Week 84: College Reading and Writing: Philip Levine

Week 84: College Reading and Writing: Philip Levine

Levine: 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 a poem by Philip Levine.

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 poems

1.     What do you think the speaker means when he tells the reader who doesn’t work “forget you”?

2.     What does the speaker mean “This is about waiting”?

3.     What does the brother represent in the poem?

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:

In Natasha Tretheway’s series “Three Photographs,” three different speakers give voice to laborers in  three different historical photographs. In the first poem, the speaker is the photographer of the photo. The speaker is excited that he’s stumbled across two African American men picking flowers for, presumably, a florist. The speaker opens the poem by exclaiming, “What luck to find them here!” (Tretheway 6).

Work Cited Page (for today’s poem)

Philip Levine, “What Work Is” from What Work Is. Copyright © 1992 by Philip Levine. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Exercise: Write a response to these poems. What are your first impressions? How do you connect or disconnect to the subject and speaker? Does the poem remind you of anything from your own life and experience?

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 Philip Levine’s poem, the speaker is making an obvious connection between work and love. The speaker also seems to be making an argument that work changes a person’s perspective. Do you agree? What kind of perspective shift do you see happening in this poem?

Exercise: Imitation

Write a poem about employment or unemployment and connect your experience to another person.

Homework:

1. Summary of Poem
2. Response of Poem
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.