Bonus points– name that meter….

“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)

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

Here’s a link to geocaching:
http://www.geocaching.com/

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.

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.

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…

• 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….