Poetry Analysis

Every once in a while (okay, more often than not), I’ll complete an assignment I give to my students.

I do this for a couple of reasons.  One, I want the kids to know that what I’m giving them to do is entirely attainable.  I have two jobs (three if you count the yoga teacher gig), two kids, and half of the responsibilities of our household; if *I* can take the time to complete an assignment, so can my students.  Two, I like to think in student mode.  I enjoy the kinds of thinking I ask my students to engage in, and taking up my own homework assignments gives me an opportunity to keep those skills sharp.  Finally, I like having an example of my work to give to students as a model.  Granted, I’ve had a lot more writing and critical thinking experience than they have, so I’m not asking them to create work of the same quality or caliber (and yes, I’m that good), but I am asking them to aspire to it.

To that end, I’ve written an analysis of a poem.

I’ve tasked my juniors and seniors with choosing some poetry to teach to the class.  I told them that in order to do this – and to do it well – they must have a close and careful look at the pieces they’ve chosen, decide what they think about it, and then come up with a way to lead us, if not to their conclusions, then to one of the students’ own devising.  Good teaching can’t happen without careful analysis, and while I’m holding out hope that they understand that (I’ve only spent the last three days saying it) I’m a little less confident that they’ll actually do it.

So *I* did.  I took one of my kids’ poems and wrote an analytical essay that I’ll bring in to class tomorrow.  There are two reasons why this was fun to do; the first is that, true to form, I didn’t really know what I wanted to say about this piece until I wrote about it.  I  knew that the poem intrigued me, but I had no idea what I really thought about it until I had to articulate it on paper.  The second reason this was fun is that this poem was actually written by my student; he’s a member of a metal band, and this is a song he wrote.  If I know this kid at all – and I think I’ve got a pretty good read on him – having this analysis is going to geek him out on a number of levels.  I’m looking forward to seeing his response to the effort I made in investigating a piece of his art.

Nameless Clairvoyance
By Blood Of A Cynic

An exchange of sacrifice is made between two races
Unique flesh stains this earth
A stern vexation
This itinerant pest and visions of apocalyptic doom are unfurled
As is the horrific truth of our wretched coexistence

Now all martyrs of science and religion
Shall fall to their knees before this creature
With vague intentions
Unprecedented and catastrophically divine contact

Unto this earth
A race kept in secrecy stirs beneath superior force
Ancient visitors bare knowledge of eternity

No man is safe in this place
Our enslavement will soon follow the invasion of our masters
Anatomic inferiority
shows the genetic manifestation of our future
Twisted and sickly misshapen
Our history eclipsed

Upon the end of this time of knowledge and understanding
A new age of insanity begins

Mrs. Chili
Nameless Clairvoyance Analysis
November 12, 2009

An initial reading of Nameless Clairvoyance leaves one with the feeling of foreboding and impending and inevitable violence due to reckless and unchecked technological advancement that outpaces the human capacity for compassion and empathy.  The poem seems to be serving as a warning; a call for man to be aware of the consequences of his attitudes and behavior, or suffer the logical and tragic end result of his callousness and disdain.

The opening stanza of this piece speaks of “an exchange of sacrifice…made between two races,” which could be read in a number of ways; war (as soldiers on both sides of the conflict die), vengeance (as in the morality of an eye for an eye), or even a more political interaction (Desmond Tutu famously told the world that oppression demeans and dehumanizes both the oppressed and the oppressor).  While the “unique flesh” mentioned in the second line could refer to some sort of alien presence, it could just as well speak to the uniqueness of the individual; that every death is the loss of untold potential.  The “itinerant pest” is racism, prejudice, and the heedless pursuit of power, control, and knowledge, which are attitudes that are found in literally every society on Earth, and which brings about, to the observant, the “apocalyptic doom”  and “horrific truth of our wretched existence.”  The second stanza brings the metaphor into sharper focus, telling us that the “martyrs of science and religion” will “fall to their knees before this creature.”

It is the contention of many thinkers, both modern and ancient, that religion is most often used to separate people rather than to unite them.  Institutionalized hatred – or, at the very least, segregation – seems to be the end result of most organized religions; if one is not one of  “us,” one is necessarily one of “them.”  Setting up that us/them dichotomy makes prejudice, racism, and other forms of social ostracization far easier and more palatable to the individual; if those behaviors are legitimized and condoned by the larger group – especially by the leadership of that group – then the individual is freed from the moral responsibility for his or her behavior.  In the course of belonging, we must necessarily identify against those who are not us; having the church – in whatever form that church takes – tell us that it’s okay to create an “other,” and that that is indeed part of God’s design, removes autonomy and free thought from the agent.

Despite their often being portrayed as opposing ideals, religion and science can have much the same effect of separating us from one another, and of giving us ways to justify and legitimize that separation.  While the mapping of the human genome has taught us that we are all of us far more similar than we are different, we continue to fear the knowledge gained in scientific pursuit as a doorway to an uncontrollable future; genetically modified foods, chemical and biological warfare, designer babies with “perfect” eye color and skin tone.  Our concerns over our inability to keep private our medical records, the proliferation of weaponry and biological agents, and the explosion of

Chili, 2

instant and global communication all have the possibility of leaving people a little less secure in our own existence.  While we may communicate more, we actually connect less; interaction through a computer screen hardly constitutes genuine human contact.  The end result of our advances in technology is that we run the risk of losing our very humanity.  The loss of our humanity only makes more likely the possibility that we will fail to recognize the humanity of others.  Those whom we deem less than ourselves are very easily abused, disregarded, or eliminated.

The third stanza hints that all of this was inevitable, that a “race kept in secrecy” has always had “knowledge of eternity.”  One is left to wonder whether this ‘race’ is in fact a separate and distinct group, or if it refers to those who have gained some sort of enlightenment.  If the latter is a possibility, one can read hope into this poem.  That some may survive by removing themselves from the choices that people make in how they treat one another – and that they operate outside the knowledge and control of the “superior force” – promises that another possible future exists, and that total destruction of humanity might be avoided.

The fourth stanza calls out the warning that “no man is safe in this place” and that “enslavement will soon follow the invasion of our masters.”  Recognizing that the blade often turns on those who wield it, it is reasonable to think that the behavior that the dominant engage in will cycle back to engulf them.  The reference to “anatomic inferiority” which “shows the genetic manifestation of our future / twisted and sickly misshapen / our history eclipsed” can be read both as a reference to past efforts to create a “perfect” or “master” race through the oppression and elimination of the so-called “other,” or it can refer back to science and the work being done to uncover and map the very nature of our existence.  We have, though the advancements of science, the capacity to destroy ourselves in ever more efficient ways.  Who lives and dies is entirely the choice of those in control of the knowledge and the resources.  The “masters” are those who decide who gets use of the media, the pulpit, the university, and the lab, and of what messages come from them.

The final couplet serves as the condemnation of technological advancement and scientific achievement untempered by human compassion; at “the end of this time of knowledge and understanding / a new age of insanity begins.”  Without the equalizing forces of empathy and goodwill, the effects of unfeeling science and polarizing religion will leave humanity with no reason to rely on one another for comfort or existence.  “Knowledge and understanding” – especially of ourselves and of one another as like beings -  are the key components to survival here; when they cease to be present in the human experience, all hope is lost.

Poetry 101

I think I’ve decided to work with poetry with my juniors and seniors for the next week or so.

I was toying with the idea of heading right into debate and persuasion, but I’m not quite confident that I’m ready to start that unit just yet. I’ve ordered a handbook with the traditional rules for debate from Amazon, and the book’s not here yet; I’d like to be a bit more familiar with the conventions of logical and reasoned argumentation than I am at the moment. I want to read A Christmas Carol with both of my classes (and to watch a couple of versions of the story on film), but I’d like for that unit to culminate just before the holiday break, so I’m holding back on that for now. When I put a bunch of ideas up for a vote on the class website, several of the kids expressed an interest in poetry, so I guess that’s where we’ll go next.

The thing is, I’m not a huge fan of poetry. I mean, of course, there are poems that I adore – deeply and abidingly and, well, truly adore – but in general, I’m not a huge fan of the genre as a whole. For the most part, I find that my frustration with poetry stems from the idea that it’s all so meaningful and profound when, most of the time, I find it overwrought and dramatic (put the back of your hand to your forehead here, and sigh deeply).

I suppose this resistance to the genre comes from far too many college classes with far too many self-proclaimed poets who went about moon-eyed for the tragic figures in our anthologies. While I appreciate that a lot of great poetry can come from suffering, I’m not sure I buy into the whole poet-as-martyr image, and I KNOW I don’t buy into the whole culture of the poetry lover, at least as it’s represented on my campus.

The kids want to look at some poetry, though, and I’m willing to take another turn on that merry-go-round, so away we go.

I’m going to experiment with the unit, though; I want the kids to do some SERIOUS thinking about this, and not just nod knowingly while I try to explicate a particular piece. I’ve dug every single poetry book out of my library which, surprisingly, totaled 19 volumes ranging from an anthology of Frost poems to work from children in concentration camps in World War II to Maya Angelou to a blogging friend of mine.

For someone who “doesn’t like” poetry, I’ve got quite a range of resources, don’t I?

My plan is to hike all these books up the 85 steps to the school, spread them out on a table, and instruct my students to choose a book or two to peruse.  At first, they’re just going to read – as much and through as many of the varied books as they can.  When they come across something that intrigues or inspires or frustrates or delights them, they are to have a closer look. Their job will then be to present these pieces to the class, and to lead us in discussion, investigation, and appreciation for the poems they’ve chosen.

I’m going to see if I can tie this in to the Poetry Out Loud program that CHS participates in every year, but I’m not going to demand that the students participate; I suspect at least a couple of them will really want to, though, and I will certainly use that as their demonstration of mastery as a final project.  For those who are not inclined to compete, I will work with them to come up with some creative way of proving to me that they “get” poetry (which will really be their way of demonstrating that they understand that poetry is entirely subjective, that poems can take on many different forms and styles, and that one of the essential features of the genre is that the piece says more than the word on the page).

My biggest challenge is going to be not rolling my eyes when one of my self-proclaimed poets pulls out a piece that I find overwrought and dramatic.  I just need to keep remembering: to each his own, Chili; to each his own…

(in case you were wondering, some of my favorite poems are this one, this one (which I can (and will) recite from memory), this one (which may be my all-time, most favorite, ever), and a new favorite, this one)

Whiplash!

My plan for today’s class was to execute an over-achieving lesson plan – one that multi-tasked and snuck a lot of learning in the back door.

My students’ next scheduled speech is a “special occasion” speech, and to give them an example, I chose to investigate both Reagan’s comments to the nation following the Challenger tragedy and the eulogy he delivered at the memorial service for the seven astronauts who lost their lives that day in January of 1986.

As I was thinking about these speeches, I had a flash of reality check.  It occurred to me that, with two possible exceptions, every single one of my students was born after Challenger went down.  I wondered how many of them had any frame of reference for the kind of impact this tragedy had on the nation at the time, given that it was something they may not have even studied in school.

I also realized, after reading Reagan’s national address, that they’d likely have little comprehension of the Apollo 1 accident and that they’d probably have NO frame of reference for the “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” quote with which Reagan closed his address, so I went back to the computer and printed out some good information about both of these things.

More often than not, I end up teaching history in my rhetoric classes, too.  If the kids have no foundations upon which to start their investigations of these speeches, they miss so much of the richness and depth.  I just can’t let that happen, so I become a bit of an historian a couple times a semester.  I have to admit that I love these classes, and that I’m considering the possibility of another Master’s degree – this one in history.  But I digress…

ANYWAY, I came to work prepared – and excited! – for a class-long discussion and analysis of these two speeches.  Not only were the kids going to be exposed to a couple of really fine examples of commemorative speeches upon which to model their own efforts for next week, but they were going to learn a bit about how to use quotes in speeches, they would see how to reference relevant historical events, and they’d get a look at how the introductions and conclusions to commemorative/special occasion speeches are different from those of informational or persuasive pieces.  Further, I was going to spend quite a bit of time in modeling good analysis, which is the skill I’m going to ask them to exercise for their take-home mid-term exam on Wednesday.  ALL KINDS of good learning was going to happen today.  I was READY, I tell you, and I was jazzed.

Alas, it did not come to pass.  Only half my students showed up to class this morning.

image credit

Since I didn’t want that many kids to miss out on such an important and useful class, I changed direction in mid-flight and decided to wing it (please fasten your seat belts and put your tray tables in their upright and locked position in preparation of the captain’s making a sudden and severe course correction).  We ended up doing an exercise on spin by looking at two different versions of the same story and discussing how the word choices lent a very different feel to each piece, discussing connotation and denotation and implication and inference, and touching a tiny bit on rhetorical structures like chiasmus and synechdoche.

It wasn’t a wasted class, certainly, but the wind got sucked out of my sails in a big, bad way.  I’m hoping that I can keep my enthusiasm up for Wednesday, when I plan to execute my killer lesson plan, regardless of how many kids fail to show.

Ten Things Tuesday

I read “The Things They Carried” with my lit students yesterday (well, with the ones who showed up, anyway) and was reminded of how visceral and present that story can be.  O’Brien is deft and effective in his storytelling, and I was moved, yet again, by this multi-layered, thought-provoking war story.

O’Brien tells his story though the description of the things that a platoon in Vietnam carried with them during their experiences of this war.  Very rarely – in fact, only once – does O’Brien actually describe the character of the men; instead, he tells us who they are and what was important to them by describing the things they thought were important enough to bring with them into battle – and the things they had no choice but to carry – and the respective weight of these things; the weight of ammunition, the weight of memory, the weight of rations and responsibility.

In homage to the tale, here are ten things that *I* carry with me as I make my way through my world.

1.  I carry my wedding rings and the promises that they represent.  My marriage is the single most important thing in my life, and I am never without the physical representations of that relationship.  I carry with me a deep and abiding respect for my husband, as well as a profound and unspeakable love.  For the magnitude of the commitment and responsibility, the weight is effortless and I will happily carry it for the rest of my life.

2.  I carry my cell phone.  The gadget represents much more than my ability to stay connected at will with anyone, it also represents safety, information (I have an iPhone, and thus can access internet and maps and music and…) and reliability (I would be a wreck without the calendar feature).

3.  I carry my children.  Not literally, of course, but they are an inexorable part of who I am and are integral factors in how I make decisions.  I want to be a good model for them for a kind, compassionate, considerate, capable woman, and it’s because of them that I make many of the choices that I do.

4.  I carry my driver’s and teaching licenses.  The driver’s license is predictable – I’m betting you all carry one of those – but I tucked the little card that came with my teaching certificate in my wallet because it represents an accomplishment that I was never quite sure I’d reach until I was almost there.  Which leads me to…

5.  I carry a tiny but nagging insecurity.  I’ve not quite managed to fully silence the monsters of my past, and every once in a while a little voice escapes from the closet to tell me that I’m just kidding myself and everyone around me.  The only thing that voice doesn’t demean is my acting abilities, it seems, for it tells me now and again that I’ve got everyone fooled.  I’m getting better and better at ignoring the voice – and the more I ignore it, the quieter it gets – but it’s still there.

6.  I carry my friendships.  Most of the time, this is an easy burden to bear – I have wonderful friends who give me far more than I feel I give in return – but sometimes I find myself carrying this load a bit too heavily.  I’m still working on negotiating the place a few friendships have in my life; I’ll get the weight settled eventually.

7.  I carry a sense of justice, and that I am part of a larger whole.  This is a hard one to describe without coming across as all airy-faerie, but part of my yoga practice involves my recognition that I belong here – that I have a right and an obligation to participate fully in this life – and that my actions, words, attitudes and behaviors matter to more than just my immediate circle.  I try to be mindful of the kinds of ripples I start in the pond, and try to make sure that the energy I send out reflects the highest and best I have to offer.  I speak out when I see injustice – I will not sit down and I will not shut up – but more than that, I try to always be aware of what I may be doing, however unintentioned, that may be perpetuating an injustice.

8.  I carry stories.  Song lyrics, novels, films, short stories, t.v. episodes, poems; I continue to amass a library of experiences that I can bring to bear on my life, and that I use to make sense of the world around me.  I love to think and talk and argue and ruminate about stories and what they mean beyond the plot, and I carry a respect and admiration and affection for the people who engage my thinking about stories.

9.  I carry a love of language and a curiosity about its use.  I carry a desire to continue to learn – I am shamelessly greedy when it comes to knowledge; I can never have enough.  I carry the two-sided belief that I am both incredibly smart and never smart enough; that where I am right now is pretty darned good, but that I can always be more and better than I am right now.

10.  I carry a sense of joy and love and compassion and kindness.  I want the people around me to be at ease in my presence.  I want people to think kindly of me and to be happy to see me.  I want to be aware of the little things that I can do to make others feel appreciated, important, and cared for.  I carry with me an awareness that, every day, I can do or say something – even if it’s just a smile – that will register positively with someone else.

Don’t Get Yer Hopes Up, Kid

I went and found the director of the freshman writing program this afternoon.

Dr. C is a wonderful though enigmatic man.  He has a Ph.D. in Old English Literature and has been a fixture at Local U. for as long as I’ve been acquainted with the place (and that’s going on 20 years now).  He LOOKS like an English professor – white hair, stern aspect, tweed jackets with the suede elbow patches (no lie).  He’s occupied the same corner office for so long that his bookshelves are starting to bow under the weight of his library, and he’s had the same creaky chair for as long as I’ve known him.

I had Dr. C as a professor in several classes as an undergraduate.  In one class – I think it was a teaching methods course – I remember his allowing an ongoing argument between myself and another student about the nature of Frost’s Acquainted with the Night.  This moron my classsmate thought that the narrator of the poem was some kind of felon fleeing the scene of his crime, and I would have none of it.  Dr. C looked on with a delighted grin on his face as the two of us verbally duked it out over several class meetings.  I also had him as an instructor in least one grammar course; he may well be the founding father of Grammar Wednesdays!  Even though he wasn’t my official advisor, I spent a fair bit of time in his office seeking advice as I made my way through graduate school.  I think he’s wonderful.

It seems I have a special place in his heart, too, because when I came to see him about getting the adjunct gig this past summer, he remembered a poem I’d written for him as an assignment in an undergrad course (it may have even been the poetry-arguing methods class).  I was entirely blown away that he, more than a decade later, recalled not only that I’d written a poem, but that he also remembered the general gist of the piece, too.   Of course, it’s pissing me off that I can’t FIND the poem – I KNOW it’s in my files somewhere, but I haven’t been able to put my hands on the damned thing.  Once I stop looking for it, it’ll show up.

Anyway, back to my story.  I found Dr. C in the hallway by my office, reading an announcement on the wall (he was on his way in and was distracted by the poster).  I followed him up to his office, where he told me that he was very busy and didn’t have any time to spare, but then proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes with me (this is typical of him).  I was hoping to pick his brains about what I might do to make myself a more attractive candidate for another adjunct gig in the spring when the freshman writing course offerings go down to nearly nothing.  I also wanted to know about what the process of getting hired as a full-time lecturer might be.

He spent a good portion of our time together trying very hard to convince me that lecturer positions are hard to come by (“I don’t know why – the job doesn’t pay well at all, but people don’t seem to leave”), and to disabuse me of the notion that I might be hired back in January.  Certainly there’ll be a place for me in the fall – he was quite clear about that – but he was also explicit about the idea that almost none of the adjuncts are asked back in the spring because there just aren’t enough classes to go around.

I’m profoundly disappointed by this, but I’m trying to keep it all in perspective.  I’ll still be associated with the university through my work with the recreation department, and I’ll make sure to stay in touch with the folks I’ve made friends with on the faculty and staff (I LOVE my neighbor – more about him later).  I’ll make sure to stay in touch with Dr. C all through the spring – maybe there’s a chance of getting a summer course.  I really, really want to stay at Local U. – we’re not willing to move and this  really is my best option for employment around here.  If I have to wait until the fall, so be it.

The Final Project

My literature class at TCC delivered their final projects tonight, and it was a hoot.

Several semesters ago, I decided to forgo the typical final exam assessment in my literature classes favor of giving the students the opportunity to demonstrate their mastery of the work done during the semester in ways that felt most authentic to them. I didn’t want to give them a test or make them write an essay, I explained, so I opened the assignment up to them and let them, within reason, put together something that proved to me that they had really gotten the work that we did together.

Their first reaction is to go positively apoplectic with panic. They want me to tell them what to do, they protest that they can’t think of anything that would be sufficient or appropriate, they worry that they’ll not tell me what I want to hear and will get a rotten grade. They claim to not understand what I mean when I explain to them what I’m looking for; they tell me that, even though they hate essays, they’d rather write a paper than have to come up with an idea for a comprehensive project on their own.

In the end, though, they almost always come through. I’ve been excited by what the students come up with as projects, and many of them have been memorable enough that I can still recall their ideas nearly a year later. My favorite by far, for example, was the student (the only man in the class, though I’m not sure that’s a salient fact) decided to imagine a postscript for Shelly’s Frankenstein in the form of a children’s story. He wrote, designed, and illustrated a book that had the Creature wandering the Arctic Circle, despondent and bereft after the death of his “father.” Eventually, he stumbles upon the Island of Misfit Toys (work with me, here) where he tells his sad story. So moved is  King Moonracer that he brings the Creature to Santa, who sees a marketing opportunity. The elves get busy making Creature dolls, which they send to the toy stores in London, where Ebeneezer Scrooge buys one for Tiny Tim (thereby effectively tying two of the the major works we read that semester together). In the end, everyone is happy; Scrooge gets to buy a present for his “nephew,” and the Creature finds a home among the happy people of Santa’s village. It was genius.

My experience with this is that students either nail the final, or they utterly flame out – only one or two have hit true mediocrity. Of my eight students this semester, one was in California on a family emergency, five hit it out of the park, one was kind of so-so, and one was my token flame-out (he wrote a “fictional biography” of Poe and refused to deliver a presentation. He’ll pass the class by the proverbial skin of the teeth).

What thrilled me about tonight’s class wasn’t so much what the kids DID, but the realizations they made as they were delivering their presentations. One student, for example, made the realization about Brokeback Mountain (which I had the students read – they could watch the film too, but it wasn’t my primary delivery of the story). After Jack dies, Ennis discovers that Jack had kept a shirt of his from the very first summer they spent together. It was tucked inside a jacket of Jack’s… in the closet. “HEY!” the student said as she was discussing the importance of that symbol (her piece was about the despair that both Ennis and the narrator of The Raven felt after the deaths of their beloveds), “I never realized that – but Jack was hiding Ennis’ shirt inside his jacket – he was keeping Ennis safe inside him – and in the closet. That’s something I totally missed until just now!  What’s more is that it was a closet in his parents’ house!!  That’s an important symbol, isn’t it?”

Yes, Honey – it is.

I wish I had audio posting capabilities, because one student – hand to God/dess – wrote, recorded, and mixed a rap song about Cole (from The Sixth Sense) and Victor Frankenstein. I nearly died laughing – it’s a riot. Another student wrote a comparison of Victor (he was a very popular topic for this class) and Jimmy Cross from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. At the end of her paper, she wrote some haiku. These two are my favorites:

Victor:

Becomes a new beast
his quandary does control him
he dies without change

Jimmy:

Ending his mission
his childishness up in flames
a man walks away

By Jove, I think they got it!

*End note; If you’re interested, here’s the assignment as I gave it to them around week 7 (TCC goes for 11 weeks – I like to give them plenty of runway for this project, even though most of them end up scrambing the week before it’s due).  I highly recommend this kind of final assessment; the kids come away impressed with how much they really do understand, and you’ll be amazed by some of the creativity they can demonstrate.  Some of the connections they make will surprise you; I guarantee it.

I’m looking for you to come up with some way of synthesizing the work that we’ve done this semester in a way that’s meaningful to you, and then to present that work to the class. I’m interested in how creative and comprehensive you can be in this endeavor; I don’t want to tell you to do this or that because I want you to determine what means of demonstrating your mastery over this material is most right for you. Not everyone likes to write term papers, and I’m happy to expand my thinking to accommodate your creativity.

That doesn’t mean that you can cut pictures out of a magazine, paste them on to a poster board to make a collage, and call it even. There are some guidelines to this project that will be common to all of you; namely that the project MUST have a written component, you MUST incorporate between 3-5 of the pieces we’ve investigated this semester, and you MUST include some form of research with your work. Beyond that, though, I’m looking to you to be creative and energetic in your thinking about this final effort, and to ensure that it demonstrates your best work.

In the past, some of the more memorable projects have included students who have written prequels to novels, or written an extra chapter to explain something that happens after the original story ends. One student wrote a children’s book. One student wrote a play based on the life of a minor character in a film, and one student wrote up an FBI profile of a character. A student did an in-depth biography of one of the authors we’d studied that semester, and one student created a movie poster for a novel, complete with a story board for the film and mock reviews from newspapers. Each of these projects played upon the students’ strengths while challenging them to expand their thinking beyond the discussions we’d had in class, and each was exemplary in its breadth, detail, and fun.

My point is that I want you to enjoy this work – but that it IS work. We’ll talk more about this in class – and I’ll get a rubric to you that details the standards I’ll use to assess your project – as the semester progresses. The last Monday class will be the due date, with the presentations happening that same night. Everyone MUST turn in a project and everyone MUST present; if you know you’ll not be in class on the last day, you have to arrange to deliver your presentation on a week when you will be in.

A Poem

I found this today at “Language Rules” and I had to share.  It made me smile:

Foolish Speak

By

sillylauralonglegs

English lauds as a language for fools.
Who can keep up with th’ extravagant rules?
Professors and teachers must practice and twitter,
So students and others can suck til they quit ‘er.

Diction is dandy; syntax, sexlacious;
Commas are overly used and contagious.
A semi-colon certainly seems semi-stoppy,
While periods punctuate prose á la choppy.

Apostrophes thoroughly trump and elude
Even the smarty-pants programmer dudes.
Copyeditors clean up and make merry
Even the ugliest copy contrary.

Where in the quotes do you put the full stop?
Within or without? Either, neither, or what?
What about commas, questions, and complaints?
Exclamations, too, are surreptitiously quaint.

English lauds as a language for fools.
Why wouldn’t you want to play dictionary duels?
English, I say, is for language-law lovers.
Its rules are circuitous—under the covers.

Random Ravings

• First of all, for all that I LOVE Amazon, I hate them a little bit, too. I think I must have bad delivery karma: I ordered Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet last week and (GASP!) paid for the shipping to get it here by Saturday so that I could start showing it to my lit. girls on Monday. Well, Saturday came and went, my friends, and I am still Dane-less, dammit! It wouldn’t be SUCH a big deal except that I am fast losing my voice (yes; despite the hex signs I’ve been throwing and the incantations I’ve been chanting, I’ve caught something and it’s lodged itself firmly in my voice) and I’m thinking that popping a movie in for a class might not be such a bad idea, especially given that I HAVE to give my composition kids a lecture about essay organization and MLA citation procedure tomorrow. I may have to put together a “comparative literature” unit for the ladies and have them negotiate through the text, the Zefirelli Hamlet and the Branagh Hamlet (which, I’m sure, will be snugly in my mailbox tomorrow when I come home from work) as their mid-term. Grrrr.

• Mr. Chili and I were watching Band of Brothers on the History Channel last night, and the network put up a little advertisement that they’re selling the DVD set for 25% off, so I went online to check out whether or not the prices were competitive with other places I’ve seen the series for sale. In the course of my investigation, I found these, and I’ve decided that I really, REALLY want them. I can’t justify the expense at the moment, but it’s going on my wish list for sure.

• OH! RIGHT! I’ve been wanting to tell you all about this since it happened last Wednesday, but I keep forgetting:

So, the lit. ladies and I are sitting around our table, reading the bits and pieces of Hamlet that they had trouble with on their own, when we get to the part where King Hamlet’s ghost first appears to his son. I read this part aloud to the girls…

I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love–

… when one of my students – a VERY bright young lady who took the class with me last year (she failed because her life fell apart at the end of the semester and she just stopped coming) – stopped me. “WAIT a minute!” she said, “this sounds familiar! Didn’t Jacob Marley say something just like this to Scrooge?”

Well, my dear, as a matter of fact, he DID!!

“It is required of every man,” the Ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me! — and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!…Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. “

I was positively DELIGHTED that she noticed both ghosts’ inability to rest, and that neither was at liberty to fully divulge the nature of their current existence to others. I’m also thrilled by how many things the girls are recognizing in the reading, particularly “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” and Polonius’ rants about “neither a borrower nor a lender be” and his bit about the clothes making the man. I don’t think they ever fully appreciated how much influence Shakespeare has had on our common vocabulary, and it’s exiting for me to see them get excited when they recognize something from the text that they’ve seen (or said) out in the “real world.” THAT’S why literature class is important.

Grammar Wednesday

I’m collecting essays from both of my classes today: the lit students have their Jekyll & Hyde essays due this morning and my composition class was supposed to turn in a reading response by 5 p.m. yesterday. In anticipation of what I’m likely to find, I thought I’d offer you this for our Grammar Wednesday meeting this week.

Taylor Mali is my hero. I love what he stands for, and his energy is inspiring to me. Here, for your pleasure (and for my perspective and stress-release ahead of essay grading), is “The The Impotence of Proofreading.” Enjoy.

Tagged!

Lara, over at Life, the Ongoing Education, tagged me for a crazy 8 meme. I’ve done this before on my personal blog, but I thought it might be interesting to try it with my professional life in mind. I’ve taken the liberty of changing some of the questions a little to suit my work, and I’ve left off the last “tag eight people to do this” bit. Ready? Here we go:

Eight Things I Am Passionate About About Which I am Passionate

1. Grammar and its proper use.

2. Education, both mine and everyone else’s.

3. Reading. Not only do I enjoy reading, but I find that I learn a lot from the process.

4. Writing. Sometimes, I don’t know what I think about a topic or idea until I start to write about it.

5. My students. Some of them make me absolutely crazy, but I care deeply about all of them, even the ones who couldn’t give a crap about me or what I have to teach them.

6. Improvement. I’m rarely content with “good enough,” and I try to model for my students that the effort it takes to make something better is always worth it.

7. Standards. I’m committed to making my students rise to the bar I’ve set for them, and I don’t think that it’s unreasonable to set that bar higher than it’s historically been set at TCC.

8. Discussion. I learn so much, from both my students and my colleagues, when I engage them in conversation. The viewpoints and ideas they offer me are exciting and challenging, and I come away from our discussions a smarter, better informed and thoughtful person.

Eight Things I Want to Do Before I Die

1. Earn another degree.
2. Teach at a bigger school.
3. Earn a full-time position.
4. Have an office of my own.
5. Work on a committee that sets curriculum and standards.
6. Take cooking courses at TCC.
7. Teach a Lit. and Film course.
8. Establish a well-founded Diversity Club at TCC.

Eight Things I Say Often

1. “Seriously? You don’t have a pen?!”
2. “Listen up; this is important.”
3. “What do YOU think it means?”
4. “I do not accept late work.”
5. “Remember; films and books are separate works of art.”
6. “Have you done the reading?”
7. “Okay, but how did you get from there to here?”
8. “Um…yeah… NO!”

Eight Books I’ve Read Recently (edited to include short stories and poems)

1. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson

2. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

3. Brother of the Mount of Olives by Paul Monette

4. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

5. Courting a Monk by Katherine Min

6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare

7. Sympathy by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

8. The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

Eight Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over Again I Use in My Lessons

1. “Cold as it Gets” by Patty Griffin

2. “The Stranger” by Billy Joel

3. “The Soul Cages” by Sting

4. “The Downesaster Alexa” by Billy Joel

5. “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot

6. “Raven” by Dave Matthew’s Band

7. “The Rhythm of Life” by Edwin McCain

8. “Driving the Last Spike” by Genesis

Eight Movies I Have Seen Eight Times Use in Lessons

1. Frankenstein (the Hallmark production)
2. A Christmas Carol (the Patrick Stewart production)
3. Hamlet (the Franco Zeffirelli production)
4. Glory
5. Nuremberg (the TNT production)
6. Mississippi Burning
7. The Last Samurai
8. Ever After

Happy Monday, Everyone!