For the Love of Poetic Devices

I noted today that one of my students was "Miss Enjambment," another "Mr. Caesura," another "Miss Repetition," and another "Miss Alliteration." Now, hopefully, none of you are offended by reference to a literary device, for the intention was to clarify that as each of you grasps onto poetry more and more, there are certain literary devices that will become your go-to ones, whether this be structural, syntactical, sound, figurative language, or any other literary element populating a poem (especially if there is a shift, shifts, or any fluctuation to attract those AP readers). Beyond parenthetical mention, second hour spent some time with "Thou Blind Man's Mark" and noted a pattern of shifts overlapping in its tone, alliteration, and rhyme scheme. How about that - multi-layered shifts! And speaking of more poetry analysis, you still have that AP classroom assignment due this week. I heard there were some oddities with the form to write your work, so just make sure you have the response in one of those boxes for submitting.

2: We finished 1.1 and have spent a lot of time over-analyzing the relationships, character psychoanalysis, and poetic elements that further reveal each character. And there are three of those characters that rhyme! Afterwards, as mentioned in the overall stream of consciousness above (is it weird that my stream of consciousness is more organized like dear Kent and not as wild and wacky as Lear?), an epiphany of shifts occurred in "Thou Blind Man's Mark" review close read. Of course, there was the apostrophe and paradox anchoring its entirety. To further the understanding of our new 1-6 scoring system, we are taking the old 1-9 rangefinders and breaking them down for the thesis, evidence, and sophistication. For homework, you are to take the 5, 6, and 7 (the first one in the packet) essays and rescore for 1-6. Tricky work, especially as you see that the brandishing of evidence can boost your score but may take away from some of the sophisticated value. We'll finish up those rangefinders tomorrow, spend some quality time with Edmund's favorite speech, and see what else we can do on a D day with limited time.

6: We might not have moved around much today, but we spent our entire hour over-analyzing the majority of 1.1, starting with why Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund are the starting three when none of them happen to be the title role and moving into Lear, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia's portrayal through their diction, poetic structure, enjambment/caesura or lack thereof, faltering iambic pentameter, pronoun usage, and their psychoanalytic sibling role. And we haven't even had any rhyming? Suspicious for a Shakespeare play? Oh, yeah. There must be (cough, cough) some reason that the Lear milieu does not encourage the rhyme. Although, alliteration seems to be the case for creating sound elements. Tomorrow, we will be working the rest of this scene. Reading-wise, make sure to spend some bonding time with Edmund (he needs it, you know, just don't call him by his dad's epithets for him), and his opening speech in 2.1. Off to bed - at least for a some short increments.