Group Work & Assignment due Monday, Nov. 17

Wednesday, we spoke briefly about WW1 poetry, looking at Sassoon's protest (link below). Then, we listened to Randall Jarrell read "The Death of the Ball Turrett Gunner" (link again below). Then, the take-home assignment for Thursday/Friday (due Monday, Nov. 19th) was distributed:

Read pages 250-258 (“Regionality”) in Vendler

“Regional poetry clothes the land in reminiscence, intimations of history, and imaginative power” (251).

“It is not ‘London’ that we see in William Blake’s ‘London’…but rather London-as-interpreted-by-Blake” (253).

Then, keeping in mind the quotes above, choose either “A Poem for Myself (or Blues for a Mississippi Black Boy)” (508-09), “The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” (518-520) or “Santa Fe” (495-496) and in ½ page to 1 page, double-spaced, explain how your selected poem is:

Not Mississippi, but Mississippi-as-interpreted by Knight
Not Newport, but Newport-as-interpreted by Longfellow

Or

Not Santa Fe, but Santa Fe as interpreted by Harjo

In other words, what does the poet see when he/she looks at Mississippi, Newport, or Santa Fe? What images, language, etc. does the author use to re-create this sense of place?

The rest of the class time was devoted to group work, to begin preparing for the final presentation.