due Thursday 10/1

1. Find five images that you think seem pregnant with meaning or interest from each of the four short stories we've read: "Roman Fever," "A Rose For Emily," "The Yellow Wallpaper," and "The Country Husband."

2. Write about "The Night Wind," p. 670.

due Tuesday 9/29

1. Write a comment on this blog about "The Country Husband." See below for prompts.

2. Work on your analysis of the two paintings, due Wednesday. Hand in on Wednesday your observations, your chart, your summary, your claim, and your discussion.

3. Optional: write another "what I learned" personal essay, due tomorrow.

Prompts for "The Country Husband":

a) Tor F: Francis might be having a mid-life crisis.

b) Why might the dog, Jupiter, be in this story?

c) Why might Gertrude be in this story?

d) How does the near-airplane crash figure in?

e) What is the role of memory in this story, specifically Francis's memory of World War II?

due Monday 9/28

1. Discuss the poem "To His Coy Mistress," p. 671, another carpe diem poem

2. Read the rest of "The Country Husband," pages 81-88.

Please note that the analysis (observations, chart, summary, claim, discussion) is due Wednesday. Don't rewrite or type the observations and chart. Do type the summary, claim and discussion. Please hand in your work in hard copy.

Please also note that the OPTIONAL new essay about something you learned is due Tuesday.

due Thursday 9/24

1. Please discuss "Cherrylog Road," p. 447.

2. Please comment on this post about The Yellow Wallpaper. Some possible topics:

a) could this be read as a parable about feminism/sexism? Explain.

b) if it is a a parable about feminism and sexism, take a detail and explain how it would work.

c) How else could this story be read than as such a parable?

You're allowed to simply make an observation and think about it.

Specific references to the text are informative and persuasive.

due Wednesday 9/23

1. Please finish reading "The Yellow Wallpaper," if you haven't already. It's on pp. 513-524.

1. Please do discuss, as usual, the poem Song of Myself (just the first two parts though). I've pasted the two parts below. You may also find the two parts on our class blog. Don't forget to think about language unless you have a good reason not to. Send your discussion to me by email as usual.

Song of Myself

1

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their

parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with

perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the

distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz'd whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and

vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing

of blood and air through my lungs,

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and

dark-color'd sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch'd words of my voice loos'd to the eddies of

the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields

and hill-sides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising

from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the

earth much?

Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of

all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions~

of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look

through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in

books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Due Tuesday 9/22

1. Discuss the poem "[I being a woman and distressed]" (p. 655).

2. Fill in the observation protocol for "Young Mother Sewing," found at www.metmuseum.org. (Use the search box.) The terms of visual analysis can be found in the department handbook, available at www.walnuthillfaculty.org.

3. Read "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Wednesday, 9/23.

due Monday 9/21

1. Please write about "Sololoquy of the Spanish Cloister" in the usual way. It will help to know that it's set in a monastery in the Renaissance era in Europe. The speaker hates Brother Lawrence in an obsessive way. Figuring out why might be something to right about.

2. Read "A Rose for Emily," 470-474, and write about it: see last night's prompt. Note that you should wait to look at the blog until after you have read, or the plot will be spoiled for you, and you don't want that to happen.

have a good weekend.

due Friday 9/18

1. Please write about "The Ruined Maid" (639) and "In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus One Day" (641)--one discussion comparing the two poems.

2. Please read pp. 467-470, parts I and II of "A Rose For Emily," and blog. You might comment on plot, point of view, setting, diction, or anything else related, but I particularly urge you to look at Faulkner's syntax (sentence-structure), especially when a particular sentence's syntax catches your eye/ear.

3. Don't forget about the OPTIONAL revision of your discussion of "Rare Bird."

due Thursday 9/17

1. Write about "Persimmons" (631) in the usual way.

2. Write a comment on this post on the subject of "Roman Fever." Address one of the following questions, or not. Backing up what you say with evidence--a quoted phrase--is always effective.

a. What do Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Ansley think of each other before the revelation that Babs (Barbara) is the daughter of Mrs. Slade's husband? How will this change now that the truth has been revealed?

b. Why is the setting appropriate to what goes on in the story?

c. Are Mrs. Slade equally sympathetic (likable or dis-likable), or do you end up rooting for one more than the other? Explain.

d. Is the view of human beings here essentially more positive or more negative?

e. What about the language of this story makes the story more than just a soap opera story of intrigue and betrayal?

due Wednesday 9/16

1. Please read pp. 113-119 (that is, to the end) of "Roman Fever." Comment as you did last night: first attempt a plot summary, or emend someone else's plot summary, until someone has gotten it right, in your opinion. If someone has, make an observation and give us your thinking about that observation.

2. Please read "Woodchucks" and "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" (627 and 628) and write about them in the usual way.

Thank you.

Homework due Tuesday 9/15/09

http://travel.webshots.com

1. Read "Let me not to the marriage of true minds," p. 611, and write about it in the usual way.

2. Read part I of "Roman Fever," pp. 110-113.

(a) Attempt to summarize the plot this far. If someone before you has done so and has made an error, respectfully say what you think is correct.

IF someone has come up with a summary you agree with, go on to (b).

(b) Make an observation, and think about it for a bit. (Column two thinking.) Feel free to refer respectfully to what others have said.

In case it's not clear, I am asking here for one, not two, blog comments.

Do read the comments made previously.

Please check back in after a half hour or so, read what people have written in the meantime, and say "I have read."

Thank you.

homework due Monday 9/14

1. Write about "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone" and email it as usual. For your observations, remember that your list of literary terms can be helpful.

2. Write up your discussion of "Rare Bird."

Have a good weekend.

homework for Thursday September 10 2009

1. Poetry: Please write about TWO poems, both about grief over the death of a loved one: "On My First Son" (p. 602) and "The Vacuum" (p. 603). Your observations can either be about an individual poem OR about both poems. Do the "important words" part for each poem. Write only one "discussion" part for both poems, not one for each.

Remember: you don't have to write about the important words (although there's no penalty for doing so), you just have to list them.

2. Write at least one claim about "Rare Bird" based on your chart.

3. If you didn't do your summer reading or only did part of it, please email me a realistic schedule you intend to follow to get it (the rest) done. For example, "I'm going to read x stories per weekend.") Keep in mind that the last two stories are quite a bit longer than the preceding ones.

homework for Wednesday night, September 9

1. Please read The River-Merchant's Wife: a Letter" on p. 599 of your Norton Anthology. Same instructions as last time. Please include your observations. Please try to make one of your observations have to do with what the poem sounds like, because the sound is where a lot of the fun is. A poem without consideration of its sound is long a song with only the lyrics, no music.

2. Finish your analysis chart on the two pages from "Rare Bird."

Thank you!

First Day's Homework

http://en.wikipedia.org

1. Find your way to this blog.

2. Read "We Real Cool," p. in your Norton Anthology, and write about it.

a. Make 3-5 observations about the poem. (An observation is something that no sane person would disagree with.)

Each observation should seem intuitively to have some potential importance. For example, the fact that the letter e occurs x amount of times probably isn't too important. The fact that the poem contains no articles seems more important.

Other possibilities (feel free to use these): "The verbs in this poem are . . ." or "The rhymes in this poem work this way: . . ." or "The metaphors in this poem are . . ." (if you think there are any metaphors). The list of literary terms and definitions in the Humanities Department Handbook will provide you with lots of ideas for observations.

b. Write down 3-5 words that occur in the poem that seem to you the most most important or interesting.

c. Look over what you've done in (a) and (b). Now write for 1/2 a page to one page, typed, double-spaced, about the poem, in a relaxed way. Try to keep going until you think you've gotten somewhere, until you think you've made a discovery about the poem.

d. Save what you've written [in (a), (b), and (c)] in a folder dedicated to writing about poems. Send an email to me and attach what you've written to the email. (If you don't know how to send an attachment, copy what you've written into the body of your email.) My address is sdurning@walnuthillarts.org.

2. Read or re-read "Rare Bird" from Ship Fever.

3. Optional: make some more progress on your chart about the passage from "Rare Bird" we looked at in class (if we got as far as starting a chart.)

Thank you!