|
Ted Brady
Eng 475
7/15/05
Lesson Plan for Teaching May
Swenson's Bleeding and Women
Overview:
The course will be designed as an introductory survey
of modern poetry for community college students. The lesson
will analyze May Swenson's Women and Bleeding as topographical
poems, which take the physical shape of the content of the poem.
Specifically, the lesson will explore how topographical poems
affect both and meaning and reception of the literature.
Student Goals:
1. The identification of a topographical poem
- Ability to judge from the content and physical appearance
of the poem.
- Ability to decipher the purpose of the physical construct
of the poem, using the content.
2. The identification of Swenson's poetic themes of gender
- Ability to identify the tension of gender relations.
- Ability to decipher Swenson's personifications as they relate
to gender.
- Ability to decipher Swenson's gender based symbols.
- Ability to see physical quality of the poems as "pictures"
of "gender".
Resources:
- All students will need a copy of Swenson's poems before
class and they are to have them in class the following day.
- On day of class discussion, a copy of Iconographs will be
passed around so students may view a collection of topographical
poems.
Class Plan (For 1 hour class):
1. Familiarization with the topographical poem (15 min).
A reading aloud of the poems.
- Different students will speak the pieces of Women and speak
the dialogue of Bleeding to augment the divisions that arise
in their physical nature.
- Discussion of how these divisions serve to create the shape
and voice of the poem.
2. Identification and discussion of Swenson's gender theme
in relation to the poem's construct (15-20 min).
- Identifying the characters of Swenson's personification.
- Identifying Swenson's symbols.
- Relating Swenson's symbols and personification to the physical
poem.
3. Open discussion to Swenson's theme and hypothetical purpose
to poem. (15 min.)
*** This discussion is meant to allow a forum to release those
immediate and more personal reactions students may have towards
the poem. The questions will most likely open up a vast range
of interpretation, but this portion of class should not dominate
the whole lesson in commitment to the lesson's focus: Form.
- What is the student's reaction to the poem's content being
relayed in such form?
- What may have been Swenson's intentions in writing these
pieces?
- What does the form add, which may not have been available
had the pieces been written in a more conventional manner?
4. Closing discussion (10 min)
- Final comments.
- Explanation of take home assignment. (See Extensions)
Extensions:
Outside activity: Students will create a different physical
structure for Swenson's poetry. Poems will be rearranged with
a two pages of explanation which details decisions in the creative
process, while also responding to the issues of gender, which
arise in Swenson's work.
Assessment:
Student's understanding of the topographical poem and Swenson's
theme will be assessed by their take home assignment, which
will challenge them to wrestle with the aspects of Swenson's
poetry; both content wise and structurally. Assessment will
focus on how acutely the student is able to grasp both content
and structure as a poetic whole. Students would do well to be
very critical of both these aspects rather than accept one as
merely a "backdrop" or "excuse" for the
other.
Web and Print Resources:
|
