Reading Circles; A Return to Poetry

Period 3: Welcome back!

This morning please gather in your small groups and share/read your humorous essays to each other. Finish the period (or until time is called) to discuss your best writing practices: answer/discuss:

• What do you do when given a writing assignment that helps you get started?
• What do you do when you hit a wall or stop writing and need to continue?
• What advice or tricks can you share with your peers about how to complete assignments?
• Discuss successes you have made this year so far in writing (pieces you liked or that worked for you, pieces you felt proud of, pieces you think you wrote well)
• As you share, take notes of these best practices from your peers in your journal.

Finally, as we gather again together make a New Year's resolution about your writing: what changes will you make to be successful this year? Write these ideas/goals in your journal.

Period 4ish:

Poems

If you think of poems as very short stories that usually focus on one or two strong images, you might come closer to understanding their power to evoke feelings. Other times, poems play with words. Like this one: 

It's all so complicated anyway... 

The problem with young poets 

is that you are too attached 

to your pain to see anything 

but the pain, as if you are 

wearing sunglasses inside

in a dark room filled with self

inflicted dark, dark thoughts. Sad. 

Sad.

Sad.

Growing up 

can suck. Yes. Or no.

Like a bent straw

that doesn't draw air. You are 

depressed. Empty like 

a glass jar. You are 

sad or mad or disappointed in 

people who, so far, let you 

down or leave you behind. You 

blame Your mother. Your father. 

Your friends. Your teachers.

God. Society. Your life. In which 

you have just been introduced, like

the new kid at school who 

wants to fit in, but doesn't

know which clique to trust. Or

If there's any reason to click on

or click off, to be or not to exist.

But you know it's only you. 

It's always been only you.

Which is why the words 

don't come when you call, 

like a cat that you want to pet

but can't. He won't come. 

Nothing comes when 

called. No muse. No use. 

Of course,

you feel dumb. Numb. It's 

safer to feel nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing. 

You feel

unsure and unsafe and unloved 

in your own awkward skin, partly 

because you cannot love yourself.

Like a snake who hates shedding

her skin, only to find more 

of the same skin underneath that

skin and 

nothing 

changes fast enough, but all is 

changing fast enough. The same old 

same old

nothing.

• Deer Hit by Jon Loomis. Note the use of stanzas in this poem. Why is the poem structured in couplet stanzas? The clues are subtly suggested in the story and conflict of the poem.
• Mother Doesn't Want a Dog by Judith Viorst. Poetry doesn't have to use fancy and difficult words. It's not supposed to be obscure. It's about human life. It can be simple and straightforward, but it should surprise us by the end. It should say things we've all seen but in a way that we never thought of saying before. Rhyme is completely unnecessary but sounds nice.
• Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market by Pablo Neruda. Of course, poetry can also use metaphor and symbolism to talk about what we love, what we lose, what dies, what lives. Subject matter for most poems is taken directly from everyday and ordinary life. It doesn't have to be about grand or cosmic things. It is grand and cosmic because it sees the ordinary in a new and extraordinary way.

Now it's your turn to try.

When asked, please go to the LIBRARY. Complete this activity with the time remaining in class:

A. Choose a book of poetry from the selections to read and study. Sign out the book and indicate on the list what book you chose (and the author).

B. Find a seat or corner in the library. Read your poetry collection selection. As you read, list themes, settings, ideas, etc. and capture cool or effective lines in your journal. If you like a line, write it down in your journal for later. Then keep reading.

HOMEWORK: Please continue reading your poetry book on your own. If you didn't complete part B of the assignment above, do that. Bring your poetry book to our next class. We will be using it.