

The famous poem"nikki rosa" :

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48219/nikki-rosa 

Try writing a poem about your childhood.

PBS

• PBS.org
• Video
• Shows
• TV Schedules
• Shop
• Donate

W. S. Merwin

The Wings of Daylight

 

W. S. Merwin

Brightness appears showing us everything
it reveals the splendors it calls everything
but shows it to each of us alone
and only once and only to look at
not to touch or hold in our shadows
what we see is never what we touch
what we take turns out to be something else
what we see that one time departs untouched
while other shadows gather around us
the world’s shadows mingle with our own
we had forgotten them but they know us
they remember us as we always were
they were at home here before the first came
everything will leave us except the shadows
but the shadows carry the whole story
at first daybreak they open their long wings

 

Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday

AGENDA:

Wednesday will be our another Poetry Workshop.  Please pick one of your poems to workshop.  I will make copies of them Wednesday morning for the class to look over. Also start thinking about Bennington contest and if you want to attend the BOA Dine and Rhyme on Oct. 20

So far you should have 5 or 6 poems that you can revise and prepare for Wednesday:

• Paradox and Oxymoron
• Golden Shovel poem
• Ashbery poem
• Dialectical
• Self-Portrait
• Object
• and maybe today's assignment on W. S. Merwin 

1. Go to:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/52501 

Listen to the poem:
https://audioboom.com/boos/147537-the-nails-w-s-merwin

2. Go over Teaching Tips

3. Read discussion questions. Post responses to discussion questions as a comment.

4. Explore all the learning lab content.especially the essay about the poem and other resources:
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/merwin/
http://www.merwinconservancy.org/2013/01/poem-of-the-week-the-nails/
https://moonlightowl.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/the-nails/ 

5. WRITE: Look over Writing Ideas and create a poem

National Day on writing

AGENDA:

http://whyiwrite.us/about/

http://whyiwrite.us/category/podcasts/