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Poetry Inspired By Art, Brenda Crosby
Poetry Inspired By Art, Brenda Crosby
French
The activity is part of an Art, Beauty, and Aesthetics unit. First, students read a short text about the notion of the window, and how looking through a window frames or changes our perspective. Students then read and analyze Charles Baudelaire’s prose poem “Les fenêtres”. Students are provided copies of teacher selected paintings and photographs, each of which features a window. In class, they write any words that the image evokes for them. From this initial writing, they write an original poem inspired by the painting or photo. This activity encourages vocabulary development, close observation of one work of art, …
A Poet’S Cento: Reflecting On The Written Word Through Writing, Nicole Trackman
A Poet’S Cento: Reflecting On The Written Word Through Writing, Nicole Trackman
Understanding Poetry
Students will create their own cento using lines from poetry discussed in class during a poetry unit. In a short analysis, students reflect on the lines of poetry that they chose to include as well as their process as a poet. This lesson allows the students to become even more familiar with their previously studied work while working through the writing process as an author. The short reflective analysis prompts students to be metacognative about their process and product. This lesson is best used at the end of a poetry unit.
Name That Invention: Examining Connotation And Sound, Dan Gleason
Name That Invention: Examining Connotation And Sound, Dan Gleason
Understanding Poetry
This exercise engages students with questions of diction, connotation, and sound patterns. Students discuss the field of product branding, and learn how much certain product names (e.g., Blackberry, Pentium, Swiffer) were considered in light their denotative, connotative, and aural elements. Then, in groups, students devise product names for four imagined products; afterward, as a class they debate the virtues of each name rate and choose a winner for each product. Such close attention to meanings, buried implications, and sound cues encourages students to adopt a very poetic form of word analysis, a skill that transfers nicely to more literary areas.
America In Verse: The Laureate Project, Leah Kind, Dan Gleason, Erin Micklo, Margaret T. Cain
America In Verse: The Laureate Project, Leah Kind, Dan Gleason, Erin Micklo, Margaret T. Cain
Understanding Poetry
The purpose of this project is to allow students to use their (developing) skills of poetic explication and close reading, combined with research and analysis, to discover and establish a solid case for a poet they will nominate as the next American Poet Laureate. Working in groups of 3-4, students will identify a published, living American poet who has not yet been designated a laureate. The project demands a wide array of skills as the students research bibliographic information on the poet: read and analyze the poet’s body of work and select one central poem to represent that poet; amass …
Imitism: Learning Imagism Through Imitation, Nicole Trackman
Imitism: Learning Imagism Through Imitation, Nicole Trackman
Understanding Poetry
Students will learn the components of Imagism through works of William Carlos Williams and D.H. Lawrence. As authors, students will demonstrate their understanding of this poetic movement through an imitation of either Williams’ poem “This is just to Say” or Lawrence’s poem “Green”.
Millie Dies In Style: Crafting Poems In Four Poetic Styles, Dan Gleason
Millie Dies In Style: Crafting Poems In Four Poetic Styles, Dan Gleason
Understanding Poetry
This exercise helps students learn about poetic style by challenging them to write poetry in different styles. To make stylistic differences most obvious, students write about the same topic in four different ways (casual, formal, depressing, whimsical). Students write poems of 4-10 lines in groups, and then they share their writings with each other. Nearly any topic may be chosen, but the topic should be a bit unusual; I like to use the tragic tale of Millie, a fictional family dog that dies suddenly by falling down an open well, to generate interest. The exercise is a fun activity that …
A Poem And Its Painting, Jenny Lee '13
A Poem And Its Painting, Jenny Lee '13
2012 Spring Semester
Charles Bukowksi, one of the most controversial poets of the 20th century, loved very few things- alcohol, sex, his typewriter, and classical music. His poetry is considered down-to-earth and easily relatable, but it is still able to maintain a high level of artistic and literary merit. His skill as an artist becomes clear when his poem “Dostoevsky” is juxtaposed with Caravaggio’s famous painting, “The Sacrifice of Isaac.” This painting depicts an angel stopping Abraham from sacrificing his son, Isaac. Although these pieces come from different artistic media, painting versus the written word, their shocking similarities are a testament to …