Mark Strand, "Keeping Things Whole"

At the Foundation.

This week: Anthology revision and book reviews.

The Anthology
Friday, the final drafts of our anthology notes are due.  I would like you to submit them to me electronically, in my homework folder, as an essay.  Please make your filename your last name. Your artifacts I would like attached at the end of that document.  If you have links to videos, include them there.  If you have images, the same.  If for some reason, you have included an artifact that you cannot attach electronically, be sure to hand in a physical copy.

So, most importantly, this week should be about revising your anthology notes so that they sound authoritative and are full of specific, well-articulated judgment about the pieces you have included.  Those judgments, as we have practiced all semester, should be both observational and inferential.  Evaluative judgment is for our last remaining assignment of the semester before our end of course presentations: the book reviews.

Book reviews
If you will recall, you have a choice in how to satisfy this requirement: (a) compose two brief reviews of books you read this semester, or (b) compose one review plus one video, either a book trailer or a poem video.  The handouts I provide you today will give you more guidance, but you can also revisit Teenreads for examples, too.

Peer-review drafts of written book reviews will be next Wednesday. If you make a book trailer or poem video, it will not be due until your semester presentation, which will come the last week of class.


This week, then, you have a short menu of options in class: (1) revise your anthology, (2) compose your reviews, or (3) work on a video. 

Jack Gilbert, "Once Upon a Time"

Once Upon a Time

We were young incidentally, stumbling
into joy, he said.  The sweetness of
our bodies was natural in the way
the sun came out of the Mediterranean
fresh every morning.  We were acidentally
alive.  A shape without a form.
We were a music composed of a melody,
without chords, played only on
the white keys.  We thought excitement
was love, that intensity was marriage.
We meant no harm, but could see the women
only a little through the ardor and the hurry.
We were innocent, he said, baffled when
they let us kiss their tender mouths.
Sometimes they kissed back, even volunteered.

                                           --Jack Gilbert
                                              Refusing Heaven

Jack Gilbert, "Married"

 Married

   I came back from the funeral and crawled
   around the apartment, crying hard,
   searching for my wife's hair.
   For two months got them from the drain,
   from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
   and off the clothes in the closet.
   But after other Japanese women came;
   there was no way to be sure which were
   hers, and I stopped. A year later,
   repotting Michiko's avocado, I find
   a long black hair tangled in the dirt.

                           --Jack Gilbert 

Reminders for Friday's peer review:

*  Four pages, double-spaced, 12 pt Times font, 8-10 artifacts.

*  An introduction, like the one sampled on our notes page.

* Signed with your alias.

* No need to include your actual artifacts.

* Try to include brief introductory transitions and descriptive lines 

that identify your artifacts, and then move into your claims. 

Jack Gilbert, "It is Difficult to Speak of the Night."

Today, Dave Etter, “Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon.” 

And here is what one current Homestead junior had to say in response to the poem:

In Dave Etter’s “Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon,” the narrator’s colloquial description of his afternoon showcases the meandering thoughts and gleeful appreciation of a child.  As the narrator bounces in the back of a yellow school bus, he decides to make himself a “sugar sandwich” and then look at “the birds/ and the gigantic blue silo” as soon as he gets home. The narrator’s love for sugary snacks and bird watching captures the essence of the child’s mind, focusing on the literal meaning of the words to create a laundry list of what he’s going to do in the afternoon. However, his attention quickly diverted as he goes on a tangent about how his family is going to the farm show but that “farming’s no fun,” and  he’d much rather “do something big” like “grow orange trees in a green house” or “drive a school bus and yell at the kids.” The narrator’s quick shift in focus is similar to that of a rambling child, never quite fleshing out a full thought and yet touching on a variety of subjects. Also, his perception of “big” things is skewed to reflect what is true in his world, a world where growing orange trees and driving buses are the noblest occupations in the world. When the narrator goes home, he grabs his sugar sandwich—a “brown sugar” sandwich, he notes—and then lies in the grass and thinks, “Imagine, a blue silo to stare at,/ and Mother not coming home till dark!” The narrator’s attention to unnecessary details like his brown sugar sandwich, his rapt attention for the blue silo, and his delight when he realizes his mother won’t be home until dark highlight the pleasure that can only be found in everyday life by the mind of a child. The narration of “Marcus Millsap: School Day Afternoon” successfully evokes the feelings of enchantment and the oddly detail-oriented thoughts of a child.

Anthology work day: change to prose requirement

One change to our anthology requirements today.  I have not been too happy with the amount of effort it has been demanding of us to find appropriate prose passages for our anthologies; it worries me that it might be taking some of the fun out of what should be a personal, open-ended assignment. 

As a result, I am going to allow you to substitute a poem for your prose artifact.  Keep in mind, you can use as many poems as you like, for that matter. 

Today, I would like to talk to as many of you as possible about a poem you are working with for this project.  Either share with me some of your work, or bring a poem to me that is resisting your efforts to find a way into it.

This week: Reader's Choice

Our poems will be suggested by classmates this week, so who knows what we'll come up with.

Friday's draft: Three new notes, typed and printed, with an alias on your header.  pass/fail 20 pts.

And a slight revision for the project in general: The full rough draft will be due next Friday.  It will need to be four full pages, typed, in 12 pt Time NR font, and needs to include an introductory paragraph plus notes for between 8-10 artifacts.  The final number is up to you, so long as there are at least four full pages of analysis in your draft.  Again, at least three notes need to be poems, but I have reduced the number of prose excerpts from two to one.

Let me know if you have any questions. 

Dave Lucas, "Suburban Pastoral"

Here, at the Poetry Foundation.

From current HHS junior Jamie Baer's anthology "Subject to Change: Poems about Coming of Age."

            In Dave Lucas’s “Suburban Pastoral,” the homely and bleak setting of a suburban town portrays the dejected dreams of better days. There is no variability or charm to this town, as “everything seems content to settle into archetypal grooves.” Evening comes on “like a second drink”; it is cold, inevitable, and predictable. Sitting in plastic chairs on driveways, men drink beer and talk about the weather. Meanwhile, beyond the “plotted cityscape,” their sons roam around, enjoying the height of their youth. Rather than regret their expired youth, the men find comfort in the dull, familiar surroundings of their wives “on the phone,” the cooler with “Labatt to spare,” and the anticipation that “at nine the Giants play the Braves.” Although “there may be something to romanticize” about their youth, the men go to bed with “nothing to say but ‘night.” The dismal suburban setting asserts that the glamour of youth eventually fades into a dreary, yet comfortable, existence.

For today's Peer Review. In a duo, read the notes for the two blogs you have been assigned and then, in a comment, give them a score from 1-3 for each of the following categories:  Claim, Support, Discussion (inference), and Language/Style.  Leave a comment, too telling them something you like about their notes, or which one you like the most.  Lastly, pick one of the two as a "star" and indicate that they are one that comment.

Once you have your winner, read the winner of the first round match you are paired with and discuss with the other two peer reviewers which of those two star posts is the "winner."  Tell them so in a new comment.

Brian Turner, "Here, Bullet"

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

                                --Brian Turner

In Brian Turner’s Iraq war poem “Here, Bullet,” the body is offered, thrown down like a gauntlet before a duel, in a challenge to death and war.  The speaker’s challenge to the “bullet” becomes a kind of taunt and suggests that life does not end with death, but continues, preserved in the written word.  The words the speaker uses to describe his body are hard, literal.  “Here,” the speaker says, “is bone and gristle and flesh./ Here is the clavicle-snapped wish.”  This frank and unsentimental depiction of the body suggests a matter-of-fact intensity—this speaker seems ready to sacrifice.  It feels like a personal grudge, too, disconnected from any larger political purpose about the Iraq war in general: “I dare you to finish/ what you’ve started.”  The confidence shown here suggests the speaker’s faith that in writing itself is the true end:  “here is where I complete the word you bring/ hissing through the air . . . here is where the world ends every time.”  If “here” is the poem itself, the speaker appears to be stealing from the bullet its power over life and death.  Life ends “here,” in the poem, not in the body.  And the final line suggests perhaps that “every time” the poem is read it is a new ending, a resurrection and death that lasts long after the “insane puncture” has taken place.

Note: for tomorrow's peer review, please do put your next two notes in a post on your blog.  If there is a youtube link to your film clip, please include it, but it is not a requirement.  If you like, both of the artifacts you examine for these two notes can be from films.  It will be nice is at least one is, though. 

These paragraphs should probably contain at least 5-10 sentences, depending on how many clauses you have in them.   For credit, these posts should be up by the time that school begins, and should have the post title "Notes 2 & 3" and should be tagged "Anthology."

Han Yu, "Losing My Teeth"

Losing My Teeth

Last year a tooth dropped,
this year another one,
then six or seven went fast
and the falling is not going to stop.
All the rest are loose
and it will end when they are all gone.
I remember when I lost the first
I felt ashamed of the gap.
When two or three followed,
I worried about death.
When one is about to come loose,
I am anxious and fearful
since forked teeth are awkward with food,
and in dread I tilt my face to rinse my mouth.
Eventually it will abandon me and drop
just like a landslide.
By now the falling-out is old hat,
each tooth goes just like the others.
Fortunately I have about twenty left.
One by one they will go in order.
If one goes each year,
I have enough to last two dozen years.
Actually it does not make much difference
if they go together or separately.
People say when teeth fall out
your life is fading.
I say life has its own end;
long life, short life, we all die.
People speak of the gaps in my teeth,
and all gaze at me in shock.
I quote Zhuangzi's story –
a tree and a wild goose each has its advantages,
and though silence is better than slurring my words
and though I can't chew, at least soft food tastes great
and I can sing out this poem
to surprise my wife and kids.

                                --Han Yu

Chinese poet Han Yu wrote “Losing My Teeth” in the year 803.  The poem’s documentation of the poet’s gradual loss teeth depicts a progression of emotion, from horror to shame to resigned acceptance of the body’s inevitable disintegration.  The poem begins with a quick recounting of the loss of teeth:

Last year a tooth dropped,
this year another one,
then six or seven went fast
and the falling is not going to stop.

The direct, matter-of-fact tone helps make the experience more dreadful.  However, at the same time, the word “dropped” suggests a consolation.  It carries associations with the falling of leaves, and has the effect of making the death of the body appear to be a similar natural stage of life.  And the rest of the poem seems to be more about living with what you have than it is about mourning the loss of youth:

By now the falling-out is old hat,
each tooth goes just like the others.
Fortunately I have about twenty left.
One by one they will go in order.
If one goes each year,
I have enough to last two dozen years.

Even in the waning of his body, the speaker here finds an “order” and musters an optimism that he has enough teeth in his mouth to last him two decades.

Sharon Olds, "Topography"

Topography

After we flew across the country we
got into bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly from the left my
moon rising slowly from the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

                                --Sharon Olds

In the Sharon Olds poem “Topography,” the bodies of two lovers become confused in an inter-mingled geography after a moment of intimacy.  This implied connection between the body and land, a commingling of east and west, sun and moon, becomes a metaphor suggesting unity and the exuberant liberation accompanying the joining of opposites.  The poem begins quietly, with the speaker recounting how they “laid our bodies/ delicately together, like maps laid/ face to face, east to west.”  An energy quickly develops as east and west collapse: “my New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho/ bright on my Great Lakes.”  While clearly sexual, there is a tenderness here, too—great distances are being crossed to bring these places together. 

Shinkichi Takahashi, "Burning Oneself to Death"

June Apple at Tavern Books, Augusta, Ga.

Burning Oneself to Death

That was the best moment of the monk’s life.

Firm on a pile of firewood

With nothing more to say, hear, see,

Smoke wrapped him, his folded hands blazed.

There was nothing more to do, the end

Of everything.  He remembered, as a cool breeze

Streamed through him, that one is always

In the same place, and that there is no time.

Suddenly, a whirling mushroom cloud rose

Before his singed eyes, and he was a mass

Of flame.  Globes, one after another, rolled out,

The delighted sparrows flew round like fire balls.

                                                                --Shinkichi Takahashi

Here is one of many possible ways to respond to Takahashi's poem.  This particular response is part of an anthology I pulled together that I called "I Would Break: Poems of the Body."

In Shinkichi Takahashi’s “Burning Oneself to Death” the spare but visceral imagery suggests that with the loss of the body comes a kind of enlightenment.  Here, the monk’s self-immolation is described as “the best moment of the [his] life,” and as “smoke wrapped him, his folded hands blazed.”  The comforting connotations of the words “wrapped” and “folded” imply that this fiery termination has ensconced the monk in a sensation of dignity and euphoria.  Here, at “the end/ Of everything,” he achieves a consoling revelation that “one is always/ In the same place, and that there is no time.”  But there is a feeling of power here, too.  The monk’s folded hands, after all, “blaze” as he becomes a “mass/ Of flame.”  Ending the line on the word “mass” emphasizes it, too, suggesting a weight and physicality to the fire the monk has become.  This elegant paradox implies that there is a great power hidden inside loss.

This week for your anthology: For Friday,  draft two more response paragraphs, or "notes."  Try to make one a close reading of a film, if you like.  Submit this draft electronically,  using an alias, to the appropriate class homework folder.  The file name should be your alias.
Reading Logs:  Recall that you should have updated your reading by today for week #3 of the quarter.  In total, you should have three nicely composed reading log posts by now for quarter #4.