In-Class Essay

1. In-Class Essay • You have 45 minutes to complete your essay. • Double space • MLA heading • The only material you may have on your desk is your outline. • When you are done, staple your outline to the back of your essay and turn it in. • Remember Prompt #3 = 4/3, Prompt #2 = 3/2, Prompt #1 = 2

2. Announcements & Reminders • If you haven’t already sent me your book report, I will accept it through midnight tonight! Send to kate.dusto@asd20.org or kchendrickson@gmail.com (if D20 is full). • Sentence Analysis #4 DUE Friday 11/30 • Extra Credit Scarlet Letter essay DUE 12/7 • Expand your paragraph into a 3-paragraph essay worth 25 points in homework category • Submit to Turnitin.com by 12/7 • Extra credit will only count if you have NO missing work as of 12/7

3. Announcements & Reminders • All late work must be turned in by Friday, December 14. I will not grade any work submitted during finals week. • Finals Schedule • Red 1 = Tuesday, Dec. 18, 7:45 – 9:30 • 3rd = Wednesday, Dec. 19, 7:45 – 9:30 • A study guide for the final will be available later this week.

4. Poetry Verbal Badminton • What comes to mind when you think of poetry? For 90 seconds, we’ll play verbal badminton: • One person says whatever pops into his/her head about poetry. • Another person responds. • Ideas are “batted” around the room. • Free associate! Make connections! No judgments! Be “good sports”!

5. Poetry is: • “a small or large machine made of words.” – W.C. Williams • “condensed speech.” – Louis Zukofsky • “an articulation of sound forms over time.” – Susan Howe • “the image of a rose.” – Ezra Pound • “the logic of metaphor.” – H. Crane • “a separate language.” – Valerie • “a polymorphous perversity.” – Walt Whitman

6. What do we get from poetry? • Glimpses of humanity/self • New perspectives through the defamiliarization of the ordinary • Inspiration and imagination • Critical thinking skills • Poetry asks us to move from examining language simply as information but as an object through the relationship between form and content. untitled (for Natalee and Jeremy) By derekbeaulieuderekbeaulieu

7. The Trouble with Poetry • Poetry evades a concrete definition; it is many things at once. • Poetry cannot be reduced to mere paraphrase. • Form: how a poem does what it does • Content: what a poem is about • Complete the following sentence: • The trouble with poetry is _________________. • As we read the poem, pay attention to the author’s tone. What does he think the “trouble’ of poetry is? What mood does he try to evoke in the reader?

8. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins The trouble with poetry, I realized as I walked along a beach one night— cold Florida sand under my bare feet, a show of stars in the sky—

9. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry, more guppies crowding the fish tank, more baby rabbits hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

10. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins And how will it ever end? unless the day finally arrives when we have compared everything in the world to everything else in the world, and there is nothing left to do but quietly close our notebooks and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

11. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins Poetry fills me with joy and I rise like a feather in the wind. Poetry fills me with sorrow and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

12. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins But mostly poetry fills me with the urge to write poetry, to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the tip of my pencil. And along with that, the longing to steal, to break into the poems of others with a flashlight and a ski mask.

13. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins And what an unmerry band of thieves we are, cut-purses, common shoplifters, I thought to myself as a cold wave swirled around my feet and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea, which is an image I stole directly from Lawrence Ferlinghetti—to be perfectly honest for a moment—

14. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins the bicycling poet of San Francisco whose little amusement park of a book I carried in a side pocket of my uniform up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

15. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins • What image stuck out to you the most? • According to Collins, what is the trouble with poetry? • What message is he trying to convey to the reader?

16. “The Trouble with Poetry”Billy Collins • Big question: How does this poem reflect one of the themes of American literature? • American Dream = self-improvement • How does this poem reflect a quest for improvement? • American Journey = physical, mental, emotional change • How does this poem reflect change? • American Hero = on ordinary person in a heroic (or tragically heroic) role • How does this poem reflect achieving goals? Think-pair-share with a neighbor.

17. New American Poetry • Next unit includes Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. • As we read, consider how the poems convey messages through form as well as content. The structure of a poem communicates just as much as the ideas embedded in its structure. • Focus on how American themes are reflected and evolved through their poems.