I'm a fan

Poetry assignment

First off, I feel like this guy knows way too much about poetry and writing to not like it.

I disagree with a lot of what he said. Just because he doesn't like poetry doesn't mean he has to ruin it for everyone else. To me, this Bernstein guy seems like an arrogant @*$&*%&^%$! Haha :)

I started out not liking poetry. However, the more I read and the more we discussed as a class, I began to understand it, which helped me appreciate it a lot more. Now, I really like poetry. I think poetry most definitely (in a valley girl accent) has a spot in our literary study. I don't think it is absolutely vital for someone to know about the intense poetry if the really don't want to, but I do think it helps the reader understand other things more easily. For example, after doing the poetry unit, King Lear was not easy to understand, but I had more patience than I did at the beginning of the year with other hard "works of literary merit" that we have completed. So maybe it isn't totally necessary but it "exercises the mind", which I enjoy!

Along with getting a good brain workout comes the analysis of poetry. This is something I really struggled with at the beginning of the year and sometimes still, but it comes a lot easier now that we have discussions. We can absolutely go too far with analyzing. However, it's fun sometimes! Honestly, think about how boring our class would be if we didn't over analyze.

So basically, I think that guy is a jerk. He can diss poetry in his mind if he wants, but leave it alone. He's wasting a lot of energy on something he hates!

Poetry...who needs it?

In celebration, or rather protest, of National Poetry Month, I'm passing on this essay from Charles Bernstein entitled "Against National Poetry Month As Such." He basically argues that there should not be a month dedicated to the reading, writing, or celebration of verse.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. You've survived a unit focused solely on poetry. You've read poems about the scandalous cutting of hair, the massacring of frogs, the abuse of children....and maybe there was a happy poem in there somewhere...Maybe?

Regardless, you all have your own opinions on poetry and its merits (or lack thereof). Are poems "much ado about nothing" or do they have a place in our literary study? Can the readers and interpreters of poetry go too far when analyzing verse, or do some of you delight in the scavenger hunt that ensues when a poem is read and dissected before your very eyes?

Please post a response to this essay and the questions I have posed before next Monday, May 2
You WILL be receiving a grade for your participation, so no post = no points.

Even if you don't care for poetry, I still want to hear from you. Heck, Charles Bernstein feels that poetry shouldn't have its own month, and he wrote a five page essay on why not!

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/044106.html

Happy Birthday, Will!!

Sadly, I'm a bit late getting this to you, but today is William Shakespeare's 447th birthday, as well as "Talk Like Shakespeare" Day. Because it falls on a weekend this year, I tho kit might be appropriate to observe this solemn occasion on Monday. Check out this website, sponsored by the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, for ways to celebrate Elizabethan-speak, as well as the Bard's birthday.

http://www.talklikeshakespeare.org/

Methinks tis time for these cross-gartered knaves to learn to speak the Queen's English!

Merry perusing and scribbling!

MCC

Scholarship Opportunity

Click on this link for a great scholarship opportunity for seniors. Write an essay in 300 words or less about the most important teacher, tutor, or coach in your life. Get people to vote for your essay by emailing them a link, posting it on Facebook, posting it to our blog, or Tweeting about it. Get more votes than anyone else and voila! FREE MONEY FOR COLLEGE! Woot!

It looks like everything can be done right online, but I would recommend proofreading your essay before submitting it.

http://www.wyzant.com/Scholarships/

Please post to the blog if you submit an essay so we can all vote for you!

Happy writing!

-MCC

Pride and Prejudice

Let me just start off by saying I loved reading Pride and Prejudice. This type of novel, with it's time period and more formal language, has always been at the top of my list of books worth reading. Some of the words, admittedly, were a little hard to understand, but by reading the passage around them and using a little common sense I was usually able to figure them out. As a whole, this book was extremely fun for me to read and is called a classic for a reason. You know what I think? Those college students are just too lazy to put forth a little brain power to try to figure out the "long words" and the formal language Austen uses. It's a shame they do not appreciate a book of literary merit like this, but high schoolers can (although I did feel a bit bad for the boys in our class. What high school boy would willingly read a romance novel?) Hope this helps Dr. Chesley realize that there is still hope for society... :)

P&P is for me!

I figured rhyming was a great way to start off this post. First, I throughly enjoyed Pride and Prejudice. However, I have always enjoyed the novels or movies set back in different time periods. The wording was a bit difficult to understand at first but as soon as you got the hang of it, it was fine. I think in order to develop an appreciation for Austen's writing, you need to give it time. Just like in life, you cannot judge things solely on your first impression. I think Dr. Chesley should know I am a fellow Austen supporter! :)

A host of golden daffodils!

The entry below was from "The Writer's Almanac" from American Public Media on Friday. Since it's spring and the daffodils are blooming, I thought this was appropriate. It's also a nice warm-up for the poetry review we'll be doing for the AP exam. The daffodils at left are being battered in today's wind on the side of my house.

It was on this day in 1802 that William Wordsworth (books by this author) was walking home with his sister, Dorothy, and saw a patch of daffodils that became the inspiration for one of his most famous poems.
They were returning from a visit to their friends Thomas and Catherine Clarkson, who lived on the shore of Ullswater, the second largest lake in England's lake district, a beautiful deep lake, nine miles long, surrounded by mountains. The Clarksons were good friends. Thomas was a fierce abolitionist who had made it his life's work to end slavery. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also a neighbor in the Lake District, wrote: "I once asked Tom Clarkson whether he ever thought of his probable fate in the next world, to which he replied, 'How can I? I think only of the slaves in Barbados!'" Apparently Tom wasn't a fan of poetry, either. But Dorothy Wordsworth and Catherine exchanged letters. Later that year, Wordsworth got married, and he and his wife, Mary, named one of their daughters after Catherine. They all enjoyed the Clarksons' witty and intelligent conversation.

Dorothy and William had left Dove Cottage at the end of March for a round of visiting friends, including Coleridge. William left Dorothy with the Clarksons for eight days while he went to Yorkshire to visit Mary, the woman he would marry six months later. On Monday, April 12th, Wordsworth left Mary to head back to his friends' house. He got caught in a snowstorm and his horse needed new shoes, but he plodded on to stay at an inn for the night, and during the ride he wrote a poem, "The Glow-worm," which begins:

Among all lovely things my Love had been;
Had noted well the stars, all flowers that grew
About her home; but she had never seen
A glow-worm, never one, and this I knew.

He made it back to the Clarksons' the next evening, spent a day with friends, and after dinner on the 15th he and Dorothy set out to walk home. It was many miles back to Dove Cottage, but they were used to long walks, and took it slowly, stopping often either to seek shelter from the weather or to admire things they passed.

Dorothy wrote in her journal: "It was a threatening misty morning — but mild. [...] The hawthorns are black and green, the birches here and there greenish but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the Twigs. We got over into a field to avoid some cows — people working, a few primroses by the roadside, woodsorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry yellow flower which Mrs C. calls pile wort. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot and a few stragglers a few yards higher up but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity and unity and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again."

For his part, William didn't write anything about the daffodils for at least two years, maybe more. No one is sure when he wrote the poem "I wander'd lonely as a cloud," but it was published in 1807. It didn't get a very good reception. One critic wrote, "He thinks it worth while to give a tame, matter-of-fact account of some daffodils blown about with the wind, because he thought of them afterwards." Another poet said, "Surely, if his worst foe had chosen to caricature this egotistic manufacturer of metaphysical importance upon trivial themes, he could not have done it more effectively." But these days it is one of Wordsworth's most famous poems, and when the BBC conducted a nationwide poll in 1995 for the country's favorite poems, it was ranked number five.

Wordsworth's 1807 version of the poem was only three stanzas long, 18 lines. When he revised it in 1815, he tinkered with some lines — changed "Ten thousand dancing in the breeze" to "Fluttering and dancing in the breeze" — and he added another stanza, the stanza that is now second and begins, "Continuous as the stars that shine / And twinkle on the milky way ..."

Not only did Wordsworth probably reference Dorothy's journal for inspiration, but his wife, Mary, came up with two lines: "They flash upon that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude." William said they were the best lines in the poem.

What?!

I'll keep this pretty brief. I did not enjoy Pride & Prejudice, but I respect it as a well-written novel. It was revolutionary, and that's why it's so famous today. There is a massive difference between liking a book and recognizing WHY it's generally considered a great novel. Though I disliked it, I'm glad I read it because it helped me grow as a reader. I can now also say, "That was a tough book, but I got through it!!", which I am proud of.

As college students, they shouldn't be complaining about big words. Get out a dictionary or instead of facebooking during class, try googling the words! :)

Is Pride and Prejudice worth it?

Yes I believe Pride and Prejudice is worth reading. It was not my favorite book to read because it was a little slow in the beginning but I ended up enjoying it. This book is a great literary work and while it may not be for everyone it's well written. Students should be excited about learning and feel proud about reading a classic. The fact that some students were saying that Jane Austen uses to big of words is really sad. I mean seriously there is a wonderful invention called THE DICTIONARY! Plus if you continue reading you can get the jist of what the word means. I can understand how some students say that her reading can be laborious but it picks up a lot during the second half of the book. All in all I truly believe Pride and Prejudice is worth reading it is a classic.

Classics

So I'm on Facebook this morning, and looking through some of the quizzes people have taken (most of them are so dumb...). But I come across one that said "Which Books Have You Read (out of 100)." I clicked on it, and it was that list of 100 books Mrs. Conklin was talking about! Of course I felt that I needed to take the quiz, and found that I have read 17 of the books... I feel pretty ok about that, although I know there are a few on the list that I should have read by now. Looks like I have a summer reading list :)

Is P&P worth it?

I personally had a rough time with P&P, not because it was too hard or Austen used "Big words". I just simply didn't like the plot..because...well...I'm a guy. I will say that the lessons are good ones and I understand what Austen is trying to say. The main problem is that people don't really Read anymore. Sure, you read your email or text but that's not the same. There is a gap between Dr. Chesley and his students. He wanted to understand or at least worked at understanding Austen. His students are in college! They should be excited to learn (especially since they are paying to be there!) I believe that Pride and Prejudice is worth the effort; most just are not willing to put forth the effort to try.

Matched - The book like 1984

Just in case anyone was missing 1984, the book I brought up in class today is very, very similar. It's part of a trilogy and the next one doesn't come out until November of this year but it's awesome :) Here's the title of the book and the author for anyone who is interested: Matched - Ally Condie

Is Pride and Prejudice worth reading?

As I mentioned in class today, my mentor from Aquinas, Dr. Chesley, is coping with complaints in his Intro to Fiction class this spring from students who don't enjoy Jane Austen's classic of Regency England.

Most of his students don't like it.  Some complain that Austen uses too many big words.  Others say she's tedious.  One said she doesn't like the book because sometimes the narrator says one thing, but it means something else.

You read P&P for summer reading, on your own, with little instructor guidance (other than the occasional blog post). I want to hear your thoughts - good, bad, or indifferent - on your reading experience and your overall impression of Pride and Prejudice. Is this a book worth reading?

REMINDER: Law Day essay contest

This is just a reminder that the deadline for the Law Day Essay contest, sponsored by the Berrien County Bar Association, is due this Friday, April 15, at 4 PM.

You can mail, fax, or email your essay of 500-800 words with the following information:


Student's name
Home address
Email address
Home telephone number
Sponsoring teacher and high school - (Sarah Carter Conklin/Bridgman High School)

If mailing your essay, please use the following address:

Berrien County Courthouse
Attention: Honorable Gary J. Bruce
811 Port Street
St. Joseph, MI 49085

The essay can be emailed to Judge Gary J. Bruce at gbruce@berriencounty.org
or faxed to Judge Bruce's office at  (269) 982-8614

Winners of the contest will be selected at the sole discretion of the selection committee and will be based upon: Composition, Theme, Creativity, and Details/Research

This is a great opportunity to flex your writing muscles and do some interesting research on the long history of legal defense in our country. If you are interested in getting some help with your writing, please let me know as soon as possible.

Email me if you have any questions about the contest itself. For those of you who have a draft in progress, I'd be happy to give your essay a quick look before you submit it.

Happy writing!!

-MCC