Dance Performances in Black Box

AGENDA:

Poetry/Dance performances today!

Poetry Portfolio

AGENDA:


Bellwork:
Vocabulary.com
PSAT practice---https://www.varsitytutors.com/psat-practice-tests


VIDEO: coursera/Revision

READING: Billy Collins/


WRITING:  Continue to work on poetry portfolio

Writing contests

WRITING CONTESTS

4.  REGISTER WITH SCHOLASTIC.  Look at Bennington:

https://www.bennington.edu/events/young-writers-awards

https://www.weareteachers.com/student-writing-contests/

https://blog.prepscholar.com/writing-contests-for-high-school-students


HOLLINS (Nancy Thorpe poetry):
https://www.hollins.edu/academics/majors-minors/english-creative-writing-major/nancy-thorp-poetry-contest/

Poetry/Collaboration

AGENDA:

Period 7--Work on poems for portfolio and contests.  Conference with Ms. Gamzon about contest entries.

Period 8--Go to Dance Studio.  Work on collaboration with dancers.  If audio needs to be rerecorded, go to computer lab as indicated by Ms. Phillips or Ms. Gamzon

Poetry Prompts/Dance Poems

AGENDA:

Go to Google Classroom to see videos of dancers' work in progress.  Provide feedback:

 If so, they should view and give written feedback- what works, what is hard to understand, what they’d like to see more of… I’d like to get the students together once more before the final showing. I am working 6^th period to draft a few guiding questions for the collaborators. They can get together to discuss these concerns. Also, to practice the poem live, re-record with adjustments to pitch, pace/tempo, tone etc.

VIDEO:  Billy Collins and Marie Howe: Writing Poetry

Continue to work on your poems.

Charles Bukowski/Ars Poetica

AGENDA:

BELL WORK: Vocabulary.com   poetry terms

READING: Go to library for Billy Collins poetry

Ars Poetica

A poem that explains the “art of poetry,” or a meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem. Horace’s Ars Poetica is an early example, and the foundation for the tradition. While Horace writes of the importance of delighting and instructing audiences, modernist ars poetica poets argue that poems should be written for their own sake, as art for the sake of art. Archibald MacLeish’s famous “Ars Poetica” sums up the argument: “A poem should not mean / But be.” See also Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism,” William Wordsworth’s Prelude, and Wallace Stevens’s “Of Modern Poetry.”

so you want to be a writer?

Charles Bukowski - 1920-1994

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• 
  
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if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins. All rights reserved.

Gamzon poems

AGENDA

VIEW:  Billy Collins: Writing Process
SHOW: Journal

WRITING:  work on poems

Intrusion

        for William Stafford

Traveling through the dark along the Seaway Trail,
we sense a family of deer, frozen at the edge
of the highway, staring back
at the headlights of our jeep--
their eyes wakeful, wary.

And so I must think of your poem,
of how the road we travel narrows and ends,
and why I, too, must question the swerving.

Later that evening back at home,
phantom deer appear.  Dreamlike,
they lurk at the very edge of consciousness,
silently watching a procession of ghostly vehicles
hurtle through the vanishing wilderness.

They wait and watch, bewildered
by these hardened shells
encasing our fragile hearts.

For Jennie, Dressed In Green Today

You are dressed in green today—

a light shade of green to match your eyes

still downcast as you mumble

a quick and timid thank you

returning my compliment.

Look up, Jennie.  Rein in your fears.

You see yourself within a still life painting—

you, a solitary misshapen pear juxtaposed

against a bowl of perfect fruit. 

The others are glistening red apples,

vibrant oranges, deep purple grapes—

all sons and daughters of perfect parents

so unlike your own.

And you-- you say are green, such an ugly green,

a green that must be pared away

to reveal soft sweeter flesh.

If only you knew how to dissipate when it hurts,

imagining yourself fog lifting from a deep lake

on sunlit mornings after a rain.

Wait patiently, Jennie.Still dress in green.

A time will come when the scars

you etch upon your arms will fade.

For it begins with green, a lovely green,

the certain steady greening of your world,

the deepening green of moss, lichen and fern--

this ever growing, deepening forest

in which you will walk without fear.

The Dust Lady

               --for Marcy Borders

1.      1. Victim 9/11/2001

Her mouth agape, lungs choking with ash, 

she remains in Stan Honda’s iconic photo

dust-caked and frozen in time--

a Munch image, silent schrie

echoing from the chaos,

from the 81^st floor 

of the  South tower

down the stairwell, 

a dazed witness

to unthinkable horror—

the dead, the dying,

souls falling from buildings

or rising into air.

A ghostly ashen figure,

her haunted eyes stare

 into the camera lens.

She reaches out a hand, a gesture.

       Perhaps she is asking, Why?

2.      2. Survivor  8/26/2015

Fourteen years later she succumbs

to the stomach cancer growing inside her.

She is remembered, even honored, the iconic “Dust Lady”--

her photo haunting a city and nation for years.

She kept the black fitted top, the cream fitted skirt,

the high boots she wore that day, unwashed,

covered with ash, grime and dust,

A lucky talisman or curse? she wondered

       

       in the years following, still battling her fears,

       crack hunger and craving.  She would not look

       at the famous photo, not wanting to be a victim anymore,

       or so she said. Perhaps, again, in the last days,

     

       she asked, hand outstretched, Why?

Resurgence

The roof needs repair.
Cracked tiles litter the yard;
moss clings to the eaves.
The spring rains fall unimpeded
through the rusted gutters.

Still, in the garden
the pink dicentra thrives,
each bleeding heart bursting into fullness
upon delicate arching stems,

and here and there
a single green fern curls
upward, reaching through a bed
of wet withered leaves
like a gangly adolescent
tentatively raising a hand
in class.