The Final Blog!

We have a mere two days of class left before our presentations begin. I'd like one last blog post from you, a final reflection about the reading you have done this semester. What form it takes is up to you, but I'd like it to be at least 250 words, and it should be done by the end of class Friday.

Reflections like this help me to make this course as personal and challenging as possible. But you need to be honest--don't say things just to make me feel good about the class.

So, in your final blog post, begin with some statistics: As accurately (and honestly) as possible, tabulate how many pages you have read this semester for this class. If you like, you can also break that down by categories: (fiction / non-fiction, or pop fiction / literary fiction).

Then, in a free-written response, contemplate any or all of these questions:

(1) How would you characterize yourself as a reader when you started this class? How independent were you? What kinds of things would you read on your own? How often would you read on your own? Where or why would you read?

(2) During the course of this semester, what kind of reading did you do? Was it easy to find things that interested you? Did you have trouble finding something you could stick with? How did you choose the things you read? Did you have trouble meeting the weekly page quota?

(3) Where and when did you find yourself sitting down to read? Do you tend to read with music on, or in silence? By the computer? Did you find yourself checking your phone a lot, or do you ever lose yourself in the reading? Do you ever talk about the books you read with your family or friends or teachers?

(4) Now, at the end of the semester, have you changed in any way as a reader? Do you read the same types of books you did at the beginning, or have you discovered any new types of writing that you like? Are you more or less likely, do you think, to read independently this summer? What do you think you might read next?

(5) As for poetry . . describe your attitude toward it at the beginning of the semester. Was poetry treated any differently in this course compared to other English classes you've had? Was the type of poetry read here any different? Has your attitude toward poetry changed in any way?

Again, please be honest in your responses.

I've loved teaching you all this semester--thanks for taking the course and making every day a fun one.

Mr. Hill

"Togetherness," Yusef Komunyakaa

Someone says Tristan

& Isolde, the shared cup

& broken vows binding them,

& someone else says Romeo

& Juliet, a lyre & Jew’s harp

sighing a forbidden oath,

but I say a midnight horn

& a voice with a moody angel

inside, the two married rib

to rib, note for note. Of course,

I am thinking of those Tuesdays

or Thursdays at Billy Berg’s

in LA when Lana Turner would say,

“Please sing ‘Strange Fruit’

for me,” & then her dancing

nightlong with Mel Torme,

as if she knew what it took

to make brass & flesh say yes

beneath the clandestine stars

& a spinning that is so fast

we can’t feel the planet moving.

Is this why some of us fall

in & out of love? Did Lady Day

& Prez ever hold each other

& plead to those notorious gods?

I don’t know. But I do know

even if a horn & voice plumb

the unknown, what remains unsaid

coalesces around an old blues

& begs with a hawk’s yellow eyes.

"Barking," Jim Harrison

The moon comes up.

The moon goes down.

This is to inform you

that I didn’t die young.

Age swept past me

but I caught up.

Spring has begun here and each day

brings new birds up from Mexico.

Yesterday I got a call from the outside

world but I said no in thunder.

I was a dog on a short chain

and now there’s no chain.

"Today," Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

"You and I Are Disappearing," Yusef Komunyakaa

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak

she burns like a piece of paper.

She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.

We stand with our hands

hanging at our sides,
while she burns

like a sack of dry ice.

She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker's cigar,

silent as quicksilver.

A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of poppies
at the edge of a rain forest.
She rises like dragonsmoke
to my nostrils.
She burns like a burning bush
driven by a godawful wind.

"Self Help," Bruce Covey

A chicken soup for the rainbow lover’s soul.

A chicken soup for the lover of chicken soup.

A carnage of birds, a devastation.

Chicken soup for the dried-up garden—

It’s been a lousy summer sucking us dry.

Chicken soup for the grocery list.

Chicken soup for unwanted potatoes.

Chicken soup for extinct animals.

In the west, the sun sets upon chicken soup.

With or without noodles or rice or barley,

Or vegetables—canned or otherwise—

Carrots and celery or egg drop chicken soup—

Chicken eggs, of course—or the alphabet

Or chili sauce. Chicken soup for chili lovers,

For the spicy soul. Chicken butchered

& boiled specifically for your cold.

A chicken soup for the cold soul,

A chicken soup for the sole of your shoe.

A chicken soup for decision making:

Does she love me? Or love me not?

Knots tied with chicken soup.

Chicken soup tied and sold in knots.

38 ways to tie your soup, to be tied.

Chicken soup for the protection of others.

A prayer to chicken soup, may it bring me

A winning lottery ticket. Chicken soup

For recovering alcoholics who still

Need hydration. A hydrangea’s

Chicken soup—to be loved like no other.

A chicken soup for Barry Bonds—

May he break Hank Aaron’s record.

Stick a pin in the chicken soup & bet

On its opponent. 30-Love. Match point.

A chicken soup for winners.

A chicken soup for losers.

Chicken soup for those who tie or draw.

The 60-plus occupations of soup.

Chicken for Sue, born in the year

Of the snake. The snake that ate

An alligator and died. They both died.

A chicken soup for the one who is eaten.

A chicken soup for the one who eats

Things other than chicken soup.

Transcending the bowl. A meta-bowl

Chicken soup for the transcended bowl.

Chicken soup for the transcending soup.

Chicken soup for the Marxist, steering

Away from values associated with heirarchies.

Chicken soup for the mud wrestler,

The roller derby queen. Chicken soup

For dairy queen, for the queen of hearts,

For Lady Di and the paparazzi,

For clean and dirty kings and queens.

For kiwis with wings, for the royal

Food pyramid. Chicken soup in

January, it’s so nice

To slip upon the sliding ice.

"Self Help," Charles Bernstein

Home team suffers string of losses.—Time to change loyalties.

Quadruple bypass.—Hold the bacon on that next cheeseburger.

Poems tanking.—After stormiest days, sun comes out from behind clouds, or used to.

Marriage on rocks.—Nothing like Coke.

Election going the wrong direction.—Kick off slippers, take deep breathe, be here now.

Boss says your performance needs boost.—A long hot bath smoothes wrinkles.

War toll tops 100,000.—Get your mind off it, switch to reality TV.

Lake Tang Woo Chin Chicken with Lobster and Sweet Clam Sauce still not served and everyone else got their orders twenty minutes back.—Savor the water, feast on the company.

Subway floods and late for audition.—Start being the author of your own performance. Take a walk.

Slip on ice, break arm.—In moments like this, the preciousness of life reveals itself.

Wages down in non-union shop.—You’re a sales associate, not a worker; so proud to be part of the company.

Miss the train?—Great chance to explore the station!

Suicide bombers wrecks neighborhood.—Time to pitch in!

Nothing doing.—Take a break!

Partner in life finds another partner.—Now you can begin the journey of life anew.

Bald?—Finally, you can touch the sky with the top of your head.

Short-term recall shot.—Old memories are sweetest.

Hard drive crashes and novel not backed up.—Nothing like a fresh start.

Severe stomach cramps all morning.—Boy are these back issues of Field and Stream engrossing.

Hurricane crushes house.—You never seemed so resilient.

Brother-in-law completes second year in coma.—He seems so muchmore relaxed than he used to.

$75 ticket for Sunday meter violation on an empty street in residential neighborhood.—The city needs the money to make us safe and educate our kids.

Missed last episode of favorite murder mystery because you misprogrammed VCR.—Write your own ending!

Blue cashmere pullover has three big moth holes.—What a great looking shirt!

Son joins skinhead brigade of Jews for Jesus.—At least he’s following his bliss.

Your new play receives scathing reviews and closes after a single night.—What a glorious performance!

Pungent stench of homeless man on subway, asking for food.—Such kindness in his eyes, as I turn toward home.

Retirement savings lost on Enron and WorldCom.—They almost rhyme.

Oil spill kills seals.—The workings of the Lord are inscrutable.

Global warming swamps land masses.—Learn to accept change.

Bike going fast in wrong direction knocks you over.—A few weeks off your feet, just what the doctor ordered.

AIDS ravaging Africa.—Wasn’t Jeffrey Wright fabulous in Angels in America?

Muffler shot.—There’s this great pizza place next to the shop.

Income gap becomes crater.—Good motivation to get rich.

Abu Ghraib prisoners tortured.—Let’s face it, shit happens.

Oscar wins Emmy.—Award shows are da bomb.

FBI checking your library check-outs.—I also recommend books on Amazon.

Gay marriages annulled.—Who needs the state to sanctify our love?

President’s lies kill GIs.—He’s so decisive about his core values.

Self-Help.—Other drowns.

"What I learned from my mother," Julia Kasdorf

I learned from my mother how to love

the living, to have plenty of vases on hand

in case you have to rush to the hospital

with peonies cut from the lawn, black ants

still stuck to the buds. I learned to save jars

large enough to hold fruit salad for a whole

grieving household, to cube home-canned pears

and peaches, to slice through maroon grape skins

and flick out the sexual seeds with a knife point.

I learned to attend viewing even if I didn’t know

the deceased, to press the moist hands

of the living, to look in their eyes and offer

sympathy, as though I understood loss even then.

I learned that whatever we say means nothing,

what anyone will remember is that we came.

I learned to believe I had the power to ease

awful pains materially like an angel.

Like a doctor, I learned to create

from another’s suffering my own usefulness, and once

you know how to do this, you can never refuse.

To every house you enter, you must offer

healing: a chocolate cake you baked yourself,

the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

"The Bagel," David Ignatow

I stopped to pick up the bagel
rolling away in the wind,
annoyed with myself
for having dropped it
as if it were a portent.
Faster and faster it rolled,
with me running after it
bent low, gritting my teeth,
and I found myself doubled over
and rolling down the street
head over heels, one complete somersault
after another like a bagel
and strangely happy with myself.

"Fate," Carolyn Wells

Two shall be born the whole world wide apart,

And speak in different tongues, and pay their debts

In different kinds of coin; and give no heed

Each to the other’s being. And know not

That each might suit the other to a T,

If they were but correctly introduced.

And these, unconsciously, shall bend their steps,

Escaping Spaniards and defying war,

Unerringly toward the same trysting-place,

Albeit they know it not. Until at last

They enter the same door, and suddenly

They meet. And ere they’ve seen each other’s face

They fall into each other’s arms, upon

The Broadway cable car – and this is Fate!

"Everybody Who is Dead," Frank Stanford

Today's poem: "Everybody Who is Dead," by Frank Stanford

Today's action list:

1. Write one reading log. Only two logs a week needed now.

2. Complete your draft for tomorrow.

"Weeds," Wesley McNair

Today's poem is at the Writer's Almanac.

"Your voice, your eyes," Paul Eluard

Anna Karina, from Godard's Alphaville

Your voice, your eyes
your hands, your lips
Our silences, our words
Light that goes
light that returns
A single smile between us both
In quest of knowledge
I watched night create day
while we seemed unchanged
beloved of all, beloved of one alone
your mouth silently promised to be happy
Away, away, says hate
never, never, says love
A caress leads us from our childhood
Increasingly I see the human form
as a lover’s dialogue
The heart has but one mouth
Everything ordered by chance
All words without aforethought
Sentiments adrift
Men roam the city
A glance, a word
Because I love you
Everything moves
To live, only advance!
Aim straight for those you love
I went towards you, endlessly towards the light
If you smile, it is to enfold me all the better
The rays of your arms pierce the mist

For a link to Anna Karina's reading of Eluard, click here.

"To You," Kennth Koch.

Today's poem can be found at the Poetry Foundation.

Action List: 3 May 2011

Robert Desnos

After discussing the Anthology Project, we will not have as much time as we usually do today for our blogging, so here is a simplified action list:

1. Compose one log to catch us up on what you have been reading lately.

Choose one of the following:

a. Read as much as you can of "Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden," the background on how they developed the intelligence to find the world's most wanted man, on the New York Times and make a brief response post (what surprises or interests you the most).

b. Read this article on what it means to be a "wired family," and write a post in response--how much does your family resemble the families described here?

"I said it to you," Paul Eluard

I said it to you for the clouds
I said it to you for the tree of the sea
For each wave for the birds in the leaves
For the pebbles of sound
For familiar hands

For the eye that becomes landscape or face
And sleep returns it the heaven of its colour
For all that night drank
For the network of roads
For the open window for a bare forehead
I said it to you for your thoughts for your words

Every caress every trust survives.

"Golden Retrievals," Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention

seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.

Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh

joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue

of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?

Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,

thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning

—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:

to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,

my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,

entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

"Dog's Death," John Updike

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, “Good dog! Good dog!”

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest’s bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet’s, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.

Action List: 27 April 2011

We'll have a "Bloggies" day today; browse the blogs of our classmates and nominate your favorite blog in a reply to this post. Then, make a post on your own blog about it that links to a couple of your favorite posts there--personal, logs, videos, whatever--and then discuss why you like what they are doing with their little piece of the internet. The top three winners will get to skip tomorrow's vocab test!

After that, take some time to log your recent reading, make a personal post, comment on some poems, and do some silent reading, if you're up for that kind of thing.

"Unmediated Experience," Bob Hicok

She does this thing. Our seventeen-

year-old dog. Our mostly deaf dog.

Our mostly dead dog, statistically

speaking. When I crouch.

When I put my mouth to her ear

and shout her name. She walks away.

Walks toward the nothing of speech.

She even trots down the drive, ears up,

as if my voice is coming home.

It’s like watching a child

believe in Christmas, right

before you burn the tree down.

Every time I do it, I think, this time

she’ll turn to me. This time

she’ll put voice to face. This time,

I’ll be absolved of decay.

Which is like being a child

who believes in Christmas

as the tree burns, as the drapes catch,

as Santa lights a smoke

with his blowtorch and asks, want one?

"The Blue Bowl," Jane Kenyon

Like primitives we buried the cat

with his bowl. Bare-handed

we scraped sand and gravel

back into the hole.

They fell with a hiss

and thud on his side,

on his long red fur, the white feathers

between his toes, and his

long, not to say aquiline, nose.

We stood and brushed each other off.

There are sorrows keener than these.

Silent the rest of the day, we worked,

ate, stared, and slept. It stormed

all night; now it clears, and a robin

burbles from a dripping bush

like the neighbor who means well

but always says the wrong thing.

"To Tell the Truch," Alicia Ostriker

To tell the truth, those brick Housing Authority buildings

For whose loveliness no soul had planned,

Like random dominoes stood, worn out and facing each other,

Creating the enclosure that was our home.

Long basement corridors connected one house to another

And had a special smell, from old bicycles and baby carriages

In the storage rooms. The elevators

Were used by kissing teenagers.

The playground—iron swingchains, fences, iron monkey bars,

Iron seesaw handles, doubtless now rusted—

Left a strong iron smell on my hands and in the autumn air

And rang with cries. To me it is even precious

Where they chased the local Mongoloid, yelling “Stupid Joey! Stupid Joey!”

Now I’ve said everything nice I can about this.

"Interstate Sonnet," Carl Marcum

A cigarette kiss in the desert. The wind-proof arc

of flame sparks inside the speeding Buick. Menthol:

a break from the monotony of highway nicotine—

most intimate of drugs. Make this mean sorrow

or thermodynamics, whatever small gesture

there is time for. Light another one, the vainglorious

interstate dusk and ash—the long, silver tooth.

This shirtless abandon, this ninety-mile-an-hour

electric laugh. The edges of windshield, haphazard

chatter. The clatter of the hubcap and the thunderclap:

the white-hot retinal memory of your life as a Joshua tree.

Permanence in the passenger seat. This long haul,

this first drag—nothing like cinnamon, nothing

like the iron taste on the back of your mortal tongue.

"Sonnet," by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

I had not thought of violets late,

The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet

In wistful April days, when lovers mate

And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.

The thought of violets meant florists' shops,

And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines.

So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,

I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams;

The perfect loveliness that God has made,—

Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.

And now—unwittingly, you've made me dream

Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.

My gallery response.

Rachel Dafforn, "Edge."

With Rachel Dafforn’s futuristic, tunic-like dress “Edge,” the muted colors, clean lines, and surprising geometry project a subdued and dignified playfulness. Dafforn crafts her dress with a soft, brushed cotton and corduroy, and her color palette is narrow, ranging from the soft black of the high-waisted black skirt to the mossy green that hides behind a gray top. The unusual triangular cut from this top, combined with the comfortable, wide wale of the corduroy provide an interesting mix of the modern and the traditional. This mixture of style and material makes Dafforn’s dress as fun and friendly as it is earnest and thoughtful.

Round 1 Winners

Daniel, Chelsey, Mary, Hannah, Londen, Christine, Abby, Kyle D, Amanda, Scott, Cole, Daniyal, Vanessa, Kyle G, Angela, John.

Congratulations, winners, and great job making your readings personal and enjoyable for us as your audience.

Round 2 will be on Monday of next week. Everyone must have their one paragraph response done and printed for that day. Winners must print theirs with an alias, while non-winners simply need their names.

Sonnet Week, Day 2: "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed and Why," Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

"Farewell to Love," Michael Drayton (1563-1631)

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

"Spring," Mary Oliver

I lift my face to the pale flowers

of the rain. They’re soft as linen,

clean as holy water. Meanwhile

my dog runs off, noses down packed leaves

into damp, mysterious tunnels.

He says the smells are rising now

stiff and lively; he says the beasts

are waking up now full of oil,

sleep sweat, tag-ends of dreams. The rain

rubs its shining hands all over me.

My dog returns and barks fiercely, he says

each secret body is the richest advisor,

deep in the black earth such fuming

nuggets of joy!

Tuesday Action List

Dan Martensen and Shannan Click at home with their dog.

Hi, everyone. Here are your blog assignments for today. It is important to me that today be a quiet work day; people will be trying to memorize their poems, writing, reading. Let the classroom be a quiet space so that these things can happen with focus and concentration.

Your tasks for today: (don't forget to add the label "Tuesday Response" to your post for action item #2, below)

1. One reading log entry.

2. One brief analytical paragraph about one of the following three homes. This may feel slightly new, but it is just another application of the process we began using with Gene Kelly's dancing, the "Falling Bough" painting, and the ATW essay.

Pick one of the following homes photographed by up-and-coming photographer Todd Selby and write a brief, 100 word response that discusses the effect created by its setting. Your claim should have two parts:

[General observations about Setting] verb [tone words that capture the mood of that home].

It is important that you dig into your tone sheet to find words that accurately convey the tone you're sensing as you look at these homes. Here is a sample claim that could apply to Homestead:

[Homestead High School's long expanses of white halls and bewildering floor plans, punctuated by dashes of colorful Art Club mural projects] create [a sense of cold, clinical formality and oppressed creativity.]

Choose one of these homes:

Pharrell Williams Modern Miami home of the well-known rapper known as Pharrell.

Dan Martensen and Shannan Click Upstate New York farmhouse of a photographer and his artist wife.

Jamie Isaia and Anthony Malat Interesting Brooklyn apartment of another arty couple.

3. Memorize your show for tomorrow. Do this throughout the day today. Read a few lines, work on your action list, look at a few more lines. At lunch today, try out a few lines for friends. Don't be afraid to take this seriously. As an audience, we want nothing more than to see that you care about what you are saying to us up there.

"Song of the Builders," Mary Oliver

Song of the Builders

On a summer morning

I sat down

on a hillside

to think about God -

a worthy pastime.

Near me, I saw

a single cricket;

it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.

How great was its energy,

how humble its effort.

Let us hope

it will always be like this,

each of us going on

in our inexplicable ways

building the universe.

About Mary Oliver

from The Poetry Foundation.

"Sleeping in the Forest," Mary Oliver

Sleeping in the Forest

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

"At the Galleria Shopping Mall," Tony Hoagland

Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear,

there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs;

one of them singing news about a far-off war,

one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood

to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood.

And here is my niece Lucinda,

who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,

who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blonde

and declares that her favorite sport is shopping.

Today is the day she embarks upon her journey,

swinging a credit card like a scythe

through the meadows of golden merchandise.

Today is the day she stops looking at faces,

and starts assessing the labels of purses;

So let it begin. Let her be dipped in the dazzling bounty

and raised and wrung out again and again.

And let us watch.

As the gods in olden stories

turned mortals into laurel trees and crows

to teach them some kind of lesson,

so we were turned into Americans

to learn something about loneliness.

Action List: 3.29.2011

First, some class notes:
1. Reading logs/blogs are due today.
2. Because the recitation "playbook" is due tomorrow for your memorized poem, please bring a hard copy of it to class, formatted the way I showed you in class. An example and instructions are on the class notes page.

Okay, here is our online fun for today. We're going to browse the online edition of Sunday's youth-dedicated edition of the New York Times Magazine. Please add the label "Tuesday Response" to your post for today and all future Tuesday blog assignments.

For today's blog assignment, you need to read and respond to at least two articles. First, follow the prompts for #1, below. After that, choose one of the following two prompts.

1. (Everyone do this one!) Listen to a few of these interviews of high school seniors about where they see themselves ten years from now. Use headphones if you have them, because they have audio.

Write a brief response that discusses your reaction to the interviews you see: Which student in the article do you relate to the most? Which one is the most interesting? Which one seems the most deluded? Then, in a second paragraph, write your own answer to that question: where do you see yourself in ten years?Next, choose one of the following options:

Respond informally, in at least 250 words, with your thoughts about one of the following articles, and incorporating at least two quotes from the article into your response:

2. "A Soccer Phenom Puts the 'I' in Team," an article with videos about a high school specialist in "free-style" soccer. Don't just watch the video--read the article; it's interesting.

3. "Online Poker's Big Winner," about a 21 year-old multi-millionaire online poker player.

"Love Song," Carol Muske-Dukes

Love comes hungry to anyone’s hand.
I found the newborn sparrow next to
the tumbled nest on the grass. Bravely

opening its beak. Cats circled, squirrels.
I tried to set the nest right but the wild
birds had fled. The knot of pin feathers

sat in my hand and spoke. Just because
I’ve raised it by touch, doesn’t mean it
follows. All day it pecks at the tin image of

a faceless bird. It refuses to fly,
though I’ve opened the door. What
sends us to each other? He and I

had a blue landscape, a village street,
some poems, bread on a plate. Love
was a camera in a doorway, love was

a script, a tin bird. Love was faceless,
even when we’d memorized each other’s
lines. Love was hungry, love was faceless,

the sparrow sings, famished, in my hand.

"Late Echo," John Ashbery

Alone with our madness and favorite flower

We see that there really is nothing left to write about.

Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things

In the same way, repeating the same things over and over

For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally

And the color of the day put in

Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter

For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic

Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention

Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory

And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows

That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge

Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

"History of Desire," Tony Hoagland

When you're seventeen, and drunk
on the husky, late-night flavor
of your first girlfriend's voice
along the wires of the telephone

what else to do but steal
your father's El Dorado from the drive,
and cruise out to the park on Driscoll Hill?
Then climb the county water tower

and aerosol her name in spraycan orange
a hundred feet above the town?
Because only the letters of that word,
DORIS, next door to yours,

in yard-high, iridescent script,
are amplified enough to tell the world
who's playing lead guitar
in the rock band of your blood.

You don't consider for a moment
the shock in store for you in 10 A.D.,
a decade after Doris, when,
out for a drive on your visit home,

you take the Smallville Road, look up
and see RON LOVES DORIS
still scorched upon the reservoir.
This is how history catches up—

by holding still until you
bump into yourself.
What makes you blush, and shove
the pedal of the Mustang

almost through the floor
as if you wanted to spray gravel
across the features of the past,
or accelerate into oblivion?

Are you so out of love that you
can't move fast enough away?
But if desire is acceleration,
experience is circular as any

Indianapolis. We keep coming back
to what we are—each time older,
more freaked out, or less afraid.
And you are older now.

You should stop today.
In the name of Doris, stop.

"Wynken, Blynken, and Nod," Eugene Field

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
  Sailed off in a wooden shoe,—
Sailed on a river of crystal light
  Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
  The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring-fish
  That live in this beautiful sea;
  Nets of silver and gold have we,"
           Said Wynken,
           Blynken,
           And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song,
  As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night long
  Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were the herring-fish
  That lived in the beautiful sea.
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish,—
  Never afraid are we!"
  So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
           Wynken,
           Blynken,
           And Nod.

All night long their nets they threw
  To the stars in the twinkling foam,—
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
  Bringing the fishermen home:
'Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
  As if it could not be;
And some folk thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
  Of sailing that beautiful sea;
  But I shall name you the fishermen three:
           Wynken,
           Blynken,
           And Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
  And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
  Is a wee one's trundle-bed;
So shut your eyes while Mother sings
  Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
  As you rock in the misty sea
  Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:—
           Wynken,
           Blynken,
           And Nod.

"For My Daughter," Daivd Ignatow

When I die choose a star
and name it after me
that you may know
I have not abandoned
or forgotten you.
You were such a star to me,
following you through birth
and childhood, my hand
in your hand.

When I die
choose a star and name it
after me so that I may shine
down on you, until you join
me in darkness and silence
together.

Action List: 3.22.11

My dog Smokey.

Participation News: Grades are updated now, unless your display name is Reach for the Moon--I have misplaced your real name, so you need to let me know if that is your online alias.

Congratulations to Artemis, Mariah Hamil, lyssa, and Count Chocula--these four were consistently the most engaged and thoughtful contributors to our ongoing poetry commentary, providing insights that were well grounded in the poems themselves. Great work. 1% extra credit for the quarter to all of you.

A picture of my friend David on a puzzle he put together.

First, a slight change to the blogging requirements: Our page quotas are going to stay the same, but your blogging requirements are a little bit lighter. From now on, it doesn't matter if you are reading popular fiction or literary fiction--you only need to log your reading three times a week. This is only a change for popular fiction readers, but it should make things a little bit easier to keep up with and still allow you time to be outside more, selling lemonade and catching frogs, now that the weather is turning nicer.

Second: I'm giving you a free week for blogging. Blogs due today are now due next Tuesday, and blogs due next Tuesday are due the week after (the week after Spring Break, btw). Only two weeks of reading and logging will be due, though you will have had three weeks to complete it. Remember, you can't get credit in this class for any books that have been assigned, in any class, any time, at Homestead. So, sorry, but no Frankenstein, David Copperfield, Lord of the Flies. Those are for other classes, right.

A picture of rain that I have been liking a lot lately.

To do today: Pick 2 of the following 3 assignments.
1. Create a personal blog post that looks back at your reading from this past quarter. What was the best reading you did? What writers did you discover? What did you discover about your own taste in reading? What did you not like? What are your plans for your 4th quarter reading? Please Double-check your pages read over the course of the first quarter and update it at the top of this post--tell us how many pages total you've read, and, if you are up to it, break it down by pop and lit sub-totals, too.

2. Best poem of the Quarter. Please make a brief post that identifies what you think of as your favorite poem from the first quarter and what you like about it.

3. Visit this site: 1000 Awesome Things. Read a bunch of them and make a post about awesome things--the ones you agree with from this site, and then name and discuss at least one thing that would be on your personal list.

4. When you are done with these things, read yer book and/or conference with me about your ATW essay.

"A Tropical Paradise," Madison F.

Lying on the beach
With sunglasses on your face
Shielding the harsh sunlight from your eyes.
You cover your skin with SPF 25.
Sand makes its way into your sandals,
but you don’t mind.
Off in the distance music is being played
on steel drums.
They set the mood of your whole vacation:
relaxation.
You see the boats drift by with their brightly
colored sides
And you hold onto your tropical drink that tastes
like bananas
With its tiny umbrella hanging off the side.
It makes you smile.
You wonder if the sailors on the boat are as
peaceful as you are.
Worries escape you as you drift into your own oasis
And your home life becomes something of the past.
Almost unreal.
You smell coconut everywhere you go
And wonder if you’ll miss it when you leave.
All you hear is the crashing of the waves.
All you can feel is your newly burnt skin.
All that matters is nothing.

"Notes on Poverty," Hayden Carruth

"Notes on Poverty," Hayden Carruth

Was I so poor

in those damned days

that I went in the dark

in torn shoes

and furtiveness

to steal fat ears

of cattle corn

from the good cows

and pound them

like hard maize

on my worn Aztec

stone? I was.

"Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep"

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Mary Elizabeth Frye - 1932

"Morning," Mary Oliver

Morning

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.

"Graves," Hayden Carruth

Graves

by Hayden Carruth

Both of us had been close

to Joel, and at Joel’s death

my friend had gone to the wake

and the memorial service

and more recently he had

visited Joel’s grave, there

at the back of the grassy

cemetery among the trees,

“a quiet, gentle place,” he said,

“befitting Joel.” And I said,

“What’s the point of going

to look at graves?” I went

into one of my celebrated

tirades. “People go to look

at the grave of Keats or Hart

Crane, they go traveling just to

do it, what a waste of time.

What do they find there? Hell,

I wouldn’t go look at the grave of

Shakespeare if it was just

down the street. I wouldn’t

look at—” And I stopped. I

was about to say the grave of God

until I realized I’m looking at it

all the time....

"Jabberwocky," Lewis Carroll

"Jabberwocky"

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Action List: 3.15.2011

Work on your own today. Headphones are fine. Do at least one of the following, make a post that responds to the questions posed, and then choose a follow-up activity.

1. Read a brief piece, "Let Kids Rule the School," from the New York Times about a school that let students make their own school within a school. Would that work here?

2. Browse this visual timeline of children's picture books. What books have your favorite illustrations, and what books do you have the best memories of?

3. Read this piece in the New York Times about "over achievers" in the NCAA basketball tournament. Does it make you question any picks you made in your brackets for this year?

Follow-up Activities:

* Confer with me about your ATW essay.
* Log some reading you've done lately.
* Compose a personal post about things on your mind or what you've been up to.

"The Journey," Josh B.

They say it’s all about the journey, I used to disagree.
Because I loved the destination but now I start to see
That when I finally get there, I think about the time
When we outsang the radio and thought we sounded fine.
The many fights that made Dad say, “I’ll turn this thing around!”
And how easy we’d make him laugh to calm him right back down.
The countless times we took a stop to stretch our legs were great,
Because space can get pretty tight when the car is packed with eight.
We all took turns to close our eyes and have a little nap
Or listen to whoever drives get lost and blame the map.
Oh how I love it in the car when we’re all having fun
So how I hate when we arrive and all of that is done.
Next to the pool, with earphones in, those times I can’t recall
But memories of getting there always do stand tall.
So Destination, here we are, but not as a family.
And as for me, I now agree, it’s all in the journey.

"The Summer I was Sixteen," Geraldine Connolly

The Summer I Was Sixteen

The turquoise pool rose up to meet us,
its slide a silver afterthought down which
we plunged, screaming, into a mirage of bubbles.
We did not exist beyond the gaze of a boy.

Shaking water off our limbs, we lifted
up from ladder rungs across the fern-cool
lip of rim. Afternoon. Oiled and sated,
we sunbathed, rose and paraded the concrete,

danced to the low beat of "Duke of Earl".
Past cherry colas, hot-dogs, Dreamsicles,
we came to the counter where bees staggered
into root beer cups and drowned. We gobbled

cotton candy torches, sweet as furtive kisses,
shared on benches beneath summer shadows.
Cherry. Elm. Sycamore. We spread our chenille
blankets across grass, pressed radios to our ears,

mouthing the old words, then loosened
thin bikini straps and rubbed baby oil with iodine
across sunburned shoulders, tossing a glance
through the chain link at an improbable world.

[love is more thicker than forget], e.e. cummings

[love is more thicker than forget]

by E. E. Cummings

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is more mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

"Love Song," Carol Muske-Dukes

Love Song

Love comes hungry to anyone’s hand.
I found the newborn sparrow next to
the tumbled nest on the grass. Bravely

opening its beak. Cats circled, squirrels.
I tried to set the nest right but the wild
birds had fled. The knot of pin feathers

sat in my hand and spoke. Just because
I’ve raised it by touch, doesn’t mean it
follows. All day it pecks at the tin image of

a faceless bird. It refuses to fly,
though I’ve opened the door. What
sends us to each other? He and I

had a blue landscape, a village street,
some poems, bread on a plate. Love
was a camera in a doorway, love was

a script, a tin bird. Love was faceless,
even when we’d memorized each other’s
lines. Love was hungry, love was faceless,

the sparrow sings, famished, in my hand.

"A Blessing," James Wright

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Writing Lab Menu: 3.9.2011

Friday’s Drafts. We have a rough draft due on Friday: the introduction and one body paragraph from your project. This draft should have your actual name, not your alias. Like the last one, this is a pass/fail draft—either you have it and it is typed and you get the full 10 points, or it isn’t and you get zero.

ATW Conferences. For another 10 points, you need to confer with me during class either today or Friday about your project. Here are your options: (a) today, we can work through one of your passages and plan a claim and some of your response, or (b) on Friday, we can review the draft that is due that day. One or the other, the choice is yours.

Today’s Menu. We get five points of participation both today and Friday if we stay off of the games and are productive. Here are some things you can do today to be productive. Do any or all of them:

1. Find those passages: the Poetry Foundation web-site, your poetry journal, our classroom library.

2. Profile a poem or passage—like we have done with the Walton Ford painting “Falling Bough” and some diction exercises, compile (a) distinctive quotations from your passage, (b) words that describe that language, and (c) a possible claim for a paragraph about that passage.

3. Read any or all of the sample essays for this project. There are several:

a. My sample that was attached to the “Harlem” response that we annotated with highlighters.

b. Jessie Hanselmann’s, on our HHS notes page.

c. My sample beginning for the “Water” ATW project I am working on.

d. A “Winner” from the peer review we conducted on Monday.

4. Error Hunt—go through the draft for your diction exercise and see if you can find any of the six “Errors of Support and Discussion” that are demonstrated on the purple handout (and online.)

5. Use the “Observation Guide” for diction on the HHS notes page to help you free-write a response to one of your passages.

6. Informal peer-review of a friend’s work so far.

Any of these menu items can be done with a friend, collaboratively, if you are able to stay on task.

Tuesday Poem: "Rain"

by Naomi Shihab Nye. In your poem journals.

What does the figurative description of the words as "houses in a landscape" suggest about his handwriting or the boy in general--what tone words seem to suggest to you, in other words?

Remember that "figurative" descriptions relate to an element of diction (connotation), and are good things to discuss/analyze in, say, an essay about language.

Action List: 3.8.11

Blogs of the Week: Hot Kool Aid, bloggerett16, Dewdrops on Daisies, and Te Amo. Great reads, all.

For today:

1. First, note some changed dates for the ATW project: The full peer review of your project, including photocopied passages, is next Tuesday, 3/15. The full, final project, with copies of your passages, is now due Thursday, 3/17. These are both one day earlier than originally planned.

2. Today, you have a few options.

(a) Prepare a reading log--periods 3 and 5 have blogs due today.

(b) Start searching for poems and passages that you can use for your ATW project. Your introduction and first body paragraph are to be peer reviewed on Friday, so it's good to get started soon. Try using the "Poetry Tool" at the Poetry Foundation to find a poem or two for your theme. If you like, you may use the poem that you wrote about for yesterday's peer review.

(c) Look at the sample ATW essay on the class website, or the "Diction Observation Guide" to get a better feel for how this project should work. Or ask me for guidance.

(d) Try the multiple-choice exercise on making claims about diction, found on the HHS class page under "Notes."

(e) Play Rock-Paper-Scissors against a computer and be surprised how tough it is to beat.