"Prayer," by George Herbert

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth ;

Engine against th' Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

"Wilderness," by Carl Sandburg

At Bartleby.

"9," by Galway Kinnell

9

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantillations he sang in his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and creeps away among the stones, one sees
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken
away from one's kind, toward these other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one's own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

Weekend Blog Assignment: Spellbound

To conclude our study of Spellbound, make an informal post to your blog that responds to one of the following prompts:

1. Pick any two of the students in Spellbound and compare and contrast what you see as their motivations for pursuing success in the National Spelling Bee.

2. Pick any two sets of parents and compare and contrast either their motivations for having their children excel in the National Spelling Bee.

3. Pick any two students or parents and compare and contrast the ways that they deal with the stress of the competition.

Responses should be thoughtful and contain references to the film itself.

Here is the IMDB link to help you remember names.

"Gee, You’re So Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain"

By Richard Brautigan, at Poetry 180.

"Here, Bullet" by Brian Turner

Here, Bullet

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Where or what do you think "Here" is, literally, in this poem--what do you think the speaker is talking about?

What do you make of the violent imagery that relates his body ("tongue's explosives," "rifling I have / inside of me") to weaponry?

Tuesday Action List 3.1.11

1. Complete the "2.28 Diction exercise," explained in the post below.

2. Once a few of us have finished the exercise, browse at least 8 other blogs to read the claims that they posted today, and then vote for your favorite by commenting to this post. Paste the claim into your comment and name the blog responsible for it.

3. Comment on a poem or two from the past week.

4. Make a personal post about your long weekend.