Week 11, Lady Aberline Likes Jazz Draft 1

Lady Aberline likes Jazz

You're not putting your hand up my dress.
Yes, I will build schools, figure puzzles and talk to animals-
but I am not open for your imagination.

Kin to puppets with weekday names, I shimmy
through life with a boring bun and blue jean jumper.
I crush the track with my bowed Sam and Libby's,
I can't work in the factory or
preside over the museum with ruddy cheeks--
but Handy Man Negri and I have our fun
in jazz clubs far from Make Believe Land.

The smoke thick rooms fill my hair as Negril
wails on the lost dings of the trolley that
makes it all real. Thinking on the delivery of
the day-the only human contact through the wall
and the change of the sweater vest leaves me trapped
unable to taste the flakes of real life slipping away.
I'm known for this because it is my name.

*This came from the exercise of writing from another character's voice. Lady Aberline is the woman in Mister Roger's Neighborhood. After doing some research about her and Handy Man Negril, I found out that both were someone famous on the jazz scene as well. There may be too many allusions here, but I like speaking from her voice. 

Week 10, Nero's Prosciutto Draft 2

Draft 2 from an Anaphora Exercise

Nero's Prosciutto

Here, where the frogs moan their tombstone solos and the rushes yawn,
I think of Venice and laundry, hanging like Nero's prosciutto.
The hemoglobin hues of summer dresses and last night's underwear
entwine. The pastels of past years and the staggering heat of canals
age the wind of middle school days.

There in the musty canals, I butcher the dog's hair like standing rib roast, little bones
wearing santa hats and leafy crowns in tandem.

Week 9, Improv

From "The Carcass" by Baudelaire
And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You'd faint away upon the grass.

There behind the rusty tire well of F150's
the glass eyed, rust colored raccoon quivers
behind the birdcage of desire and hears the
tick of drums and the useless trills of runner's heels
cutting through the dense woods of libraries and
the health department.

Week 9, Free Write

Translation  of Baudelaire's "The Carcass" 
My Words in Bold
Une Charogne
The Charger

Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,


Rapunzel mouses the object of venom, man and me.
Ce beau matin d'été si doux:
The blue martian eats suduko
Au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme
And detours under the sentiment of the flaming cologne.
Sur un lit semé de cailloux,
Surrender the lite semen and Clorox.
Les jambes en l'air, comme une femme lubrique,'
The jambs in the air come and lubricate the feminine
Brûlante et suant les poisons,
The Brilliant sauna of poisons
Ouvrait d'une façon nonchalante et cynique
Nonchalant ovaries critique the falcons
Son ventre plein d'exhalaisons.
and venture the plain explosions.

Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture,
Of solitude and rayon with cigarette points in the furniture.
Comme afin de la cuire à point,
Come to defend and cure the point of breaking
Et de rendre au centuple à la grande Nature
and the complete rendering of gratin.
Tout ce qu'ensemble elle avait joint;
Touching and reassembling the awaiting joint. 

Week 9, Pedagogy

This week, I am working to convince my students that poetry is a useful form of writing. Working with my student teacher, we developed lessons where we are reading poems in class required by the GPS, then we are having the students select lines to use as a starter. Although I had some rather good images "The city smells like crumbling buildings"-student and "the post it notes of life stare back through the cave"-student, for the most part, students were confused. I wonder if I went wrong somewhere. Perhaps we didn't work to establish a basis for this work, and so the students are confused about their purpose and their goal. The performance standards focus strongly on literature content, but when it comes to writing, they are more vague. I wonder, should I have done other exercises to set this up before actually having students write? 

Week 9, Response to Classmate's Journal -Darin Metters

In Response to Darin's Post regarding testing:

College for all students limits the opportunities for the majority of our students. Georgia is one of the few states that allows all students to take the SAT. Although I completely agree that all students who wish to go to college should be afforded that right, I do not believe that college for all students is the best path. However, the shift in education recently leans toward methods to prepare students for multiple paths instead of just college. For example, most classes in high school are taught by highly qualified teachers in their area instead of pedagogy, but schools working under Class Keys are focused on the concept of exemplary lessons that focus more on method, application and relevancy, rather than just content. This focus highlights skills verses content. Another example of this shift is happening at our school. We are focused mostly on helping the students who want to exceed, exceed. In doing so, we have found it has little to do with actual intelligence but instead, hard work. Before students attend to information, they must have a reason, instinctively or extrinsically, to focus on that activity. Although I don't have the answer for motivating all students or where the motivation comes from, motivation seems to be the answer to success for our students.

Week 9, Sign Inventory

"The Drowned Children" by Louise Gluck

1. The title of the poem controls the meaning. From her other poems, titling is very specific and important.

2. The speaker is addressing a general "you".

3. The word natural in the second line suggests multiple meanings: natural as in nature of the pond, natural as in how is should be.

4. The use of "they" makes the drowned children generalized and less personal.

5. The personification of the pond "lifting" and "dark arms" gives nature more agency than the children.

6. The second and third stanzas begin with conjunctions: "and" and "but."

7. The list of household items at the end of stanza two that ends in "their bodies" aligns the children with just things laying around the house.

8. The italics at the end are interesting. Could it be the voice of the drowned children?

9. The idea of naming in the third stanza seems contradictory to the anonymity of the children so far in the poem.

10. The idea in the second stanza that death comes to people differently is an interesting characterization of death.