It was so nice to meet some of your parents at Open House yesterday :) In this blog post, we'll:
MacArthur Geniuses and Nobel LaureatesI just wanted to let you know that NK Jeminson won a 2020 MacArthur genius award, along with $625,000. I've never read her, but I feel like her work would probably be right up my alley, and yours as well if you were into Octavia Butler. In fact, it kind of seems like Jeminson is an Octavia Butler for our generation. In this Guardian article, the newspaper describes Jeminson's work as "pushing against the conventions of epic fantasy and science fiction genres while exploring deeply human questions about structural racism, environmental crises and familial relationships." While we're on the topic of awards, I want to let you know that the 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature will be announced on Thursday. Fingers crossed for Margaret Atwood. Poetry Claims DebriefingThe claim is the foundation of our analytical writing. If there's a problem with the claim, it's usually nearly impossible to spend the rest of the paragraph defending it successfully. Let's look at some opportunities I noticed for strengthening our claims. Read through these carefully before you submit your next round of DJ's. Also, reread last week's debriefing on claims. Some of us need to review the structure of a strong claim. 1. The claim should be one sentence. Now, I'm not saying that every strong claim that has ever been spun out of a mind has always been one sentence long. What I am saying is that a sentence is enough space to create a strong, arguable claim. When we start bleeding our claims into other sentences, often our language becomes sloppier and we add unnecessary additional ideas. A strong one sentence claim is more difficult to write than a sprawling idea spread out over many independent clauses. A strong one sentence claim is often more precise than sprawling claims. Here's an example of a multisentence student claim: In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas repeats, “rage, rage against the dying of the light,” to convey his belief that life is bright and should be fiercely protected to the very end. This poem is the fear Thomas has of his father giving in to death, so repeating for him to fight for his life shows how important life is to Thomas that he compares it to a light. There is too much here that belongs in the explanation, not the claim. Here's a revised, stronger, one sentence version of the claim: In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas illustrates the tragedy of death and the beauty of life by the repetition of the phrase "the dying of the light." 2. Revise your claims on a word level. The claim is an important sentence, maybe the most important sentence of your analysis. It needs to be strong. Every word should accomplish some sort of work. Before you turn in your second set of dialectical journals, and before you turn in any analytical work, reread your claim to make sure that every word is important and necessary. 3. Distinguish between author and speaker. The difference between the author and the speaker is more confusing in poetry than in fiction. But it's essential that these terms aren't confused with each other. For our purposes, the author of the poem is the person whose hand in around the pen, the person making the stylistic choices and crafting the words we are reading. The author doesn't inhabit the poem, the author creates the poem. The speaker is one inhabiting the poem. Let's look at a second claim example of a student claim: The author is grieving over the loss of his dad, which alludes to the perspective of the speaker which is the author relating to anyone who grieved over the loss of a loved one. And a stronger revision: In his poem, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas' shift into the second person point-of-view in the last stanza turns the speaker's argument for the morality of resisting death into his personal grief at the approaching death of his father. That's probably enough to be getting on with for now. More next week. Writing WorkshopsNext Monday's Content Hour will be our first Writing Workshop. Here are a few details about how they will work:
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AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined AP English Literature and Composition classroom. Archives
May 2021
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