Week 35: College Reading and Writing: Gay and Begg

Week 35: College Reading and Writing: Gay and Begg

Ross Gay and William V. Begg: 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 twenty-first poem and response in the book today, starting on page 68. 

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 the bullet crave?

2.     To what is the bullet compared?

3.     What does the bullet not want to know?

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:

Kyle Dargan’s poem “Natural Causes” tells the story of a boy who purchases a gun “from a farm in Virginia” (31) from a farmer who “keeps his gaze down as to remember nothing of the boy’s face” (31). The speaker of the poem insinuates that the farmer has sold guns to other boys like this one, when they say, “His customers rarely return older” (31).

Work Cited Page (for today’s poem)

Gay, Ross. “The Bullet, in Its Hunger.” 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 did most medical professionals “stand by” and do prior to Sandy Hook?
2. What kind of issue is gun violence, according to Begg?
3. What were the issues doctors worked to change in the last generation?

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: In his response, Begg writes, “The bullet will be in charge no longer” (69). In Gay’s poem, he personifies a bullet and gives it power in the poem. When the bullet is given power in the poem, who or what is stripped of their power?  Use lines from both the response and the poem to answer this question.

Exercise: Imitation

Write a poem where you personify an object and give it power.

Homework:

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

About this class:

In this class, you are welcome to submit homework for a grade.  If it’s not strong enough to earn an A, I’ll give you some comments to help you revise it, and let you do it over again. You have as many chances as you want to complete and perfect the work in this class, and you are welcome to do more than one week’s worksheet for homework at a time; ask me for sheets you’ve missed.  Students who complete 15 weeks of graded assignments and a longer paper can qualify for college credit.  When you get close to completing 15 weeks, I’ll help you get started on your longer paper.