Thursday, September 11, 2008

Objectives:
After this class, students will be able to:
1. respond in writing to photographic images.
2. share thoughts and writing in front of a group and listen to others.
3. analyze poetry written specifically after the events of 9/11.

Agenda:
1. Warm-Up: Photo Freewrite: Students will critically view and analyze a series of seven 9/11 photographs. As they view each photo, they should write a list of descriptions, thoughts, feelings, questions, etc., anything that comes to their minds. The end result of this writing activity will look like a poem. (Photos for this activity will be posted in another entry.)

2. Poetry Analysis of Falling Through Air by Margery Snyder:

Events are irrevocable
Some thoughts, once thought
Cannot be undone, once
Encoded in synaptic pathways
Come to the same end
However often re-enacted.

Gravity and time move
In one direction
As those people fell but once
Through awe and smoke
But are ever dead
No matter how often
The moment of their fall
Plays through my nerves...

So I fall through air
Between these scented trees
My feet dangling to gravity
As did theirs, but once,
This time, however often
I run down this hill.

Even the littlest moments
Are irrevocable, words said,
Once said, cannot be recalled.
They clasped hands and chose
Fire or falling. They chose
To fall together, tiny specks
Through air that fed the fire
Preceding the towers' greater crash.

So I, too, fall through air
This moment and the next
I love this life and let it pass
I'm still and always falling
I say to you,
Ever irrevocably
I love you.
Leap with me.

©2001, Margery Snyder

Questions to answer in your notebooks and discuss:
a. What is your first gut reaction to this poem? Write 3-5 sentences.
b. List three words in the poem which you do not know OR list three words from the poem which can help you on the SAT.
c. The definition of IRONY is when an event or action turns out to be the opposite of what is generally expected. For example, it would be ironic for a driving instructor to be injured in a car accident; you would expect that a driving instructor would have a perfect driving record. In this poem, then, why is it IRONIC that the word irrevocable is repeated?
d. Write a new title for this poem. Explain your reasoning for this new title.
**This assignment should be completed for homework!

Homework: Please visit our class website for tonight's homework. You will analyze irony and allusion in a BIZARRO comic. Write your answer in your notebook.