week of 11/13/12

Week of 11/13/12


11/15/12


Goal: Continue our discussion of highly structured poetry.

First Step The Facebook Sonnet

Vocab: exhume: to dig up, as with a body.

Exercise: Draw four big boxes on your paper like so:

For each stanza of this poem, draw a quick cartoon.

Welcome to the endless high-school (A)
Reunion. Welcome to past friends (B)
And lovers, however kind and cruel. (A)
Let's undervalue and unmend (B)

The present. Why can't we pretend (C)
Every state of life is the same? (D)
Let's exhume, resume, and extend (C)
Childhood. Let's all play the games (D)

That occupy the young. Let fame (E)
And shame intertwine. Let one's search (F)
For God become public domain. (E)
Let church.com become our church. (F)

Let's sign up, sign in, and confess (G)
Here at the altar of loneliness. (G)

--Sherman Alexie


Shakespearean Sonnets (Shakespeare, the OG): 

The basics.

Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare.

1. 14 lines. 
2. If it's shaped like a box, it's probably a sonnet.
3. Quatrains and a couplet.
4. Rhyme and iambic pentameter.
5. Translating Shakespeare

As a group, let's translate Sonnet 130



11/13/12

Goal: Continue with form and structure in poetry. 

First Step: Charlie and/or Jackie. Slam is tonight. 

Who wants extra credit??



Finish Team Villanelle Assignment. Share some.

HW: Individual Villanelle Assignment (see last week's blog or Edmodo for details)