So, my students are nearing the end of their first book, and have made their requests for a second book. Some went directly for the books that they commented on in the first two weeks, some went back to the list they used for the first requests, and some went in new and surprising directions. […]
I began Ellen Bryant Voigt’s The Art of Syntax last night, and though I haven’t yet attempted to apply what I have learned to my readings of poems, I’ve actually found that her translation of some of Robert Jourdain’s thoughts on music (in Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy) had a deep, profound effect on the […]
My first independent reading list is done for the semester. I do six reading assignments throughout the semester (though this time they’ll all read the same book for the third assignment), and students are expected to write about the books they read four times. There were a couple of books I was hoping to assign […]
Though you hardly notice a difference, I’m now running a more advanced version of WordPress, which is pretty great on the back end. In my Intro to Poetry class, we spent some time last week on Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” giving it a close reading and looking for ways that the sonnet form provides some tension with […]
One of the first poems I teach in my intro to poetry classes is William Carlos Williams’s “This is Just to Say.” It’s a short poem with an amazing amount going on, though at first glance, many students dismiss it as slight or unworthy of being a poem. My favorite thing about teaching it is […]
