English 262

Blackboard Thursday Instructions for Jan. 28th

 

Before completing the items below, go into Blackboard and watch/read through these two Power Point presentations:

  • "Self-Profiles, Whitman, and Transcendentalism." Concentrate especially on the latter quarter or so.
  • "Form and Music in Poetry."

 

1) (2-3 paragraphs, roughly)

Drawing on the Power Point presentation titled, "Form and Music in Poetry," examine the music of Whitman’s lines.  Find 2 good and meaningful examples of internal rhyme, assonance, consonance, alliteration, cadence, a burst of blank verse, and/or otherwise interesting and beautiful verbal music.  Quote the passages or lines you’ve identified and try to indicate with precision how the music is being made and why it matters.

 

2) And let’s get started on Dickinson:

—How is she radically unlike Whitman? Consider both form and content. (1 paragraph)

—How, perhaps oddly enough, is she actually like him? Again, consider both form and content. (1 paragraph)

—How would you describe her poetry based on our discussion last week of different kinds of reading and ways of approaching literature? In one good paragraph, does her poetry:

    Divert you? (take you away from reality?)

    Take you toward reality?

    Educate you? (teach you about a time period etc. or some other thing?)

    Interest you? Catch your attention? Engross you?

    Make you want to be deviant? :)

    Encourage “growth in your life”?

    “Spark your imagination”?

    Have value for its own sake?

    Something else?


 

3) A little Dickinson madness: look at YouTube interpretations of Dickinson poems:

All of Dickinson's poems can be sung to the melody of "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "Amazing Grace," and "Theme to Gilligan's Island." Listen to:

4) Pick a Dickinson poem and memorize it. That's right. Memorize it. Be prepared to recite the poem in class by Feb. 2nd.

 

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