Corral on "To Robert Hayden"

Here is an interview in which the poet gives, in essence, a reading of his own poem.

Annotated Bibliography Redux (Due 12/1)

Due: Wednesday, November 19, 2014  Now, Monday, 12/1 (FOLLOW DIRECTIONS)

Worth: 25 points 

Requirements:

• One complete page, minimum
• MLA Format, including: 12 point font size in either Times New Roman or Cambria font; double space
• Two proper MLA end citations, each annotated in two paragraphs
• MLA in-text citationà Make sure to acknowledge authors, and to insert parentheses with proper information in the annotated paragraphs

What is an annotated bibliography? An AB can be considered a reflective Work Cited page. Instead of simply listing the publishing details, you follow each end citation with an annotation of the source’s topic and its thesis point, followed by the source’s importance/application to your research.

The basic information found in the annotation: (paragraph 1) what is the source’s main point, and (paragraph 2) how is it important to your research.

Generic Format

Proper Work Cited citation of your source  (Review Rules for Writers)

            A paragraph that provides analytical summary of the source: provides context for the source; provides its main point, and its main example used to support its thesis.

            A paragraph that connects the source’s main point to your research. How do you see the article supporting your essay? How are the author’s points helpful?

Student Example:

Weber, Ian. “Shanghai Baby: Negotiating Youth Self-Identity in Urban China.” Social Identities. 8.2

            (2002): 347-368. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.

            Ian Weber’s “Shanghai Baby” is a cultural analysis of Wei Hui’s novel Shanghai Baby, especially its impact on urban youth identity construction in modern China (348). Weber posits that Wei Hui’s narrator’s journey is “a metaphor for the ongoing struggle by Chinese youth to reconcile individualistic and collectivist orientations” (366). The reconciliation Weber refers to is between Chinese teenagers – especially females – wrestling with their sexuality and individuality and the government’s vision for submissive citizenship. Weber comments frequently about the sexual encounters experienced by Wei Hui’s narrator being counter to the type of citizen China wants to portray (349; 355). The Chinese government has debated censorship (350) of the novel, and Weber argues that it is because sexual freedom contradicts socialist equality (366).

            Weber’s analysis supports one of the assumptions that I had going into my research of the rebellious first generation American youths in Amy Tan’s short stories: that there is a cultural conflict in regards to the Chinese elders’ views of individuality and their sons and daughters. One cultural difference I need to consider in my analysis of Tan’s portrayals of Chinese youth is that equality in the US is based on a democratic system, not socialist one, and this allows me to analyze characters’ behaviors in regards to this difference. Weber has helped me better show that Tan’s teenagers live in a new society, one that supports individual expression, which is in direct conflict with their family heritage. I now understand that there are reasons the Chinese elders have their beliefs.

HW for 11/24

With your 1.5 Response 1 due and being a poetry explication, you will need to read these webpages further for more clarity:

1. Duke University's explanation of what explication means.

2. University of North Carolina's model (scroll down) for how to write an explication.


For Group A, B, and C: be ready to lead the discussion on your poems, based on explications!

• Make sure to contact each other over the weekend (use e-mail and Canvas, etc.)

• Discuss your readings of the same poems. Help each other see things in the poems (that is one of the main reasons we are doing this--teamwork). 

• Your entire group will take the front of the class. Each of you needs to contribute to the discussion.
• You can ask the class questions about the poems, but make sure you have your own answers to those questions.

•  If you need to use the computer to show anything, please e-mail Professor A. ahead of time so that he can either post it to the blog or have it ready for you at the start of your presentation. 

Groups for Poetry Leads

Group A: Diaz, "When My Brother Was An Aztec" (1), "Downhill Triolets" (52) & "A Brother Named Gethsemane" (64)

• Ana Colon
• Connor Chaney
• Rebecca Steinberg

Group B : Corral, "Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso" (21), "& both Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" poems (4, 71)

• Kayla Boucek
• Ruth Cachola
• Michael Garfield

Group C: Diaz, "Mariposa Noctorna" (60), "Monday Aubade" (83), & Corral, "To Robert Hayden" (63)

• Stephanie Horchler
• Corrin Johnson
• Haley O'Shea

Group D: Corral, "To the Beastangel" (53), "To the Angelbeast" (55), & "To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor's Garage" (61)

• Barbara Cheakalos
• Levi Peresta
• Rachel Rasicot

Group E: Corral, "Monologue of a Vulture's Shadow" (73); Diaz, "Of Course She Looked Back" (88) &"A Wild Life Zoo"(101) 

• Marissa Colea
• Rylee Rucker
• Austin Weller

HW for Wed., 11/19

Work on your Annotated Bibliography. Read the post over on how to cite poetry, and incorporate those points in your bibliographies.

On Wednesday, I will assign each of you to a Group (ABCD or E) and you will be given specific poems to explicate. 

Citing Poetry: some easy rules

• The ideas about any quoting of sources are still relevant with poetry. You still need to lead-in to your quotes, attaching them to your own ideas with a sentence. Never drop a quote! 

• Use the line number in your in-text ( ) citation, rather than page. The line of a poem never changes! 

• Don't quote more than three lines of poetry at a time, within a sentence. Your points will be harder to understand because there will be way too much language to unpack in those lines. Plus, quoting too much takes up your thought space. 

• You don't have to, nor should you want to, always quote entire lines. With poems, you can practice quoting just important images or a figures of speech within a line or lines.

• Example:  The speaker's first piece of advice includes the idiom to "keep your head" (line 1). The idiom refers to the listeners need to stay calm and focused.

• Example: A major theme of the poem includes self control, as seen in the speaker's advice to the son to "trust yourself" (3), "don't give way to hating" (7), and do not "make dreams your master" (9). Such advice continues for the rest of the poem, including in the final stanza, where the speaker reminds his son not to let neither "foes nor loving friends" (27) emotionally change the way he acts. 

• Mechanically, if you are integrating two lines of poetry into your own sentence, you need to indicate the line break with a forward slash:   .../ ...

• Example:  "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" beings with the command, "Let us go now, you and I, / When the clouds are spread out against the sky/ Like a patient etherized upon a table," with that image setting the poem's sombre tone (lines 1-3).

• If the first word of each line is capitalized, make sure you do so in your own quote. Here, all three lines begin with words capitalized: Let, When, Like.  

• If you are quoting the last line of one stanza and the first line of the next stanza in the same quote, you use a double forward slash: ...// ...

• Example: Look at Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays."  (Hayden is a Corral favorite)

• The son shows the tense childhood relationship with his father, "and slowly I would rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of that house,// Speaking indifferently to him" (lines 8-10).

Studying Reviews for concepts

A good source of both understanding an unfamiliar text and for modeling your own analytical sentences is to look for direct reviews of your subject--with your poetry collections, you should have been able to find one on-line pretty easily. 


Here is a review of Natalie Diaz' collection at MUZZLE. Though you will NOT use first person in your Research Essay, and though the review is not 'perfect,' you can still learn a lot about your subject from reading a few of these such reviews

• Pay attention to how a reviewer discusses theme and imagery on a sentence level
• Pay attention to how a reviewer summarizes a text
• Pay attention to how a reviewer integrates quotes into their own claims (as we have discussed) and how he or she mechanically cites poem line and stanza breaks.

Warnings

• Reviews often give the short end of any one poem. The purpose for reviews is to be more generic, and though they often concern themselves with a writer's themes they often ignore an in-depth look at that theme. 

• Instead, reviewers spend more time on craft and on making a decision on whether the book is great or not. Your job is to not get lost in the "greatness" or lack thereof of the work. Your job is to focus your research more on unpacking the subject matter's actual social statement.

• For instance, the reviewer does not go in-depth in her statements such as: "Image driven poems like “Cloud Watching” (“Betsy Ross needled hot stars to Mr. Washington’s bedspread— / they weren’t hers to give. So, when the cavalry came, / we ate their horses. Then, unfortunately, our bellies were filled / with bullet holes”) and “Dome Riddle” sit well alongside the more narrative pieces. The poems about the speaker’s family range from the myth- and fantasy-laced title poem to the brutally direct and unornamented “Why I Hate Raisins.” Your Research essay would want to address what makes those images powerful--what do they comment on. Your job would be to discuss what the myth-like quality of Diaz' poetry is being used for.