PROPOSAL FOR FINAL PAPER/PROJECT

ELEMENTS OF ONE PAGE PROPOSAL

Possibilities:

1. Classic Compare/Contrast using close readings of Dickinson/Whitman as evidence and essays located on the resources pages attached on blackboard or HERE (Whitman) or HERE (Dickinson). @2500wds. Can be language-focused, thematic, or historical.

2. Homage work. A creative work that makes its choices in relation to Whitman or Dickinson or Both. Accompanied by a close-reading of the work that details exactly HOW and WHY the choices relate to their inspirations. THE PIECE + @1200wd paper

3. Translation of a Whitman or Dickinson work (or two pieces) into another form (short film, fine art, photo-essay, song, etc.) Accompanied by a close-reading of the work that details exactly HOW and WHY the choices were made to highlight/illuminate the work/s in question. THE PIECE + @1200wd paper.

4. Something I have not thought of.

*** If you choose the creative work... I expect them to take more time, not less, and just as much research. Do not choose 2 or 3 if you think they will require less work. They are not likely to be successful without rigorous argument for why they are appropriate responses to the work at hand.

FOR TUESDAY JULY 26th

These are already linked:

"I felt a funeral in my brain"

"It was not death, for I stood up"

"I felt a cleaving in my mind"

"I heard a fly buzz when I died

"Because I could not stop for Death"

"Safe in their alabaster chambers"

"I died for beauty, but was scarce"

And in Whitman (pages 296-299)

A Hand-Mirror

Gods

Germs

Thoughts

When I Heard...

Perfections

O Me! O Life!

FOR THURSDAY JULY 21

Go HERE for links to the poems which start with these words (most are linked in the Johnson version... though not all)


I'm wife...
I gave myself...
I taste a liquor never brewed
The moon distant...
Much madness is divinest sense...
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Wild nights...

FOR TUESDAY 7/19

Read the "Children of Adam" section of LoG (125-45).

And watch THIS VIDEO on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary to understand the urge to definition and comprehensiveness of the time period during which Dickinson and Whitman both wrote.

for Thursday JULY 14th

In addition to looking at your papers and reading blogs... we will be looking at the Inscriptions section of Whitman's LoG (p 37-49).

Also--here is EDs timeline I was trying to put up on the screen yesterday--

for Tuesday July 12

In addition of Part 2 of My ED : Please read her self-bound fascicle 18 (out of 40 compiled between 1858-1864) Linked HERE.

This is the fascicle that contains "After great pain..." We will discuss how her ordering contexts affects your understanding of the poems.

THREE POEMS FOR THURSDAY

A Small Needful Fact

Is that Eric Garner worked

for some time for the Parks and Rec.

Horticultural Department, which means,

perhaps, that with his very large hands,

perhaps, in all likelihood,

he put gently into the earth

some plants which, most likely,

some of them, in all likelihood,

continue to grow, continue

to do what such plants do, like house

and feed small and necessary creatures,

like being pleasant to touch and smell,

like converting sunlight

into food, like making it easier

for us to breathe.

                                  -Ross Gay

Bullet Points

I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trashbag, and if I do
I promise you, I will not do it
In a police car while handcuffed
Or in the jail cell of a town
I only know the name of
Because I have to drive through it
To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,
But I promise you, I trust the maggots
And the ants and the roaches
Who live beneath the floorboards
Of my house to do what they must
To any carcass more than I trust
An officer of the law of the land
To shut my eyes like a man
Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet
So clean my mother could have used it
To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will kill me
The same way most Americans do,
I promise you: cigarette smoke
Or a piece of meat on which I choke
Or so broke I freeze
In one of these winters we keep
Calling worst. I promise that if you hear
Of me dead anywhere near
A cop, then that cop killed me. He took
Me from us and left my body, which is,
No matter what we’ve been taught,
Greater than the settlement a city can
pay to a mother to stop crying, and more
Beautiful than the brand new shiny bullet
Fished from the folds of my brain

                                               -Jericho Brown

America

Claude McKay, 1889 - 1948

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. 

FOR TUESDAY JULY 5th

 WW 741-62 (Preface to LoG)... and the death-bed Song of Myself sections 6-14 (p.66-75)          

                                       

You can save My ED—Intro through Part 1 (through p 28) for Thursday

Link to Sample close-readings (less academic but to give you ideas) HERE