Hamlet, a conflict map.

Today: Conflict mapping Hamlet at the AP Underground.

"Romantic Moments," Tony Hoagland

Romantic Moment

After seeing the nature documentary we walk down Canyon Road,
onto the plaza of art galleries and high end clothing stores

where the orange trees are fragrant in the summer night
and the pink adobe walls glow fleshlike in the dark.

It is just our second date, and we sit down on a bench,
not looking at each other, holding hands,

and if I were a bull penguin right now I would lean over
and vomit softly into the mouth of my beloved

and if I were a peacock I’d flex my gluteal muscles to
erect and spread the quills on my Cinemax tail.

If she were a female walkingstick bug she might
insert her hypodermic proboscis directly into my neck

and inject me with a rich hormonal sedative
before attaching her egg sac to my thoracic undercarriage,

and if I were a young chimpanzee I would break off a nearby tree limb
and smash all the windows in the plaza jewelry stores.

And if she were a Brazilian leopard frog she would wrap her impressive
tongue three times around my right thigh and

pummel me lightly against the surface of our pond
and I would know her feelings were sincere.

Instead we sit awhile in silence, until
she remarks that in the relative context of tortoises and iguanas,

human males seem to be actually rather expressive.
And I say that female crocodiles really don’t receive

enough credit for their gentleness,
Then she suggests that it is time for us to go

do to get some ice cream cones

and eat them.

--Tony Hoagland

Share your right sides at the AP Underground.

Read on video by the crazed-looking Tony Hoagland himself.

Also, power verbs and tone list handouts are now on the class Notes page. 

Today: an AP Underground dialogue about Robert Pack's "An Echo Sonnet."

Formal Response Portfolio due Thursday, 2/23.

 

                               Home interior by Ye Rin Mok

 

 For Thursday, please compile the best work you have produced in the course of writing formal responses this quarter.  This "Formal Response Portfolio" should be between 4-6 pages and should contain at least four different examples of analysis--at least four different subjects, that is. It should also show your work at its best.  Revise your work if it is not to that point yet. 

Please submit this portfolio to the appropriate Homework folder, using last name in the filename, like this: "HillFRP."

Within the portfolio itself, to separate each individual section, simply insert a line with three centered asterisks.  The first line of each sample of analysis should serve to identify the subject you are writing about, so there is no need for individual headings or titles other than the one at the top of the page.

100 pts.

Hamlet's Diary

To facilitate our discussion of Hamlet and to give your a head start on your formal response writing (#3 is due next Monday), I've started a new forum at the AP Underground called, for no clear reason, "Hamlet's Diary."

On any given day that we look at Hamlet in class, I will be asking four students to post two discussion prompts each to that sub-forum.  These prompts should simply take the form of questions related to the portion of the play we observed in class that day and should be posted by the next day before school begins. Begin each prompt with a tag that tells us, at a minimum, what act and scene your prompt relates to.  If your prompt relates to style or language, you might provide line numbers, too.

When devising your prompts, recall the four doorways that give us access to the process of making observations: how is setting (physical, social, political) playing a role?  What characterization is taking place?  What actions seem significant?  What style/language close readings seem appropriate?

Thursday: Perrine Project Work Day

First of all, let's say that we push Formal Response #3 to not next Thursday, (no school next Friday) but the Monday following.

Secondly, let's say that we do not start our Perrine Projects next Tuesday--we'll start on Thursday instead.  That pushes everyone back at least two days, and for sure we'll probably have to make more changes along the way, too.

But you need to think about them now.  That assignment handout made you all responsible for a lot.  And us, your audience, while we are watching and interacting with you, don't want to be bored.  We want efficient, clear description of the techniques and their effects.  We want quick examples using poems from the chapter.  We want impressive examples of how we can write about these techniques.  And we'll probably want cookies or something.

So today, put some thought into it.  And some work, and we'll see what progress we can make.  I can't promise many (or any?) more work days between now and their start.  Have a great day and see you Friday.

Here is a poem I have been thinking about all day:

"Scarecrow on Fire"

We all think about suddenly disappearing.

The train tracks lead there, into the woods.

Even in the financial district: wooden doors

in alleyways. First I want to put something small

into your hand, a button or river stone or

key I don’t know to what. I don’t

have that house anymore across from the graveyard

and its black angel. What counts as a proper

goodbye? My last winter in Iowa there was always

a ladybug or two in the kitchen for cheer

even when it was ten below. We all feel

suspended over a drop into nothingness.

Once you get close enough, you see what

one is stitching is a human heart. Another

is vomiting wings. Hell, even now I love life.

Whenever you put your feet on the floor

in the morning, whatever the nightmare,

it’s a miracle or fantastic illusion:

the solidity of the boards, the steadiness

coming into the legs. Where did we get

the idea when we were kids to rub dirt

into the wound or was that just in Pennsylvania?

Maybe poems are made of breath, the way water,

cajoled to boil, says, This is my soul, freed.

--Dean Young

Poetry Sandbox

Four poems to choose from today.  Pick any two, read them once, twice, and for each  compose a single claim that might work for your first body paragraph in an essay about that poem.

Your claims may be left-side, right-side, or full, but, if left side, should go through a specific "doorway" of setting, character, action, or style, and describe that doorway specifically, originally.  Here is s list of adjectives that might help you describe the doorway you are going through.

Post your claims as "questions" in the appropriate topic set up at AP Underground.

Here are the four poems in our sandbox today, all found at the great web site Poetry 180.

"Introduction to Poetry," Billy Collins.

"Radio," Laurel Blossom

"After Us," Connie Wanek

"White Eyes," Mary Oliver

Friday Moderator: John's Sunday

To participate in today's moderator session, please click here.

Roberty Bly, "Surprised by Evening"

There is unknown dust that is near us
Waves breaking on shores just over the hill
Trees full of birds that we have never seen
Nets drawn with dark fish.

The evening arrives; we look up and it is there
It has come through the nets of the stars
Through the tissues of the grass
Walking quietly over the asylums of the waters.

The day shall never end we think:
We have hair that seemed born for the daylight;
But at last the quiet waters of the night will rise
And our skin shall see far off as it does under water.

Closed Today

SACS is closed today.  Let's have our next formal response be due on Monday, and in class essay #5(b) will be on Tuesday. 

Here is a kind of sweet love poem, with a child as an intermediary, by an Indiana poet named Joe Mills.  Maybe you will like it.

The Return of the Openers

Today, the Feltron Report, a kind of personal annual report that a man named Nicholas Felton has been creating about his life since 2005, compiling and depicting statistics in ways that are surprising, illuminating, and often beautiful.

How does one go about reading something like this? 

What can we observe? 

Let's remember our four friends: Are there settings here?  What character elements are depicted?  What actions are represented?  How does the style of this project affect the attitudes and ideas it implicates?

Interesting interview with Felton from an episode of the great podcast Radiolab.  Starts 17'05" into the show.

All the Pretty Horses: A Harkness

APH Harkness Questions

First, a Note: Please bring your Perrine textbooks with you to class on Tuesday.  

For at least three of the questions below, try to have a thoughtful response prepared, and a page citation or two that will help back you up. 

These questions can be considered in almost any order, but my hope is that our Harkness discussion can touch on at least four of them in the course of 15-20 minutes.

Your discussion may also follow questions of your own that you bring with you or that occur to you in the course of your talk: “what’s the deal with” questions, or questions about a character’s motivations in a particular scene, etc.

1.      How is this novel a typical Western?

2.      How does it deviate from the myth?

3.      In what ways is this a Romantic novel?

4.      Does the novel undercut its Romanticism in any way? Is there anything in this novel, that is, that suggests a more tragic, realistic perspective on the western myth?

5.      Who has power/control in this novel?

6.      How do they wield this control?

7.      Is there a wilderness to be tamed? How is it characterized?

found on Kottke.org: an answer to the question "what is it like to have an understanding of very advanced mathematics?"

You are comfortable with feeling like you have no deep understanding of the problem you are studying. Indeed, when you do have a deep understanding, you have solved the problem and it is time to do something else. This makes the total time you spend in life reveling in your mastery of something quite brief. One of the main skills of research scientists of any type is knowing how to work comfortably and productively in a state of confusion.

John Ashbery, "At North Farm"

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?