Living Poet Project
Directions: Find a poet who is still alive today. You may click on one of the provided links to help you find this person or you can explore on your own. Please avoid changing your mind! Make sure your poet is alive!
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Introduction: For this assignment - which will be completed over the course of the year - you are to pick a living poet, read and comment (in blog form) on their poetry, and comment on other students’ blog posts. |
1. Mr. Dale ordered the books on this link for our classroom, so please peruse this link. We will pass the books around in class: https://muchadoaboutteaching.com/top-ten-poetry-collections-for-the-classroom/ Links to an external site.
2. See this list of living poets with links: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AkaqdIHsLqYwrWWKK4Z-nX4_7-RzgDIlchbYY8NRegg/edit?usp=sharing Links to an external site.
3. See this link: https://teachlivingpoets.com/find-poets/ Links to an external site.
4. Maybe your selected poet has read his/work aloud here? Links to an external site.
Ilya Kaminsky reading a poem HERE Links to an external site.
Block 3 Sign up Links to an external site.
Block 6 Sign up Links to an external site.
Block 8 Sign up Links to an external site.
Blog Entries:
Directions: After you’ve picked your poet and chosen a poem to discuss, you’re ready to write your first blog post! Your Poetry Blog should convince me that you have read and thought carefully about your contemporary poet and his or her poems. To a limited extent, it is true that a poem means what the reader thinks it means; you must, however, be able to explain your interpretation by specific references to the poem. I’ll specifically be looking for what you have to say and how well you say it -- your personal reaction to the poem and your explanation of the logic that led to your interpretation. This is the place for you to have full creative freedom for your writing and the voice you’d like to use for your audience.
Directions: You MUST include the following in every poetry blog:
- The poem’s title in quotation marks and the poet’s name
- A quotation from the poem -- integrated with your own sentence, properly punctuated, and commented upon as necessary to show why you cited that particular line.
- Specific references to the poem
- Careful thought
- A picture that reflects the poem’s central or controlling idea
- 500+ Words (include your word count at the bottom)
After you’ve included the five MUSTs above, you may choose at least three of these MAYBEs to guide your response:
- a general statement of the poem’s content
- an analysis of the speaker/persona
- a discussion of the title’s significance
- a detailed response to a specific line or lines
- an examination of poetic techniques used, such as rhyme, rhythm, simile, metaphor, personification, allusion…
- a close analysis of the poet’s diction, perhaps noting specific word choices, or connotation and denotation
- a paraphrase of the poem
- an explanation of where the poem’s shift occurs, or shifts if there are multiple
- a discussion of the writer's life and its relevance to the poem
- a statement relating the poem to your experience or ideas
- an explanation of problems you had in understanding the poem
- an analysis of the structure of the poem
- your opinion of the poem, good or bad, supported by specific references from the poem
Rubric Links to an external site. and Example High Scoring Blogs Links to an external site.