William Stafford, "In the White Sky"

at The Writer's Almanac.

The homework folder for the final draft of your anthology notes is now open.  They are due by Friday morning, 7:45.  Please remember to use your last name for your filename, and to add your artifacts (links, poems, etc.) to the end of your notes.  Any artifacts that are physical (like copies of prose passages, for example) can be handed in on Friday during class.

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, "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. 

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. 

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."

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. 

Dean Young, "Luciferin"

Today's (neo) surrealist "love" poem: at The Foundation.

Peer review today for Note #1:

Visit and read a handful of Notes from a class one period earlier than yours (1,2, or 4).  Read at least four.  As you read, consider their claim, their supporting examples, and their discussion/analysis of tone or them.  Then, provide at least one piece of positive feedback and one critical suggestion for improvement.  Consider the "common errors" handout we used when suggesting changes.

When you have finished leaving your comments, write the names of the four blogs you read on a piece of paper, circle your favorite, and leave it in the basket on the counter over by the heroes.

"I Said it to You," Paul Eluard

I said it to you for the clouds
I said it to you for the tree of the sea
For each wave for the birds in the leaves
For the pebbles of sound
For familiar hands

For the eye that becomes landscape or face
And sleep returns it the heaven of its colour
For all that night drank
For the network of roads
For the open window for a bare forehead
I said it to you for your thoughts for your words

Every caress every trust survives. 

--Paul Eluard

Today: Anthology Work Day

Friday: Note  #1 due.  Post Note #1 to your blog by the beginning of school.  It can be a close-reading of any type of artifact, not just a prose passage.  Consider looking at a scene from a film, a painting, a poem, or, if you've found one, a passage of prose.  Label your post "Anthology."

Describing (Observing) Diction: Samples and an Exercise

Looking at the McCarthy sample from Blood Meridian, we can describe his language a lot of different ways.  Below are a few possibilities.

Notice that all of the following are merely descriptive; they only observe or describe his style and don't try to draw any inferences about what literary effects his style causes.  For that reason, I like to refer to this kind of claim as a "left side" claim:

McCarthy’s language in this passage is both elegant and sensuous.

McCarthy writes with a sensuous elegance.

McCarthy’s prose is heavy with portentous imagery and an ornate, almost archaic diction.

McCarthy’s style has a rustic, atmospheric elegance to it.

McCarthy’s diction is as vast and wild as it is darkly ornate.

This passage from Blood Meridian revels in a dark and antiquated sensuous elegance.

McCarthy is dark, antiquated, sensually elegant.  

Develop your own left side claims for the two remaining prose excerpts from our original samples and post them both to the online "sandbox" I put together here: No White Flarf.  To help think of useful adjectives, consider referring to the "Words that Describe" handout on our Notes page.

After you have posted your claims, I'd like you to browse our class blogs to see what themes people have chosen for their anthologies, and I would like you to suggest, in comments, at least three possible artifacts to them.

Anthology: Theme Statement

I'm planning to focus my anthology work this semester around the general theme of Winter. It's a season that seems to provoke a wide range of emotional responses from people--we love it, hate it, get weary of it.

I have a few ideas about the texts that I will collect for it, but a lot is up in the air, still.  I'm thinking of the final scene from Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, with the snow slowly covering up the dying hero.  I'm also thinking of the Richard Wilbur poem "Year's End," because of the way that it depicts that muffling, room-like atmosphere that is snow at night on a quiet street, if that makes sense.  Lots of possibilities. I'm also thinking of the Christmas morning scene from A Christmas Story and probably a scene from the Laura Ingalls Wilder novel A Long Snowy Winter.

Conceptual Poetry: "The Day," Kenneth Goldsmith

at the Poetry Foundation.

Don't forget to put some thought into a theme for your Q4 Anthology.

And your reading goals, too: make them specific and personally challenging.