English I
Mrs. Grant
Final Outside Reading Book Response Assignment
If you want to work with a partner. . . .
"Dear Classmate" using email, write another student in class (and cc me) about your
book, having a written conversation about the book.
What to do:
1) select a partner
2) Email your partner a thoughtful letter about the book you've read. Be sure to
mention the author and title and to write a THOUGHTFUL, ORIGINAL, and
DETAILED (Ex: use specific character names and places from the text) email letter
about your book. Use a passage or two from the book to support your thinking. Cite it.
Follow standard English conventions. (Send by 5/8).
3) After reading your partner's email, respond to it in a thoughtful, original manner.
Again, cc me. (Respond by 5/11).
If you want to continue sloshing around in poetry . . . .
“Poetry Connection” Bring in poems that are thematically related to the story; integrate these
into larger discussion. Present to class. 5/11
“Epistle Poem” write a poem in the form and voice of a letter: e.g., Scout to Calpurnia (see
example of Epistle Poem on back). Then, in a few paragraphs, discuss your thinking behind the
poem and how it relates to the book. 5/11
“13 Views” inspired by Stevens's poem "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird": each
stanza offers a different view of a character or chapter. (see example of “Blackbird” on
back) 5/11
If you have an additional idea related to partner work or poetry, please let me know!
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Epistle Poem
Epistolary poems, from the Latin "epistula" for "letter," are, quite literally, poems that read as
letters. As poems of direct address, they can be intimate and colloquial or formal and
measured. The subject matter can range from philosophical investigation to a declaration of
love to a list of errands, and epistles can take any form, from heroic couplets to free verse.
Letter to N.Y.
By Elizabeth Bishop
For Louise Crane
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
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Further examples of Epistle Poems. . . .
This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Letter
by Langston Hughes
Dear Mama,
Time I pay rent and get my food
and laundry I don't have much left
but here is five dollars for you
to show you I still appreciates you.
My girl-friend send her love and say
she hopes to lay eyes on you sometime in life.
Mama, it has been raining cats and dogs up
here. Well, that is all so I will close.
Your son baby
Respectably as ever,
Joe
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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs
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