Write in highly metered poetry… post it here!
Bonus points– name that meter….
December 7, 2009
Some of W.B. Yeats’ “greatest hits”:
“The Stolen Child” (p. 4), “Down by the Sally Gardens” (p. 6), “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (p. 12), “When You Are Old” (p. 13), “The Host of the Air” (p. 18), “The Song of the Wandering Aengus” (p. 20), “He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” (p. 23), “The Folly of Being Comforted” (p. 26), “Adam’s Curse” (p. 27), “The Fascination of What’s Difficult” (p. 31), “To a Friend whose Work has Come to Nothing” (p. 36), “The Irish Airman Foresees his Death” (p. 48), “The Collar-Bone of a Hare” (p. 49), “Easter 1916″ (p. 60), “The Second Coming” (p. 64), “Sailing to Byzantium” (p. 66), “Leda and the Swan” (p. 80), “Among School Children” (p. 81), “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” (p. 96), “After Long Silence” (p. 97)”Long-legged Fly” (p. 126), “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” (p. 128)
November 29, 2009
The “Little “ Essay
Due Friday, December 4
6-8 pages, 1.5 spacing, duplex printed. This is in the neighborhood of 2400-3000 words.
You should:
• Hand in 3-4 pages of draft by Monday 11/30 or Wednesday 12/2.
• Write your paper about poetry of Seamus Heaney.
• Choose ONE longer poem or TWO shorter poems that have “synergies” you can explore in some depth. Other poems can be brought in as accents.
• Use me as a resource to test ideas, ask questions, suggest other sources of information.
• Use at least ONE source apart from the primary sources of the poems themselves to enrich your critical perspective. We have good Putnam Library Reference tools to help you find high quality material. I also will suggest Seamus Heaney’s prose writing as a superb source of additional, quotable material.
• CITE your SOURCES. Any and all outside sources MUST be cited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You may:
• Embed personal reflection (the Wallis model) into the poetical analysis.
CRITERIA for PLATH paper.
Did you…
______ Staple the corrected first draft to the back of the completed draft? (You will lose some points if you did not.)
______ Take into account my comments and corrections as you wrote your final draft? Good writing shows good evidence of editing and revision, both of form and content.
A good PLATH paper:
• Achieved a good, well-proportioned balance of Plath analysis and personal reflection.
• There was a seamless integration of the Plath and the personal, including smooth transitions.
• There was a strong, legitimate connection between your personal reflection section and the poetry you selected.
• Had a strong prose style (good writing)
• Had excellent control of mechanics: spelling, grammar, punctuation, quoting, citing
• Was at or near the four page length
November 20, 2009
Read at least 10 poems from Seamus Heaney’s Seeing Things.
Read your new New Yorker
Post a reply in two parts:
1) Response (need not be lengthy) to what you enjoyed (beyond the cartoons) in The New Yorker this week and
2) “Top hits” from Seeing Things. Start to find synergies between 2 poems…
November 18, 2009
For Thursday (11/19):
Read 10 Poems from The Spirit Level including “Mint” (p.9) and “A Sofa in the Forties” (p. 10). Make sure you look up and note any vocabulary words or allusions that are unfamiliar.
Make a QUICK post telling me a top 5 hits of others you decide to read. Thanks!
Here’s a link to geocaching:
http://www.geocaching.com/
November 6, 2009
WHAT:
4-Page Paper Due Wednesday, November 11.
4 Pages, 1.5 spacing, duplex print OR emailed to me (turnincoon or my regular email)
4 Pages is at least 1600 words.
WHEN:
2 Pages of draft are due by class time, Monday November 9.
HOW:
• Using Wallis’s essay as a model, or Manthon’s concept from CITYterm of “writing from need”, your essay MAY combine personal narrative with close reading of the literature (Plath’s poetry, poem or poems)
• You may also choose to do a very in-depth unpacking of a single poem, but not one we have read and discussed in class. I have seen some excellent 4-6 page papers on a single Plath poem, so this is a legitimate challenge.
• You may find two poems that you believe lend themselves well to compare/contrast. Perhaps one that is in what Freida Hughes calls the “Ariel voice” and one that is not? Don’t be afraid to do a little research into back story– there is a quite a lot of material about these poems,this poet. Anything you find, though, that did not come out of your own brain all by itself MUST, MUST, MUST be cited!!!!!!!!
• As before, a motif. But exercise caution– don’t be too broad. “Nature.” “Ted and Sylvia’s marriage” “Death” “Suicide”–all too big. This is a 4-5 page paper, not a master’s thesis. Scale accordingly.
October 23, 2009
Read the Introduction to Sylvia Plath’s Ariel and the poems up through p. 30.
Post a reply here, using “Quotation Sandwich” method whereby you quote something from the reading (with a page number, please!) and “sandwich” it between some introductory sentences and some analytical sentences. Your post need not be lengthy; I am going for some content grounded in text, here, as we move along with this poet.
Follow the blogroll to Wallis’s page and read the essay she has posted there… Please leave her a comment (she has already gotten some from people who read her post– that’s the power of the web!!!), and take note of how she structured this piece. I would like you to model the next paper I have you write on what she did, here, as they learned last year at The Mountain School.
October 16, 2009
1) A FINAL-ESQUE (no poem is ever truly finally finished) REVISION of your first poem. The new draft should look really good and be stapled on top of the ever-growing stack of drafts.
2) Read “Lorelei” (p. 22 of The Colossus) very carefully and closely. We want to be able to give it a good take-down on Monday and move on.
3) Enjoy your New Yorker, and give us a blog (This is required blog #3 of this week… get caught up on blog #1 and #2 if you missed a day).
“Content, not just cartoons,” says Mrs. Coon…..
4) If you need to go back and add citations to web posts, please take care of that, too…
October 15, 2009
1) Research something from the Sylvia Plath website http://www.sylviaplath.info
OR
2) Research something interesting about John Keats or Fanny Brawne and post it
OR
3) Be a vocab sleuth and look up for us and post:
acanthus (p.3: Colossus)
tumuli (20)
acanthine (21)
Oresteia (21)
Lorelei (22)
scrim (22)
whorled (23)
descant (23)
hebetude(23)
gimcrack (29)
October 8, 2009
• Your 3-4 page paper on the poetry of Rad Smith is due by class time (9:10 AM) on Wednesday, October 14. We don’t have class on Tuesday, but Thursday will be a Monday schedule. Your paper should be 12 point font, 1 inch margins, 1.5 line spacing. I expect that 3-4 pages means about 1500 words or thereabouts. When in doubt, however, aim for “Less is More.” Don’t pad your paper or overwrite to fill space and impress me. (It won’t work!) If you give me hard copy, please print double-sided to conserve paper. I would also be happy for you to send it to turnincoon or to my personal email.
• Reading Colossus and Other Poems by Sylvia Plath. Finish the book by Friday, not Wednesday. I will ask for at least 3 SHORT “track back”, metacognitive I-search type blog postings on how you go about this….
The first one is due on Wednesday. Be SHORT– just get the thread started… reply and talk-back to each other…be informal, honest and revealing…
HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY WEEKEND!! SAT’s and all that jazz….
