"This Poem Doesn't Care That it Isn't a Sonnet," Laurie Lamon

Today's poem is located at Willow Springs.

Today, prepare submission #2, which is due at the beginning of the day on Friday.

It should be interpretive.  If you are having trouble deciding on a proper subject to interpret, try browsing the constantly updated links to artists of all kinds at "It's Nice That"and "Wall to Watch."

"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. 

Hill short list 2.7.12

1.  This Must Be The Place
As stated on their web site, TMBTP is a "series of short films that explore the idea of home;
what makes them, how they represent us, why we need them."  Three short video clips depict dramatically different settings that each, in their own way, count as a home.

2. A Restless Transplant
Guy quits his job in NYC with some fashionable magazine, buys a van, travels around the west surfing, camping, and taking pictures.  Brief captions accompany the photographs that document this trip, which I have been following for a few months now.  I can't decide if there is a purpose to it, or if he is learning anything, or if he is just accumulating material for a book so that he can somehow cash on in it all.  But I keep watching.

3.  Bout Time: Claressa Shields
Short film about a high school student in Flint, Michigan who is training to be a boxer.  Some desperate images of the city and her surroundings contrast with her own sanguine attitude, but she admits this is all a tool to help her survive a situation that ruins most people. 

"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.

"Autopsy in the Form of Elegy," Josh Stone

In the chest
in the heart
was a vessel

was the pulse
was the art
was the love

was the clot
small and slow
and the scar
that could not know

the rest of you
was very nearly perfect.

Today: Name the two blogs that contain the most impressive submissions this week.  Please identify your class period, too.

Poetry Out Loud Results

To all of our 2012 contestants,  first let me convey how impressed Ms. Barrett was today.  "Head and shoulders better than last year" was one comment she made, and I agree.

The judging was especially difficult compared to past years; several of the contestants could have represented Homestead in impressive fashion, and I wish you could all go state.  But we had to choose one, and in the end accuracy points ended up making a difference in the final standings--it was that close.  So here are the results:

First Place: Monica Dollive
1st Alternate: Clair Pranger

Finalists: Danielle Wildrick, Sahand Emamian, Darby Cook

If she is able, Monica will represent us at the state finals in Indianapolis on Saturday, February 25.  Congratulations to her, and to everyone who participated.  By competing today, you asked more of yourselves than is common, and you should be proud of that.

"At the Galleria Shopping Mall," Tony Hoagland

"At the Galleria Shopping Mall," Tony Hoagland

Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear,

there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs;

one of them singing news about a far-off war,

one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood

to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood.

And here is my niece Lucinda,

who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,

who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blonde

and declares that her favorite sport is shopping.

Today is the day she embarks upon her journey,

swinging a credit card like a scythe

through the meadows of golden merchandise.

Today is the day she stops looking at faces,

and starts assessing the labels of purses;

So let it begin. Let her be dipped in the dazzling bounty

and raised and wrung out again and again.

And let us watch.

As the gods in olden stories

turned mortals into laurel trees and crows

to teach them some kind of lesson,

so we were turned into Americans

to learn something about loneliness.