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. 

"The Sacred," Stephen Dunn

Today's poem is found at The Writer's Almanac.

This week's SAT error type: Parallel Structure.  Here is a link to what OWL has to say on the subject.  The short exercises on this error type will be due on Thursday along with vocab homework, and parallel structure will be tested in some additional questions on that test, along with some review questions from the past error types we have studied.

Two submissions this week: Sub #3, from Podcast Week, is due on Tuesday.  Sub #4, an interpretive response, is due on Friday.  A short List is due tomorrow, too. 

TODAY, visit the blogs of peers who posted informal responses to the same episode of This American Life that you did, read their responses, and post at least two comments that agree or disagree with their remarks, briefly expanding on your reaction to their ideas.  Browse the blogs of students in this or any other class.

After commenting, work on your draft for Submission #3.

"February Ground," Marge Piercy

"February Ground"

Three feet of snow in twenty-four hours
on top of seven inches. Not really
credible here. On the fourth day
we found the car under a six
foot drift and dug it out.

At first we could not open doors.
The post office shut for two days.
Our road had vanished into a field.
We felt the sky had finally
fallen and drowned us.

Six weeks: now patches of ground
emerge from white fortresses.
How beautiful is the dirt
I took for granted. Extraordinary
the wild green of grass islands.

Having the world snatched
from us makes us grateful even
for fence posts, for wheelbarrow
rising, for the stalwart spears
of daffodil uncovered.

Everything revealed is magical,
splendid in its ordinary shining.
The sun gives birth to rosebushes,
the myrtle, a snow shovel fallen,
overcome on the field of battle.

--Marge Piercy

Today, choose a podcast from yesterday's short list, and listen, taking notes for things like useful quotations.

By tomorrow, you should compose an informal blog post of 100 words about the episode you are responding to.  This response should note comparisons and contrasts between the 2-3 segments in your episode that you plan to focus on: compare and contrast observations between these segments or thematic/tonal inferences.

Please title your post so that it includes the title of the podcast you chose, like this: "Podcast response:  Notes on Camp."

"Having a Coke with You," Frank O'Hara; Podcast Week

Today's poem is presented here by its author in one of the view videos available of him reading his own work.  Watching it is one of the best ways to get a feel for the conversational insouciance of O'Hara.  He's both breezy and deeply affecting at the same time, and it looks easier to pull off than it is.

This week at The Spartan Reader is Podcast Week.  Instead of your usual shortlist, I will provide you with a short list of This American Life podcasts that you can choose from and prepare an interpretive response to for submission #3, which will be due on Monday of next week. 

Today, we will watch a video version of one of their stories that appeared on their Showtime television show.

"Astrolabe," Dawn Potter

Dawn Potter, "Astrolabe"

 This week, I would like submission #2, which is due on Friday, to be an interpretive response.  What text you analyze is still up to you, but I would like your response to be interpretive in nature (of some text that compels you to draw inferences about an implied meaning or tone), rather than a review (which is evaluative) or a critical response (where you are responding to an explicit main idea).

Today, browse the blogs of your classmates and leave at least three comments on blogs, telling them (a) one item on their short list that would be the most interesting, most appropriate for an interpretive response, and (b) what you think they might be able to analyze about that piece--what they should observe and infer about it. 

"Here, Bullet," Brian Turner

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.

Today:


1. Sub #1 Nominations: Finish nominating the two blogs with the most impressive and interesting submissions from last Friday.  Simply identify, in the comments to last Friday's post, the two blogs that have the most authentically analytical responses to their text.

2.  Inference Exercise: Two parts for this exercise, which will need to be printed (to copier 2035) and handed in today.  (Part A) Browsing blogs for a class other than your own, copy the best interpretive response you have come across, paste it into a word document, and then deconstruct it into its analytical elements by underlining all statements of observation, italicizing all statements of inference. See the sample document "deconstructing a text" on the school notes page for an example of how this is done.  The last paragraph is coded (in blue and red) to show obs. and inf.

(Part B) Again, browsing the blogs for a class other than your own, find one response that contains no analysis of its text.  Copy it into your document, too, and then provide a brief, 3-5 sentence informal discussion of what you believe they could have inferred and analyzed about their subject.  Ideally, their text will be something with an implicit main idea, but one that they simply did not actually analyze, perhaps because they are still a little confused about the nature and process of analysis, which is perfectly understandable. 

3.  In addition to your name in the header, please add your email address to this document because our class blog will be going private soon, and I will need an email address in order to give you access.  Probably best to use the address you used for your Blogger account.

4.  If you have time, you may proceed to compile short list #2, which is due tomorrow.

"Everybody Who is Dead," Frank Stanford

"Everybody Who is Dead," Frank Stanford

Today's poem: "Everybody Who is Dead," by Frank Stanford

Short List Tuesday: Today, browse the short lists of our classmates, both in this and other classes, if you like.  (1) Comment on anywhere from 3-5 and (2) make a post titled "Week 5: Top Links" in which you simply link to (commenting on them is optional) the 3-5 most interesting links you came across in your browsing. 

"Unmediated Experience," Bob Hicok

Unmediated Experience 

She does this thing. Our seventeen-

year-old dog. Our mostly deaf dog.

Our mostly dead dog, statistically

speaking. When I crouch.

When I put my mouth to her ear

and shout her name. She walks away.

Walks toward the nothing of speech.

She even trots down the drive, ears up,

as if my voice is coming home.

It’s like watching a child

believe in Christmas, right

before you burn the tree down.

Every time I do it, I think, this time

she’ll turn to me. This time

she’ll put voice to face. This time,

I’ll be absolved of decay.

Which is like being a child

who believes in Christmas

as the tree burns, as the drapes catch,

as Santa lights a smoke

with his blowtorch and asks, want one?

Bob Hicok

Today's work: Your Spartan Reader "Short List"

 We are just figuring out this class magazine project.  Whatever it ends up looking like, it will be something you made, and that alone makes it worth trying.  

For the next two days, we are going to spend our time exploring options for our first article, which will be due not this Friday, but next.  For this Friday, your job is to create a single post, a "short list" of three possible articles you are considering for your first submission.  

Simply provide a list that identifies, for each possible article, the subject/title of the piece, a link, if it is available online, and a 25-50 word description of the subject and why it intrigues you.  Pictures would be nice, but aren't necessary.  

To help you with this process, I have put together a list of links to online destinations that provide an internet's worth of possibilities.  It is saved on class web page as "Spartan Reader Links," and it is a list that we will update as new sites are pointed out to us.  

You may want headphones to listen to some of the audio and video possibilities.  Your job these next two days is to engage yourself in the process of reading deeply.  Let me know what cool stuff you find.

Jim Harrison and Friday Blog assignment

"I Believe"
I believe in steep drop-offs, the thunderstorm across
the lake in 1949, cold winds, empty swimming pools,
the overgrown path to the creek, raw garlic,
used tires, taverns saloons, bars, gallons of red wine,
abandoned farmhouses, stunted lilac groves,
gravel roads that end, brush piles, thickets, girls
who haven’t quite gone totally wild, river eddies,
leaky wooden boats, the smell of used engine oil,
turbulent rivers, lakes without cottages in the woods,
the primrose growing out of a cow skull, the thousands
of birds I’ve talked to all of my life, the dogs
that talked back, the Chihuahuan ravens that follow
me on long walks. The rattler escaping the cold hose,
the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see
from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling
to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.
--Jim Harrison


Your Friday Post: Our blogs should be established by now, so let's spend a day having a look around to see what people have done with theirs. Do more than skim and click through these pages--read them deeply, looking at their literacy narratives, their reading responses, their overall look, and do the following:

(1) leave comments for at least three different posts, reacting briefly but sincerely to something the author said in it.

(2) Compose a new post on your own blog that does two things: First, name 1 or 2 blogs that you think are the most interestingly made so far. Link to them, quote them, and discuss briefly what you think makes these blogs above average.

(3) Second, in your post you should name the blog that you think has the most impressively written Dead Poets Society response and discuss what is good about it: its opening claim, the way it describes its observations, or its discussion of the tone. Quote it, too, if you like.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Blog assignments: Week 2.

Just so that we are all on the same page, be sure you know that by Friday, January 13, you should have the following up and online:

1. Your blog.
2. A literacy narrative.
3. At least one reading log, or reading logs that total 300 words.
4. Elements, observations, and a claim for your duo exercise.

If you haven't, please email me your blog url, title, and your username.

Thanks!

Duo close readings: Interior Design Options

Dan Martensen and Shannan Click at home with their dog.

If your group has decided to do a close reading of a home, choose from one of the following. This subject matter may feel like an odd choice, but it is just another application of the close reading process we began using with the Gene Kelly's scene from Singin' in the Rain.

Pick one of the following homes photographed by up-and-coming photographer Todd Selby:

Alternatively, you could observe and analyze Homestead H.S. itself and come up with a claim about it.

Here are the possible homes shot by Todd Selby:

Pharrell Williams Modern Miami home of the well-known rapper known as Pharrell.

Dan Martensen and Shannan Click Upstate New York farmhouse of a photographer and his artist wife.

Jamie Isaia and Anthony Malat Interesting Brooklyn apartment of another couple.

Duo close readings: Painting options

Walton Ford's "Fallen Bough"

For large images, click on the titles:

Edward Hopper, "Nighthawks" (1942)

Walton Ford, "Fallen Bough" (2002)

Jackson Pollock, "#1" (1950)