Thursday September 9, 2010

Reminders: Vocabulary 1 is due tomorrow. After class it is 10 points off per day; that includes the weekend.

On Monday you have your summer reading assessment. See previous blogs for details. Below is a generic critical lens model, in case you have forgotton. I suggest you review this.

Model for writing a critical lens essay. Note that the bold words must appear in the essay.

As (insert the author’s name or write as someone once said if you do not know the author’s name) once said, “ (insert quote). In other words (this is where you paraphrase the quote.) Use words that are not part of the quote. You may write two to three sentences. This is supported in the (insert first genre: novel, autobiography, play, memoir, epic poem) (insert first title) by (insert author) and the (insert second genre) (insert second title) by (insert second author) through the literary elements of (choose two: character, plot, setting, theme, tone).
Paragraph 2: support the above with book 1
Give two detailed, specific examples
Paragraph 3: support the above with book 2
Give two detailed, specific examples.

Conclusion: do not repeat the quote, but make a general, universal statement that ties the two books into the writer’s words.
IN class today:

We are reviewing The Yellow Wallpaper in terms of literary elements:
character,
plot,(foreshadowing, irony, climax, denouement)
theme
point-of view
tone/ mood
figurative language devices (imagery, similes, metaphor, personification. onomatopoia,)

HOMEWORK for tomorrow. Please read through the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens. Be prepared to read it aloud "trippingly'.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens


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.