Window Poem

In a New Post on your blog, please share the Window Poem you created in your journal during class on Thursday. Add an image--maybe a painting or other artwork that goes along with what you've written. Thanks!

Inspired by your artist

In a New Post on your blog please choose 2 pieces by the artist you profiled Tuesday and write a narrative poem of at least 10 lines for each. 

A narrative poem is one that tells a story.  It doesn't need to rhyme.  You could tell a made-up story inspired by the painting, you could tell a story from your own life the piece makes you think of, you could make up a story about the subjects in the painting...You could connect your two 10-line poems or let them stand on their own. Try to include vivid, sensory details and rich, interesting word choices.  You might even try to include a poetic device (like alliteration, simile, repetition, etc.) if you're comfortable doing so.  

Please include an image of the piece of art you are writing about in your post.  Give the post a creative title.

Artist Profile

Grumpy Cat works in oils

Please profile the artist you chose to study in a New Post on your blog.  Please all include the information from your brochure, but instead of listing it, write the information more like a life story in paragraphs.  

Include an image and/or self-portrait of the artist as well as 2-3 images of the artist's most famous works.  

Title Your Post Artist Profile: ______ (name of artist).  Thanks!

Don't quote me on that

We often turn to the words of others for inspiration, guidance, or even just a good laugh. These words might come from favorite pieces of literature, song lyrics, a wise family member or friend, even movies or TV.

Please create a New Post on your blog featuring some of your favorite quotations.  You can find interesting looking versions of them on Google Images or elsewhere, or you can simply type them in (you could change up the font and colors to make it interesting).  Be sure to give credit to the writer or speaker.

Here are a few quotes that I like:

"Love is the answer,

at least to most of the questions

of my heart."

Jack Johnson

Your quote may be from a person you know or a person you don't. It may be funny or serious, thought-provoking or light-hearted. Just so it speaks to you.  You might also want to jot your quote(s) down in your journal for something else I hope we can do this week.

On the topic of "quotes," I'm adding a link here to a funny site that documents superfluous (extra, unnecessary) uses of quotation marks. Maybe it's only funny to me as an English teacher, but take a look: http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/. Be on the lookout for unneeded quotation marks in your world...maybe you could send one in.

Catch up/move on

We will be moving on to a new topic (ART!) for inspiration next week, so if there are any BOOKS/TEXT-inspired pieces you would still like to receive credit for (including the pieces I haven't given points/zeroes for yet) you need to do so no later than this Sunday night.  

Use class time today to make up work you're missing on our current theme (not dreams, objects, or color--that window has closed).  You can circle any work you complete today (or that I missed seeing somehow) on your grade check and turn it back in to the basket on my desk today or take it home for your reference to finish up work this weekend).  

Supplies for the magazine poem, blackout pages, and newspaper cutouts are all on the back counter if you need them.  You can be writing in your journal or working on something else if you've finished everything.  

I also need you to take this quick survey if you haven't already so I can sign off for us in the office.  Leave a comment on this post letting me know you've done so for 10 points.  Thanks so much.


Have a great Ceremonial weekend!   

6 Word Memoirs

In a New Post on your blog, please share whichever of the 6-Word Memoirs you came up with in class  that you are comfortable sharing.  Just one or all of them.  Include an image or images.  You don't need to explain them, but you could if you wanted to. You could also submit what you've come up with to the Smith magazine website.  Here's a link to the video we watched if you'd like to send it around to your friends and see which ones they think could apply to you (and themselves...).

In the news {papers}

In a New Post on your blog, please share some writing inspired by our dig through newspapers Tuesday.  You might have one longer piece or several shorter ones, but come up with at least 250 words.  Include some images and a catchy title.  

You could mention the headline, photo, ad, etc. that sparked your idea in an Author's Note, or you could leave that a mystery...but don't just describe or narrate what you cut out--make up something new.

Blackout

Thanks for trying the newspaper and book page blackout technique (scientific terminology there) in class Tuesday. Please share at least one of your blackout text pieces as a COMMENT on this post. 

You could type the text you left on the page as a sentence or poem or story.  You could also take a picture with your phone and post your work that way on your own blog, but that is optional.

I'm thinking you could do this same technique with any printed material containing a good chunk of text to work with. I also think you could be inspired to write all sorts of other pieces by using your blacked out piece as a starting point.

You could visit Austin Kleon's website to see what others have come up with and even post your own work there if you're up for it. 

Famous First and Last Lines: Make them Yours

In a New Post on your blog, type up some original writing of about 400 words or more  inspired by the pink famous first line and the purple famous last line you glued into your journal.  This could be one continuous piece or two separate pieces.  Include an image and an interesting title to your post. Put the lines you used in bold.

Hey!  Take this quick survey, too, if you can!  There is a single link to the survey. The participant will need to select his or her role and then site. Click here to take the survey: https://bbyt.es/TL7TC

Famous First and Last Lines

In a New Post on your blog, present the following information  for each of the lines you chose.  Title this post Famous First and Last Lines.  You could link to relevant informational sites.  

Be sure to include the following for EACH:

• the line word for word
• the author, his or her birth/death years, and a bit of info about him or her
• the year it was published
• a 40-50 word summary of the novel in your own words
• 40-50 words on why you personally would or wouldn't like to read this book
• at least one image for each

Here's an example:

Famous First Line (pink):

"You better not never tell nobody but God."

This line opens the novel The Color Purple, published in 1982 by author Alice Walker, who was born in Georgia on 9 February 1944. Through letters written back and forth to one another, the novel traces the story of two poor, African-American sisters who are separated, one married off to an older, misogynistic neighbor and the other called to serve as a missionary in Africa. The main character Celie also writes letters to God because she has no one else to share her shameful secrets and her deepest feelings with. 

I first read The Color Purple in a college class at Drury, a class taught by one of my favorite professors who I have long admired and tried to emulate as a teacher myself. I had read the work of Maya Angelou and found myself drawn to the stories of African-American women, and this story captivated me. I have since read the book 6 or 7 more times, and every single time I find something to shake my head at, mumble a "yup!" to, laugh about, cry about...Such a powerful work to me--I will read it many times more, I know. I wrote about a passage that reminded me of the turmoil in Ferguson, Missouri, back in 2014.

Famous Last Line (purple):

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

F.Scott Fitzgerald ended his most famous novel The Great Gatsby with these words, considered by some to be the best closing lines of any novel ever. The novel came out back in 1925 but still shows up on collections of all-time classics and high school reading lists. Narrator Nick Carraway offers insight into the vapid society of West Egg, New York, in the 1920s, as well as the mostly empty marriage between Tom and Daisy Buchanan. The action centers on languid afternoons and extravagant parties at the mansion of Gatsby, an enigmatic millionaire.

I read The Great Gatsby in English class my junior year in high school. I re-read it again a couple of summers ago and enjoyed it very much. I liked the film starring Leonardo DiCaprio (so cute! totally one of my girlhood crushes) as Gatsby released a couple of years ago. The director, Baz Luhrman, also did one of my all-time favorite movies, Moulin Rouge, so I knew I'd really like what he did with Gatsby.

The lines were pulled from this list of Best Opening Lines and this list of Best Last Lines.  You could browse them for other writing ideas or inspiration.

Memorable Passage

Post a passage (probably no more than a paragraph or so) from a book that was memorable to you. Type the passage in word for word and add some of your own thoughts (250 words or more) before and/or after, explaining why this particular set of words caught your attention or has stayed in your memory.  Title this post Memorable Passage.  Include an image with this post, too.

I used to write quite a bit on my own blog about what I read, if nothing else just to remember, but often to reflect on words that stuck with me. If you are so inclined or need some ideas about books to read or what you might write about reading, you can check out my posts here and here and here and here and here.  Also here and here.  But that's totally optional.

Here is an example of a Memorable Passage post:

Today I finished Elizabeth Berg's Dream When You're Feeling Blue, a book I found at the thrift store a couple of weeks ago. This story follows 3 beautiful sisters and the various soldiers they correspond with during the war. Wouldn't I love to have all the letters to and from my grandfathers? Who wrote to them? I especially noted a passage summing up what one soldier had written to oldest sister Kitty:

"He thought times like this could galvanize people into a certain kind of unity but could also make for unexpected changes in the individual, for strange contradictions. He said he himself had begun to feel the need to be alone most of the time. And yet he also felt a kind of love and compassion for humanity far greater than what he'd ever felt before. He found it hard to blame the war on any one person. He thought that, despite witnessing--and taking part in--such unimaginable violence, most soldiers would come home from the war wanting never to hurt anything again.

"He told her about boys who came back from the battle vacant-eyed, their hands shaking, who in a few hours' time were ready to smile and joke again and then eager to rejoin those at the front. He said that extinguishing life in another seemed to make you unspeakably grateful for your own, indeed for life in general. For a few hours after a battle, Hank said, everything the men looked at seemed caressed by their eyes. They were such young boys. They were such old men."

I'll be thinking of William Archie Curtis and Julian Jasper Cowan when we celebrate the 4th this weekend, as I do on any holiday or moment with a patriotic slant. I'll never really know what those two went through, and I'll never be able to really define how I feel about what they did, the young boys they were, the old men I watched them become. But I'll think of them kindly and generously, as Hank described, as men who saw and felt so much pain that they never wanted to hurt anything again. My whole life they've been so very kind, so very generous, to me.