Student Assignments: Poetry Homework
The last two weeks have been full at work, self-imposed and super interesting. I don't regret the work, even if I'm not finished with the grading yet (a rarity -- I grade quickly; if I have essays or tests remaining, I sometimes don't sleep well, so I get up and do them). I've been letting the kids hand in the essays late, trying instead to keep up with the homework they assign to the class. And since I expect them to do my homework, I feel obligated to do the homework they assign.
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In my last Bread Loaf summer I took a poetry course and a drama course. Bruce Smith was the poetry teacher, and rather than talk over our heads, he remained expert and listener both. Oskar Eustis was the drama teacher, an understated guy who liked to remind us that he did not have a Ph. D., that all American drama was rooted in the topic of money (He told us that money is a taboo subject for people, that he would talk about sex with his friends, but not money. People couldn't talk about how much money they had or made.), that we could come to a play at Providence Rep (where he was director -- or do you say dramaturge? I don't remember the terminology.) any time.
I have merged these two men and classes in my mind, likely because both of these professors were so understated, kind, smart. They really cared about what we thought. I didn't always feel that way at Bread Loaf. When I had begun the five year summer program, I felt like I was the weakest student there, the least knowledgeable, the one with the most to learn. I took one English class in college, and I took that pass-fail, so here I was knowing less that everyone else. My friend who convinced me to do the program with him got after me, annoyed with my everyone-knows-more-and-is-smarter-than-I-am attitude (of course, I felt annoyed with people who talked down to me because I hadn't read various writers -- so I was both accepting and fighting my own judgment of myself at the same time) that first summer.
Bruce and Oskar took me seriously, in all that I hadn't read and in all that I had read and taught. When I told Oskar about the play J.B., he was interested, curious. When I told him that I liked Arthur Miller's All My Sons after we read it in class and that I wanted to teach it to students, he had me make a lesson plan to bring to Thayer with me. In my mind Bruce had us write lesson plans, too, though I don't know whether he really did. I have it in my head that he had us write one analysis, one imitation, one lesson plan. What I remember bringing back afterwards was an analysis of Whitman's "A Noiseless Patient Spider" and teaching the poem to sophomores the next year because now I understood it (or at least in my mind and in my way) so thoroughly.
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Sitting in the lobby of a Rome hotel this fall -- waiting for students to check in for a dress code, passport, working Italian phone number check -- I asked the director, "What if I don't get to all the books I ordered? I'm thinking that I want to do a poetry unit where the kids pick a poem, make a lesson plan, teach the poem, write an analysis, and write an imitation. But I think I might run out of time to do everything."
He said, "Do it. It's perfect. Don't worry about the books."
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A week of in-class preparation and meetings. Two weeks of poems taught by the students. One day of reading imitations aloud. Here are some of the most memorable, and the ones that made me think about poetry, life, love, nature. The creativity and brilliance of kids. It's been a privilege to listen.
"Love after Love" Derek Wolcott
Helen' homework:
Write a letter to an old crush, ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, that will never reach them....why you liked them, why you broke up, stuff they did to annoy you, etc...This letter should act as a new beginning, a way of forgiving them, or even getting something off your chest that you always wanted to say but didn't.
Class: Helen invites everyone to read his/her letter. Most kids do. (I do.) We reread the poem aloud. Helen asks everyone to remove the letter he/she wrote. She walks around with a wastebasket and says to us, "Now put in your letter. Let these feelings go."
"If" Rudyard Kipling
Iza
homework: Think about a piece of advice you were given at some point in your life. Write for five minutes about how this piece of advice does or does not relate to the advice in the poem.
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and wanted me to delay my move to San Francisco, where I had no job and no place to live. But I wanted to go. One day on the front porch of the Scituate house, Dad said, "Go. You need to go. She wants you to get a job here since you're hanging around. Go." So I did. This was advice that said, Do what you want and do it while you can. Don't let anyone else stop you. Don't worry about what other people think. Just go. Live your dreams. Don't back down....I feel pretty sure that my mom thought that I was selfish at times. She's likely right. And I'm still glad that my dad told me to go.
in class:
What's advice your parents have given you?
One girl, Kate, says: My dad has said to me every day since I was in kindergarten, as he dropped me off, "No learning, no growth, no fun."
I want to start saying this to my own kids.
"A Sunset of the City" Gwendolyn Brooks
May
homework: Write down four words to go with each season. Then write for five minutes: Was there a time when you were aware of your age or getting older? How was it and how did it feel?
I sit at my kitchen table and write about varicose veins and an uncooperative back when I was thirty-eight/thirty-nine and pregnant with Hannah. I've always had myself 7-10 years younger than I am.
In class, May asks, "What does it mean to be old?" The kids learn that Brooks wrote the poem when she was about 44 years old. They agree: this is middle age.
I mean, I guess they're right, but I still find this shocking. I'm 46. If I'm halfway, that puts me at living til I'm 92. This actually sounds pretty good. It's not 100, but it's pretty close. It's just that I had thought that I had years to go before middle age.
"I, Too, Sing America"
Langston Huges
Vanessa teaches this poem. She has us watch a video on origin of the term African American and a video called I'm Not a Racist. Vanessa posts the homework twice -- in the second posting she tells us to watch the video if we can, but warns that it can be disturbing. She tells us in class that she had forgotten how tough the language was when she assigned it (I think she may have reposted/revised for me.) Most kids in the class had see the I'm Not Racist video before, telling me, "Everyone has seen it before. It was a big deal when it came out." Where was I?
She writes an imitation called "Size None", with a line through the "one" of None. She writes about her curves and ends with the line, "We are all beautiful."
"since feeling is first" e.e. cummings
Ji
Ji's homework. Read the poem. Then listen to this ASMR. The first time I heard of ASMR was two weeks ago on a family hike. On the way down, three kids were playing a game, and Mary was making an ASMR video, in which she whispered when she spoke and noted the sounds around her. When I read Ji's assignment, I holler to Mary and she and Hannah come to the kitchen and listen to the ASMR with me.
Ji's assignment: Write down six words after you listen. Think about individual sounds versus the feeling that you got listening to the ASMR.
Class ends up being a discussion about the word "syntax."
I tell the kids as they walk out later, "When I nag my husband about the last 10% of the kitchen he hasn't cleaned up, he says, 'Whoever pays attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you.' "
"i have found what you are like"
e.e. cummings
Quinn
Quinn and I look at the first e.e. cummings' poem she chooses. It's got a lot of red in it. We decide the passion and sex aspect might be a bit much. So she chooses another with yellows and greens and love, too.
Her homework:
Read "i have found what you are like." Mark it up in whatever way marking it up helps you understand it. Then look at the list of lines from e.e. cummings' poems (she's compiled at least sixty lines), and make a six line poem using these lines only with no changes.
Using six lines from her compilation, I make a poem about the sun, and the final line is "the Queen of queens is dancing."
I am stealing this homework assignment from Quinn.
"The Best Cigarette" by Billy Collins
Harrison
I'm bummed that so many kids smoke while they're here...or I guess I'm hoping that it's only while they're here. Harrison's homework for us: Read the poem. Listen to Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee." Write down an object that would serve as your cigarette, an object that has made certain moments in your life more memorable, special. Write about this object and such moments.
I choose tea -- it's a way to visit with anyone almost anywhere. We share tea and stories and time.
Blackout poetry. He tells us to cross out lines in the poem without altering anything else, to create blackout poetry, which I've never heard of. I do the assignment, making the focus my first car, a red 1987 Plymouth Horizon, that my dad found for me, and for which I paid $800 the summer after college graduation. It made it out to California and lasted a year until it wouldn't pass CA emissions standards (no surprise). But before it was in the Salvation Army lot, it took me over the Golden Gate Bridge and made me feel that I could do anything if I could make it out to San Francisco and drive my Plymouth Horizon by myself over that red bridge.
In class, Harrison asks which two out of three activities people did for the homework. Two out of three? I didn't read carefully: I did all three. Perhaps I would have even if I had known because I was curious and his homework assignments were better than mine often are.
Blackout poetry. Who knew.
"O Captain, My Captain" Walt Whitman
Kurumi
We read the poem; we talk about Abraham Lincoln; we watch a clip from the movie Dead Poets' Society; we write two line rough imitations and stand up on our chairs (or the table for me -- chair wasn't feeling so steady) to recite our two lines.
Kurumi is usually quiet. Today she commands the room. She salutes her English teacher back in the states, a woman who is her cheerleader, confidante, and mentor.
"Sleeping in the Forest"
Mary Oliver
Savannah
The students are not surprised that Savannah chose this poem: it's nature and beauty and being refreshed by the outdoors. Savannah is from New Mexico and loves the outdoors. She is open-faced, sunny, kind, eager to learn.
Oliver's speaker becomes born again when falling asleep in the forest. We all feel refreshed and born again just reading her poem and being near Savannah and her excitement over it.
"Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines"
Pablo Neruda
Nicole
Homework:
Listen to two songs -- one by Harry Styles and one by Five Seconds of Summer. I'm dutiful: I listen.
Write about a heartbreak. It doesn't have to be romantic.
In class the kids share their stories -- friends, lost grandparents, seeing siblings move away.
Her imitation is about her and a friend (romantic? unclear) who used to take the subway together every day to and from school in New York. She has written instructions to me above her imitation: "Play while reading poem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2nUUrbmztQ." I do.
"The Afterlife" Billy Collins
Sofia
Homework:
What does Collins say happens after death?
Write for five minutes on what you think happens after death.
"Singapore" Mary Oliver
Sophie
Poor Sophie -- She wanted to see a statement on women in Singapore, a human rights poem. I didn't see it. I told her, and I let her go.
Homework: Pay attention to the nature in the poem. Why does Oliver bring in nature when she's talking about a women cleaning toilets?
Class: Sophie puts forth her human rights, plight of women in Singapore thesis. Her classmates show her how the speaker says that she doesn't doubt that "this woman love[s] her life." They see connection and understanding, but not a political statement though they all acknowledge that they at first looked for a comment on the environment when the read the poem at first since Sophie picked it.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2nUUrbmztQ
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