Week 20: College Reading and Writing: Brian Clements and Po Kim Murray
Week 20:
College Reading and Writing: Brian Clements and Po Kim Murray
Brian Clements
and Po Kim Murray: 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 eighth poem and response in the book today,
starting on page 25.
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. What does it
mean that the “private investigator” “may have been a pimp”?
2. This poem is
in four sections, each one stanza. What
do they have in common?
3. What does Clements
mean when he concludes “After that a lot of other things happened,/but it doesn’t
really matter what”?
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:
Brian
Clements’ poem “22” goes through four stories from his life; the first is about
a co-worker “my girlfriend ran off with” who “carried a .22”, the second about
a pimp “pointing a .22 semiautomatic” at his head, the third is about deaths in
the life of his “best friend in sixth or seventh grade,” and the fourth is
about a school shooting that his wife survived(25-26).
Work Cited Page
Clements, Brian “22” 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
- What’s the Newtown Action Alliance?
- Who is on the two sides Murray seens in this debate?
- What does Murray say he knows?
Exercise: Summarize the response
Write a
paragraph summarizing the response with quotations, in-text citation, and a
Work Cited Page.
Exercise: Analysis
Question for
analysis: Clements and Murray have very different relationships to what they
say “matters.” Clements implies what
matters in his conclusion: “After that a lot of other things happened,/but it
doesn’t really matter what” (26). Murray
makes plain “what mattered” and who it mattered to (27). Using quotation from the text, what do you
think matters here, and why?
Exercise: Imitation
Write your own poem telling a series of related
stories. Clements’ poem is four stories
about gun violence; you could write four stories about cooking, or hanging out
with your friends, or being alone. Use Clements’
techniques of using specific detail in each story.
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:
- Summary of
Poem
- Summary of
Response
- Analysis of
Poem and Response
- Imitation of
Poem
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