"Poetry" by William Stafford

from this site. find more stafford poetry here

This Bitter Earth

In the performance of the play we watch in class, this song was played on the phonograph by the Ruth character as the curtain comes up on Act II. She is ironing but listening intently. Beneatha then comes in and says, "Enough of this assimilationist junk!" and puts on some Nigerian folk music.

"This Bitter Earth" is a classic. A beautiful song made famous by Dinah Washington. Lyrics below. Why might Ruth, in particular, be moved by these lines?

This bitter earth
What fruit it bears
What good is love
That no one shares
And if my life is like the dust
That hides the glow of a rose
What good am I
Heaven only knows

This bitter Earth
Can it be so cold
Today you're young
Too soon your old
But while a voice
Within me cries
I'm sure someone
May answer my call
And this bitter earth
May not be so bitter after all

Raisin In the Sun Assessment

Questions: A Raisin in the Sun

Identify the following items:

• Lena Younger
• Ruth Younger
• Walter Lee Younger
• Beneatha Younger
• Travis Younger
• Joseph Asagai
• George Murchison
• Karl Lindner
• Bobo
• Willie Harris
• Clybourne Park
• Springfield
• Flags and Spears


Answer the following questions on your own piece of paper:

1) Explain the different ways Travis’ parents respond to his request for 50cents. Explain how they deal with each other on this subject. What does this reveal about the characters?

2) The check. Explain all that the check seems to represent in this play.

3) The plant. Explain all that the plant seems to represent in this play.

4) What things does Mama tell the family about the past—both the history of their family and their larger history of black families in America?

5) Examine the emphasis on fatherhood in this play. Who are the different fathers in this play? In what ways is the play about manhood and fatherhood?

6) Who says the following and at what point in the play? Explain the importance of the passage:

“Oh—Mama—they don’t do it like that any more. He talked brotherhood. He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship.”

7) Does this play offer encouragement or example or moral models for all audience members or is it just about a black family in the fifties? Do you find something in this play that speaks to you? Explain.

CRQ4 Fahrenheit 451

English 12 ENG12PLC
Fahrenheit 451. Critical Reading Questions #4: pages 44-66
a) On page 46 Montag thinks about an old joke about a man who called his wife to ask her what’s for dinner. Why?
b) Summarize what we learn about Montag’s marriage on pages 44-52.

c) How does Montag learn what happened to Clarisse? What has happened to her?

d) Describe Mildred’s attitude toward what happened to Clarisse. Describe her attitude toward the burning of the old woman and her books. Describe her attitude toward her husband as he struggles with what he had to do at the old woman’s house. Then, compare Mildred’s attitude toward these things with her attitude toward the people she calls her “family.” Are they her family? Who are they? Now think about this whole complex set of questions and explain what Bradbury is saying about where we might be headed. He wrote in 1950. How did he know to make such eerily accurate predictions?

e) On page 55 we learn how Montag became a fireman. “In my sleep I ran after them.” What does he mean?

f) On page 55 Capt. Beatty shows up at the home of Guy and Mildred Montag. On page 57 Beatty starts a kind of history lesson that continues through page 66. Summarize the process he describes. “When did it all start?” What does he mean by “it all?” What drives the process he describes? Explain the role played by the following items in the process Beatty describes:

• Photography, motion pictures, radio, television
• Books
• Population
• Speed
• the “pastepudding norm”
• cutting—condensations, digests, tabloids, the one page Hamlet
• from nursery to college and back to nursery
• school/discipline
• zippers
• theatres,
• sports, recreation
• minorities
• facts vs. philosophy (a sense of motion without moving)

This is a complicated task, this question f. You may have to reread Beatty’s “lecture” to Montag until you understand. Make sure your explanation is consistent with this important part of the lecture: “There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time . . . (page61). In other words, your explanation must not claim that the Government imposed these things on the people. Beatty makes this clear.

Richard Wilbur Poem. AP students, get familiar with this one.

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

BY RICHARD WILBUR

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
The soul shrinks

From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
“Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,
“Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
Of dark habits,
keeping their difficult balance.”


Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” from Collected Poems 1943-2004. Copyright © 2004 by Richard Wilbur.

note: can't get the line breaks exactly right. typed it up correctly but html seems to "fix" certain lines. you will receive a better copy in class.

Dystopia

Definition of Dystopia: (adapted from Wikipedia)

In literature, dystopia refers to a futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live as we do, this kind of future might be the consequence. A dystopia, thus, is regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government.

Common components of dystopia:
• Repressive social control/lack of individual freedom
• Constant warfare--often used as rationale for the sacrafice of personal freedom.
• Human values threatened by technology—technology evolves faster than human capacity to understand how to use it appropriately.

In some literature and films the above are imposed upon the society. Often--and perhaps more frightening--it becomes clear in some dystopian fictions that the society somehow chose this course—or failed to choose a healthier course—and bargained away incrementally what we currently value (what we say we value?) in human life and society. They bargain away freedom in exchange for security. They bargain away genuine human interaction in exchange for technological convenience, etc. (Does this perhaps sound familiar, my dear zombie children who are enslaved by cell phone and facebook?)

here's the old man's handout on syntax

AP English Language/Comp.
Paper revision: Syntax. Improving sentence style

Are your sentences all sentences? Does each have at least a subject and a verb? (Sentence fragments. If one appears, is it intentional and apt and used in a way that makes a legitimate contribution to the text? Should some long ones be broken up?

How long are your sentences? (Count the words in your paper. Then count the sentences. Divide to determine average length.)

Find your longest sentence. Compare the length of the sentence that precedes it and the one that follows it. If your longest sentence is not either followed by or preceded by a short sentence, change one of its neighbors to a short, crisp sentence.

Sentence Structures
simple sentence: one independent clause
ex: I like tomatoes.
compound sentence: two or more independent clauses
ex: I like tomatoes and I eat them often.
complex sentence: one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses
ex: I like tomatoes that are organically grown.
compound-complex sentence: two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.
ex: I like tomatoes and I eat them often, but only if they are organically grown.

Count (in your paper) each type of sentence structure described in the box above. Record your totals. What type of sentence do you rely upon most? Edit for variety.

Sentence types (in terms of purpose--aka mood)
Declarative—makes a statement: I eat tomatoes.
Imperative—gives a command: Eat that tomato right now.
Interrogative—asks a question: Who can resist tomatoes?
Exclamatory—for emphasis—makes an exclamation: This tomato is delicious!

If all your sentences are declarative, make an effort to include—where appropriate—one or more of the other three types listed here.

Sentence Styles
Periodic—begins w/subordinate elements, postpones main clause. (builds suspense?)
ex: Now truly depressed and sadly glancing at the trashcans while thinking, “here is a metaphor for my meaningless life,” he vowed to never again go a day without tomatoes.
Loose sentence—subordinate elements come at the end to call attention to them.
ex: He lost interest in school, sports, even tomatoes, caring only about the number of “friends” he had gathered on myspace.
Interrupted sentence—subordinate elements in the middle, often using dashes.
ex: Mikey—after months of eating only tomatoes while locked in his room—ran away with a girl he met online who shared his love of the delicious red fruit.
Parallel Structure—repeated grammatical structures.
ex: We must not ignore the schools without access to quality books, the children without access to quality healthcare, and the honest citizens without access to organic tomatoes.
Balanced sentences—grammatically parallel components balanced against each other.
ex: Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend; inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. (Groucho) ex2: His garden was well-tended and full of tomatoes but his brain was neglected and bereft of ideas.