Revision, as classically understood, generally relates to the poet’s understanding while composing a poem, via kneading language, via discovering insight. More and more though I find that sort of revision is only part of the problem, if it is a problem.Here's the link to the whole posting: http://therumpus.net/2013/03/david-biespiels-poetry-wire-revising-poetry-just-got-easier/
Yes, a poet revises, and tinkers, and starts over. But: Lately I’ve been thinking about revision in terms of the audience more than the poet, in terms of readers and the public-other far more than, speaking for myself, the relationship between me and what I am writing.
I don’t mean to reject revision in terms of revising to clarify and make clearer — as necessary as that intention is. I mean, rethinking of revision as something you want the reader to have, to experience, to live with. I mean, leading a reader to re-see the world, to experience a re-vision of their living life. For the reader to have the re-vision more so than the writer.
For National Grammar Day, Mental Floss posted this:
Take advantage of the fact that the same sentence can have two different structures. This famous joke from Groucho Marx assumes that most people expect the structure of the first part to be
One morning [I shot an elephant] [in my pajamas].
But another possible, and perfectly grammatical, reading is
One morning [I shot] [an elephant in my pajamas].
Make a garden path sentence. In this one, we think we've reached the main verb when we get to "raced," but instead we are still inside a reduced relative clause. Reduced relative clauses let us say, "the speech given this morning" instead of "the speech that was given this morning" or, in this case "the horse raced past the barn" instead of "the horse that was raced past the barn."
Another garden path sentence, this one depends on the fact that "complex," "houses," and "married" can serve as different parts of speech. Here, "complex" is a noun (a housing complex) instead of an adjective, "houses" is a verb instead of a noun, and "married" is an adjective instead of the past tense of a verb.
Make a sentence with multiple center embeddings. We usually have no problem putting one clause inside another in English. We can take "the rat ate the malt" and stick in more information to make "the rat the cat killed ate the malt." But the more clauses we add in, the harder it gets to understand the sentence. In this case, the rat ate the malt. After that it was killed by a cat. That cat had been chased by a dog. The grammar of the sentence is fine. The style, not so good.
Another crazy center-embedded sentence. Can you figure it out? Start with "anyone who feels X is likely to agree." Then go to "anyone who feels if X then Y is likely to agree." Then fill out the X and Y. You might need a pencil and paper.
Buffalo! It's a noun! It's a city! It's a verb (meaning "to intimidate")! We've discussed the notorious buffalo sentence before, but it never stops being fun. It plays on reduced relative clauses, different part-of-speech readings of the same word, and center embedding, all in the same sentence. Stare at it until you get the following meaning: "Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison in their community."
This sentence takes advantage of the versatile English –ing. The author of a 19th century grammar guide lamented the fact that one could "run to great excess" in the use of –ing participles "without violating any rule of our common grammars," and constructed this sentence to prove it. It doesn't seem so complicated once you realize it means,
"This very superficial grammatist, supposing empty criticism about the adoption of proper phraseology to be a show of extraordinary erudition, was displaying, in spite of ridicule, a very boastful turgid argument concerning the correction of false syntax, and about the detection of false logic in debate."
Not only is this a great example of the wonderful crazy things you can do within the bounds of proper English, it's the perfect response to pull out the next time someone tries to criticize your grammar.
Sources of sentences: 1. Groucho Marx; 2. Bever (1970); 3. Wikipedia; 4. Chomsky & Miller (1963); 5. Chomsky & Miller (1963); 6. William Rapaport; 7. Goold Brown (1851).
Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/49238/7-sentences-sound-crazy-are-still-grammatical#ixzz2MmQIxayT
This April, during National Poetry Month 2013, the Academy of American Poets is celebrating the role that correspondence has played in poets' development and writing lives.
In the spirit of Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, in which Rilke replies to letters from a young military cadet and aspiring poet asking for his advice, we are inviting students to engage with poetry by handwriting letters to some of the poets who serve on the Academy's Board of Chancellors.
Among other very cool photos of American authors at home published by the Atlantic – including Zora Neale Hurston, Mark Twain, Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Vladimir Nabokov, and – don’t miss: Truman Capote.
Some of these may even be appropriate for classroom use.
What would Carol Jago have us do with this one?
| www.caroljago.com |
In my own experience, I think I lingered too long on books in the past, thinking I had to teach everything in those books. That might’ve benefited a few kids in the class, but for too many, this might’ve sucked the life out of the book. I think I’ve grown as a teacher understanding how far I should go with a book to keep kids’ attention—while still challenging them with what we address—but then being able to move on without risking losing them because they feel we’re beating a dead horse (or dead Kurtz, or dead Gatsby).
Another teacher said:
I have a problem with over-teaching literature. I love her reminder that not all of the book has to be nit-picked. Looking at my upcoming calendar for Jekyll and Hyde, I am already thinking about each day how I can lessen the emphasis on decoding EACH and EVERY detail in order to spend more time on a few passages.
I have always given reading quizzes to hold my students accountable for reading passages as their homework assignment, but I think I will try “here’s the sparknotes version, not tell me 3 things you remember happening” idea for a quiz.
I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel here, especially when they have nothing [specific about what the tests will look like] to show us. I also think that if there needs to be an increase in non-fiction, she should make it very clear that the English department, which is responsible for the fiction that is supposed to be 30% of their entire reading, should not feel that they need to throw away the choices we’ve made and replace them with non-fiction. That 70% certainly comes from the reading they do in science and social studies and business classes.
I plan on making our SSR requirement a non-fiction for next year. I 100% agree with her that students need to be reading more of this type of print to better navigate through the world. I will be asking the library for some pointers in this area. I love how she talked about her husband’s selection of books on his nightstand and made the point that future husbands are in our classroom. We need to pick things they will naturally gravitate towards wanting to read.5. Young Adult Literature. This was one of the topics that Carol asked the audience to refrain from throwing tomatoes at her. I received feedback on both sides of the issue: that "texts should be in the kids' ZPD," or that "YA is a valuable teaching tool to increase the love of reading. One teacher said:
I liked that she was not a fan of adolescent literature that is written in a dumbed down fashion so as not to be off-putting to readers. I liked her insistence that we shouldn’t be “teaching” with books that students can read and interpret on their own satisfactorily.
Ignoring the research showing that student-selected texts which are age appropriate should be a part (certainly not all or even a majority) of the classroom for students to see it as valued and important. Dismissing it to outside reading doesn’t work. These are the texts that are engendering a love of reading for many beyond the nerdy girl.
