Week 17: College Reading and Writing: Richard Blanco and Ladd Everitt

Week 17: College Reading and Writing: Richard Blanco and Ladd Everitt

Richard Blanco and Ladd Everitt: Annotating, Summarizing, Analyzing, Imitating

to annotate: to make notes on something to help you understand it better

to summarize: to put something in your own words

to analyze: to consider a question on the text, providing supporting examples from the text

to imitate: to create an original piece of writing based on something you have read

We are doing the fifth poem and response in the book today, starting on page 17. 

Exercise: Read and annotate

1. Read the poem and response out loud and underline any words you need to look up

2. Write any questions you have in the margins or in your notebook

3. Put tricky parts into your own words in notes in the margins or in your notebook

Exercise: Questions for Comprehension of the poem

1.           Who is Blanco talking to?

2.           What’s “the love  of those we’re not supposed to love”?

3.           What’s “the new hate”?

Exercise: Summarize the poem

Write a paragraph summarizing the poem with quotations, in-text citation, and a Work Cited Page.

example too-short summary, incorporating quotation and in-text citation:

Richard Blanco's “One Pulse--One Poem” starts with Blanco invoking the reader, asking for

help finding “our courage to face this page” (17).  He describes the sound of the nightclub,

“the rhythms pulsing through Pulse [. . . ] mixed with gunshots” and imagines the dead as a “choir of their invisible spirits rising” (Blanco 17-18).  Blanco expresses “[a]nger for the voice of politics armed with lies” but ends with images of the dead when they were alive and happy,  from when they were children to “their very last selfies” (18). 

Work Cited Page

Blanco, Richard. “One Pulse--One Poem” Bullets Into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Ed. Brian Clements et al. Beacon Press, 2017.

Exercise: Questions for Comprehension of the response

1. Why is it hard to “acknowledge how precious all these people’s lives are while continuing to move forward?”

Exercise: Analysis

Question for analysis: What are some of the strategies in the poem and response for writing about something difficult? Which do you think is the most effective as a reader or as a writer?  Use quotation and summary to support your answer; you can use evidence—cited quotation or summary—from any of the pieces you have read in this book.   

Exercise: Imitation

Write your own poem asking the reader to help you write about something difficult, anything you want. Use Blanco’s technique of naming things as he does them, like “Write one more stanza.” (18).

For homework, revise these in a blue book or on loose paper; do not turn in your notebook or rip out pages to turn in.

Homework:

1. Summary of Poem
2. Analysis of Poem and Response
3. Imitation of Poem