Summer reading- for fun not becasue someone said we had to

I know I said good bye... but I miss you guys. Besides, who else will talk about books with me?  I'm seeking recommendations for good, fun reads.  I'm working on two books right now:

Sebastian Junger's War.-  He's the guy who wrote The Perfect Storm... great writer.  And I feel like I ought to know more about what's happening in Afghanistan.  For the most part, I like it.  Fast paced, relevant, and interesting.  But he uses a lot of military acronyms that I don't know.  And there are a ton of places, so I'm continually flipping to the map at the front of the book. If anyone else trys this one, I suggest making a character list to use as a bookmark...because there are many many characters and I'm struggling to keep them all straight.

The Glassblower of Murano-  a breezy read that doesn't require much thinking.  Perfect for the first days out of vacation.... and on sale at Bookshop Santa Cruz.  It's one of those historical fiction pieces that seem to be very popular these days in which there are two parallel stories... one set in the past and one in the present.

So, friends, what do you suggest next?  I'm open to anything, but am mostly seeking great Young Adult Fiction.

The end

I'm closing our blog.  Thanks for a great year.  Be sure to visit in the fall :)

since feeling is first

yet another article for the cummings fans among you

If you want to comment, choose a quotation from the text and share your thoughts on it.  This is NOT on the final, but may help increase your overall understanding of cummings and his work.

In Just-- and l(a

Some thoughts on In Just-

An article on the connection between haiku and cummings work, with special attention to 1(a 

More on l(a.  Interesting, but only for the truly interested.

If you want to comment, choose a quotation from the text and share your thoughts on it.  This is NOT on the final, but may help increase your overall understanding of cummings and his work.

Informaiton about the Spring Semester Final

I just finished writing your final.  You will have a packet of poems to refer to during the test.  The entire test is multiple choice, ranging from 3-5 possible answer choices per question.  The test includes:

• 5 questions in which you need to identify the vocabulary word that isn't like the others.
• 7 questions in which you need to identify which pair of vocabulary words does not have the same kind of relationship (synonym or antonym) as the other pairs of words.
• 13 questions in which you must read a short passage including vocabulary words and then answer questions about the passage.  
• (In total, I think I managed to include all but 9 of our vocabulary words from the semester)
• 10 questions base don the poetry vocabulary from the scavenger hunt, in which you must match the term with its definition.
• 42 questions which require you to interpret the poems.
• 5 questions based on the notes we took on his life and the literary movements during which he lived.

There is a grand total of 82 questions.  The total number of questions on the poems might change a bit between now and the final, as some groups have not yet presented/ shared their sites with the class, and I don't intend to hold you accountable for knowing those poems unless they do one or the other of those things.

Happy studying :)

Anyone Lived ina Pretty How Town

There is a good article about anyone lived in a pretty how town.  The first part of the article is about l(a, but the rest is on this one.  If you want to comment on the article, choose a quotation from the text and share your thoughts on it.  This is NOT on the final, but may help increase your overall understanding of cummings and his work.

Also, George Lucas (yes, the Star Wars director, not some other person with the same name) made a film version of this poem in 1967.  I think it was a project when he was in college.  You can see a clip here.

 

grasshopper

thoughts on that crazy poem that just looks something like a word search gone wrong.  Skim to the middle of the article where you see a familiar poem.

This is NOT on the final... just interesting.

Group Poem Analysis

As you send them to me, I will add your analysis to the blog. Thus, this post will be continually "edited" to reflect the projects that have been turned in. If yours doesn't show up here by 6/2, it means it has not been turned in and you should get it in. You can continue to update and modify your analysis until 6/2. Your changes should show up here as well. You should read ALL of these, not just the ones done by your classmates, in preparation for the final.

Cambridge Ladies analysis by B4
Cambridge Ladies by B2
My Sweat Old Etcetera by B2 
My sweet of Etc by B4
Humanity i love you by B2 
Humanity i love you by B4
All ignorance by B2 
All ignorance by B4
What if a Much of a Which of a Wind by B4
What if a Much of a Which by B2
pity this monster by B4
pity by B2
Poetry or Beautry Hurts Mr Vinal by B2
n(o)w by B2 
n(o)w by B4

NOTE:  Given that I am unable to post the analysis by either of the groups doing Jehovah Buried, Satan Dead on time, I will not ask any questions about that poem on the final.

oil tel duh woil doi sez

Here's what others have to say about this crazy poem.

AP English Meeting

If you are taking AP English next year, then you need to attend a lunch meeting on Thursday in H11.

Cummings' titles

A list of Cummings' books and an explanation of how and why he chose his titles, including the book that has no title (often referred to as [No Title])

If you want to comment, choose a quotation from the text and share your thoughts on it.  This is NOT on the final, but may help increase your overall understanding of cummings and his work.

Get Your CUmmings-esque Poem Published

I know that not all of you will be interested, but for those of you who have been patiently waiting all year for us to finally get to poetry, I wanted to pass along a little bit more.  There is an entire organization devoted to thinking about Cummings and his work, the E.E. Cummings Society.  They publish an annual magazine titled Spring.  (Many of the articles linked to this blog come form that magazine.)  The magazine includes scholarly articles about Cummings as well as contemporary poetry that is influenced by Cummings.  So, if you are interested in submitting your poem to the magazine (what's the worst that could happen?), send a clean copy of your poem, a self addressed stamped envelope, and a brief cover letter to:

Michael Webster
Spring Editor
129 Lake Huron Hall
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI, 49401

I strongly suggest taking a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the publication before submitting, so that you can sound like you know a bit about your audience.

the dirt on cummings' marriage to Elaine

All the gossip about who cummings' relationship with his wife Elaine.  Is this relevant to our study of his work?

cummings comic

Making your poem analysis website

You are going to work with a group of your peers to create a google docs analysis of a cummings poem and then post it online for the rest of the class to view.  I have done one as a sample.  There are also directions for how to do this.  I had a lot of fun making the sample.  I hope you have fun with this too :)

Please either email your link to me or share your document with me BEFORE the start of class on 6/2/11. After I receive them, I will post them for your classmates to read.

Spring Poems

An article on his spring poems
An article on cummings' diction 

These articles are NOT going to be on your final.  However, you may find that they help you to better understand the poems that WILL be on the final.  

If commenting in response to this post, you might choose a favorite quotation from an article and comment on it.  How did it add to your understanding?  Why do or don't you agree with it?  etc...

life and times

Whitman Connections?

Song of Myself
Excerptsby Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

---

1
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

6

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he. 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and
women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

52. The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud° of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse° my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fiber your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

(Note: For some reason the line breaks and spacing aren't formatting quite right on the blog.  Sorry.)

Questions to Contemplate.  Answer in comments if you are so inclined.
1. What, in your opinion, is the most important—or most interesting, or most puzzling—line in Whitman’s poem? Why?  What do you think the line means?
2. Nature:  How does Whitman show his connection to the natural world in this poem? For example, what qualities does he say he shares with the spotted hawk?  How is or isn't his relationship to nature reminiscent of Cummings' connection to nature?
3. Style:  What verb tense does Whitman use in this poem and other selections from “Song of Myself”? How would the effect have been different if the speaker had spoken in a different tense? 
4. Self:  The first line of “Song of Myself” is “I celebrate myself, and sing myself”; the last line is “I stop somewhere waiting for you.” What do you think this might reveal about Whitman’s purpose in writing “Song of Myself”?  What is cummings' purpose?  How does each man view himself within the context of the larger world?  How do you know?  How do they compare? 
5: Art: What do you think Whitman means when he describes his own poetry as his “barbaric yawp”?  How does this compare with cumming's views on poetry and art?
6.  Politics: Some readers of this poem have further taken the meaning of “barbaric yawp” to refer to the way Europeans might have viewed the “American experiment” of democracy. What do you think?  Does Whitman express political views?  If so, how do they  compare with cummings' political ideas?
7.  If you have any questions of your own about this poem, please post them in the comments, so that others might attempt to answer them.

next to god of course american i love you

You probably noticed references to the "Star Spangled Banner." and "My Country 'Tis of Thee", but some say the poem also references Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade":  Do you agree?

Buffalo Bill

Some interesting background on Buffalo Bill