Reading a Poem

"Reading a Poem: 20 Strategies"

HW for Wed., 11/5

1. Read over the Research Proposal and do some initial background into the authors and books on the back. Which ones most interest you, and why?

2. Read from Natalie Diaz' collection: "Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination..." (5), "A Woman with No Legs" (16), and "Why I Hate Raisins" (9-10).

Read from Eduardo C. Corral's collection: "In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes" (9-10), "Border Triptych" (12-14), and "Immigration and Naturalization Service Report #46" (16).

• What subject matter(s) do these poems deal with? 
• What commonalities do Diaz' speakers have with each other?
• What commonalities do Corral's speakers have with each other?
• What are differences in the character traits of the speakers in Corral's poems?
• What are the most arresting images in each poem? What makes them memorable and comprehendible? 

3. Read in Rules for Writers: Chapters 53 and 54 (420-447).

Basic Questions for Understanding a Poem

What does an image denote and connote? 

What does a description tell you? 

What is the situation, and what happens/what results?

What philosophical ideas get asked or stated?

Research Essay: Secondary Sources

There are quite a few valuable on-line resources that you can find essays on contemporary American poetry. Below are a few of the websites that have been vetted (evaluated) by your professor:

1. The Poetry Foundation has a database of essays on Poetic Theory

• "Use This Word in a Sentence: "Experimental"" Ann Lauterbach

2. Boston Review also has a large selection of essays.

• "A Machine Ate My Language" by Carmen Gimenez Smith

3. Poetry Daily's Newsroom often links to viable sources, from magazines, interviews, and other periodicals.

4. Poets.org  (The Academy of American Poets)

5. The Poetry Society of America

6. The Rumpus Room 

7. NPR

8. Lana Turner Journal

9. The Best American Poetry blog

Other websites that are vital, yet they have limited access to articles (subscriptions). See if any of these are available through our college library databases:

1. The Paris Review

2. Virginia Quarterly

3. American Poetry Review

4. Kenyon Review 

Homework: Review Coordination and Subordination Ideas in RR

1. Your Essay 2 revisions and edits are due. We will cover in depth Chapter 14: Emphasize Key Ideas as part of self-editing exercise on your essays on Monday. Here is what you need to do to prepare your essay:

Work on using one of the coordination or subordination techniques to revise your thesis statement. Your essay prompt demands you to have a complex idea in which you are showing how multiple characters' views relate to each other. Therefore, your thesis should have one of the following forms:

• , FANBOYS
• a semi-colon that combines two related ideas
•    ; conjunctive adverb (or trans phrase), 
• subordinating conjunction + IND, IND  
• IND +  ,   + subordinating conjunction + IND

2. Do the Breaking Down Metaphor handout on Canvas, as well as read the poem "Escape Hatch"

Consistent Perspective

One of the weakest language shifts involves the change from third person to first or second. We've discussed this issue a few times.

• Sentence to sentence, you need to maintain the same subject when discussing the same subject. If you start a thought with "our" or "Albert" you must stick to that subject until the thought is complete, even in the next sentence. Shifting from "We love to take walks. You are amazing" is really disconcerting. 

• "You" is most effectively used as the subject when giving advice or directions (such as when you are writing a process-oriented paper on How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies. Yum!)

Time is also very important. You screw time when you shift verb tenses, within a sentence or from sentence to sentence! 

• In literary analysis, you write in the 3rd person simple present (Albert walks. Klara states). Doing so will allow you to much more cleanly express flashback using key transitional words or phrases or the simple past tense.

• Albert goes on a worldwide search for his father, and ends up in the South Pacific. To find his father, he must work as first mate to a slave trader named Jack Lewis. Albert compromises his ethics to seek the truth of his father. 

That dirty, sinful word 'syntax' needs consistency, too. 

• Active voice construction is the first key. Your writing in Active Voice is benefited by a consistent verb tense, coincidentally. Why? Because the "simple present" forces you to scrap all worthless verb constructions for the easiest. You get down to "subject + verb" construction. 

• Passive voice:  linking verb + by/with + subject  (The boy was bitten by the dog.)

• In listy sentences, or in multiple sentences in which list ideas, you should also follow the same order and form (137-39).  

• Order: in multiple sentences or compound sentences, make sure the sentences that go together follow "subject, verb" structure. If one of the actions changes to "verb, subject" then you have a shift.

• Form: Pay attention to the verb forms and types. If you have an action verb, the next verb construction should be an action verb. Your goal is to get those verbs to match in form and "type."  
• Linking verbs (to be or to have verbs) are a great clue.  
• When the verb form changes drastically over a sentence or two, you've got an issue.

Basic Editing Skill: Diagram your sentences to test for most grammar issues

1. Underline the subject of the sentence

2. Circle the verb

3. Box or bracket or cross out (with a pencil or your mind!) all the other words

Supplemental strategies:  

• Write DEP above dependent clauses and IND above the complete sentences. 
• Draw a vertical line ( |  )  between each end punctuation to isolate and edit individual sentences.
• Edit by BACKWARDS READING. Start with the last sentence in the paragraph. Then the second to last, then the third, and so on.... 
• Use the space bar to separate a paragraph from the rest. Even spacebar each sentence so they stand alone on a line. 

A Writing Mechanic's Issues

1. Don't use "etc." and other Latin abbreviations (343) because they are tonally too casual.

2. Acronyms: only used widely-known acronyms. As RR notes, if you are using a less unfamiliar acronym you need to introduce the whole title first, with the acronym in parentheses.

• Bourdain studied at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the premier cooking school in the USA.  [See what I did there?!?}

3. Salutations can be used with proper names, when logical. 

• Unless the character goes by "Miss Sophie," you would call her Sophie--never Ms. Sophie.  However, Mrs. Rasmussen is also Anna Rasmussen--never Missus Rasmussen.

4. With numbers, the general rule is to spell out all numbers one-hundred and below. Along with rule four, you also have rule five dealing with numbers:

5. If a number starts off a sentence, write out that number. Fourteen-hundred and seventy-five is a large number, isn't it?

6. Stay numerically consistent. If you make the minor error of stating 3 out of four dentists agree, you should really be arguing that 3 out of 4 dentists agree. 

7.  As the book notes, numbers used as part of modifying phrases can be in number form, not spelled out.

• He hired an editor to get the 500-pound monkey off his back. The editor, though, was not five-hundred pounds, nor a monkey.

8. To italicize, or not to italicize, that is A question. However, you should never have to make it THE question.

•  Longer, "complete" texts such as books, albums, TV shows, movies, plays, magazines, newspapers, and even websites should be italicized. 

• However, the Bible and the Constitution are not italicized (348). Legal document titles are never italicized. 

9. Also, do not italicize (or bold, or underline) the title of your own essay. Use capitalization rules, instead.

10. Go beyond spellcheck. Use spellcheck, but don't rely on it. Spellcheck doesn't catch homonyms (there, their, there're | it it's | to two too | here hear!)

11.  Plurals versus (not verses) Possessives.  The apostrophe (') is used for ownership. You cannot tack on an -s or -es to a word to make that word own the next word. 

• What do I do with Jerry's throw [rug]? Do all Jerrys throw left-handed?

12. Capitalize proper nouns, like character names. Real people names. Business names. Titles of sources.

• There is a difference between giving Johnny cash and giving Johnny Cash away.

13. Commonly misspelled words: look for them versus assuming you have tight verses. Check 356-57 in RR, but also go to a dictionary for words you are unsure of.

14. Hyphens are not dashes. Hyphens are used with compound words, between prefixes and suffixes (360). 

15. Hyphens are also important to use when you are formatting your essay. If there is too much white space at the end of a line and you have long word, try to split that word up at a natural syllabic break to avoid the empty, or too short, line.