Links to help with your research

World Wide Watch 09 – http://www.worldwatch.org

Into the Warming World 2009 --PDF, Glossary and Stats, Bulleted Facts & Innovations -- WWWatch 09.pdf –whole book in pdf http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5984

Glossary & Ref. Guide -- http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/CCRG.pdf

Key facts -- http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5988

An example of a city’s plan: Green Plan – Philadelphia --

http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/01/29/philadelphia-green-future

Diane DiPrima – Revolutionary Letters

http://www.google.com/books?id=FDzmVXE1GYwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=revolutionary+letters&ei=OYhNSrsFmILIBJz4wekC

The Green Poetry Pack -- Mario Petrucci -- http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/lib/tmp/cmsfiles/File/GreenPack-Petrucci-PDF.pdf

Poets’ Corner: Protest
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/SubjIdx/protest.html

Poets’ Corner: Weather
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/SubjIdx/weather.html#table

Words Without Borders -- http://www.wordswithoutborders.org

Poems – Massachusetts Institute of Technology site

http://web.mit.edu/lit/www/dutchiamb/poemdepot.html

Social, Political and Anti-War Poems – http://judithpordon.tripod.com/poetry/id125.html

W.S. Merwin on Political Poetry -

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/merwin/political.htm

Poetry of Liberation - Annenberg Collection -- http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit15/glossary.html

Hungarian Poets 2006 -- http://oregonstate.edu/dept/foreign_lang/totopos/samples.html

North African Poems – bilingual -- http://oregonstate.edu/dept/foreign_lang/totopos/Excerpts%20from%202005%20North%20African%20Voices.html

C. Forche on poetry of witness -- http://www.english.illinois.edu/MAPS/poets/a_f/forche/witness.htm

Yale - Spanish – English -- Poems and Translation - Spanish-English - Yale page.docx (45.162 Kb)

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1979/5/79.05.06.x.html

Poets Against the War -- http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/worldpoets.asp

Paul Krugman of affording to save the planet -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01krugman.html?_r=2,

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/getting_to_green/the_green_rubber_snake

Nicholas Kristoff on “Clean, Sexy Water” -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/opinion/12kristof.html?em

Macedonian Poetry -- http://www.mymacedonia.net/language/antology1.htm

Chinese Olympic Poem -- http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/BAFA113F-90F0-486B-A4F7-CCE97A4D1D35/

Tiananmen -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/world/asia/04soldier.html?_r=1&th&emc=th and http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/opinion/04kristof.html?th&emc=th

Storytelling - Nieman Foundation -- http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/home.aspx and http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/essay.aspx?id=100060

Effective Research

Effective Research Methods:
1) Make sure you have a specific topic. Turn your topic into a question to form an internet search.
If your search doesn’t produce anything, expand your topic and make it more general or change the question. Don’t limit yourself to just scholarly articles and news sources – use blogs (those by organizations and those which are personal blogs), youtube, facebook pages, etc.
2) Read the articles and websites and take notes. Write down quotations, summaries, things that you can use in your piece, but also write down web addresses and authors. You may need to come back, and you will need to acknowledge sources for your project.
3) Evaluate what you read. Don’t accept everything at face values. Writers have bias and not every thing on the internet is true. Think about the web source. If it has an dot -edu (.edu) it is from a university and probably can be trusted. A dot- com (.com) is selling something. Just don’t quote something written as satire as fact, and if it looks wrong, do further research.
4) Make sure you are using a good search engine and if you want to use scholarly research try a library database or Google Scholar. If you need help come see Martie or Kent.

Resources for Final Projects

Don't forget that Kent and I have poetry books and copies of poems that are on the institute's website in Powerpoint documents on a resource table on the second floor near the public computers. I can email you digital copies of particular poems, or the whole file, or use my USB drive to transfer.

Introduction to Drama

Introduction to Drama.
Essential Questions: What is drama? Why use drama to advocate?

Types of Drama to be discussed:
Flash Drama
Readers’ Theater
Found Drama
Collage
Guerilla Theater

Learner Objectives:
To understand dramatic structure
To be able to define drama and discuss the role of drama in advocacy
To look at various types of drama that can be used for advocacy
To write, find, or adopt a script for a dramatic performance
To discuss short plays and look at sections of plays that may have an environmental message
(The Tempest, The Birds, Doctor Faustus, A Midsummer Night’s Dram)

Drama was considered a genre of poetry by the ancient Greeks. Aristotle offered drama as a general term to describe forms of poetry that were acted. The Roman writer Horace stated that the purpose of drama was either to delight (comedy) or instruct (tragedy).

“Drama is about imperfection. We don’t always like morally good people.”

“Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.” -- Robert Lynd

“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” – Hitchcock

Great drama is all about conflict. Every scene, every line of dialogue must move the conflict along.

So what is conflict? The clash of opposing forces. These forces can be other people, nature, society, our own selves, or fate or God.

What does a successful drama need?
Conflict, characters, setting, dramatic structure and good dialogue.
Characters: you need at least one (dramatic monologue). Your character should be someone with magnitude. Or importance. Some common person who stands for all of us. He needs to be a person who faces some sort of conflict. The setting/plot should reflect the time in which you live.

If where talking about the environment, it could be a story about a person who lives in a place where there is no clean water and this person’s mother is dying from disease associated with drinking polluted water.

So what’s the conflict here?
What must the main character overcome? How will they overcome it? Or will they overcome it? Is there a solution?

See http://www.expertvillage.com/video/153588_write-drama.htm

Dramatic Structure: Exposition, inciting event, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution

Dialogue: characters need to have a goal every time they speak. They want to get something from the other character(s). There must be conflict in the dialogue.
“Your dialogue shouldn’t be – what’s called—too much on the nose. You character shouldn’t be saying exactly what they’re thinking.” -- Marcy Kahan
“Characters shouldn’t actually answer each other’s lines, they should jump off each’s lines onto something else, or turn corners or surprise people. This will also create movements.”

LET’S LOOK AT SOME MASTERY DIALOGUE and discuss how it performs the above: contains conflict and moves it along; the speakers seek some information or objective from each other; the dialogue jumps off of each others.


CLAUDIO

Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signior Leonato?

BENEDICK

I noted her not; but I looked on her.

CLAUDIO

Is she not a modest young lady?

BENEDICK

Do you question me, as an honest man should do, for
my simple true judgment; or would you have me speak
after my custom, as being a professed tyrant to their sex?

CLAUDIO

No; I pray thee speak in sober judgment.

BENEDICK

Why, i' faith, methinks she's too low for a high
praise, too brown for a fair praise and too little
for a great praise: only this commendation I can
afford her, that were she other than she is, she
were unhandsome; and being no other but as she is, I
do not like her.

CLAUDIO

Thou thinkest I am in sport: I pray thee tell me
truly how thou likest her.

BENEDICK

Would you buy her, that you inquire after her?

CLAUDIO

Can the world buy such a jewel?

BENEDICK

Yea, and a case to put it into. But speak you this
with a sad brow? or do you play the flouting Jack,
to tell us Cupid is a good hare-finder and Vulcan a
rare carpenter? Come, in what key shall a man take
you, to go in the song?

CLAUDIO

In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I
looked on.

BENEDICK

I can see yet without spectacles and I see no such
matter: there's her cousin, an she were not
possessed with a fury, exceeds her as much in beauty
as the first of May doth the last of December. But I
hope you have no intent to turn husband, have you?

CLAUDIO

I would scarce trust myself, though I had sworn the
contrary, if Hero would be my wife.

BENEDICK

Is't come to this? In faith, hath not the world
one man but he will wear his cap with suspicion?
Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?
Go to, i' faith; an thou wilt needs thrust thy neck
into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away
Sundays. Look Don Pedro is returned to seek you.

Re-enter DON PEDRO

DON PEDRO

What secret hath held you here, that you followed
not to Leonato's?

BENEDICK

I would your grace would constrain me to tell.

DON PEDRO

I charge thee on thy allegiance.

BENEDICK

You hear, Count Claudio: I can be secret as a dumb
man; I would have you think so; but, on my
allegiance, mark you this, on my allegiance. He is
in love. With who? now that is your grace's part.
Mark how short his answer is;--With Hero, Leonato's
short daughter.

CLAUDIO

If this were so, so were it uttered.

BENEDICK

Like the old tale, my lord: 'it is not so, nor
'twas not so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be
so.'

CLAUDIO

If my passion change not shortly, God forbid it
should be otherwise.

DON PEDRO

Amen, if you love her; for the lady is very well worthy.

CLAUDIO

You speak this to fetch me in, my lord.

DON PEDRO

By my troth, I speak my thought.

CLAUDIO

And, in faith, my lord, I spoke mine.

BENEDICK

And, by my two faiths and troths, my lord, I spoke mine.

CLAUDIO

That I love her, I feel.

DON PEDRO

That she is worthy, I know.

BENEDICK

That I neither feel how she should be loved nor
know how she should be worthy, is the opinion that
fire cannot melt out of me: I will die in it at the stake.

DON PEDRO

Thou wast ever an obstinate heretic in the despite
of beauty.

CLAUDIO

And never could maintain his part but in the force
of his will.

BENEDICK

That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she
brought me up, I likewise give her most humble
thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded in my
forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick,
all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do
them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the
right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which
I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.

FLASH DRAMA –
This is just a short play that is less than ten minutes in length.

Review of Week 1

Review from Week 1:

Four elements needed for a good poem
1)Imagery
2)Keep it simple
3)Show don't Tell
4)Always have a story

Poetical Forms useful for protest:
List Poem
Litany
Haiku (drive-by haiku)
Pantoum
Found Poem
Syllabic Verse

Strategies for effective performance poems:
1)Have a hook
2)Use a song (and stop in the middle)
3)Say the unexpected
4)Contrast and juxapose images that are new or exciting
5)Make fun of politicians
6)Use repetition
7)Say the ending three times for effect

My Last Duchess - example of Dramatic Monologue

THAT’S my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Frà Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not
Her husband’s presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:” such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad.
Too easily impressed: she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!


-Robert Browning

Poetical Forms to use for Protest

7/1: Protest Poems, SLAMS and Poetical Forms
Begin class with Students reading Protest Poems.
Objectives:
1)To learn the purpose of FORMS
2)To write various types of forms to find which best fits our purpose
3)To discuss the dramatic monologue and how the monologue can be used

FORM + CONTENT + CONTEXT = IDEA
Forms that we will investigate:
List (look at Allen Ginsberg, other examples)
Litany (need poems)
Haiku (Basho – discuss 5-7-5 verses Kerouac’s idea of Western Haiku)
Pantoum (Atomic Pantoum, Ashberry’s Pantoum)
Syllabic Verse
Found Poetry
OTHER FORMS Students can explore: Ghazal, Villanelle, Sonnet, Blues, Sestina

Dramatic Monologues:
Robert Browning (“My Last Duchess”), Jonathan Holden (“Babbitt”), AI.

HW: Choose a form to write; Write a dramatic monologue







LIST POEM
Really – it is what it sounds like – A List.
Yet, it has purpose:
1) The things on the list are important and the writer wants you to notice them for a reason.
2) There’s a story in it – somewhere.
3) Arranged with a parallel structure or repetition.

Cosmopolitan Greetings – Allen Ginsberg

Stand up against governments, against God.
Stay irresponsible.
Say only what we know & imagine.
Absolutes are Coercion.
Change is absolute.
Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.
Observe what’s vivid.
Notice what you notice.
Catch yourself thinking.
Vividness is self-selecting.
If we don’t show anyone, we’re free to write anything.
Remember the future.
Freedom costs little in the U.S.
Asvise only myself.
Don’t drink yourself to death.
Two molecules clanking us against each other require an observer to become
scientific data.
The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal
world (after Einstein).
The universe is subjective..
Walt Whitman celebrated Person.
We are observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.
Universe is Person.
Inside skull is vast as outside skull.
What’s in between thoughts?
Mind is outer space.
What do we say to ourselves in bed at night, making no sound?
“First thought, best thought.”
Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.
Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.
Syntax condensed, sound is solid.
Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.
Move with rhythm, roll with vowels.
Consonants around vowels make sense.
Savour vowels, appreciate consonants.
Subject is known by what she sees.
Others can measure their vision by what we see.
Candour ends paranoia.

Allen Ginsberg
See –PFD on list
...
www.babinlearn.com/pdf%20files/Poetry/THE%20LIST%20POEM.pd

Litany
“A ritualistic speech, prayer, chant or petition”
It often uses repetition of the same words at the beginning of line or some other type of parallel structure.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/litany/
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Allen-Ginsberg/3704

Haiku
Usually 5-7-5 syllable count, but this is not always followed as some American poets note that Japanese doesn’t directly translate into English.
Usually contains three short lines of images. The 2nd and 3rd lines sometimes contrast (“August Dawn
Armpit stain
As the foreman drinks coffee”)
The poem is often about nature, often in present tense using everyday words and often contains a seasonal word.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177057

Pantoum
http://www.43things.com/entries/view/1371919
A poem written in quatrains. You can have as many quatrains as you’d like in the poem, but don’t go on too long. It’s a poem based on repetition of lines. Every line in the poem repeats.
Lines 2 and 4 become lines 1 and 3 of the proceeding stanza
Lines 1 and 3 of the first stanza becomes lines 2 and 4 of the last stanza.




SO – it looks like this
1
2
3
4

2
5
4
6

5
7
6
8

7
9
8
10

9
3
10
1


If it sounds confusing – don’t worry. Let’s look at another example:
http://www1.broward.edu/~nplakcy/pantoum.htm

Pantoum
by John Ashbery

Eyes shining without mystery,
Footprints eager for the past
Through the vague snow of many clay pipes,
And what is in store?

Footprints eager for the past
The usual obtuse blanket.
And what is in store
For those dearest to the king?

The usual obtuse blanket.
Of legless regrets and amplifications
For those dearest to the king.
Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,

The usual obtuse blanket.
Of legless regrets and amplifications
For those dearest to the king.
Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,

Of legless regrets and amplifications,
That is why a watchdog is shy.
Yes, sirs, connoisseurs of oblivion,
These days are short, brittle; there is only one night.

That is why a watchdog is shy,
Why the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying.
These days are short, brittle; there is only one night
And that soon gotten over.

Why the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying
Some blunt pretense to safety we have
And that soon gotten over
For they must have motion.

Some blunt pretense to safety we have
Eyes shining without mystery,
For they must have motion
Through the vague snow of many clay pipes.

from The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland (New York: WW. Norton and Company, 2000)

Another example of pantoum - go here


Dramatic Monologues: also know as closet dramas. This are poetical speeches given in the voice of one character. The poem uses the idea of an invented persona (meaning that the poet has made up a character to speak)to tell a story that reveals some trait (reveals personality) about the speaker that shows insight into an abspect of humanity. There are many good websites on the dramatic both here are two: poets.org and poetryarchive.org

Example of Name Assignment

Named

Kent

Think of cigarettes
"Your father named you
after his favorite brand."
My uncle chuckles
sipping Wild Turkey.
My father, a chronice smoker, smoked
nine packs during my mother's labor.
The story: he stood staring
at a pack when the nurse brought
news: "Mr. Fielding- a boy."
Think of cigarettes.
Think of my father, the white
lobby, his pacing, stick
after stick in his mouth
smoke curling from his lips
like surfer waves
in a rough ocean.
Think of cigarettes.
Think of me.
I became the smoke
that made my father cough
the smoke that blackened lungs
the smoke that filled
the long work hours
at a school he hated - inhale, inhale-
to buy bread, to buy shoes
we were poor, we needed
so many things: pencils, pants
doctor visits, dental work
electricity, heat, milk.
I am the smoke filled days
the orange flare as he inhaled.
My growth and deeds are the stubs
in the cemetery ashtray.
I got in fights at school
with kids older, gave one ten
stitches, threw rocks at cars
nicking and denting two or three.
I stole candy from stores,
peed on my 2nd grade teacher's
Datsun, hid in the woods
to avoid the principal and a whipping.
Still my father came, reliable, stern
again and again, he came
to get me from the office
cigarette stuck in the corner
of his mouth, gray smoke
drifting into his graying hair.
Again and again, he inhaled
asked, "What were you thinking?"
I think of the cigarettes
in his hands - chalk sticks
to mist one's name. Our lives
are the inhale of burning particles
Our lives are the release of gray truths.
When I die let it be with smoke & fire.
Let the consumption be brief.
Think of cigarettes.
Think of my father
working into the night
grading papers, shaking his head,
missing sleep, so that I could eat,
so that he could protect me,
so that I could grow and learn.
Think of the smoke in his lungs.
The smoke that ate his life.

Writing for Performance DAY 1

Introduction: Writing for Performance
“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” -- Plato

“A poem begins with a lump in the throat.” – Frost

“There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.” – John Cage

“Poetry is a weapon” – Baraka

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” –Shelly

This workshop will be divided into three sections: poetry, drama and prose. In this class we will read, write and perform. The goal: To get you to find something that you can use to advocate your ideas. This is a performance track, but in order to perform something you must first have a script, even if it is improv. Our goal is either for you to find someone else’s work, write your own work, or combine someone else’s work with your own. Eliot once stated that the best poets STEAL. And it’s a post-modernist idea, “the ocean of consciousness”, that art can use already existing art to create something new. Meaning: I encourage you to steal! We’ll call it sampling or alluding.

In this track you will develop two small projects and one final project. Our job as instructors is to teach you the skills in order for you to put the pieces together. In the creative writing track, it is our job to find the script.
DAY 1: Why use poetry to advocate? What makes a good poem? Performance Poetry.

Learning Objectives:
1)To list three items that make a good poem
2)To answer why use poetry to advocate.
3)To understand how to analysis a poem.
4)To write parodies with a slant on the environment.
5)To write down “Their Story” and keep a journal.
6)To value the impact of imagery in a poem.
7)To think about the connection between poetry and performance.

Why use poetry to advocate?
Think about what is more immediate: a good speech or a good poem? A well written essay or a song? Woody Gruthie used to walk around with a sign on his guitar that stated: “This machine kills fascists”. A good poem or song usually makes someone react – even before they understand it on a conscious level (this isn’t to say that they didn’t understand it subconsciously). When we talk protest:
Think of slogans. Think of songs. Think of Martin Luther King. Think of Muhammad Ali. Think of any religion – you’ll find poetry.

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words” – Robert Frost.

“Poetry should strike the reader as wording of the highest order and appear almost as a remembrance.” – John Keats

“Always be a poet, even in prose.” -- Charles Baudelaire
Poetry is concise and says more in a shorter space.

What makes a good poem?
a)imagery – 1st and above all things – you must have imagery.
Imagery – is the use of the five senses to create a description

We make sense of the world through our five senses, and therefore to create an experience for the listener or reader we need to allow them to experience it by evoking the five senses.

“The apparition of the faces in the crowd
Petals on a wet, black bough.” -- Pound

Go here for more examples.

b)Story – always have a story. Even lyric poems have a story somewhere. All humans are storytellers. Share a story with your listeners.

c)KEEP IT SIMPLE. Don’t try to make something sound witty or sound like poetry. Make it honest and sound like you or the characters/persona in the poem. Difficult poets are often not good advocates.

d)Show don’t tell.
If you're a rapper, instead of telling someone to let your freestyles come naturally, how can you show them with your words?

From the family tree of old school hip hop
Kick off your shoes and relax your socks
The rhymes will spread just like a pox
Cause the music is live like an electric shock

--Beastie Boys "Intergalactic" From Hello Nasty

e) When possible use figurative language

IMAGERY ASSIGNMENT:
Think about your name:
What image does your name give off? What does it smell like? What does it sound like? If you had to eat it what would it taste like? What does it look like?
Now take two images that contrast one another and put them together:
Example: Hydrogen Jukebox. Aspirin Nipple.

“This is Just to Say” – handout poem and play radio versions.

View performance poets: Amiri Baraka “Someone Blew Up America”;

Ron Whitehead, “I Will Not Bow Down America”;

“Taylor Mali, “
http://www.taylormali.com/

HW: Write a parody. Write name poem.