Expository Speech: Day 2; Poetry Baseline Exercises

Take 5 minutes to prepare your speech. If you have already given your speech, work with one of the students who were absent last class. If you were absent, join a group and read your speech to them. Peers should give some pointers or advice about your poem to the performer. 

Then: Deliver your speech to the whole class.

Good speakers:

• Make eye contact
• Speech clearly and loudly
• Use gestures
• Have energy
• Change tone
• Perform with sincerity

Class: do your best to be supportive of each speaker. At the very least, be courteous. Selfish and self-centered people lose friends. You don't have to be a jerk. Keep an open mind.

Poetry Exercises: Day 1

We are going to write many drafts of poems in our journal and Google drive today. Let's start with an exercise:

A poem is...

In your journal write what a poem is in a poetic way. Use specific nouns and active verbs to get at the "feeling" or "meaning" or "sense of" poetry and what it means to YOU. Try using figurative language or metaphors or similes. Take 5 minutes and write your draft in your journal.

For example: "Poetry is..." by Emilio Villa

Literally, or denotatively, a poem is a piece of writing, often having figurative language and lines, that suggest rhythm and image. We use figurative language when our writing goes beyond the "actual meanings of words (denotation) so that the reader gains new insights into the objects or subjects" in our draft.

Poems should utilize imagery (an appeal to the senses by using a metaphor, simile, assonance/consonance, alliteration, symbol, personification, onomatopoeia, specific nouns/active verbs, figurative language); poems do not need to rhyme. They should create a specific picture or image in the mind of the reader or listener. Usually, there is a turning point or volta near the end of the poem (or the last line). 

All poem drafts should have a meaning, a theme. There are 4 themes found in poems (sometimes more than one of these 4 themes is found in a single poem!)

Poems are always about:

• Human life
• Death
• Nature
• Love

Make a list of subject matter that you might write a poem about in your journal...Take 3 minutes.

Now let's take a look at Shmoop's explanation of what a poem is all about. And we'll read a couple.

Get it? Questions? 

Let's break it down. Poems should have a structure. They look different sitting on a page. They are not written like prose is written. They are special. However, they should be written using punctuation. Paragraphs in poems are called stanzas. When we change the topic or scene, we can start a new stanza. 

Poems are written using line breaks. Line breaks are important--because they mean something in a poem. A long line slows the pace of your poem. A short line speeds up the pace of your poem.

Structure: Dice poem exercise... Get ready to write. Follow these rules:

• Select a subject from your journal list. Or, since you're going to use dice, choose one of these themes: chance or fate, gambling, randomness, games, probability, etc.
• Select 2 dice from the pile.
• Roll both dice to determine the # of lines for your poem.
• As you write each line, roll both dice to determine the number of words in each line of the poem.
• Write that poem in your Google drive. 

Take 10 minutes to do this.

Use one of the "poem starter" prompts to write as many drafts of poems as you can for the rest of class. When you finish one prompt, try a new subject or topic and write another draft. 

Poem starters - Write a poem about:

• No one knows about... (use this opening line to write a poem that involves something or several things that someone doesn't know about you--or the speaker/narrator of the poem...)
• Three wishes (perhaps one wish per stanza; what would you wish for and why? Past wishes, wishes that came true, etc.) 
• Traveling to a special place or writing about going to a special place you visited when you were younger or in trouble, etc.
• Getting a haircut or writing about your first haircut experience; write about your first operation or visit to the hospital, etc.
• A scientific fact (real or invented) that fascinates you [Use scientific vocabulary to describe ordinary human activities, etc.]
• An insect that got into your home or an insect that you studied or observed in a particular place/time
• The sound of a specific language (a time you heard a new word or a different language)
• Death (the time you first became aware of death or mortality or loss)
• The number 3 (or your favorite #)
• The ocean (recall your first visit there, or use the ocean as a symbol for conflict in a human life)
• Missing someone 
• Something that makes you angry
• The ups and downs of love
• The view out of your window or your backyard or a room in your house
• City lights at night (lights in the morning or during a quiet rainstorm or snowfall)
• A particular work of art (ekphrastic poetry—find a picture and describe it or how you feel viewing it)
• Having a superpower (If I could…; or I’ll be your…, etc.)
• Being in an airplane or on a train or on horseback or a bike (flying or riding for the first time)
• Playing a sport
• A shadow
• A person transformed into an animal or object (You are a…; describe a person as an animal or object, etc.)

HOMEWORK: Write poems.