First, we’ll do a little writing based on your poem. On your blog, respond to the following prompt:

Take a look at the poem you’re presenting on Friday.  Try and give a more or less literal summary of the poem.  What are the parts that you don’t understand? What are the parts that you think are interesting uses of words or imagery?  What do you like best about your poem?  (200 words)

Then, we’ll spend a little time working on memorizing.  We’ll spend the time we need  to make our poems seem as natural as possible.

Next, we’ll see a short presentation on literary terms: irony, foreshadowing, and conflict.

Finally, we’ll answer questions about Chapter 4 in OMM and hopefully get a headstart on Chapter 5 in class.

HW: Read Chapter 5 and be ready to present your poem on Friday

Let’s start with something different.

“Progressive Health” by Carl Dennis is a poem in the voice of a strangely seductive health care official. We’ll see a student rendition of it and then in small groups, we’ll analyze it on 2 levels.

1. How and with what strategies does the speaker attempt to convince the poet?  How does he/she use kairos, commonplaces, logic, and other strategies?
2. What is the poem itself trying to convince us of and through what (obviously more indirect) strategies?

Then, we’ll talk a bit about slide design by seeing the Presentation Zen blog.  This is a blog that deals with presentation styles and issues written by Garr Reynolds, a writer who lives in Japan. Look at the blog and especially click on some of the articles on the right side marked archives. See especially Jobs vs. Gates, What is good PowerPoint design, and Where do I get good images?

In a blog post, respond to these questions after you wander around a bit in Presentation Zen.

1. Give examples of the types of advice and example Presentation Zen uses.
2. What kind of persona does the author of the blog present?
3. Why is Jobs better than Gates?
4. How could PZ’s advice help you in your speech?

We’ll look at 2-3 speeches (or at least parts of them).

• Lawrence Lessig at TED

• Dick Hardt about Identity 2.0

• Hans Roslin at TED

Finally, I hope to give you some time to work.

HW: Design at least 4 slides for Thursday and continue your research.

Extra: Are you interested in Prezi?

To start, let’s look at the winner of the 2007-2008 Kaplan contest

1) Look at the 1st paragraph. How does the author try to hook us? What works and what doesn’t?

.2) Look at the 2nd paragraph. Quote 3 segments where the author uses sensory detail to explain what is happening. What works/doesn’t?

3) What does the Mozart practice segment show us about the author? Why is it there?

4) Analyze the ending. How does the writer bring it all together? What does she tell us here?

5) Why do you think this won 5k? Did it deserve it? Explain.

Then, we’ll take some time to work on our own personal essays.

Finally, I want to take a look at Poetry Out Loud and choose our own poems.  Here’s the site and here are the qualifications. Choose a poem that is at least 14 lines long with extra credit for any choice over 25 lines. There is even a keyword search.  We’ll bust out the note cards in class to start the memorizing process.

HW: Finish the Personal Essay. Print it!

We’ll start with a little passage from F451 to get us going (”My grandfather ran off the V-2 rocket film” pg. 157) and talk a bit about what he’s going on about.

Then, we’ll take some time to peer edit each other’s work. You’ll need two readers.

Reader #1: Check the form for the body paragraphs. Is there a clear thesis, topic sentence, quote set-up, quote, and commentary? If not, tell the reader what’s missing.

Reader #2: Comment on the commentary. Does the writer do a good job of connecting the quote to the topic sentence? Also, check for any gramatical or mechanical errors.

After a bit of time to work, my next plan is to take a look at the Poetry Out Loud anthologies. and…

Individually, choose 4 lines of poetry that you like. Write them down on the subway cards provided, making words bigger or smaller as necessary for emphasis or meaning. Do a little sketch or drawing to the side to give the poem a bit of visual impact. Then, we’ll try to memorize our lines. Here’s the anthology.

HW: Finish Criticize This papers October 14th.