Literature: March 2008 Archive Page

I've been making an extra effort this year to create some new worksheets designed to teach basic, stand-alone concepts in my Introduction to Literary Study class.

Here's a new worksheet to help students write a sonnet.  Below is the part they're actually supposed to submit... after that I've included the text that explains the assignment. I've already taught the basic form of the sonnet, so this is a review, but I tried to make it stand on its own.  My goal is to teach the form, rather than to encourage or reward creative expression, but I also want students to have fun.

Suggestions?  Comments?

Workbook 2-2: Write a Sonnet                                           Name ____________________________
(Bring printout to class.)

This is a poem that I wrote; Eye Contact published it a few issues ago.

 

Your retro, old-skool little song enshrines The unrelenting jackboot five-stress beat Of heel-toe thumping heel-toe bumping feet In fourteen rigid rhyming goose-step lines. What talent's there? I'll never march; I swarm! I curse your foolish rules, your chains that bind, That dare to organize my off-beat mind; For truly I don't need no steenkin' form. Why pack and prune, revise, rework, rephrase My unproof'd laundry list of angst or hate? In beatless bliss I'll blurt and bloviate And vent my emo vices in cafés. From boxy vises freed, such verse as mine Shall flow like so much screw-top Wal-Mart wine.

Scan the poem (identify the rhyme scheme and stress pattern). (Write on this page.) Note the "turning point" and identify the new idea. (Write on this page.) Identify the "main point" driven home in the final couplet. (On this page.) What can you conclude about the relationship between the imaginary speaker of the poem, and my own intentions as the author of the poem (and a teacher who asks students to write sonnets)? (Answer in a brief paragraph on the back.)

 

Part IIa:  Present your own original sonnet in the grid. You may write on a printout, or edit this file.

Part IIb:  Write a short paragraph (on the back) that explains how your poem demonstrates your knowledge of prosody (see Hamilton) and your ability to apply that knowledge in an original creative work. Explain any deliberate deviations from iambic pentameter.

Play This Thing offers this review of "Photopia" (a text game by Adam Cadre).

Photopia is very, very linear. It has very simple puzzles. It's barely interactive at all.

And yet it works. Photopia could be a short story, but it would lose most of its impact. It's difficult to explain why that is without ruining the game. The key to Photopia's success is the interactions between the player and the main character (who, interestingly enough, is never actually playable).

Photopia takes the term "interactive fiction" to a new level, because that's really what it is.

Photopia actually brought IF to that new level almost 10 years ago, back in 1998, so this isn't exactly news -- but the game is still worth the praise today.

Mike Edwards describes his first time teaching Bartleby the Scrivener:

I stole the idea for my lesson plan from a colleague, who'd used it to great success. Minor modifications on my part, but it went like this: for homework, I'd asked them to read the story in its entirety, and told them to be prepared to lead discussion in class today, and to come to class with notes on motivation and action in the story to help them do so.

I brought my laptop to class, which I'd never done before. (Each classroom has its own dedicated computer.) I set it up on my desk. In the seconds before class started, I said to them something like this: "You've just read a story in which someone, with a screen between him and the other characters, fails to do what they expect of him, and in violating the expectations customary to their relationship, causes disruption and concern."

And that was All. I. Said.

BoingBoing links to an interesting story about time travel and a self-policing community of time-travelers (modeled on a Wiki community).

11/21/2104
At 02:21:30, SneakyPete wrote:
Vienna, 1907: after numerous attempts, have infiltrated the Academy of Fine Arts and facilitated Adolf Hitler's admission to that institution. Goodbye, Hitler the dictator; hello, Hitler the modestly successful landscape artist! Brought back a few of his paintings as well, any buyers?

At 02:29:17, SilverFox316 wrote:
All right; that's it. Having just returned from 1907 Vienna where I secured the expulsion of Hitler from the Academy by means of an elaborate prank involving the Prefect, a goat, and a substantial quantity of olive oil, I now turn my attention to our newer brethren, who, despite rules to the contrary, seem to have no intention of reading Bulletin 1147 (nor its Addendum, Alternate Means of Subverting the Hitlerian Destiny, and here I'm looking at you, SneakyPete). Permit me to sum it up and save you the trouble: no Hitler means no Third Reich, no World War II, no rocketry programs, no electronics, no computers, no time travel. Get the picture?

At 02:29:49, SilverFox316 wrote:
PS to SneakyPete: your Hitler paintings aren't worth anything, schmuck, since you probably brought them directly here from 1907, which means the paint's still fresh. Freaking n00b.

At 07:55:03, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Amen, SilverFox316. Although, point of order, issues relating to early 1900s Vienna should really go in that forum, not here. This has been a recurring problem on this forum.

Scotsman:

"I did not see the pilot and even so, it would have been impossible for me to tell that it was Saint-Exupéry. In our youth at school we had all read him, we loved his books. I loved his personality. If I had known I wouldn't have fired. Not at him." -- 88-year-old Luftwaffe veteran Horst Rippert, speaking of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, aviator and author of The Little Prince.

The Tribune Review published this story about an incident at my local library.

The director of the Greensburg Hempfield Area Library was injured Wednesday afternoon while blocking a married couple who allegedly tried to steal a Christmas novel.

[...]

Muccari said he was near the entrance for the 4:22 p.m. incident because he was posting tax forms on a bulletin board by the metal detector when the alarm went off as Jennifer Cook walked through.

He determined that a book in her bag was her own, but discovered that she was concealing a copy of "Finding Noel" in the front pocket of her hooded sweatshirt.

"She said, 'I wasn't trying to steal it,' and I said, 'Oh really?' " Muccari said.

When Muccari asked a clerk to call police, Jennifer Cook offered up the book, said she had to be someplace and asked him to cancel the police call, Muccari said.

Although David Cook initially claimed not to know about the attempted theft, he pushed Muccari as the couple tried to flee, police Capt. George Seranko said.

Police were able to identify the Cooks because the man left behind his wallet and the woman left behind a broken, silver necklace with a charm bearing the name "Jennifer." Police have been unable to locate the couple.

I love the details the reporter puts into the story, such as the quote from the judge who married the Cooks.  I looked up the opening of "Finding Noel" on Amazon, and found this:

When I was a boy, my mother told me that everyone comes into our lives for a reason. I'm not sure I believe that's true. The thought of God weaving millions of lives together into a grand human tapestry seems a bit fatalistic to me. Still, as I look back at my life, there seem to be times when such divinity is apparent.... Of course such a theory carried to the extreme would mean that God sabotaged my car that night because, had my car's timing belt not broken at that precise moment, this story never would have happened. But it did, and my life was forever changed. Perhaps my mother was right. If God can align the planets, maybe He can do the same for our lives.

Maybe the Cooks should have thought about that before their little encounter with Muccari.

They're definitely stressed. They're sleep-deprived. They may be furious (at me!).  But they're still riding the intellectual buzz that comes from finishing a research paper.

I love what happens in the classroom on the day a major assignment's due.  Students come to class after having wrestled a mess of free-write drafts and marginalia and Post-It-Notalia into some semblance of order.  In pursuit of evidence to support their thesis, they've turned to sources that aren't on the reading list, so their comments during class discussions are opportunities for them to introduce new knowledge, rather than a performance for my benefit. 

A similar thing happens in lit surveys on the day of a scheduled quiz. Because the students have spent some time re-reading and reflecting, they've noticed connections they didn't see when they were just trying to mow through the required number of pages.  The part of the class time that's not devoted to the quiz always seems a little livelier.  Yet I find reading quizzes to be confrontational and artificial. Of course, journalism students students do need practice writing under pressure, and there are courses in which the content is so voluminous and complex that regular quizzes can be an important tool for filtering and categorizing. 

So maybe quizzes are a necessary evil, in order to generate that quiz-day discussion buzz... but a quiz doesn't really teach... it doesn't really let me assess much besides quiz-taking ability... a quiz takes time away from discussion (which is what really matters in a seminar). An a quiz adds an artificial time constraint that's antithetical to everything we tell our students about how to read and write critically.  Oh... and I really hate grading quizzes... the students haven't had the time to put much soul into their work, and because they've learned the value of drafting and revising, they know they'd have been able to make their point more convincingly if they'd only had more time.  When I take the time to write prompts that will generate short answers that I'd actually be interested in reading, the short quizzes turn into "quizzams" (a word I use in order to signal to my students that they'll have to think, rather than regurgitate). 

There are other ways to check to make sure students are doing the readings... you can dictate a very general question and have them supply specific examples in a free-write for a few minutes. (The ones who didn't do the reading will spend most of the time flipping through the book -- if they brought it with them.) 

Of course, there are also the students who stay up all night to finish their paper, but are too tired to come to class.  I value the "post-paper buzz" so much that I have in the past added an explicit penalty to a major assignment grade, for students who skipped class on the day the assignment is due.  (That turned out to be more trouble than it was worth... now I just factor the student's decision into their overall class participation grade.)

By the time they've submitted their final draft, I've already seen at least the thesis paragraph and a few pages of quotes, so I can call on students who've already thought in depth about whatever sub-topic gets raised in the discussion.  More hands go up while I'm talking, and more heads nod when a peer makes a good connection. Students expecting to be quizzed come in braced for the unknown. That energy can be put to good use in a pre-quiz review session, but I don't get the idea that the effect is lasting.  On the other hand, students who come to class having just finished a research paper have a sense of accomplishment.