Friday, August 3, 2012

Questions for 8/6 -- EN 190 Summer II 2012


Good afternoon :)

Next week is our last week of class.  How quickly Summer II has gone!

For Monday, please read chapters 15, 16, and 17.  We will be finishing up poetry on Tuesday, and I would like to go over some poems in translation on that day.  Thursday will be our final, and we will have the last presentations.

Here are a few questions for your journals.

-- How have your journals helped you with the course's readings?

-- Even our editors seem a little overwhelmed by the variety of poetry.  How does poetry's openness as a form help you as a reader?  How does it get in your way?  Would you like more rules?  Why?  Why not?

-- Examine one of the poems you read but we did not discuss.  How does its poet use sound?  How does its poet use word choice?  Emotion?  How would you describe the speaker?

-- Look at poems by the same author (i.e., Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Cool" and "The Bean Eaters," sonnets by Shakespeare, Robert Frost's "Apple Picking" and "The Road Not Taken").  Alternately, here are some second poems by authors we've looked at in class:
Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Rites for Cousin Vit" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182621
Robert Hayden's "Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178596
Howard Nemerov's "To D--, Dead by Her Own Hand" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/21518
Maxine Kumin's "Woodchucks"   http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15650
Li Young Lee's "The Hour and What is Dead" http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16636
Dylan Thomas' "Fern Hill"   
Theodore Roethke's "I Knew a Woman"
How are the different poems by the same author similar?  How are they different?  Feel free to find other poems as well.  Which topics seem to interest the poet?  Which techniques does he/she use?  How does he/she use line length?  How do the poems sound?  What might be the poet's voice?

-- Choose two poems where the connection is not obvious.  What is that connection?  Consider Rita Dove's juxtaposition of poems in the anthology that she edited: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/309
Here are the two poems she mentioned:

-- Here are links to poems by Carol Anne Duffy and Philip Levine, the poets we listened to in the video below

How are the different poems by the same author similar?  How are they different?  Feel free to find other poems as well.  Which topics seem to interest the poet?  Which techniques does he/she use?  How does he/she use line length?  How do the poems sound?  What might be the poet's voice?  How does the video shed light on his/her poems?  How do his/her poems shed light on the video?

-- Discuss Ginsberg's use of long lines in "A Supermarket in California":

-- What would you like to write about for the next paper?

-- How did the presentation by Ashley and Stephen help you understand film more?  How did it help you understand literature?

-- Have you seen any of Alfred Hitchcock's films?  What do you like best about them?  Why?

I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing what you have to say.

Dr. Szlyk

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