Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Final Activities



THE GLOUCESTER PROJECT FINAL CHALLENGE:



Come up with a name for your group that reflects the topic(s) about which the members have written. (For some groups this will be easy; for other groups you might need to use a bit of imagination.):

________________________________________
(title of group)

A/F-block you have until 8:50 to the following:

1.  Choose a short excerpt (a paragraph or a poem) from your multigenre paper to read aloud.

2. Create a catchy advertising slogan and design for your group that can fit on a bumper sticker. The bumper sticker should be somewhat like a title and somewhat like a thesis. It should be short, memorable, and convey the essence of your group’s attitude toward the topic(s). Have fun.

3. Create a tour of Gloucester related to your group’s topics. (Google maps might help.) Include a reasonably clear sketched map of the tour. Include at least five stops on the tour related to your group’s topics.

4. Write a list of ten things Gloucester should know about your group’s topic(s). Order the list from least important to most important. What is relevant? What is essential? What will help the city understand who we have been, who we are, and who we will be?

5. Make a schedule of events for a day celebrating your topic(s).
You must schedule an event related to your topic (a speaker, a demonstration, a game, music, etc.) for each of the following times. Be creative! Write a few sentences explaining the event.

Remember, money is no issue, so how could you really teach/show Gloucester about your topic?

9:00am to 10:00am

10:30am to 11:30am

2:00pm to 4:00pm

6:00pm to 8:00pm

Monday, June 17, 2013

Swiggity Swock, Here You Go A Block; Oppa F-block Style

F-block
Hope Weaver - Banana Bread
Emily Murray - Mini Bagels
Alan Davis - Chocolate x2
Nicole Bauke - Fruit Salad, yummy yummy
Liz Murphy - Munchkins
Olivia Parsons - OJ/Milk/Apple Juice
Cara O'Connell - Cupcakes
Kevin Rogers - Lucky Charms and Bowls
Carren Jepchumba -Cups, napkins, spoons, forks
Katie Manning - Chex Mix Mix

A-block
Ivy: fruit salad w/o apples (Jordan's allergic, so be nice)
Kirsten: hashbrowns
Arly: donuts
Jordan/Hannah Ellis: bagels
Kacie: waffles and *sigh* s'mores goldfish
Christina: muffins/ pastries
Bethany: syrup, ketchup, butter
Corinne: tea
Kelly Foster: juice
Yazmeen: cups
Anna: plates
Dianna: utensils

And yours truly, your lovely teacher, I, J Cook, will bring  in sweet Dunkin Donuts coffee.
Thanks.

<3 xoxox <3

Friday, June 14, 2013

Gloucester Project: Reflecting on Poems

Tell me about the poems you've made.

1. Did you use a prompt? What was your inspiration? (A photo, a painting, a poem, a text?) Did you use a traditional form? Did you invent a form? Did you alter a prompt or form that I gave you?
Also, tell me about your trials and tribulations as well as breakthroughs and success.

2. What worked for you, stimulating your poetic ear and imagination? What are you proud of?

3. What are you still frustrated by or concerned with? What would like to know more about or practice more? What would you do if you had more time?

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Creative Writing Genres and Assignment



Creative Writing Genres for the Gloucester Project 2013
(On Friday June 14, 2013 you will pass in at least three poems adding up to at least seventy-five lines. I'm not very worried about these limits, but I want to make sure you produce substantial work. The poems will be proofread and typed, as well as imaginative, insightful, engaging, daring, vivid.)

Poetry

Go Inside a Photograph by Hoa Nguyen

“For this exercise, you will need a photograph. This can be a photo of yourself, family members, or strangers. I find it most generative if there is some temporal distance between yourself and the subject of the photograph i.e.: an archival or historical photo for which you have no direct memory.

Study your photo in detail. Imagine what is just beyond the borders of the frame. If it is in black and white, imagine it in color. Assign it smells, textures, sounds. Imagine that you can step inside the frame and walk around, experiencing that moment in time.

Now begin to write. Include as much sensory detail as possible; make up other detail, speculate. Be sure to pay attention to the rhythm and sound of your lines as you lay them down. If you get stuck, try repeating a word or phrase. Read your text out loud and strike out any awkward sounding lines. Arrange the lines on the page, give it a title and call it a poem.”

Spontaneous Poem based on an exercise by Rita Dove
To activate your subconscious mind, do the following:
·         Free write about your topic for five minutes. (This is stream of consciousness writing.)
·         Pick ten vivid, interesting, revealing words from your stream of consciousness free-write.
·         In five minutes write a ten-line poem in which each line contains at least one of the ten words and in which each of the ten words is used at least once.
·         Make a title using a phrase from your stream of consciousness free-write.
·         The point of this poem is to emphasize spontaneity, whimsy, seeming randomness, linguistic daring, absurdity, surreality, etc.

Metaphor Poem
·         Start with your topic. Brainstorm aspects of the topic (for example, Fitz Henry Lane=schooners, house atop Harbor Loop, oil paint, crutches, apple-peru, etc.) as well as feelings and concepts associated with the topic (for example, Fitz Henry Lane=luminism, beauty, realism, observation, etc.)
·         Then create metaphors for items in either list. (From the F.H. Lane list of concepts: Luminism is a painting with a light bulb inside. Or, a bit more vivid: The sky in the painting swallowed a light bulb. From the F.H. Lane list of objects: Crutches are legs Lane shed to sit and paint.
·         String the metaphors together. Edit them. Revise them. Expand them. Contract them. Use your ear, your mind’s eye, and your sense of the language of images to guide your revision.

Ekphrastic Poem
·         Choose an object or work of art (a photograph, statue, song, film, poem, story, painting, etc.) related to your topic.
·         Write a poem in which you respond to the work of art as if you were speaking directly to it, or as if you were an outsider (a newcomer, a tourist, a foreigner, an alien) seeing it for the first time without context, or as if you were inside the art, or as if you were the art/object.
·         In the title of the poem let the reader know what object or work of art you are responding to and from what perspective you are responding to it.
·         Many students like to write ekphrastic poems using a poetic form. (See below.)

Poem-based-on-another-Cape-Ann-poem Poem Write a poem in response to one of the poems in the Cape Ann poet packet. (In the poem, in the title, or in a note, let the reader know to what poem you are responding.)

Visual-Found poem using your research  
  • Take sentences directly from your research and/or from anything you’ve already written for the Gloucester Project.
  • Make the sentences into a poem by using a title, arrangement, line breaks, spacing, and font size and type. The purpose of this activity is to emphasize the visual aspect of poetry.
  • Create a title.
Erasure poem using your research
  • Take sentences directly from your research and/or from anything you’ve already written for the Gloucester Project.
  • Make a poem by eliminating words in the sentences, by adding linebreaks, by adding spacing, and/or by playing with font size and type.
  • Create a title.
Found vocabulary poem using your research
  • Take a passage from your research
  • Write a poem using only words from the passage.
  • Don’t forget a title.
Traditional Form Poem (Italian sonnet, English sonnet, villanelle, sestina, tanka): Write a poem about your topic using a traditional poetry form*. (Forms are posted below.)
Combine any of the poetry exercises with a particular poet form. Or try the same prompt using different forms.
 ********************************************************************************************

Traditional* Forms of Poetry

Sestina
Length: 39 lines (six six-line stanzas with a final stanza of three lines)
Rhyme scheme: none
Rhythm: varied
Other: 123456, then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531. These six words then appear in the final tercet as well, with the tercet's first line usually containing 1 and 2, its second 3 and 4, and its third 5 and 6.

Italian Sonnet (in English)
Length: 14 lines
Rhyme scheme: ABBAABBA CDECDE
Meter (rhythm): iambic pentameter
Other: volta (shift) at line nine

English Sonnet
Length: 14 lines
Rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Rhythm: iambic pentameter
Other: volta at line nine, couplet provides closure or resolution or twist.

Ballad
Length: varies
Rhyme scheme: usually ABCB
Rhythm: four-beat line followed by three-beat line, etc. (Beat=stressed syllable)
Other: ballads tell a story

Villanelle
Length: nineteen lines
Rhyme scheme: ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA
Rhythm: usually tetrameter or pentameter
Other: The first and third line in the first stanza are repeated in several places. The first line is repeated at the end of the second and forth stanzas and in the third line of the last stanza. The third line is repeated at the end of the third and fifth stanzas and in the very last line of the poem. Here’s the scheme: A1bA2  abA1  abA2  abA1 abA2 abA1A2.

Limerick
Length: five lines
Rhyme scheme: AABBA
Rhythm:
anapestic (unstressed, unstressed, stressed syllables: da, da, DUM)
or amphibrachic (unstressed, stressed, unstressed syllables trimeter: da, DUM, da)
with three stressed syllables in lines 1, 2, and 5; and
two stressed syllables in lines 3 and 4.
Other: Limerick’s are usually playful, often absurd.

Haiku
Length: three lines
Rhyme scheme: none
Rhythm: five syllable, seven syllables, five syllables
Other: traditional haiku refer to the seasons directly or indirectly (kigo), and include a “cutting word,” a break in the text (kireji).
Tanka is a variation with the following syllable pattern: 5-7-5-7-7.
Renga is linked “tanka” 5-7-5, 7-7; 5-7-5, 7-7; etc.; finishing with an additional 7-7. 
Less Traditional Poetic forms that might help you create your own form

Acrostic variations: end-acrostic, double acrostic, mesostic

Anaphora (repetition of line or sentence beginnings), epistrophe (repetition of line or sentence endings)

Kerouac’s book of blues: one page poem

Olson’s projective verse (composition by field): treat the page like a musical score and/or artist’s canvas

Oulipo Experiments:
N+7: where each substantive or noun in a given text, such as a poem, is systematically replaced by the noun to be found seven places away in a chosen dictionary.
George Perec’s La Disparition (A Void in English): no words in the work include the letter “e”

Create-Your-Own-Form
·         Choose a form (tanka, haiku, acrostic, mesostic, double acrostic, sonnet, villanelle, limerick, sestina, etc.) and revise the rules so there are at least three constraints* (rules), or invent a form of your own with at least three constraints (rules).
·         Use the constraints to write a poem in response to your topic or some aspect of the topic.
·         In a note below the poem write down the three rules.

* Constraints can refer to rhythm and sound: rhyme scheme, alliteration, syllable count, stressed syllable count, etc. Constraints can refer to words and concepts: a particular word has to be in each line or stanza, a particular word cannot be used, a particular type of word (a color, a season, a name, etc.) must be used, etc. Other constraints: no words with the letter “e” or every line must have one word than the line previous or the words on the page must be arranged to look like the object being described.
Someone Else’s Form Write a poem using a form one of your classmates created.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Reflecting on Gloucester Project Researched Arguments

Before you turn in your essay...

Complete the self-assessment checklist.

At the bottom of the checklist write what types of sources you used. (Match the type to thecitation. For example, "Google books>>>>> Garland, Down to the Sea" Or, "Personal Interview>>>>>Papows, Albina")

Then, reflect on what you have done well, what you are proud of, and/or what aspects of the essay are effective. (Consider the checklist.)

Finally, reflect on what you are still concerned about, what you would like to improve upon, and/or what you would do if you had more time.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Reflecting on the Creative Real World Rhetoric Project

Respond in the comment box.

1. Narrate your role in the creation of your group's real world rhetoric. How did you contribute? What did you do?

2. Compare your group's original vision as expressed in your proposal letter with the actual final product.
a. What turned out as you hoped--or better? Explain.
b. What (if anything) changed? Why?
c. What didn't go as well as you had hoped? What would you work on if you had more time? What might you do differently? Explain.

3. Explain how the particular choices made by your group contributed to effectively conveying your message and achieving the purpose of your rhetoric.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Reminders

Due on Monday, May 20.

1) 10+ responses to quotations from a Gloucester book. Read this post for comments about the books or what the responses should include.

2) 10+ responses to quotations from a work of a book-length research-based argument. Read this post for comments about the books or what the responses should include.

3) A work of creative rhetoric with a real world audience: hand in (or send me a link to) your creative rhetoric & hand in an up-to-date version of your proposal letter. As I have told you in class, the letter must be revised to reflect any changes you have made in the project. Read this post for comments about my expectations for the project and the letter.