Week. . . Two? 111 plus some Zoom classes with old worksheets and now "Ghazal" by Reginald Dwayne Betts.

 41 men and women signed up to read FELON with us in a weekly Zoom class--too many to make it work with social distancing and the classrooms available, so we are meeting with two groups, alternating weeks. Last week we did "When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving," and this week we are doing the first poem in the book! 

"Ghazal" by Reginald Dwayne Betts: Annotating, Summarizing, Analyzing, Imitating

Today we are reading the first poem in Felon, “Ghazal,” on page 1. 

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, the white space on the page

3. Put tricky parts into your own words in notes in the margins, the white space on the page

Optional Exercise: Questions for Comprehension

1. “Occam’s razor” is the principle that the simplest explanation is usually the right one. What do you think it means in the first couplet? There are a lot of ways to think about this, so don’t worry that there’s ONE right answer you have to figure out—there isn’t!

2. Titus Kaphar is the artist who made the tar-dipped portraits of incarcerated men on the cover of Felon. Here’s an explanation from the website of the museum that exhibited the work:

“After completing the portraits, Kaphar submerged a portion of each panel in tar; initially the tar-covered area corresponded to the percentage of his life that each subject had spent in prison. Kaphar abandoned the formula after considering the countless consequences of imprisonment for the men’s lives, even after their release. In his later panels, Kaphar began with his original equation and extended the tar at least up to the mouth, representing the silencing of the incarcerated men, who were stripped of many rights, including the right to vote and access to federally funded programs in many states. The tar also serves to obscure the men’s faces and provides a kind of privacy not afforded to them on the mug shot websites, which are part of the public record.” (https://studiomuseum.org/exhibition/titus-kaphar-jerome-project).

What do you think Betts means when he says Kaphar “knows redaction is a dialect after prison” (1)? 

Optional Exercise: Summarize the poem

Write a paragraph summarizing the poem with quotations, in-text citation, and a Work Cited Page

example summary, incorporating quotation and in-text citation: 

Reginald Dwayne Betts' poem "Ghazal" uses the ghazal form: couplets that each end in a rhyming word (suspect, dialect, reflect)  followed by a repeated word or phrase (after prison). Each of the couplets examins a different facet of life after prison, including what “your eyes reflect,” family you lose, how others have experienced the change (Betts 1). 

Work Cited Page 

Betts, Reginald Dwayne. Felon. W. W. Norton and Company 2020 

Optional Exercise: Analysis

Question for analysis: What do you think counts as "sanity" for this speaker? Use quotation and summary to support your answer.  

Optional Exercise: Imitation

1. Write your own couplet that would fit in this poem, using a rhyme for “recollect/genuflect/reject” and “after prison” at the end. 

2. Try writing your own ghazal! Ghazals are in couplets, usually couplets that can stand on their own, like these—but if you want to connect them that’s fine. The author’s name appears in the last one.  You can use any rhyme and repeating word or phrase you like—you don’t have to stick with “after prison.”