"At the Galleria Shopping Mall," Tony Hoagland

Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear,

there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs;

one of them singing news about a far-off war,

one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood

to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood.

And here is my niece Lucinda,

who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,

who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blonde

and declares that her favorite sport is shopping.

Today is the day she embarks upon her journey,

swinging a credit card like a scythe

through the meadows of golden merchandise.

Today is the day she stops looking at faces,

and starts assessing the labels of purses;

So let it begin. Let her be dipped in the dazzling bounty

and raised and wrung out again and again.

And let us watch.

As the gods in olden stories

turned mortals into laurel trees and crows

to teach them some kind of lesson,

so we were turned into Americans

to learn something about loneliness.

"O Captain, My Captain!" Walt Whitman

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.


O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.


My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Action List: 3.29.2011

First, some class notes:
1. Reading logs/blogs are due today for period 3.
2. Because the recitation "playbook" is due tomorrow for your memorized poem, please bring a hard copy of it to class, formatted the way I showed you in class. An example and instructions are on the class notes page.

Okay, here is our online fun for today. We're going to browse the online edition of Sunday's youth-dedicated edition of the New York Times Magazine. Please add the label "Tuesday Response" to your post for today and all future Tuesday blog assignments.

For today's blog assignment, you need to read and respond to at least two articles. First, follow the prompts for #1, below. After that, choose one of the following two prompts.

1. (Everyone do this one!) Listen to a few of these interviews of high school seniors about where they see themselves ten years from now. Use headphones if you have them, because they have audio.

Write a brief response that discusses your reaction to the interviews you see: Which student in the article do you relate to the most? Which one is the most interesting? Which one seems the most deluded? Then, in a second paragraph, write your own answer to that question: where do you see yourself in ten years?Next, choose one of the following options:

Respond informally, in at least 250 words, with your thoughts about one of the following articles, and incorporating at least two quotes from the article into your response:

2. "A Soccer Phenom Puts the 'I' in Team," an article with videos about a high school specialist in "free-style" soccer. Don't just watch the video--read the article; it's interesting.

3. "Online Poker's Big Winner," about a 21 year-old multi-millionaire online poker player.

"Late Echo," John Ashbery

Alone with our madness and favorite flower

We see that there really is nothing left to write about.

Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things

In the same way, repeating the same things over and over

For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally

And the color of the day put in

Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter

For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic

Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention

Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory

And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows

That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge

Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

"Modern Love," John Keats

And what is love? It is a doll dress’d up

For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;

A thing of soft misnomers, so divine

That silly youth doth think to make itself

Divine by loving, and so goes on

Yawning and doting a whole summer long,

Till Miss’s comb is made a pearl tiara,

And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;

Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,

And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.

Fools! if some passions high have warm’d the world,

If Queens and Soldiers have play’d deep for hearts,

It is no reason why such agonies

Should be more common than the growth of weeds.

Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl

The Queen of Egypt melted, and I’ll say

That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.

"History of Desire," Tony Hoagland

When you're seventeen, and drunk
on the husky, late-night flavor
of your first girlfriend's voice
along the wires of the telephone

what else to do but steal
your father's El Dorado from the drive,
and cruise out to the park on Driscoll Hill?
Then climb the county water tower

and aerosol her name in spraycan orange
a hundred feet above the town?
Because only the letters of that word,
DORIS, next door to yours,

in yard-high, iridescent script,
are amplified enough to tell the world
who's playing lead guitar
in the rock band of your blood.

You don't consider for a moment
the shock in store for you in 10 A.D.,
a decade after Doris, when,
out for a drive on your visit home,

you take the Smallville Road, look up
and see RON LOVES DORIS
still scorched upon the reservoir.
This is how history catches up—

by holding still until you
bump into yourself.
What makes you blush, and shove
the pedal of the Mustang

almost through the floor
as if you wanted to spray gravel
across the features of the past,
or accelerate into oblivion?

Are you so out of love that you
can't move fast enough away?
But if desire is acceleration,
experience is circular as any

Indianapolis. We keep coming back
to what we are—each time older,
more freaked out, or less afraid.
And you are older now.

You should stop today.
In the name of Doris, stop.

"For My Daughter," Daivd Ignatow

When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.

When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.

"Feeding Hunger," Sandra Lee Smith

"Feeding Hunger"

How do we begin to justify
Hunger of the masses
When we have so much,
And so much is wasted?
My refrigerator is full
As is the pantry;
You can’t get another vegetable
Or pieces of fruit
Or box of cereal
On the shelves.
The children arrive
And know where to find
Juice boxes and bags of chips
To snack on.
The freezer is filled
With frozen bricks of various soups.
We could go, I estimate,
Six months without
Buying groceries.
We eat well
With little waste
But I was well trained
To economize.
Even so,
Much goes to waste
And I think about my mother’s warning
About the starving children
In Europe.
Now China
Or Asia
Or Africa.
Children have been starving somewhere
All of my life.
Yet
Farmers pour milk into ditches
And burn crops.
Feed the Hungry, we are urged.
Millions are at risk of Starvation. You can help.
Eighty Cents a Day can Change a Life forever.
Sponsor a child today!
And yet
Though I sponsor a child
And donate dollars to organizations,
Millions continue to starve
While farmers continue to destroy crops.
What difference will it make
If I throw out a crust of bread?
Who cares?
Who really cares?

-Sandra Lee Smith

Action List: 3.22.11

My dog Smokey.

Participation News: Grades are updated now, unless your display name is Reach for the Moon--I have misplaced your real name, so you need to let me know if that is your online alias.

Congratulations to Artemis, Mariah Hamil, lyssa, and Count Chocula--these four were consistently the most engaged and thoughtful contributors to our ongoing poetry commentary, providing insights that were well grounded in the poems themselves. Great work. 1% extra credit for the quarter to all of you.

A picture of my friend David on a puzzle he put together.

First, a slight change to the blogging requirements: Our page quotas are going to stay the same, but your blogging requirements are a little bit lighter. From now on, it doesn't matter if you are reading popular fiction or literary fiction--you only need to log your reading three times a week. This is only a change for popular fiction readers, but it should make things a little bit easier to keep up with and still allow you time to be outside more, selling lemonade and catching frogs, now that the weather is turning nicer.

Second: I'm giving you a free week for blogging. Blogs due today are now due next Tuesday, and blogs due next Tuesday are due the week after (the week after Spring Break, btw). Only two weeks of reading and logging will be due, though you will have had three weeks to complete it. Remember, you can't get credit in this class for any books that have been assigned, in any class, any time, at Homestead. So, sorry, but no Frankenstein, David Copperfield, Lord of the Flies. Those are for other classes, right.

A picture of rain that I have been liking a lot lately.

To do today: Pick 2 of the following 3 assignments.
1. Create a personal blog post that looks back at your reading from this past quarter. What was the best reading you did? What writers did you discover? What did you discover about your own taste in reading? What did you not like? What are your plans for your 4th quarter reading? Please Double-check your pages read over the course of the first quarter and update it at the top of this post--tell us how many pages total you've read, and, if you are up to it, break it down by pop and lit sub-totals, too.

2. Best poem of the Quarter. Please make a brief post that identifies what you think of as your favorite poem from the first quarter and what you like about it.

3. Visit this site: 1000 Awesome Things. Read a bunch of them and make a post about awesome things--the ones you agree with from this site, and then name and discuss at least one thing that would be on your personal list.

4. When you are done with these things, read yer book and/or conference with me about your ATW essay.

"All That is Gold Does Not Glitter," JRR Tolkien

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.[1

"Spring," Karla Kuskin

Spring

by Karla Kuskin

Karla Kuskin

I’m shouting

I’m singing

I’m swinging through trees

I’m winging skyhigh

With the buzzing black bees.

I’m the sun

I’m the moon

I’m the dew on the rose.

I’m a rabbit

Whose habit

Is twitching his nose.

I’m lively

I’m lovely

I’m kicking my heels.

I’m crying “Come Dance”

To the fresh water eels.

I’m racing through meadows

Without any coat

I’m a gamboling lamb

I’m a light leaping goat

I’m a bud

I’m a bloom

I’m a dove on the wing.

I’m running on rooftops

And welcoming spring!

"Don't Quit"

Don't Quit
Unknown

When things go wrong as they sometimes will;
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill;
When the funds are low, and the debts are high;
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh;
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you can never tell how close you are;
It may be near when it seems afar.
So, stick to the fight when you're hardest hit
It's when things go wrong that you mustn't quit.

"I dance for the love," Amy Lee

"I dance for the love"

I dance for the love

I dance even when I feel pain
I dance knowing there's something to gain

I dance for the love

I dance for me
I dance for everyone to see

I dance for the love

I dance as the sunshine
I dance hoping you will be mine

I dance for the love

I dance with words to say
I dance all day

I dance for the love

I dance even when you leave
I dance and still believe

I dance for the love

-Amy Lee

"On being asked for a War Poem," W.B. Yeats

On being asked for a War Poem

I THINK it better that in times like these
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,	5
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

"A Dream Within a Dream," Poe

A Dream Within a Dream
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

"Graves," Hayden Carruth

Graves

by Hayden Carruth

Both of us had been close

to Joel, and at Joel’s death

my friend had gone to the wake

and the memorial service

and more recently he had

visited Joel’s grave, there

at the back of the grassy

cemetery among the trees,

“a quiet, gentle place,” he said,

“befitting Joel.” And I said,

“What’s the point of going

to look at graves?” I went

into one of my celebrated

tirades. “People go to look

at the grave of Keats or Hart

Crane, they go traveling just to

do it, what a waste of time.

What do they find there? Hell,

I wouldn’t go look at the grave of

Shakespeare if it was just

down the street. I wouldn’t

look at—” And I stopped. I

was about to say the grave of God

until I realized I’m looking at it

all the time....

"The Pressure of the Game," Karley Dobis

“The Pressure of the Game”

Slowly dripping down,

And sliding off your face,

Showing all your fear,

As your heart begins to race.

You search for the break,

Looking at the slope,

You just can’t figure it out,

And you’ve lost all hope.

You talk to your caddy,

He’s stumped too,

So you go with your gut,

Since there is nothing better to do.

You let the ball go,

Rolling down the green,

Praying for a miracle,

You start to cringe and lean.

But then it falls,

Right down the cup,

So like Tiger Woods,

You do a fist pump.

You’re still in shock,

It just can’t be true,

But you have to forget it,

Now onto Hole Two.

Action List: 3.15.2011

Work on your own today. Headphones are fine. Do at least one of the following, make a post that responds to the questions posed, and then choose a follow-up activity.

1. Read a brief piece, "Let Kids Rule the School," from the New York Times about a school that let students make their own school within a school. Would that work here?

2. Browse this visual timeline of children's picture books. What books have your favorite illustrations, and what books do you have the best memories of?

3. Read this piece in the New York Times about "over achievers" in the NCAA basketball tournament. Does it make you question any picks you made in your brackets for this year?

Follow-up Activities:

* Confer with me about your ATW essay.
* Log some reading you've done lately.
* Compose a personal post about things on your mind or what you've been up to.

"[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]," e.e. cummings

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

by E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

"Mid March," Lizetter Reese

Mid-March

It is too early for white boughs, too late

For snows. From out the hedge the wind lets fall

A few last flakes, ragged and delicate.

Down the stripped roads the maples start their small,

Soft, ’wildering fires. Stained are the meadow stalks

A rich and deepening red. The willow tree

Is woolly. In deserted garden-walks

The lean bush crouching hints old royalty,

Feels some June stir in the sharp air and knows

Soon ’twill leap up and show the world a rose.

The days go out with shouting; nights are loud;

Wild, warring shapes the wood lifts in the cold;

The moon’s a sword of keen, barbaric gold,

Plunged to the hilt into a pitch black cloud.

"Wrist-wrestling Father," Orval Lund

On the maple wood we placed our elbows
and gripped hands, the object to bend
the other's arm to the kitchen table.
We flexed our arms and waited for the sign.

I once shot a wild goose.
I once stood not twenty feet from a buck deer unnoticed.
I've seen a woods full of pink lady slippers.
I once caught a 19-inch trout on a tiny fly.
I've seen the Pacific, I've seen the Atlantic,
I've watched whales in each.

I once heard Lenny Bruce tell jokes.
I've seen Sandy Koufax pitch a baseball.
I've heard Paul Desmond play the saxophone.
I've been to London to see the Queen.
I've had dinner with a Nobel Prize poet.

I wrote a poem once with every word but one just right.
I've fathered two fine sons
and loved the same woman for twenty-five years.

But I've never been more amazed
than when I snapped my father's arm down to the table.

Orval Lund

"Fire and Ice," Robert Frost

Fire and Ice

by Robert Frost

Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

[love is more thicker than forget], e.e. cummings

[love is more thicker than forget]

by E. E. Cummings

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is more mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

"A Blessing," James Wright

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Writing Lab Menu: 3.9.2011

Friday’s Drafts. We have a rough draft due on Friday: the introduction and one body paragraph from your project. This draft should have your actual name, not your alias. Like the last one, this is a pass/fail draft—either you have it and it is typed and you get the full 10 points, or it isn’t and you get zero.

ATW Conferences. For another 10 points, you need to confer with me during class either today or Friday about your project. Here are your options: (a) today, we can work through one of your passages and plan a claim and some of your response, or (b) on Friday, we can review the draft that is due that day. One or the other, the choice is yours.

Today’s Menu. We get five points of participation both today and Friday if we stay off of the games and are productive. Here are some things you can do today to be productive. Do any or all of them:

1. Find those passages: the Poetry Foundation web-site, your poetry journal, our classroom library.

2. Profile a poem or passage—like we have done with the Walton Ford painting “Falling Bough” and some diction exercises, compile (a) distinctive quotations from your passage, (b) words that describe that language, and (c) a possible claim for a paragraph about that passage.

3. Read any or all of the sample essays for this project. There are several:

a. My sample that was attached to the “Harlem” response that we annotated with highlighters.

b. Jessie Hanselmann’s, on our HHS notes page.

c. My sample beginning for the “Water” ATW project I am working on.

d. A “Winner” from the peer review we conducted on Monday.

4. Error Hunt—go through the draft for your diction exercise and see if you can find any of the six “Errors of Support and Discussion” that are demonstrated on the purple handout (and online.)

5. Use the “Observation Guide” for diction on the HHS notes page to help you free-write a response to one of your passages.

6. Informal peer-review of a friend’s work so far.

Any of these menu items can be done with a friend, collaboratively, if you are able to stay on task.

Tuesday Poem: "Rain"

by Naomi Shihab Nye. In your poem journals.

What does the figurative description of the words as "houses in a landscape" suggest about his handwriting or the boy in general--what tone words seem to suggest to you, in other words?

Remember that "figurative" descriptions relate to an element of diction (connotation), and are good things to discuss/analyze in, say, an essay about language.

Action List: 3.8.11

Blogs of the Week: Hot Kool Aid, bloggerett16, Dewdrops on Daisies, and Te Amo. Great reads, all.

For today:

1. First, note some changed dates for the ATW project: The full peer review of your project, including photocopied passages, is next Tuesday, 3/15. The full, final project, with copies of your passages, is now due Thursday, 3/17. These are both one day earlier than originally planned.

2. Today, you have a few options.

(a) Prepare a reading log--periods 3 and 5 have blogs due today.

(b) Start searching for poems and passages that you can use for your ATW project. Your introduction and first body paragraph are to be peer reviewed on Friday, so it's good to get started soon. Try using the "Poetry Tool" at the Poetry Foundation to find a poem or two for your theme. If you like, you may use the poem that you wrote about for yesterday's peer review.

(c) Look at the sample ATW essay on the class website, or the "Diction Observation Guide" to get a better feel for how this project should work. Or ask me for guidance.

(d) Try the multiple-choice exercise on making claims about diction, found on the HHS class page under "Notes."

(e) Play Rock-Paper-Scissors against a computer and be surprised how tough it is to beat.

"Black Boys Play the Classics," Toi Derricote

Black Boys Play the Classics

by Toi Derricotte

Toi Derricotte

The most popular “act” in

Penn Station

is the three black kids in ratty

sneakers & T-shirts playing

two violins and a cello—Brahms.

White men in business suits

have already dug into their pockets

as they pass and they toss in

a dollar or two without stopping.

Brown men in work-soiled khakis

stand with their mouths open,

arms crossed on their bellies

as if they themselves have always

wanted to attempt those bars.

One white boy, three, sits

cross-legged in front of his

idols—in ecstasy—

their slick, dark faces,

their thin, wiry arms,

who must begin to look

like angels!

Why does this trembling

pull us?

A: Beneath the surface we are one.

"Prayer," by George Herbert

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth ;

Engine against th' Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

"9," by Galway Kinnell

9

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantillations he sang in his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and creeps away among the stones, one sees
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken
away from one's kind, toward these other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one's own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

Weekend Blog Assignment: Spellbound

To conclude our study of Spellbound, make an informal post to your blog that responds to one of the following prompts:

1. Pick any two of the students in Spellbound and compare and contrast what you see as their motivations for pursuing success in the National Spelling Bee.

2. Pick any two sets of parents and compare and contrast either their motivations for having their children excel in the National Spelling Bee.

Responses should be thoughtful and contain references to the film itself.

Here is the IMDB link to help you remember names.

"Those Winter Sundays," Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?


1.  What words could you use to describe the sounds in this poem?
2.  Do the sounds of this poem change from stanza to stanza?

"Harlem," Langston Hughes

“Harlem”

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

--Langston Hughes

"Here, Bullet" by Brian Turner

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Where or what do you think "Here" is, literally, in this poem--what do you think the speaker is talking about?

What do you make of the violent imagery that relates his body ("tongue's explosives," "rifling I have / inside of me") to weaponry?

3.1 Diction Exercise: Poetry

On your own, using any of the poems in your poetry journal, carry out the same diction exercise that we conducted last week. Post the results to your blog with the title "3.1 Diction Exercise."

(a) List the 8-10 words that strike you as most representative of the poem's diction.

(b) Characterize at least two of the four elements of diction, listing at least two adjectives to describe each element.

Use the last page of your tone handout to help you find adjectives that describe the elements you are observing. There are columns, for example, about "sound" and "appearance" that can help you to describe the music or concreteness of the language.

(c) Draft a full claim that uses 2-3 of the adjectives you came up with and then completing the right side using the class tone sheet.

Tuesday Action List 3.1.11

1. Complete the "3.1. Diction exercise," explained in the post above.

2. Once a few of us have finished the exercise, browse at least 8 other blogs to read the claims that they posted today, and then vote for your favorite by commenting to this post. Paste the claim into your comment and name the blog responsible for it.

3. Comment on a poem or two from the past week.