Judith J. Katz
Background Thinking
One of the primary goals of this unit is to expose students to a wide variety of authentic American voices in order to increase their prior knowledge. In the first two lessons students have gained familiarity and a certain level of comfort in reading poetry that is written in voices that are quite different from their own. In this lesson students will be reading, discussing, and deciding which voice they want to "imitate" (Oliver) when they begin creatively writing and in order to find their own authentic American voice.
The suggested readings for Lesson 3 range from quite short to quite long. While a short poem is no guarantee of simplicity a long poem, by virtue of it's perceived heft, can appear immediately challenging and intimidating to a reluctant or poor reader. The longer pieces can be excerpted, replaced, or removed, depending on the abilities of your students. The overall purpose and goal of Lesson 3 will remain intact regardless. I recommend that all students are given at least three poems to work with so that they have a variety of voices to choose from when they choose a great poet's voice to imitate.
I will be using Walt Whitman's
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
as the basis for Activity I: Teacher Demonstration. I've chosen
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
because
the way in which Whitman uses syntax to show us who is audience is, as well as to make us his audience, is echoed by Adrienne Rich in her poem
(Dedications)
that we worked with in Lesson 2
.
Is Rich imitating Whitman? And if she is what does that give us permission to do when we begin to write? We are certainly as different from the writers we are reading as Rich is from Whitman.
Please note: Once you have worked through Activity I and Activity II of Lesson 3 you may continue and complete each of the remaining activities in this lesson or you may proceed to Lesson 5. The remaining activities are there to help students work independently and with peers to revise and refine the authentic American voice they are developing.
The teacher should prepare a packet for each student that includes:
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1 The John Hollander quote in Activity I
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2 Each of the poems s/he will have the students read (I prefer one poem per page)
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3 A list of the literary elements previously worked with in the unit
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4 An example of the kind of imitation (Oliver) that leads to a piece of writing that is in the imitators' unique American voice. I have found that students appreciate it when teachers struggle through an assigned activity so I encourage you to do so. But I have also included
"A Pantoum for Walt Whitman Who Never Wrote One and for My Students Who Have"
, a poem I wrote for my students when we were working with the Master/Apprentice method while reading Walt Whitman's
Leaves of Grass.
It is a favorite of my students' and a serviceable model.
Activity I: Teacher Demonstration
We are about to read a small collection of poems written by American poets in a variety of American voices. In his introduction to "Poetry for Young People", Poet John Hollander writes about the poems he chose for that anthology and about the American voice. His words apply to the group of poems we are about to read as well:
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The old motto of the United States of America, e pluribus unum (out of many, one) referred originally to the federation of different states into one nation. But it has come to mean something very important about our culture, our civilization, which has been celebrated by many of our countries most interesting writers. [These poems] written by men and women with diverse concerns, backgrounds, and attitudes, and these poems, quite different from each other, are all, sometimes in very different ways about the United States of America. (4)
With that in mind we are going to read a variety of poems by a diverse group of American poets. As we read we will be trying to identify what elements of writer's craft they are using to create their unique American voices. We are in the process of figuring out how we can find our own voices by understanding each of theirs. We will identify how they use the literary elements we have been studying and we will also answer some of our essential questions:
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1. What literary elements does the writer use to create his/her unique American Voice?
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2. Who is the writer's audience?
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3. Does this writer speak for you?
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4. Is this writer's voice like yours?
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5. What does this writer make you think? Feel?
Each poem is a voice map that we can follow. When we follow the map that a poet we like, connect to, and want to imitate has left for us we are on the way to finding our own way of making the trip from writer to reader and from speaker to listener. Our job is to become part of the conversation that the poet we admire began. Our job is to advance the conversation, add a little more detail to the map so that the next writer can continue the journey. Let's go.
Have student's read around (each reads a stanza out loud) Whitman's
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry".
Once the student's have read the teacher will read it once again. As the teacher reads students should highlight any words, phrases, or lines that particularly "pop" for them. The highlighted part can be something they like, don't like, connect to, don't understand, or especially something they wish they had written themselves.
When the second reading is over have students share the parts they highlighted. Encourage open discussion, that is text based, and that centers around the five essential questions above. Make your own thinking process about this poem visible to the students as in: I feel like I am the audience Whitman is writing to. Me. Now. Even though he wrote this a long time ago because I can see the same things he saw, even now. When he says: "These and all else were to me the same as they are to you [. . .] Others the same--others who look back on me because I/look'd forward to them,/ [. . .] What is it then between us?/ What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years/between us?" Well that just gets to me because I think about my place in time and how time works and how maybe he's in the past looking at the water even while I'm here in the present thinking about the water and how did he know I would be hearing his voice. He certainly seems to know someone will be. He's like a time traveler he seems to be able to be where he is and where I am at the same time.
My advice to my students at this point is that we are about to become huge sponges absorbing the great voices and holding onto the lines we like because in a day or so, when you start writing you may want to work with Whitman's idea of the time that has passed "between us." So as we continue reading that's what I want you to do when you are reading, hold onto the ideas, words, phrases, and stanza's that speak to you from all of the poems we read.
Continue to work with
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"
or choose the next poem that you want your students to consider. Either way we are reading these poems with the understanding that we are one of the poet's intended audiences. We are reading these poems like we are shoppers with enough money to buy, to own, anything we find that fits and that we like.
Work with as many poems as your students can handle. Make sure they are highlighting and keeping all of the poems together.
Read
I Write America
last because it is the most student accessible of all the recommended poems and it is the poem that the Activity II: Guided Practice is based on.
Activity II: Guided Practice
In the same way that it was fairly easy to take Adrienne Rich's refrain "I know you are reading this poem" and have the students write their own versions of it, the poem
I Write America
lends itself naturally to imitation. Imitation, in order to make-the-leap to authentic voice, must have some restrictions, however. The primary restriction I insist upon when students begin their short poem with the words
I Write America
is that whatever they choose to write America about must use the literary element of personal content. We are not interested in broad sweeping generalizations in the nature of: I write America for all the kids who are starving in the ghetto. If you are not personally acquainted with someone who is actually starving in the ghetto. . .don't write about it. There's plenty to write America about in your own personal experience and your own personal experience is more powerful than any generalization you can come up with.
Remind students that they can also write something lovely and grateful to America. . .they don't have to be angry to write to America. But they can be if they want to.
Remarkably, in my experience, students can write one stanza to America in about five to ten minutes. It would seem, in fact, that they have been waiting for someone to invite them to write America. Students want you to write America too--so do.
Have students share out their stanzas and post them in the room or even out in the hall outside your room if your students are amenable to that.
Activity III: Student Independent Work--Writing in your own authentic American voice
Use your own notes to do each of the following steps. Use your work as exemplars to lead your students through the process. Students may use any poem from any of the three lessons in the unit.
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1. Reread all of the poem-fragments you have highlighted.
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2. Choose the three fragments that you have highlighted that you like the best. Put little sticky notes (or in some way make them easy to find again) on your top three choices.
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3. Rank your choices one, two, and three based on which fragments you like the best.
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4. Use the fragment that you ranked number one as the first line of the poem you are going to write.
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5. Re-read the original poem or at least the stanza that your first line comes from. Choose one to two additional literary elements you might want to imitate from the original poem or writer. For example--you might:
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1 Write to a similar audience
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2 Use similar syntax and/or tone
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3 Use the same word count or syllable count per line
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4 Use elements of sound that the original used (repetition, rhyme, etc)
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5 Work with similar subject matter
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6 Etc.
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6. Once you have chosen the first line you must decide who you are writing to--who is your audience? Re-read the quote from June Jordan. The audiences you might write may include the original poet.
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7. Your completed poem should have a minimum of fourteen lines.
Please note: I use fourteen lines because it's the length of a sonnet and I think it takes at least that many lines to develop a thought. Most students want a minimum length to get started--their completed poem can be longer.
Also bear in mind that by this time in the unit the student's heads will be swimming with the poetry of great writers. This will help some students and traumatize others. Virtually nothing is more helpful to the writer than writing to a specific person. You may need to remind the students of this many times throughout their writing process. Keeping a specific audience, or person in mind while writing makes the writing far more manageable--it is the difference between trying to talk to get your message across to a whole room full of people and text messaging just one person. Which feels more specific and controlled?
Recommended Readings
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
, by Walt Whitman
The New Colossus
, Emma Lazarus (http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm
Let America Be America Again
, Langston Hughes
next to of course god america i
, by e e cummings (Gioia 291)
I Write America
, The Cast of Def Poetry Jam on Broadway
A Pantoum for Walt Whitman,
by Judith J. Katz (appears at the end of this lesson)
Advanced Readings:
The Warden Said to Me the Other Day, by Etheridge Knight (Gioia 854)
Bilingual/Bilingue, by Rhina Espaillat (Gioia 856)
Assessment
The "To Do" chart below is designed to help students, peer writing counselors, and the teacher assess the student writers' progress as well as to help keep students moving forward through the whole process of writing. As the student completes each section s/he should sign off in the box marked self. The boxes for peer and teacher will be discussed in Lesson Four. Lesson Four is optional.
One of the great beauties of the "To Do" chart is that it serves as a quick assessment tool for the teacher as well as for the student. As the student checks off his or her progress the teacher can, via a quick glance, see exactly where the student thinks s/he is in the writing process. I say "where the student thinks s/he is" because, of course, a student may breeze over a specific step without actually understanding it or working through its intricacies. That can be okay in some steps but in others it can create an impasse that keeps the student from moving forward. The "To Do" chart gives the teacher and student an objective vocabulary for discussion of how to get from here to there as well as how to review and move forward again.
Most classes have a mixture of abilities as well as a variety of speeds at which students work. As students complete the Lesson Three "To Do" you may have them move on to the Lesson Four "To Do". In so doing some of your students will end up with more edited pieces than others, which is fine.
Regarding Steps 12 and 13: It is important that each student share their work with the class. It is equally important that each student knows and is able to tell the class:
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1 What poem and poet they are imitating or working with.
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2 What literary elements they have been trying to work with in their poem.
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3 Who they are writing to. . .who their audience is.
When the student identifies the three elements of writer's craft above they are signaling what they are trying to accomplish to their reader/listener (step 12). When the reader/listener writes a short piece of "fan mail" back to the writer (step 13) after hearing his/her poem, the reader/listener should try to connect his/her positive response to one of the elements the writer said s/he was trying to accomplish. Of course the teacher needs to realize that reading and responding in this way is time consuming. After each reader the class at large needs about five minutes to write and deliver their missives. The teacher should also write a short note during this period. I have often been able to write both a note to the reader and a evaluation grade for the work of the student during that five minute period. Since I have already read the poem and discussed it with the student I am aware of the work the student has struggled with and has either done or not done. Most students enjoy both writing and receiving the little pieces of fan mail and I enjoy grading the work on the spot rather than later that evening.
(table available in print form)
Projected Length of Lesson
Five to seven class periods.
Sample Poem by Judith J. Katz
For Walt Whitman; Who Never Wrote A Pantoum
And For My Seniors Who Have
Judith J. Katz 11/3/06
"Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord"*
like the dewey manna
in the dessert
filling but not satisfying
Like the dewey manna
comforting and consistent
filling but not satisfying
what we need, not what we really want
Comforting and consistent
meltingly aromatic food for angels
what we need, not what we really want
not being angels
Meltingly aromatic food for angels
revered, respected, and in the end reviled
not being angels
it is all too good for us
Revered, respected, and in the end reviled
forty years is a long walk to hold onto a singular focus
it is all too good for us
but of course, we don't know that, we're just walking
"Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord"
forty years is a long walk to hold onto a singular focus
in the dessert
but of course, we don't know that, we're just walking.
*Song of myself, by Walt Whitman
