September 30

ELA 20: Sept 30 “The Piano” poetry analysis…

  1. We began the class with a reminder that the Symbolism Formal Paragraph was due yesterday. (There are a few who think they’ll be able to hand it in by the end of the day and my leniency will extend Just that far.) They also had several assignments handed back to them with comments.
  2. To remind us and really help clarify the embarrassment and frustration kids feel at times because of their somewhat pushy parents, I showed a quick video clip from the popular show “Gene Simmons Family Jewels”. In this clip, they show several of the family videos of the kids when they were younger. The kids, now teenagers, are slightly embarrassed by the videos but also have fun remembering the events in them.
  3. We did an intense study of the poem titled “The Piano”. Their copies of their poem should be littered with annotations and markings after all our discussion and discection of it. One of the biggest things this poem makes clear is that poetry can have a climax in it, even though there’s not necessarily a resolution, and that line length in poetry also has an impact on the tone of the overall piece. (Near the beginning of the poem, the narrator, a young boy, has very long-winded descriptions and details of the events leading up to the climax of his ordeal, but just after that climax the sentences drop short in length (as much as two words immediately after) and are clearly broken apart by periods to make it clear his attitude is angry and bitter. It’s a really interesting, very well put together poem!
  4. We’ll continue tomorrow with our analysis of a much shorter and less complex poem titled “Warren Pryor”.
  5. With just the few minutes left in class, I showed them three or four minutes of a movie I have but haven’t had the chance to watch yet. In scanning the movie, though, there was a part where a man who is terminally ill has the opportunity to walk through his old childhood home, in his search for some meaning to life. His response in being in his old room is surprising, that it gives him no satisfaction and that while he’s even standing there he hardly believes his life was ever happy. “You can’t go home” is the final thought. It is fitting with the first sub-unit we studied and a very similar situation to the essay we read titled “Back to Wolf Willow”.


Posted September 30, 2008 by Waldner in category ELA 20

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