Visualizing Poetry through Doodling

See 21st Century Teaching and Learning in Visual Arts

Taking inspiration from the TED Talk on Doodling, I am asking you to:

1. Copy via hand either:

Billy "Sonnet" by Billy Collins

or

Shakespeare's sonnet #18 "Shall I Compare Thee..."
See earlier blog post.

2. And doodle!
Draw simple pictures to the imagery in the poem in the margin or embed imagery in the text itself.

Be creative - and feel free to use markers or crayons.
I would like to select the top three to post in our classroom.




Consider these questions:

How does your understanding of the poem influence your doodling?

How does imagery influence tone?

If you haven't listened to the TED Talks on Shakespeare's sonnet, I encourage you to do so.

If you were interested in the doodling TED Talk, check out the longer talk when you have some downtime. She offers helpful hints if you feel you are not much of an artist.

Plus think about this advice:

Sunni Brown, in her master list of visual notetaking tips and truisms, focuses on the very foundation of the art: listening. She writes about the importance of picking out metaphors and similes, descriptor cues and paying attention to the narrative build. But most importantly, she says, you need to turn all other voices off: 

“Suspend your own frame of reference. Focus externally. Turn off your ego. Quit thinking everything revolves around your opinion. Give the stage in your head to someone else!”

Form III Poems - and more!

For Form III, we select poems from an anthology:

Introduction to Poetry edited by X. J. Kennedy & Dana Goia:

1. Shakespeare, "Shall I Compare Thee..."
                                           Other sonnets: Collins, "Sonnet" Arnold, "Shakespeare"

2.  Frost, "Out, Out-"

3. Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz"

4. Sexton, "Her Kind"

5. Olds, "Rite of Passage"(with Audio)

6. Williams, "This Is Just to Say"

7. Eliot, "The Winter Evening Settles Down"

8. Tennyson, "The Eagle"



9. Rich, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"
(Text from Prof. Al Filreis English 88 Modern & Contemporary American Poetry)

10. Browning, "My Last Duchess" (with Audio)

11. Plath, “Metaphors” (with a paragraph of analysis)

12. Lawrence, “Piano”

13. Bottoms, "Sign for My Father, Who Stressed the Bunt" (Handout—this is not in the book)


Additional Poets & Poems:

14. Cummings, "in Just"

15. Stallings, "First Love: A Quiz"

16. Herbert, "Easter Wings"

17. Hollander, "Swan and Shadow"

18. Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

19. Merwin, "For the Anniversary of My Death"

20. Collins, "Introduction to Poetry" (video on humor)

Shakespeare

BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

Others abide our question. Thou art free.

We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still,

Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,

Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,

Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,

Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,

Spares but the cloudy border of his base

To the foil'd searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,

Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,

Didst tread on earth unguess'd at.—Better so!

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,

All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,

Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

Introduction to Poetry

BY BILLY COLLINS

I ask them to take a poem   

and hold it up to the light   

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem   

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room   

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski   

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope   

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose   

to find out what it really means.

Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press.

What is good poetry analysis?

Is this good poetry Analysis?

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.

The Digital Divide

Journal Question:

What do you think is the biggest difference between your generation and older ones?

@volunTEENnation essay contest http://t.co/O0up53X4I7 What do you think is the biggest difference between your generation and older ones?

— Mr. O'Brien (@kobenglish14) March 10, 2014

@socialwebabcs "Creating [student] engagement without a culture of learning is like planting a seed in cement and hoping it will grow."

— Kevin James O'Brien (@KOB14) March 6, 2014

More from John Seely Brown:

With Final Drafts of Journals Due Monday..

Remember:

You must have all three rough drafts stapled to your final drafts of your journal.


Please, review your comma usage as well as your use of the semi-colon.

“With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope.” 

FAQ: Click links for answers. 

Examples from Wikipedia.

What is a comma splice? 

Simply removing the comma does not correct the error, but results in a run-on sentence. There are several ways to correct a comma splice:

• Change the comma to a semicolon, dash, or colon:
  • It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark.
  • It is nearly half past five—we cannot reach town before dark.
  • We cannot reach town before dark: it is nearly half past five.

In this example, the two clauses must be transposed. A colon often introduces a reason or explanation: the colon becomes a substitute for "because". The clause giving the reason ("it is nearly half past five") must follow the clause that needs explanation ("We cannot reach town before dark").

• Write the two clauses as two separate sentences:
  • It is nearly half past five. We cannot reach town before dark.
• Insert a coordinating conjunction following the comma:
  • It is nearly half past five, and we cannot reach town before dark.
  • It is nearly half past five, so we cannot reach town before dark.
• Make one clause dependent on the other:
  • Because it is nearly half past five, we cannot reach town before dark.
  • It is nearly half past five, which means we cannot reach town before dark.
• Use a semicolon plus a conjunctive adverb:
  • It is nearly half past five; hence, we cannot reach town before dark.

When do I use a semi-colon?

What is a serial comma? 

Here's a clever example about the serial comma from The Chicago Manual of Style:

Q. I totally agree with Chicago’s use of the serial comma. However, I am creating a style guide for a company that does not use the serial comma. For the sake of consistency, I am considering stating in the guide that the serial comma is not to be used at all (yikes!). My question is: Is it better to be consistent (and not use the serial comma at all) OR to add in the serial comma ONLY when it is necessary to prevent ambiguity? I wish that I could just DEMAND the use of the serial comma at all times, but alas, I am just a lowly intern. Thanks a lot for your help!

A. Well, if you don’t allow it at all, you will at times be stuck with situations like the following hypothetical dedication page that our managing editor likes to cite: 

“With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope.” 

(Maybe that example will help you change your company’s policy.)

Additional Resources:

https://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/commas/

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/692/01/

Important Reminders

Reminder, Journal #3 is DUE THURSDAY!

BRING a Hard Copy - be prepared to peer edit again.

Bring your Macbeth to class Friday and a laptop if possible.

Final Journal (Revisions and first drafts) - DUE MONDAY.



If you haven't seen this already...
A decent summation; however, much of the text is cut and much of the figurative language is lost.

For example, see Part III, what is lost in Act IV Scene III with Malcolm and Macduff?

Another Snow Day: For class/homework Today...

1. You should have finished your second Journal.

2. You can work on your Third and Final Journal:
Thoughts from your character's point of view on ACT V
DUE THURSDAY.

3. Watch 30 minutes of this documentary or the whole thing if you are bored:


 Actor Ethan Hawke researches the part of Shakespeare’s murderous Macbeth.

On Netflix - or click here for full episode on PBS...

Great questions from the Teacher Viewing Guide:

• Is the play’s action driven by Macbeth’s human-ness or by supernatural evil?
• Does Lady Macbeth turn her husband into a killer, or does he possess that power himself?
• What is the psychology of grief?

4. Review old blogs...Watch other versions of Macbeth that you haven't seen yet!

Trailer: