reading reminder: 5/29

I apologize for not blogging this earlier, but in case you did not write this down in class:

Komunyakaa: "Facing It" (3076) and "My Father's Love Letter" (p. 3077)

Li-Young Lee: "Persimmons" (p. 3199); "Eating Alone" and "Eating Together" (p. 3201)

Jorie Graham: "The Geese" (3118) and "At Luca Signorelli's Resurrection of the Body" (3119)

Mimicking the Artist 2 (30pts): End of Cold War Era authors

Due: Monday, June 1st (!!!)

Prompt:

You are to write a creative piece (a poem or a short story) in which you thematically focus on exploring one aspect of cultural identity conflict as an American (that includes ethnic, religious, gender, regionalism, intellectualism, blue-collar, etc.). 

You must imitate one of the authors we have covered over the last three weeks since midterm. That list includes: Amy Tan, James Wright, Philip Levine, Rita Dove, Alberto Rios, Thomas Pynchon, Sandra Cisneros, Yusef Komunyakaa, Billy Collins, Li-Young Lee and Jorie Graham.

Imitate their writing style, how they chose to address their themes of cultural conflicts in their characters and in their poems. But, to be clear as water....You are writing your own, original creative piece inspired by one of the above authors.

Requirements: 1-2 pages, SINGLE-SPACED, Times New Roman, CREATIVE TITLE, indicate who you are imitating...

Reader Response #3 (50pts): 5/27

In 1-2 pages, answer the following prompt for Wednesday, May 27th:

"Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros is a Mexican-American immigrant story about a woman named Cleofilas. From this plot and character, Cisneros explores numerous themes, including the following: conflict of nationality, victimization, economic hardship, and the role of women in Mexican culture. Choose one of the themes and argue for Cisneros' take on that theme through this story. 

In other words, what statement is made on the theme through Cleofilas: who she is, what has happened to her, and what happens to her. Discuss her identity as you explore one of the above themes."

Guidelines:

1-2 pages, 12pt font, Times New Roman, double-spaced.

quick link:

Alberto Rios' "Day of the Refugios"

Upcoming Reading Schedule, and RR #2:

Reader Response #2

(50pts)

Due: Monday, 5/18/2009 in class

Guidelines:

Rita Dove's "Parsley" is one of her more known poems. More importantly, the poem exemplifies her exploration of social historical issues. As critic Helen Vendler states in the essay "Rita Dove: Identity Markers" on Dove and her place among African American poetry, considering this poem in particular:

… Poems of victimage, told from the viewpoint of the victim alone, are the stock-in-trade of mediocre protest writing, and they appear regularly in African-American literature. The position of victimage, and victimage alone, seems imaginatively insufficient to Dove, since it takes in only one half of the poem’s world. That half has of course great pathos, and we hear that pathos in the song she writes for the Haitian cane-cutters … (Vendler, 1995).

In one and a half to two pages, explore how Dove goes beyond simply using emotion to explore the subject of the poem -- the murdering of 50,000 Haitian cane-cutters who could not pronounce their "r"s correctly in Spanish! Focus on the language -- its musicality, its imagery -- and the message or thoughts the speaker of the poem provides to its audience by the end of poem. To help you out, what makes this poem go beyond your standard "this is wrong" journalistic approach to such atrocity?

Reading Schedule:

Monday, 5/18: Thomas Pynchon's "Entropy", pages 2816-2827

Wednesday, 5/20: Amy Tan, pages 3154-3163

Friday, 5/22: Sandra Cisneros, pages 3163-3171

Monday, 5/25: No Class, Memorial Day

Wednesday, 5/27: Yusef Komunyakaa and Lorna Dee Cervantes, select poems TBA

Friday, 5/29 : Billy Collins and Jorie Graham, and Fanny Howe - select poems TBA

Taking Further Analytical Steps: for 5/13

To help each student reader become more critical of the poems, it is important to size up what our own readings of the individual writers' works with those of published critics and reviewers alike.

One really good site on Modern American Poets, for instance, is the following website run by the University of Illinois *click bold link*. This particular site may help enrich your reading of some of the work we've read, are reading, and will read, before the term is over and June sets fire to our skin!

Part of your homework for Wednesday:

• Find, and print off, a published piece of criticism of one of the authors we are assigned to read this week. 
  
• Bring it in, having read, and be ready to discuss the criticism.*
• Go to an academic database (on library network!), use the one provided above, or evaluate on-line sources not endorsed by professor, but that do seem reputable academic sites ( www. . . . .edu sites most often are reputable). 
• WIKIPEDIA IS NOT, I REPEAT, NOT, I REPEAT, NOT A REPUTABLE SITE

*This particular assignment is something I am going to push the students in this particular course to do more and more, with three major goals particularly in mind:

1. To make you aware of how the literary world views the literature of our time.
2. To provide you models for your own criticism and critical writing strategies
3. To support and/or challenge your own readings of the texts.

example of student literary analysis

*The version below has been somewhat edited, and could use some more textual citation to support points within the middle parts, but do pay attention to some of the interpretations and focus on explaining how the line has clarified Blanch DuBois's character as lonely and needy...and then explains that through the text.

A representative line from Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire is the line from scene 11, with the main character Blanche speaking to the doctor come to take her to the psyche ward: ""Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." The line sums up the character and outcome of protagonist Blanche DuBois, a woman who desperately seeks honest acceptance from any form of humankind. When she states that she has "always depended on the kindness of strangers," the audience sees her loneliness and how Blanche has lived much of her life as a "woman of the night," taking numerous strangers into her bed for solicited passion. 

Far too long, she had allowed these men (even a boy) to give her a false sense of love and security, to the point she began to believe their lies - even creating many lies of her own, as she tried to hide or justify her immoral lifestyle. 

As a child, Blanche had been groomed in comfortable living conditions - affluent to say the least. As an adult, she lost the mansion she once lived in, but still needed to maintain her modest social status somehow. It is apparent that more than intimacy, Blanche sought someone, anyone, who would treat her as the prim and proper lady she so badly wanted to be. Someone who would not pass judgment on the person she really was. Though she knew it was not genuine, Blanche accepted the artificial "kindness" of these strangers because it masked the loneliness she really felt. Blanche was lonely and this "kindness" is what she lived for, until she was banned from the hotel room she had turned into a whorehouse. Throughout the play, Blanche still attempts to fill this void.

Loneliness echoes the attitude of other characters in this production. Harold "Mitch" Mitchell for one, was romantically linked to Blanche. He too was lonely and sought the companionship of a beautiful and proper woman and Blanche is exactly what he was looking for. In Scene 6, they express their loneliness and how together, they would no longer be alone. However, when he gets wind of Blanche's shady past he dumps her immediately and unsympathetically. Unlike Blanche, Mitch sought an honest woman and refused to settle for less. He wanted "kindness" too, but it had to be real, lest he stay lonely and continue to live at home with his ailing mother. Mitch knew he would be more lonely when his mother was no longer around. Apparently, he did not care.

Blanche makes the noteworthy quote at the end of the play, speaking to Doctor, who arrives to take her to a mental institution. He was a caring and compassionate gentleman, and he addresses her as a lady - this is all she had ever wanted. The psychiatric doctor represents freedom from loneliness and all that is good in humankind, and in Blanche's mind, she has finally found the real kindness of a stranger. This time, with no strings attached.