March 30

Study for the poetry unit test on Wednesday; check the glossary of poetry terms at the end of the book and make sure you know all of them. Finish Crime & Punishment before Friday. We like to keep it light.

March 19

1.  No blog prompt today.

2.  Write either a villanelle or a sestina -- due Monday after the break.  You can choose to write a sonnet instead, in which case it would be due on Wed.  The big poetry test will take place on Wed.

3.  Finish reading Crime & Punishment, which we will begin discussing on Friday the 3rd.

4.  Have a lovely spring break!

Prompt -- March 17

1. Be ready to dive into Crime and Punishment on April 3rd.
2. Register for AP exams by Friday of this week.
3. The following poem is by a famous Portland writer, Ursula Le Guin, and was republished in last Sunday's Oregonian. Consider how Le Guin uses sound, rhythm, imagery, and symbolism to serve her purpose.

The Cactus Wren

In this great silence, to sit still
and listen till I hear the wren
is to draw free from wish and will.
She flits to perch; her slender bill
spouts a thin jet of music, then
in the great silence she falls still.
Wind nods the short-stemmed flowers that fill
the sandy wash. She sings again
her song devoid of wish or will.
The hummingbird's quick drum and thrill
is gone just as I hear it, when
in this great silence all holds still.
The granite sand, the barren hill,
the dry, vast, rigorous terrain
answer no human wish or will.
Again, the small quicksilver trill
that has no messages for men.
In the great silence she sings still
of pure need free from wish or will.


"The Cactus Wren" is from Incredible Good Fortune,
Shambhala, 2006, © 2006 by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Prompt for the weekend 3/12

A. Read the poem that follows: Consider all the elements of poetry that we have studied thus far. How does the poet use these poetic elements to give the poem meaning?


Hope -- Lisel Mueller

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

B. You need to register and pay for AP tests by Friday. If you wait until Friday, you will also end up waiting in a line.

C. The following students need to turn in their "Snowstorm" essays to turnitin.com: Sharon, Kassie, Sandeep, both Jonathans, Connor P., Sanjana, Nupur, Tabron, James, and Niloy

Prompt - March 10

Read the poem "The Wild Swans at Coole" by William Butler Yeats (405/346/426/420).  How does Yeats use all the elements of poetry (diction, imagery, figurative language, sound, rhythm, tone) to embue his poem with a sense of the timelessness of nature in contrast to that of man.

Homework - March 4

1. Write an essay on Emerson's use of sound to create the experience of a snowstorm. 2-3 pages, 75 points, due Tuesday the 10th. You must attach a copy of the "worked" poem to the back of the essay. Also, be sure to submit it to turnitin.com.

2. No blog prompt tonight.

Homework and prompt for Wed. March 4

1.  Homework:  (a)  Read chapter 11  (b)  Read "Snowstorm" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Using a printed copy, mark all the sound devices you find.  If you have misplaced your copy, you can find one online.

2.  Engage in a blog discussion of "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost.  Focus on how Frost uses sound to enhance meaning.