due Friday 9/17

1. Keep working on your From Another Country Tasks.

2. Describe another poem. Catch up on any previous poems you haven't described, or do this one:

Vowels

A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue : vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
Which buzz around cruel smells,

Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
In anger or in the raptures of penitence;

U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;

O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:
O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes!

Arthur Rimbaud, French, 19^th Century

due Thursday 9 /16

Work on the interview.

Think about your video. Even if you don't know your partner yet, thinking is good.

Optional: describe another poem:

Tell Me, O Swan

Tell Me, O Swan, your ancient tale.

From what land do you come, O Swan?

to what shore will you fly?

Where would you take your rest, O

Swan, and what do you seek?

Even this morning, O Swan, awake,

arise, follow me!

There is a land where no doubt nor

sorrow have rule: where the terror

of Death is no more.

There the woods of spring are a-bloom,

and the fragrant scent “he is I”

is borne on the wind:

There the bee of the heart is deeply

immersed, and desires no other joy.

Kabir, Persian India, 14^th Century

due Wednesday 9/15

continue working on the interview/personal ad writing project.

Email me when you have your personal ad ready--a version that's informative but not too personal.

Please finish the description of "Poems to the Sun" (below). If you have time adn want to get ahead, you may write a description of the next poem, "Untitled ["Puva, puva, puva" (also below).

Poems to the Sun

All the cattle are resting in the fields,

The trees and the plants are growing,

The birds flutter above the marshes,

Their wings uplifted in adoration,

And all the sheep are dancing,

All winged things are flying,

They live when you have shown on them.

The boats sail upstream and downstream alike,

Every highway is open because you dawn.

The fish in the river leap up in front of you,

Your rays are in the middle of the great green sea.

Egypt (Ancient)

Untitled ("Puva, puva, puva")

Puva, puva, puva,

In the trail the beetles

On each other’s backs are sleeping,

So on mine, my baby, thou.

Puva, puva, puva!

Hopi Indians

due Tuesday 9/14

1. Keep pushing forward with the interview.

2. Go through your descriptions of poems and try to write "labels" (topics, categories) for each one. Don't force it, but try to come up with at least one for each poem.

due Monday 9/13

1. Contact your potential interview partner. If possible, start interviewing; I'll send you the questions, and I'll include them at the bottom of this post/assignment. The deadline for finishing the interview and the writing parts of the assignment is Monday, September 27. We'll talk about the writing assignment on Monday.

2. Describe this poem please:

Song of Kuk-Ook, The Bad Boy

This is the song of Kuk-ook, the bad boy.

Imakayah—hayah,

Imakayah—hayah.

I am going to run away from home, hayah,

In a great big boat, hayah,

To hunt for a sweet little girl, hayah;

I shall get her some beads, hayah;

The kind that look like boiled ones, hayah;

Then after a while, hayah,

I shall come back home, hayah,

I shall call all my relations together, hayah,

And shall give them all a good thrashing, hayah;

I shall marry two girls at once, hayah;

One of the sweet little darlings, hayah,

I shall dress in spotted sealskins, hayah,

And the other dear little pet, hayah,

Shall wear skins of the hooded seal only, hayah.

(Eskimo)

*

interview questions:

Interview questions:

1. What are you working on in your art?

2. Please be more specific or give an example.

3. What is it like for you to work on that?

4. What’s another pursuit of yours (preferably your second favorite pursuit)?

5. What are you working on nowadays as you engage in this pursuit?

6. Please give an example.

7. What is it like for you to work on that?

8. What would your good friends say is one of your best qualities?

9. What’s an example of your being that way?

10. What would your good friends say is one of your worst qualities?

11. What’s an example of your being that way?

due Friday 9/10

1. Attempt to locate your potential partner for the From Another Country project and do your bes to make them see that this is a project they want to be a part of.

Talking points:

It will be fun.

It will help the school be a more complete community because it will help people from different countries get to know each other.

It will take two to five hours all told, but these hours will be broken up according to your mutual convenience.

It will involve a very short video, an interview, and a small writing project.

2. Do two more poems:

Song for the Sun Disappeared Behind the Rainclouds

The fire darkens, the world turns black.

The flame extinguishes, misfortune upon us.

God sets out in search of the sun.

The rainbow sparkles in his hand,

The bow of the divine hunter.

He has heard the lamentations of his children.

He walks along the milky way, he collects the stars.

With quick arms he piles them into a basket

Piles them up with quick arms

Like a woman who collects lizards

And piles them into her pot, piles them

Until the pot overflows with lizards

Until the basket overflows with light.

Hottentot people (South Africa)

Spring, the Sweet Spring

Spring, the sweet spring is the year’s pleasant king;

Then blooms each thing, then maids do dance in a ring

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,

Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,

And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,

Young lovers meet, old wives a sunning sit,

In every street these tunes our ears do greet:

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

Thomas Nashe, English, 16^th Century

due Thursday 9/9

Write descriptions of these two poems. Remember that poems are almost always stories--there is a main character (or there are main characters), the re is some kind of plot, there is some kind of setting, even if these things are merely hinted at.

Lullaby

Someone would like to have you for her child

But you are mine.

Someone would like to rear you on a costly mat

But you are mine.

Someone would like to place you in a camel blanket

But you are mine.

I have you to rear on a torn old mat.

Someone would like to have you as her child

But you are mine.

Akan people (Ghana)

*

You Playmates of Mine

You playmates of mine in the scattered parks of the

city,

small friends from a childhood of long ago:

how we found and like one another, hesitantly,

and, like the lamb with the talking scroll,

spoke with our silence. When we were filled with joy

It belonged to no one: it was simply there.

And how it dissolved among all the adults who passed

by

and in the fears of the endless year.

Wheels rolled past us, we stood and stared at the

carriages;

houses surrounded us, solid but untrue—and none

of them ever knew us. What in the world was real?

Nothing. Only the balls. Their magnificent arches.

Not even the children . . . But sometimes one,

oh a vanishing one, stepped under the plummeting

ball.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Bohemia (Czech Republic)

homework due Wednesday, 9/8/10

1. Read through the course syllabus. I'll send it to you by email.

2. Read the Humanities Department policies under "Other Resources" at http://www.walnuthillfaculty.org/Humanities.

3. Take a video of thirty seconds or less and attempt to send it to me at sdurning@walnuthillarts.org. The point is to give a test-run of the technology involved, not to make an excellent video. Making an excellent video will come later. If this part of the homework takes more than forty-five minutes, stop and try again tomorrow.

4. Read the following poem and then write a three to seven sentence description of it. Then

a) save the description in a safe place on your computer.

b) send a copy of the description to me at sdurning@walnuthillarts.org.

We'll eventually be writing descriptions of some forty-five poems. When you've written a page's worth, print out that page so you'll have it saved in two places--in the computer and on a printed piece of paper.

Write your name and the name of the poem at the top of your description and double space your description. Please proofread it. Do your best, but don't be anxious; we'll learn from each other as we go along how to write good descriptions. For now, just go for it, describing the poem in whatever way seems best to you.

If you want to get ahead on your homework, you may go ahead and work on a description of the second poem as well--that description will be due Thursday. Here is poem one:

1. Hymn to the Sun

The fearful night sinks

Trembling into the depth

Before your lightning eye

And the rapid arrows

From your fiery quiver.

With sparking blows of light

You tear her cloak

The black cloak lined with fire

And studded with gleaming stars—

With sparking blows of light

You tear the black cloak.

Fang people (Gabon)

If you want to get ahead:

2. Song for the Sun Disappeared Behind the Rainclouds

The fire darkens, the world turns black.

The flame extinguishes, misfortune upon us.

God sets out in search of the sun.

The rainbow sparkles in his hand,

The bow of the divine hunter.

He has heard the lamentations of his children.

He walks along the milky way, he collects the stars.

With quick arms he piles them into a basket

Piles them up with quick arms

Like a woman who collects lizards

And piles them into her pot, piles them

Until the pot overflows with lizards

Until the basket overflows with light.

Hottentot people (South Africa)

example of a description of a poem

Let's say the poem I'm describing is this one by Ezra Pound:

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

notes: this is the whole poem. Also, the Metro refers to the subway system in Paris.

Five-sentence description:

Pound, in just a few words, makes us know that he is recounting a personal experience of an aesthetic kind: the appearance of the people's light-colored faces against the relative darkness of the subway station struck him. He must have thought to himself, "how to describe them?," and come up with his metaphor: the faces were like petals on a wet, black bough. The reader's imagination must zoom away to a place far from a subway station in the middle of a city; it must picture itself near a tree; it's been raining; the petal of a flower that has recently bloomed on that tree has been affixed, by rainwater, to a tree branch. "What were we talking about?" asks the reader. "Oh yes, faces in a subway--yes, they could be like the beautiful flower petal on the branch! How surprising!"