I hope you had a great weekend. If you missed class, we completed the following:
1. We reviewed the TP CASTT method using several different pieces of poetry. Students were placed in groups and the following poems were evaluated. I AM SO PROUD OF YOU! Well done with the evaluations using the TP CASTT FORMAT! If you missed class, you are welcome to complete a TP CASTT evaluation on one of the following poems.
American Hero
Essex Hemphill
I have nothing to lose tonight.
All my men surround me, panting,
as I spin the ball above our heads
on my middle finger.
It’s a shimmering club light
and I’m dancing, slick in my sweat.
Squinting, I aim at the hole
fifty feet away. I let the tension go.
Shoot for the net. Choke it.
I never hear the ball
slap the backboard. I slam it
through the net. The crowd goes wild
for our win. I scored
thirty-two points this game
and they love me for it.
Everyone hollering
is a friend tonight.
But there are towns,
certain neighborhoods
where I’d be hard pressed
to hear them cheer
if I move on the block.
I have nothing to lose tonight.
All my men surround me, panting,
as I spin the ball above our heads
on my middle finger.
It’s a shimmering club light
and I’m dancing, slick in my sweat.
Squinting, I aim at the hole
fifty feet away. I let the tension go.
Shoot for the net. Choke it.
I never hear the ball
slap the backboard. I slam it
through the net. The crowd goes wild
for our win. I scored
thirty-two points this game
and they love me for it.
Everyone hollering
is a friend tonight.
But there are towns,
certain neighborhoods
where I’d be hard pressed
to hear them cheer
if I move on the block.
FREEDOM
by William Stafford
Freedom is not following a river. Freedom is following a river, though, if you want to.
It is deciding now by what happens now.
It is knowing that luck makes a difference.
No leader is free, no follower is free - the rest of us can often be free.
Most of the world are living by creeds too odd, chancy and habit forming to be worth arguing about by reason.
If you are oppressed, wake up about four in the morning; most places you can usually be free some of the time if you wake up before other people.
It is deciding now by what happens now.
It is knowing that luck makes a difference.
No leader is free, no follower is free - the rest of us can often be free.
Most of the world are living by creeds too odd, chancy and habit forming to be worth arguing about by reason.
If you are oppressed, wake up about four in the morning; most places you can usually be free some of the time if you wake up before other people.
The Beep, Beep Poem
By Nicki Giovanni
I should write a poem
but there's almost nothing
that hasn't been said
and said and said
beautifully, ugly, blandly
excitingly
stay in school
make love not war
death to all tyrants
where have all the flowers gone
and don't they understand at kent state
the troopers will shoot . . . again
i could write a poem
because i love walking
in the rain
and the solace of my naked
body in a tub of water
cleanliness may not be next
but there's almost nothing
that hasn't been said
and said and said
beautifully, ugly, blandly
excitingly
stay in school
make love not war
death to all tyrants
where have all the flowers gone
and don't they understand at kent state
the troopers will shoot . . . again
i could write a poem
because i love walking
in the rain
and the solace of my naked
body in a tub of water
cleanliness may not be next
to godliness but it sure feels
good
i wrote a poem
for my father but it was so constant
i burned it up
he hates change
and i'm baffled by sameness
i composed a ditty
about encore american and worldwide news
but the editorial board
said no one would understand it
as it people have to be tricked
into sensitivity
though of course they do
i love to drive my car
hours on end
along back country roads
i love to stop for cider and apples and acorn squash
three for a dollar
i love my CB when the truckers talk
and the hum of the diesel in my ear
i love the aloneness of the road
when i ascent descending curves
the power within my toe delights me
and i fling my spirit down the highway
i love the way i feel
when i pass the moon and i loller to the stars
i'm coming through Beep Beep
good
i wrote a poem
for my father but it was so constant
i burned it up
he hates change
and i'm baffled by sameness
i composed a ditty
about encore american and worldwide news
but the editorial board
said no one would understand it
as it people have to be tricked
into sensitivity
though of course they do
i love to drive my car
hours on end
along back country roads
i love to stop for cider and apples and acorn squash
three for a dollar
i love my CB when the truckers talk
and the hum of the diesel in my ear
i love the aloneness of the road
when i ascent descending curves
the power within my toe delights me
and i fling my spirit down the highway
i love the way i feel
when i pass the moon and i loller to the stars
i'm coming through Beep Beep
Leningrad Cemetery, Winter of 1941
by Sharon Olds
by Sharon Olds
That winter, the dead could not be buried.
The ground was frozen, the gravediggers weak from hunger,
the coffin wood used for fuel. So they were covered with something
and taken on a child's sled to the cemetery
in the sub-zero air. They lay on the soil,
some of them wrapped in dark cloth
bound with rope like the tree's ball of roots
when it waits to be planted; others wound in sheets,
their pale, gauze, tapered shapes
stiff as cocoons that will split down the center
when the new life inside is prepared;
but most lay like corpses, their coverings
coming undone, naked calves
hard as corded wood spilling
from under a cloak, a hand reaching out
with no sign of peace, wanting to come back
even to the bread made of glue and sawdust,
even to the icy winter, and the siege.
Identity
by Julio Noboa Polanco
Let them be as flowers,
always watered, fed, guarded, admired,
but harnessed to a pot of dirt.
I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed,
clinging on cliffs, like an eagle
wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.
To have broken through the surface of stone,
to live, to feel exposed to the madness
of the vast, eternal sky.
To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea,
carrying my soul, my seed,
beyond the mountains of time or into the abyss of the bizarre.
I'd rather be unseen, and if
then shunned by everyone,
than to be a pleasant-smelling flower,
growing in clusters in the fertile valley,
where they're praised, handled, and plucked
by greedy, human hands.
I'd rather smell of musty, green stench
than of sweet, fragrant lilac.
If I could stand alone, strong and free,
I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed.
by Julio Noboa Polanco
Let them be as flowers,
always watered, fed, guarded, admired,
but harnessed to a pot of dirt.
I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed,
clinging on cliffs, like an eagle
wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.
To have broken through the surface of stone,
to live, to feel exposed to the madness
of the vast, eternal sky.
To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea,
carrying my soul, my seed,
beyond the mountains of time or into the abyss of the bizarre.
I'd rather be unseen, and if
then shunned by everyone,
than to be a pleasant-smelling flower,
growing in clusters in the fertile valley,
where they're praised, handled, and plucked
by greedy, human hands.
I'd rather smell of musty, green stench
than of sweet, fragrant lilac.
If I could stand alone, strong and free,
I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed.
HOMEWORK!
1. Make sure you have seen the film that correlates with your independent reading book.