Week 62: College Reading and Writing: t’ai freedom ford

Week 62: College Reading and Writing: t’ai freedom ford

  

 t’ai freedom ford: 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 

  

Exercise: Read and annotate 

  

1. Read the poem 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. How does rhyme work in this poem?

2. What do you notice about the words?

3. How does the question/answer structure work?

  

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: 

  

Brenda Hillman’s poem “The Family Sells the Family Gun” tells the story of siblings getting rid of their father’s gun after “his ashes...were lying” (87). The speaker questions what it means to own and get rid of a gun in America, saying, “[w]e couldn’t take it to the cops even in my handbag” (Hillman 88). 

  

Work Cited Page (for today’s poem) 

  

freedom ford, t’ai. “Answers.”Poem-a-Day, Poets.org, 2019, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/answers

 

Exercise: Analysis 

Question for analysis: This poem is about interrogation. ford says, this poem asks the reader to “wrangle with whether they are the question or the questioner or the questioned or the answer.” Use the clues in the poem to answer who you are, according to ford? Remember to use quotation and citation as you support your points.

  

Exercise: Imitation 

Write a question/answer poem about your neighborhood. It can be about your community, your family, your streets and homes, the politics, cultural or social world. You are the expert on you.  Use elements from ford’s poem that you admire to make your own story stronger. 

Homework: 

            

1.     Summary of Poem                    

2.     Analysis of Poem           

3.     Imitation of Poem         

  

About this class: 

Your notebooks belong to you; you can write first drafts in them, and make notes for yourselves.  To turn in homework, revise your work in a blue book or sheets of paper you can get from your instructor. 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.

Answers

By: t’ai freedom ford

They ask what I believe in—
Sour milk: the curdle & butter of it
Baby’s breath ragged with phlegm
The green sheen clinging to her skin like algae
The bone & teeth of us mossy and alive with DNA

But what’s your religion, they’re after—
What gods do you pray to?
The frilly curtains of her laughter
remodeling alla my pain
Oh, how she adorns this house of mine

So god’s a woman? (hands on they hips)
How water ain’t a woman
the way she make your thirst
her temperamental breasts
& everywhere everything everyone everywhichway—water

Well, who your altars honor?
The ghosts that inhabit us
& all the evidence of them:
double vision—floaters flecking
our periphery when we look away

from the light—all the mouths
at the bottom of our stomach—
Ever wonder why we eat two plates
& still hungry?      Or how our anger
multiplies in seconds like a kitchen

of negro roaches?        Yes, even the roaches
have melanin      black/brown with the spirits
of wayward witches        I burn candles
& pour brown liquor out for my bitches
& they glorious golden auras

To what churches do you tithe?
Our Lady of Ladled Magnificence
God of Ghetto Grace Incorporated
Our Mother Who Art in Harlem
House of Regurgitated Resurrections

Have you ever been possessed?
We ain’t never not been owned
not with all that restless bone
sediment at the bottom of the Atlantic
wonder why we frantic with personalities

How we sing with three throats
bending notes weeping willow
What are trees if not spirits
weeping & dancing simultaneous?
How we dipped our nooses in gold

& hung crosses from them
& wore them like shiny portable altars
How is there not a church in our chests?
How our breasts leak gospel truth
How our teeth ache with the blood of Jesus

Who, then, is your muse?
(pointing) ain’t she a muse        amusing     
a  maze            amazing       amazon
of our dreams       prisms that fracture
into auras & auras that fragment dimensions

Isn’t mourning a religion, then?
Like how all these feelings grow
muscles & flex & jerk inside of me
Like how they can’t kill us even when
they hands scream bloody murder

Like how we show up wearing white
just to spite them—spit at the pulpit
of bullshit & Babylon       How we eat
bibles for breakfast      Leviticus & grits   
Our souls sizzling in the skillet like gizzards