In-Class Essay
• You have 45 minutes to complete your essay.
– Double space
– MLA heading
• The only material you may have on your
desk is your outline.
• When you are done, staple your outline to the back
of your essay and turn it in.
– Remember Prompt #3 = 4/3, Prompt #2 = 3/2,
Prompt #1 = 2
Announcements & Reminders
• If you haven’t already sent me your book
report, I will accept it through midnight
tonight! Send to kate.dusto@asd20.org or
kchendrickson@gmail.com (if D20 is full).
• Sentence Analysis #4 DUE Friday 11/30
• Extra Credit Scarlet Letter essay DUE 12/7
– Expand your paragraph into a 3-paragraph essay worth
25 points in homework category
– Submit to Turnitin.com by 12/7
– Extra credit will only count if you have NO
missing work as of 12/7
Announcements & Reminders
• All late work must be turned in by Friday,
December 14. I will not grade any work
submitted during finals week.
• Finals Schedule
– Red 1 = Tuesday, Dec. 18, 7:45 – 9:30
– 3rd = Wednesday, Dec. 19, 7:45 – 9:30
• A study guide for the final will be available later this
week.
Poetry Verbal Badminton
• What comes to mind
when you think of
poetry? For 90 seconds,
we’ll play verbal
badminton:
– One person says whatever pops
into his/her head about poetry.
– Another person responds.
– Ideas are “batted” around the
room.
– Free associate! Make
connections! No judgments! Be
“good sports”!
Poetry is:
• “a small or large machine made of words.” –W.C.
Williams
• “condensed speech.” – Louis Zukofsky
• “an articulation of sound forms over time.” – Susan
Howe
• “the image of a rose.” – Ezra Pound
• “the logic of metaphor.” – H. Crane
• “a separate language.” –Valerie
• “a polymorphous perversity.” – Walt Whitman
What do we get from poetry?
• Glimpses of humanity/self
• New perspectives through
the defamiliarization of the
ordinary
• Inspiration and imagination
• Critical thinking skills
untitled (for Natalee and Jeremy)
By derek beaulieu derek beaulieu
– Poetry asks us to move from
examining language simply
as information but as an
object through the
relationship between form
and content.
The Trouble with Poetry
• Poetry evades a concrete definition; it is many things at
once.
• Poetry cannot be reduced to mere paraphrase.
– Form: how a poem does what it does
– Content: what a poem is about
• Complete the following sentence:
– The trouble with poetry is _________________.
• As we read the poem, pay attention to the
author’s tone. What does he think the “trouble’
of poetry is? What mood does he try to evoke in
the reader?
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night—
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky—
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,
and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti—
to be perfectly honest for a moment—
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
• What image stuck out to you the most?
• According to Collins, what is the trouble with
poetry?
• What message is he trying to convey to the reader?
“The Trouble with Poetry”
Billy Collins
• Big question: How does this poem reflect one of the
themes of American literature?
– American Dream = self-improvement
• How does this poem reflect a quest for improvement?
– American Journey = physical, mental, emotional change
• How does this poem reflect change?
– American Hero = on ordinary person in a heroic (or
tragically heroic) role
• How does this poem reflect achieving goals?
Think-pair-share with a neighbor.
New American Poetry
• Next unit includes Walt Whitman and Emily
Dickinson.
• As we read, consider how the poems convey
messages through form as well as content. The
structure of a poem communicates just as much as
the ideas embedded in its structure.
• Focus on how American themes are
reflected and evolved through their poems.