In Ten Play Festival @ 7:30 in E Auditorium

Thursday, Friday, & Saturday; attending and writing a reaction for each play can earn you up to five (5) extra credit or make-up reactions.

Cancelled Thursday Classes, Poetry Drafts, & Presentations

Cancelled Thursday Class

For those who were NOT in class on Tuesday or in case you forgot, remember that we will NOT be having class tomorrow.  Instead, I encourage you to be working on your Poetry Essays and your Adaptation Projects.  Consider going to the writing center for help during this time.

Poetry Essays

The drafts for the Poetry Essays are due Sunday night at 11:55pm.  MAKE SURE that you focus on how your selected poem(s) relates to YOU.  The thesis/body should NOT be telling the reader what the poem means or how it applies to the rest of the world; this is YOUR relationship with the poem and how it affects or relates to your own life.  You can (in fact are encouraged) to include experience from your own life, which mean use of narrative.

Adaptation Projects

Beginning Tuesday, we will be watching the presentations in class.  If you are making a video, either upload it to YouTube for easy access or bring it on a flash drive.  The instructions are relatively simple, but remember that you must "present" for five minutes, either through the actual adaptation or an explanation of the process that you went through to create it.  This assignment is an easy A if you follow the minimum requirements.  Forgetting the assignment is a guaranteed zero (not an F, a zero); so make sure you are a participant!!  We will be going in the order of volunteers then random selection, so make sure you are ready to go!!!!

Useful Guide for Reader Response

If you missed either Tuesday's or Wednesday's overview of the upcoming Reader Response Poetry Essay, see this Sample Reflective Response Essay.  Although the writer is using a song for this response, you can see a strategy for setting up your analysis.  The one thing you do NOT need to do is use the headers (the instructor is using these to show the role of each paragraph in the essay, but the transitions at the start of each paragraph should provide the logical connection, suggesting what that paragraph is doing in the essay).  This is a somewhat informal essay, but that is fine because you are using first-person perspective.  

Warning: This essay is incomplete, so it does not actually get into the full analysis.  Make sure that in working your way through the poem, you do NOT just give the equivalent of a synopsis--simply retelling the reader what the poem says--literally.  It should be your REACTION to the poem and its various elements that make up your analysis, with a general overall assessment of the poem as it applies to YOU, not me, not students, not scholars, but YOU.