All of these I have outlined more specifically in the Poetry Unit Learning Objectives (also copied below). We will follow these objectives as we spend three class periods on poetry.
January 12, 2015 (Monday)
For our first day of the poetry unit we read the following (from our course texts) and discussed these in class:
- Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, entries for "epic" and "lyric" (we also looked closely at "ballad")
- in Smith (100 Best Loved Poems)
- Two narrative poems:
- "Lord Randal" (p. 1 / location 53)
- Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (p. 55 / location 938)
- Two lyric poems:
- Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional" (p. 78 / location 1332)
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Sonnet XLIII" (p.48 / location 823)
- One dramatic poem:
- Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess" (p. 63, location 1079)
We began discussing poetry as being originally (and perhaps most powerfully) an oral and communal phenomenon, and then reviewed the three major genres of narrative, dramatic, and lyric poetry. I emphasized that each genre has subgenres, and those genres (like "ballad" or "sonnet") each have three components:
- an historical component (they emerged at a given time or are characteristic of a given literary period);
- a content component (genres are often associated with certain types of topics and even moods)
- a formal component (genres are partly characterized by a set of formal characteristics)
We also began discussing our experience of reading poetry in ebook form. I mentioned the poor quality of the inexpensive etexts we were reading from. We also struggled with the poor format for the otherwise very useful Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (which has no table of contents and an awkward index in its ebook format).
January 13 (Tuesday)
For their Tuesday blog post, I want my students to think broadly about the value of poetry (both to others and to themselves - our first learning objective in the poetry unit). They will do this by composing a blog post made up of three things:
- Create a blog post in which you tell a story about the value of poetry either historically and generally, or else personally (in your life or that of someone else).
- Select a poem to memorize or a topic about which to compose a sonnet (due in class Wednesday 1/21/15; this fulfills our fourth learning objective for poetry).
- Name some individuals or audiences with which you might share your memorized or composed poem (either in person or online), other than fellow classmates.
As models for this type of writing, read
- "The Utility of Poetry for Dentistry" (a brief account of finding how poetry has mattered to someone else)
- "Fully Empowered by Poetry" (a brief personal literary narrative showing how poetry has mattered to me personally and why I chose to memorize a given poem).
In order to select a poem to memorize, you can name your own and why you wish to memorize that poem; or, choose from among these famous sonnets. Or, if wanting to compose a sonnet instead, refer to "Compose Your Own Sonnet: A Guide." (If the latter is your choice, just indicate that this is the case in your blog post, and propose your topic).
The blog post should be about 400-500 words total.
January 14 (Wednesday)
- Select 10 poems from our anthology (Smith) and come prepared to discuss their genres, their authors, and their periods. Use the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms if you need help with any of that.
- In class we will listen to some epic poetry, and we will also review fundamentals of analyzing poetry (in preparation for the blog post analysis due on Tuesday, January 20th)
January 16 (Friday)
- Create a blog post that documents your experiments with poetry on digital or social media platforms (see the five options listed in objective 5 for the poetry unit, below). Budget time to try some of those options. You should talk about not merely what you observe in others, but how sharing poetry (in any of those ways, either your own or by others) has worked for you.
January 20 (Tuesday)
- Poetry analysis blog post due. Read this blog post, "Basic Literary Analysis: Poetry" and then compose a brief literary analysis of the poem "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (p. 35 / location 601 in our poetry anthology). Make this a micro-analysis of one paragraph. Use the model I give in the Basic Literary Analysis post. Do not read fellow students' analyses prior to posting yours. Avoid doing any research online about this poem.
January 21 (Wednesday)
- Come prepared to recite your memorized poem. Practice this aloud (even better, in front of a friend) and try to give this some energy and animation. The goal is not to convince us that you knew every word, but to draw us into the poem because you show interest and feeling as you recite it. If it feels like you are trying to hurry through the poem before you forget any of its words, that's not satisfactory. Consider this a performance, not just a passing-off of a requirement.
Poetry Unit Learning Objectives
- The Nature and Value of Poetry:
Be able to articulate what poetry is, how it varies from other forms of discourse, and why it has been of value both generally and personally. - Poetry Across Time and Media:
Read examples of poetry that exemplify different literary periods and their media contexts, including - spoken/performed poetry (mostly from the distant past);
- written or printed poetry (mostly from the Renaissance through the 20th century); and
- digitally mediated poetry (20th-21st centuries);
- Genres and Literary Form in Poetry:
- Read examples of and know the characteristics of three basic genres of poetry: narrative poetry, dramatic poetry, and lyric poetry.
- Understand, identify, and begin to make interpretations of poetry based on diction (word choice); narrative point of view; rhythm and rhyme, and figurative language.
- Creating or Memorizing Poetry:
Become more acquainted with the feeling of form by - Memorizing and reciting a brief famous poem (from a set list of choices)
- Composing a sonnet
- Poetry on Digital-Social platforms (Amazon, Kindle, Goodreads, and Audible)
Explore and participate on digital-social platforms in order to understand and critique contemporary poetry study. Activities will include - Curating texts (virtual shelf of poetry ebooks on Goodreads; online and on-device collections of ebooks for Kindle)
- Reading, annotating, and sharing excerpts via Kindle
- Listening to an audiobook version of poetry from Audible or Librivox
- Watching, evaluating, and responding to video poetry (see examples in this post).
- Participating in online discussions of poetry
No comments:
Post a Comment