Dear friends of literature,
This is a blog dedicated to you, the lover of literature. I will provide links to literary websites, and sites focusing on the study, teaching and enjoyment of literature. This will also serve as a venue for my students to connect to, and interact with other readers of literature. I will often pose questions for my students here, and you are welcome to join them in the conversation. Please use your most civil language. Also, understand that many of the voices you read here are those of young students, and they are still in their early stages of analytical discourse.
MUSE STUDENTS: LOOK HERE! HERE IS MY LESSON IDEA FOR NEXT WEEK!
1) GO TO THE FIRST LINK BELOW. Read the poem "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins. Respond directly on this blog. What are your views of this poem?
2) Find/share a poem that addresses some of the same themes, shares the sense of humor, uses the same memory/historical style, or uses similar imagery to construct a narrative.
3) Find that poem on the web. You may have to dig, but many poems are available free online. Place the LINK to the poem on THIS blog as a COMMENT.
4) Give some explication as to why you selected this poem.
5) Read a poem posted by another student, and comment on their selection.
6) GO TO THE SECOND LINK (the youtube link). Watch the clip. What do you think of the movie? What worked it terms of the connection to the poem? Add your thoughts to the COMMENTS link.
Here are some other links that you may enjoy!
http://www.berkeleyrep.org/school/index.asp
http://www.calshakes.org/v4/educ/
http://www.sfmt.org/workshops/youthproject.php
http://playsandmusicalsnewsletter.pioneerdrama.com/public/blog/100513
At first, I didn't think the poem 'humorous', but as Mr Vaughn revealed that we're supposed to find another poem that 'shares' the sense of humour, I re-read it and caught it.
ReplyDeleteAs a medievalist, reading the actual number of the year in question took me back when I tried to envision what it would actually be like during that era, and it seems good ole Billy also shares that same curiosity.
Although one might argue that the subsequent poem is on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of tone, I nonetheless was reminded of T.S. Eliot's 'Wasteland'... he sort of moves from time period to time period, but it is trying to wrestle with the illusion of time and place. I probably read a lot into that, but I feel that there are some connections. Eliot also knew a lot of history in general, including medieval (which of course means "between time" -- 'medi' and 'eval')...
That's my two cents folks! Not enough time to delve further. Apologies!
- Marcus Markle
On the theme of memory, I recommend:
ReplyDeleteThe Autobiography of My Mother
By Jamaica Kincaid
Here's my favorite quote from the book :)
"And yet memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present."
Happy reading!!!
The theme that I was picking up on was not memory - it made me think about loss. So, I picked out this poem written by a teenager.
ReplyDeleteLIFE
Follow your dream
Pursue it with haste.
Life is too precious
To waste.
Be faithful, be loyal
And all your life through
The dream that you follow
Will keep coming true.
Poem by Lillian, age 14
I Go Back to May 1937, by Sharon Olds
ReplyDeleteI see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
Persimmons
ReplyDeleteIn sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose
persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew on the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet
all of it, to the heart.
Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down,
I teach her Chinese. Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I've forgotten.
Naked: I've forgotten.
Ni, wo: you me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.
Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.
Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn't ripe or sweet, I didn't eat
but watched the other faces.
My mother said every persimmon has a sun
inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.
Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper
forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang. The sun, the sun.
Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father would stay up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.
This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents' cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.
He's so happy that I've come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.
Under some blankets, I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.
He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?
This is persimmons, Father.
Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.
-- Li-Young Lee
For Mr. Vaughn's Curriculum Project:
ReplyDelete"The Flea" by John Donne, famous 16th century poet
One of my favorites, despite (or because of) its creepiness. My favorite part:
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/flea.php
Check it out!
Jackie
The Writer
ReplyDeleteIn her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.
Richard Wilbur
This is one of my favorite poems:
ReplyDeleteOne Art
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteA Song for New Year's Eve
ReplyDeleteby William Cullen Bryant
Stay yet, my friends, a moment stay—
Stay till the good old year,
So long companion of our way,
Shakes hands, and leaves us here.
Oh stay, oh stay,
One little hour, and then away.
The year, whose hopes were high and strong,
Has now no hopes to wake;
Yet one hour more of jest and song
For his familiar sake.
Oh stay, oh stay,
One mirthful hour, and then away.
The kindly year, his liberal hands
Have lavished all his store.
And shall we turn from where he stands,
Because he gives no more?
Oh stay, oh stay,
One grateful hour, and then away.
Days brightly came and calmly went,
While yet he was our guest;
How cheerfully the week was spent!
How sweet the seventh day's rest!
Oh stay, oh stay,
One golden hour, and then away.
Dear friends were with us, some who sleep
Beneath the coffin-lid:
What pleasant memories we keep
Of all they said and did!
Oh stay, oh stay,
One tender hour, and then away.
Even while we sing, he smiles his last,
And leaves our sphere behind.
The good old year is with the past;
Oh be the new as kind!
Oh stay, oh stay,
One parting strain, and then away.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThose Winter Sundays
ReplyDeleteby Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
This is a good, succinct poem on life and loss and renewal.
ReplyDeleteThe Trees by Phillip levine
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7109
The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem # one
ReplyDeleteby June Jordan
well I wanted to braid my hair
bathe and bedeck my
self so fine
so fully aforethought for
your pleasure
see:
I wanted to travel and read
and runaround fantastic
into war and peace:
I wanted to
surf
dive
fly
climb
conquer
and be conquered
THEN
I wanted to pickup the phone
and find you asking me
if I might possibly be alone
some night
(so I could answer cool
as the jewels I would wear
on bareskin for you
digmedaddy delectation:)
"WHEN
you comin ova?"
But I had to remember to write down
margarine on the list
and shoepolish and a can of
sliced pineapple in casea company
and a quarta skim milk cause Teresa's
gaining weight and don' nobody groove on
that much
girl
and next I hadta sort for darks and lights before
the laundry hit the water which I had
to kinda keep an eye on be-
cause if the big hose jumps the sink again that
Mrs. Thompson gointa come upstairs
and brain me with a mop don' smell too
nice even though she hang
it headfirst out the winda
and I had to check
on William like to
burn hisself to death with fever
boy so thin be
callin all day "Momma! Sing to me?"
"Ma! Am I gone die?" and me not
wake enough to sit beside him longer than
to wipeaway the sweat or change the sheets/
his shirt and feed him orange
juice before I fall out of sleep and
Sweet My Jesus ain but one can
left
and we not thru the afternoon
and now
you (temporarily) shownup with a thing
you says' a poem and you
call it
"Will The Real Miss Black America Standup?"
guilty po' mouth
about duty beauties of my
headrag
boozeup doozies about
never mind
cause love is blind
well
I can't use it
and the very next bodacious Blackman
call me queen
because my life ain shit
because (in any case) he ain been here to share it
with me
(dish for dish and do for do and
dream for dream)
I'm gone scream him out my house
be-
cause what I wanted was
to braid my hair/bathe and bedeck my
self so fully be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
not pity
be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
your love
http://animoto.com/play/7l6KNuS6c3lydjhCK1q2AQ?autostart=true
ReplyDeletethis is the link to the video I created about 'The Great Gatsby ' my video represents jay and nick , who are the main characters and I chose to dowload picture that represent them . For example Nick is a wealthy young smart guy and I looked up pictures to represent that . Enjoy ! - Rashawn Moore .