Dialogue - what makes it work?

Today we'll turn our focus from poetry to narrative and dialogue. We'll watch a few classic moments of movie dialogue, and then choose some of our own.

• Please enter your examples into this document

From that, we'll name what makes dialogue work.

Finishing Art Institute work

Greetings! I'm with my American Studies class on a field trip today (yes, two field trips for me in the smae week!).  The directions for today are simple - to complete the work you started on Tuesday at the Art Institute. As you read in the handout that day, there are three pieces you are submitting. Use the time today to type up / revise / complete those pieces and submit them to turnitin.com by the end of the period.

For each piece, please take a moment to include the name of the artwork and the artist.

Here are some helpful links for today:

• Handout from the Art Institute field trip
• Art Institute of Chicago website - "Collections" tab
• Use the search bar to type in the name of the painting or artist - you have to scroll all the way down the page to see the results.
• If you need to write a fresh piece today, select one from the museum's collections. They are organized several different ways - easy to browse through and find something inspiring!

Writing about art - field trip!

A:

B:

C: 

D:

Giving and Receiving Feedback - Portfolio Work

We spent time this week giving feedback to each other about one of the poems you want to include in your portfolio. Instead of evaluating each other's poems, we gave two very specific types of non-judgmental feedback: Pointing and Sayback.

• Pointing - Simply identifying words and phrases that "stick out" or resonate with you, the listener, in some way as you hear the poem.
• Sayback - What you, the listener, hear the poem talking about or saying. This usually starts with the phrase, "I hear this poem talking about..." or "I hear this poem saying..."

It is up to you to figure out how to use the feedback, but here are some questions to consider:

• When you read the pointed words / phrases, are they the ones you expected others to hear and focus on? Why?
• Did people point to words / phrases you did not consider to be important?
• Do you want to find a way to emphasize certain terms?
• Did people tell you the poem was saying what you wanted it to say?
• How might you alter the poem to more effectively communicate what you want it to say?

Remember, your portfolio is due on Monday by the start of class.

On that day, part of the assignment is for you to share a finished poem aloud with the class during our celebratory reading.

Here is a link to a description of the Poetry Portfolio.

Identity poems - Poetry Portfolio assignment

We'll start today with an exploration of the different ways in which we identify ourselves. We'll use a poem, specifically, its title, as a springboard into our own work:

• What It's Like To Be A Black Girl (for those of you that aren't)

Then, I'll introduce the Poetry Portfolio project:

• Poetry Portfolio overview

I'll have you upload some work from a few weeks ago - we used this form on that day - you should have it in your folder

List poems

We'll start today by reading a poem by Walt Whitman, "I Hear America Singing"

Then it will be your turn, writing a poem entitled "I Hear My School Singing"

You'll brainstorm a list of the people you want to include in your poem. For each group / type of person you'll need an action word and at least one object related to their life.

When we start to write our version, you can use this template if you find that helpful. If not, try to stay roughly similar to Whitman's length and structure.

Sestinas!

OK, today we are going to challenge ourselves with a complicated poetic form - the sestina.

First, let's read these examples by Elizabeth Bishop.

Then, open up this document: How to write a sestina

Just in case you'd like to see more, here are a few other examples of sestinas:

• Love sestina
• Nature sestina
• Dreams sestina

9-11 & poetry

Today we'll read and discuss a selection of poems written in honor of, or as ways to capture the emotions of, 9-11.

Which ones stand out to you as most effective, and why?

9-11 poems

Alliteration - Consonance - Assonance

Today we'll continue our work with pastoral poems, focusing on these three poetic devices: Alliteration, Consonance, and Assonance.

Why use them at all?

When you repeat something, you are calling attention to it, marking it through sound.

What Is Consonance?

Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, often at the beginning of words. Tongue twisters are the most obvious use of consonance, as in 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.' American writer Edgar Allan Poe used consonance to great effect in his gothic poem, 'The Raven' (1845). Listen for the repeated sounds:

'And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.'

The first line of this excerpt contains four repeated 's' sounds, from the s's in 'silken,' 'sad' and 'rustling,' and the soft 'c' in 'uncertain.' The phrase 'silken, sad, uncertain' sounds a lot like the sound made by rustling curtains. In the second line, the repetition of the 'f' sound in the words 'filled,' 'fantastic,' 'felt' and 'before' is similar to a cartoon character stuttering in f-f-f-fear. Both sets of repeated sounds add to the spooky vibe Poe is known for.

What Is Assonance?

Assonance is a literary device using repeated vowel sounds. Because repeated vowel sounds can create rhymes, assonance is often found in poetry. Take, for example, this stanza from 'Travel,' a poem by American Edna St. Vincent Millay:

'The railroad track is miles away,

And the day is loud with voices speaking,

Yet there isn't a train goes by all day

But I hear its whistle shrieking.'

The long 'a' sound is repeated in 'railroad,' 'away,' 'day, 'train' and 'day' (again) and makes an end rhyme at the end of the first and third lines with 'away' and 'day.' Along with giving the poem that familiar singsong quality rhyming poems have, the repeated sounds have a cadence much like the sound of a railroad train chugging along. The rhyming ends up mirroring the content of the poem.

The king of clever rhymes, Dr. Seuss, uses consonance and assonance to create rhyming couplets - two lines of verse, one right after the other, that have rhyming end sounds. Take, for example, the rhyming couplet at the beginning of 'West Beast East Beast.'

'Upon an island hard to reach,

The East Beast sits upon his beach.'

The two lines contains four words with the long 'e' sound, 'reach,' 'east,' 'beast' and 'beach,' making them upbeat and fun to read aloud - to kids and to adults!

What is Alliteration?

Alliteration is the repetition of sounds through more than one word or syllable. For example: Take the (extreme use of) the "L" sound that repeats in the following phrase: "The lurid letters of Lucy Lewis are luscious, lucid and libidinous."

All of these aural elements are mostly found within the lines of a poem rather than at the end. Sometimes they carry from one line to the next or over several lines. These are often used when a line or two seems to lack cohesion (the repeated sounds create pattern, thus structure) or to create a repeated set of sounds that will either A) stand apart from the words around them (because they are aurally different) or B) will make a pattern with their own sounds that can then be varied for emphasis. Take the use of alliteration as an example. The (rather simple) line above can easily illustrate two possibilities.

If the line came on the heels of something like:

The video clips taken by Frank in Louisville are dull but
the lurid letters of Lucy Lewis are luscious, lucid and libidinous.
Surely we haven't seen anything like them in years.

The alliteration in the second line makes it stand out from the others that surround it. Conversely, if we added a variance from the alliteration and made it:

The lurid letters of Lucy Lewis are luscious, crude and libidinous.

The emphasis is obviously on the word "crude," as it now stands apart from all the "L" sounds around it.

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It is important to remember when implementing any of these techniques that the goal of structure in a poem is to contain the poem, to allow order and chaos to co-exist. If the structure becomes too apparent (to the point that it detracts from the experience of the poem, as in the "Lucy Lewis" example above), it is doing its job poorly.

To help you with your work today, using these three techniques, here are two websites you might try out:

• RhymeZone
• WikiRhymer

Pastoral Poems - Place

Our focus for today is on place, and the tradition of the pastoral poem. Pastoral poetry was traditionally intended to idealize the “innocence and simplicity” of rural life and natural landscapes, in contrast to the “corruption and evils” of city life.

I'll have you make a list (no surprise) of places linked to these prompts:

• Names of places in or around your neighborhood (excluding your home, but could include places on the school campus) you visit at least once a week
• Places you are excited to go to (past present future)
• Places you hold in your memory
• Places in Chicago/city of your choice you are fascinated by or really love
• Places you remember or are familiar with that are problematic

Then we'll read two poems by Nate Marshall. He takes the idea of the pastoral poem and re-invents it to celebrate and comment on his childhood on the south side of Chicago.

• Nate Marshall poems: "Candy Store" and ""Fame Food and Liquor"

Your task / challenge for today contains two parts:

1. Write a pastoral poem about one (or more) of the places from your list
2. Incorporate 2 different poetic devices from the list we used in class on Tuesday.

Poetic Terms

We'll start today with a look at Shakespeare's Sonnet #18.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate. 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. 

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 

And often is his gold complexion dimmed; 

And every fair from fair sometime declines, 

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed; 

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, 

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, 

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st. 

   So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, 

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Then, we'll check out this video:

We'll then shift to a look at poetic terms, using this handout:

• Poetic Terms and Rap Lyrics

Name poems - Part 2 - Tone

On Friday we continued our work with name poems by writing a second one. However, this time I asked you to think about tone and to use a different tone than you used for the first poem.

What is tone? Tone is the poet's attitude toward the poem, the subject matter, the speaker, and / or the reader. It is the feeling you have and the way you express it. Here is a link to a great list of potential tones a poem might have:

• Poems - Tones

At the end of class, we shared some examples of our name poems.