Monday, March 10, 2014

POETRY & GRAMMAR: Shall I Compare Thee...

Thank you for the effort on your journals!

I look forward to reading - and noting the changes - that you made in your revisions. 


For homework tonight:

PART 1 of 2:

You have choices - SEE BELOW:

1. Google "Sonnet"

2. Watch one of the TED Talks below...

3. Listen to Billy Collins read his poem "Sonnet"

PART 2 of 2:

YOU MUST write a paragraph (4-5 complete sentences) about what you learned and what you found interesting and why?

Yes, a handwritten paragraph is fine.

After our conversation today, I want you to think more about how you learn:

As we move forward, questions to consider:
What are your associations with poetry? 
Does poetry matter today?  
Why does poetry matter?  Why not? 
What are your associations with grammar? 
How do you learn grammar?  
How does technology help as well as hinder your learning of grammar? 
Can we learn grammar through poetry?  
How does understanding grammar (and punctuation) enhance our understanding of poetry? 




Two brilliant, yet very different takes, on Shakespeare's famous sonnet #18



Sonnet XVIII: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
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 dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st 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.










How many lines does a sonnet have?


Sonnet - Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.


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