Aim: How can we define the literary value of poetry?
This lesson’s do now reads as such:
“Consider your prior experiences you’ve had when reading poetry (Good and Bad)”
・What are some of the challenges you or others can experience while reading poetry
・What does poetry mean to you?
This Do Now was a whole class discussion, similar to those of past cycles.
After some of the usual class maintenance, we were also introduced to project-based learning, and said project is the poetry project, which we will slowly work on, piece by piece.
Once the discussion began, we were asked to be as honest as possible. To express any sort of hate or love we have for poetry. Our classmates started the discussion, from a mild neutrality to seething annoyance at it. However, it seems the majority of the class had a neutral or neutral-negative opinion on it. It seemed that we hated the over use of symbolism and metaphors in poetry, why can’t anything just mean what the words literally mean. A black curtain should just be a black curtain, not a complex metaphor of shadows and sadness and that the author was saying how it's a dark shadow over the characters. This discussion had a point tho, to show what we thought and to serve as a reminder to keep an open mind, the past is the past and we can change.
After the do now, we watched a ted-ed video on what makes a poem, a poem. It began with the shortest poem in history and branched off from that to talk about poems across the world. That taking it all in, there is no simple definition. That if we focus on one part of poetry, poetry can be many things, from music and visual art. The video taught us that poetry seems to be more of a concept and is uniquely human, it cannot be recreated by anything else, not even learning robots.
Following the video. We moved down the slideshow to a type of poetry called free verse. Free verse is a style of writing that does not follow any sort of structure. There are no rules or restrictions, unlike say the syllable limits of haikus. Most importantly in my opinion, you do not need to rhyme. Many believe that poetry must rhyme on each line, however this is not true, for free verse styles at least.
Free Verse - Poetry without a fixed pattern of meter or rhyme
Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnlwOn94uJs
Onto the class activity which consisted of us being split into the usual groups, these groups were to read and answer a question about two poems. One by a man called Whitman and another by Neruda. We were instructed to read these poems and establish a definition of poetry based on each along with a definition agreed on by the group. Using textual examples in our answers for Neruda and Whitman as well.
Neruda Whitman
Following 10 mins of discussion which I admit was rather challenging. We left the groups and the class held discussion among themselves on what their groups had developed for an answer. We agreed poetry was a way of expressing ideas through literary means, using specific styles. We then agreed that Whitman focused more on expressing ideas while Neruda was more interested in expressing a story, his personal experiences in poetry.
After the discussion was done the class was mostly over, we turned in our slides for grading. Ms Peterson revealed the main project of this unit, a poetry anthology. An anthology is essentially a collection of poetry, ours will consist of 3 poems. A free verse poem, which we learned today, an extended metaphor and a shakespearean sonnet. The latter two will be revealed and expanded upon in future cycles. This poem project will be due after the break so no need to rush, this due date is not solid tho. It is subject to change with the unstable nature of current school events.
Reflection:
What I learned in that lesson was the different ways poetry could be interpreted and written. It expanded by my idea of what poetry was and could be. It never would have come to my head that music or its lyrics could be considered poetry until the lesson. The concept of free verse poetry was also introduced to me in this lesson. The idea of writing poetry without limits or rhyming wasn’t an entirely new concept to me. In fact it was my primary way of writing poetry since I’m terrible at rhyming. But now I have a word and idea to associate it with and the confidence to know that what I write is true poetry. In addition to this, I learned about two poets and how they thought about poetry, those being Whitman and Neruda respectively. The reason I and the class learned this material is because poetry has a major part to play in literature. Poetry is often some of the first ideas people get when they hear the word. Poetry is going to be essential in this class and understanding it will not only help here but in many other real life things to do with reading. How I will use this knowledge I learned will be to add onto my knowledge and experience with poetry. Using it to improve any poetry I may write in the future. This knowledge will also be essential to the future project and what I need to do for that. Free verse is one of the 3 poems I must write and though it may be the most easy to do for me, the vocabulary is gonna be important to take note of. Overall this is gonna be important for me and this unit in the near future.
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