Left-Handed Poems: January 30, 2019

Focus: How can your non-dominant hand unlock a new kind of poetry?

1. Warming up with a short assessment on Academic Vocabulary, Set 3

2. Enjoying the "left-handed" poems of Galvin and Levine

For Galvin:

• Find one line with unusual syntax or an unusual line break.  
• Try rewriting it in a way that makes it more "usual."  
• What did it lose?
• What makes this poem "left-handed"?

For Levine:

• Find three examples of enjambment that seem significant to you. 
• Why do you think he broke the lines there?  In other words, how does it emphasize or create meaning?
• What makes this poem "left-handed"?

3. Trying out your own left-handed poems (or right-handed if you're a lefty like me)

4. Reflecting on the process: How did writing with your non-dominant hand affect your writing? Did it affect your syntax? Line breaks? Other?

HW:
1. For Friday: Read Chapters 14 and 15 and prepare a Socratic ticket.

2. For February 7:  Decide what poem you'd like to take on for your poetry project/paper. It needs to be from a different time period than the poem you analyzed first semester. We will have our poem metacognitive on Feb 7.