Today, I handed back the USSR logs, the vocabulary tests and your Mockingbird essays. We read two of our peers' essays and wrote two strengths and one weakness for each essay and then did the same for our own essay.
We read a poem to our partner and added a new poem to our poetry log.
I collected a new poem from each of you. (This poem is similar to Thursday's poem, however, you get to pick a new "big idea" and your own key images).
Today, we edited Thursday's poem using the following criteria:
Sound: Add sound through as many of the following devices as you can: onomatopoiea, assonance, dissonance, alliteration, internal rhyme, rhythm, repetition
Line breaks and enjambement: How do you break your lines. Make each line count.
Cross out all the adjectives.
Cross out all the cliches.
Look for surprise. If your reader can predict the next line, cut that line, or move it to the end of the poem. Surprise reflects thoughtful description. Think of Crozier's lines "plummets like a wounded bird" or "sparks burn stars into his skin".
So what? No matter how nicely a poem may sound, it needs to also make us think and feel. The theme must be implied through action, point of view, description etc, right?
Check that you explain what you mean. For example if you think something is indulgent, how would you show that? What does indulgence sound like, feel like, smell like, taste like? Appeal to all five senses when describing things.
Hand in a new, edited draft of Thursday's poem tomorrow.
We added the words scandalous and indulgent to our list today.
