Tuesday

Turn in poetry packages. Please stack neatly on the side of my desk or clip together. Some students might need to print. Since I am not there, they cannot use my computers for that, but allow them one or two at a time to go print in the library or in another teacher’s room.

After that, each student should get one of those green literature books that are littered about my room. Look up “Shooting an Elephant” in the table of contents of that text and read this nonfiction essay silently. Answer all questions at the end of the story in complete sentences.

Make coffee house plans!

Thursday

Here is the rubric you requested! It is for the poetry editor.

Wednesday

Please do the writing parts of the new assignment, due Dec.17 and 18, by typing it double spaced throughout.


Further, plan to present your art and poetry on A-day, Thursday, December 19, and on B-day, Friday, December 20, in a coffeehouse setting. Bring the poetry you have kept in the closet all this time, the paintings that reveal something true, the songs that will improve our day, the dramatic monologue or performance that will insert delight into the early morning of our lives. And a donut and a drink would be nice too.

Tuesday

The next assignment:

Get out all your Donne poems (or look them up on the blog), and order them according to clear organizing principles.

You are about to edit a short student edition of the poetry of John Donne. Your job for the publisher is to group Donne's poems appropriately and put them in the best order both by groups and by contents within the groups. 

I recommend three separate groupings. For instance, you might have one group called "Jack Donne, the Rake." Have clear criteria for choosing poems for this group, but of course, some of the main ones should be that all these poems reveal a young, reckless voice and regard love with a distinct physical emphasis. Within that group, decide how and why you are going to order the poems in a certain way: "The Flea" first, "Song" second, and so on, with a clear critical principle guiding your decisions.  

Once you have decided upon your criteria for ordering the poems, physically do it with the physical copies of the poems. Then write a one-page overall introduction to Donne with relevant biographical and general critical information. Next, write a one-half-page introduction to each group of poems in which you explain your criteria for ordering and grouping as you have.  Give the entire collection a title and do the same for each group within the collection. Make a table of contents that you place right after a title page. Then provide the overall intro, then the first group intro, then the first group poems, then the second group intro, then the second group poems...

Work singly or in pairs – no threes! You will receive a project grade. Pairs will share.

Friday

As a class, you are just being awesome with this poetry project.

Wednesday

For your presentations, remember to email me your FORMATTED poems in an attached document so that they will show on the whiteboard as you wrote them. That's the Donne model, your Donne emulation, and your Wilson response. Be prepared to answer questions about your artistic choices.

Monday

Look at this base rubric and see what looks good or bad about it. It is for the Donne/Wilson project:

Donne (50)
Coherence	10
Strong contrasts manifest in wit, irony, and/or paradox	5
Memory as a theme or motif	5
Shape	5
Rhyme scheme	5
Numerical meter	5
Emulation of metrical variations	5
Emulation of sentence patterns	5
Emulation of image types and figures of speech	5
Wilson (50)
Coherence	15
Strong contrasts	5
Memory as theme or motif	5
Rhyme as Donne poem rhymes (with flexibility)	5
Emulation of language patterns (omissions, verb use)	10
Truth of character	10