'Twas the Day of Keats Birth

Happy birthday to the brilliant Keats, the poet fascinated by the imagination, Grecian urns, nightingales, the life that he would never, alas, have the chance to live with Fanny. One of his most cited poems during this time of year would be "This Living Hand" - from the quick read focusing on diction, it could be deemed a spooky representation of the holiday. However, knowing Keats frustration with a shortened life, this probably means more than a scare.

Meanwhile, as the words "guitar" and "Gorgonzola" haunt the memory, we are continuing forward with our foray into poetry and your growing ethos regarding the genre, how to interpret its meaning, and break down its structure. All classes, no matter where we are in the cycle, have your new best friend, the poetry packet, which will come in handy in the upcoming weeks and months. If you have procrastinated a bit, you have your 2 box prompts to do this evening.

2: After finishing the rangefinders for Sidney's prompt, you received your essays back, which revealed that you once did not have as strong of grasp on poetry analysis as you do now. Some big tickets items for this prompt included the paradox, the apostrophe, the alliteration, the rhyme scheme and its shift, and the complex tone of the speaker. Remember, the speaker is at the center of each poem - and that is a way to tie in persona too. To end class, we looked at different types of feet (as in meter). Tomorrow will be more with meter, structure, and poetry styles. We will be attempting to do as much of the poetry packet as we can each day.

4: Upon a second close reading, many poetic elements appeared in Sidney's sonnet - alliteration, paradox, apostrophe, rhyme shifts, complex tones. With that in mind, we scored the rangefinders to find out what makes the prompt successful (and the main reason = speaker). At the end of the hour, we looked at the 5 type of feet, which means we will be practicing identifying feet tomorrow.

7: Same as second hour - except we still need to go over the meter activity together to see how you did with breaking words into syllables, figuring out the stressed components, and identifying each foot type. More to come with that poetry packet tomorrow!