Monday's poem, 1.31.11

"Scheherazade," by Richard Siken.

Here is the Wikipedia entry on the story of Scheherazade that this poem alludes to. Do you see any connection? What is the purpose of the allusion, here?

Are these the kind of stories you think the original Scheherazade was telling the king? What is different? What does that suggest about how we have changed, or about the state of mind of the person narrating this poem?

Friday's Poem, 1.28.11

"Things," by Liesl Mueller.

Thursday's poem 1.27.11

"Publication Date," by Franz Wright.

Period Four: Bloggies winners, Week 1.

Best Reader's Log: Dewdrops on Daisies

Best Personal Blog: Ocean Waves and Just Life and Hot Kool Aid

Best use of the Internet: Bloggeret16

Nice work, everyone--some interesting blogs out there.

Wednesday's Poem

"Somewhere in the World," by Linda Pastan. At the Writer's Almanac.

Period Four: The Bloggies, episode one.

In the comments here, nominate a blog for our first installment of The Bloggies!

Don't just nominate your friends; browse the class blogs and nominate a blog for any of the following categories: Best Reader's Log, Best Personal Blog, Best Use of the Internet.

Nominations close at the end of class!

Tuesday's Site of the Week: Storycorps

Storycorps is a unique project. People travel the country in an Airstream trailer, stopping in towns to record the stories that local residents feel like telling. The stories are all archived at the Congressional Library and the most interesting stories are featured on their web site. Storycorps actually came through Fort Wayne last summer, setting up shop for a week.

For today's class, update your blogs. Your reading logs will probably be one priority--fill us in on what you've been reading. Also, add up the total pages you have read since (a) last Tuesday, and (b) this entire semester. To make it easier for me, at the end of a post today, list these totals like this:

Current:
Total:

Another alternative would be to create a gadget that shows your current reading totals on the right side of your page.

After updating your reading log, or instead of it, visit Storycorps. Listen to 3, 5, 10 stories, whatever, and make a post about what you think of what you heard.

Tuesday's Poem: "Keeping Things Whole"

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.


- Mark Strand

Friday's poem.

"At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border"

By William Stafford.

*Comments closed*

Thursday's poem

At the Writer's Almanac, "French Toast."

The Bloggies, Week 1 Winners!

Congratulations to the following bloggers--each has earned the right to drop a vocabulary score this quarter.

Best Reader's Log: Imagining the Future is a Kind of Nostalgia

Best Personal Blog: Alice in Happy High

Best Use of the Internet: Just Blogging

Our next reading logs/Bloggie Awards will be on Tuesday, February 1st. You will need to have blogged two more weeks of reading by that time. Let me know if you are looking for something good to read!

Period Three: The Bloggies!

In the comments here, nominate a blog for our first installment of The Bloggies!

Don't just nominate your friends; browse the class blogs and nominate a blog for any of the following categories: Best Reader's Log, Best Personal Blog, Best Use of the Internet.

Nominations close at the end of class!

Ice

by Gail Mazur

In the warming house, children lace their skates,

bending, choked, over their thick jackets.

A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy

it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,

clumping across the frozen beach to the river.

December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,

the first sheer ice, black, then white

and deep until the city sends trucks of men

with wooden barriers to put up the boys’

hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,

of trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour

of distances moved backwards without falling,

then—twilight, the warming house steamy

with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs

aching. Outside, the hockey players keep

playing, slamming the round black puck

until it’s dark, until supper. At night,

a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.

Although there isn’t music, they glide

arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,

braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never

be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,

find her perfect, skate with her

in circles outside the emptied rink forever?

Introduction to Poetry

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.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.

Intro to the Poetry Journal

For today's class, browse a few of these sites linked above. The Foundation site is one of the best and most fun to play around with. Find the poem you want to be the first in your journal and copy it down, as neatly as you can. Skip lines only at line breaks.