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

1. What’s the Newtown Action Alliance?
2. Who is on the two sides Murray seens in this debate?
3. 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:

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