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.