Day 15

Feel free to check in with the class in this shared document.

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

A poem for the flocks of Canada geese I see every day: For me, Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" - like so much of her poetry - has always been both a comfort and an inspiration. Check out her "greatest hits" in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

A song for today: Cat Power's "Nothin' But Time" from her great album Sun. Like Oliver's poem, a comfort and a gentle, friendly nudge. Stick around for all eleven shimmering minutes; Iggy Pop eventually joins in for added awesomeness. File under tracks like: David Bowie's "Heroes"; LCD Soundsystem's "All I Want," or "All My Friends"; Sharon Van Etten's "Seventeen"; your additions? 

"It's up to you to be a superhero..."

Works Cited

Cat Power. "Nothin' But Time." Sun, Matador, 2012.

Oliver, Mary (1935-2019). "Wild Geese." Brainpickings.org. https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/24/mary-oliver-reads-wild-geese/. Accessed 27 Mar. 2020. (n.b., the link includes a clip of Oliver reading her poem)

Day 14

Vernal pools, "though in forests, still reflect / The total sky almost without defect."

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

A poem for Robert Frost's birthday: "Spring Pools" by Robert Frost captures the fleeting beauty of vernal pools with a rhythm and rhyme that is as deceptively complicated and wondrous as the many natural cycles evoked in the poem. Try your own poem in A-A-B-C-B-C A-A-B-C-B-C and feel free to share it with me / our class.

Spring Pools

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods --
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.

A Frostian song by the Boss: Bruce Springsteen's "Hello Sunshine" (from his most recent album, 2019's Western Stars) closes with - I think - a nod to Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Works Cited

Frost, Robert (1874-1963). "Spring Pools." The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, Macmillan, 1979, p. 245.

Springsteen, Bruce. "Hello Sunshine." Western Stars, 2019, Columbia.

Day 13

Peach, apple, and cherry blossoms are showing up around my neighborhood.

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

A tune for today: Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder" is ten minutes of blissful soul jazz. When it's over, you might want to put it on again. The whole album is worth seeking out and is on the "Core Collection" list from The Penguin Guide to Jazz. Check out some more classics on that list here.

A poem for spring's simple pleasures: "Today" by Billy Collins has a few great tricks up its sleeve involving its structure. Notice how Collins has taken a single sentence and arranged it in two-line stanzas that guide the reader at a leisurely pace through the poem. What else is going on here?

Today

BY BILLY COLLINS

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

Works Cited

Collins, Billy. "Today." Poetryfoundation.org. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40824/today-56d21ebdad746. Accessed 25 Mar. 2020.

Morgan, Lee. "The Sidewinder." The Sidewinder, 1964, Blue Note.

Day 12

Skunk cabbage has arrived

"...one ought every day at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -Goethe

According to onthisday.com, William Wyler's film adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights premiered 24 March 1939. A song to commemorate this event: Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" from her debut album The Kick Inside (though I've linked the remixed version from her excellent 1986 compilation The Whole Story).

A poem for today: From the "wiley, windy moors" of Wuthering Heights, we travel to Emily Dickinson's imagination for "I never saw a Moor."

I never saw a Moor--
I never saw the Sea--
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God

Nor visited in Heaven--
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given--

Works Cited

Bush, Kate. "Wuthering Heights." The Whole Story, 1986, EMI Records.

Dickinson, Emily. "I never saw a Moor." www.writing.upenn.edu. http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/dickinson-chartless.html. Accessed 24 Mar. 2020.

ELA Enrichment

Follow this link to the ELA Enrichment template. You're welcome to record your work in a notebook or in an online document. Aim to post a comment on this page with a sentence or two about what you've read or how you're doing by Friday. Please contact me (mreynolds@belmont.k12.ma.us) with any questions you have. I look forward to recommending texts, hearing about what you're reading, and sharing ideas!

A free and democratic society must have responsible and critical citizens conscious of the need continuously to examine the world that we inhabit and to try, even though it is more and more an impossible task, to make it more closely resemble the world that we would like to inhabit. And there is no better means of fomenting dissatisfaction with existence than the reading of good literature; no better means of forming critical and independent citizens who will not be manipulated by those who govern them, and who are endowed with a permanent spiritual mobility and a vibrant imagination. 
-Mario Vargas Llosa, "Why Literature?" <--full essay linked here

Day 11

Crowds of daffodils along the Charles River

A song for Monday: Mitski's "Nobody" from the artist's outstanding fifth album Be the Cowboy brings together disco and an existential crisis. To learn more about Mitski, check out the endearing New Yorker profile from last summer.

A poem about daffodils: William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is yet another great poem by the old master. Wordsworth was practicing social distancing centuries ago. Try out your own lonely, cloud-like wandering and write a poem about it!

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud 

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Works Cited

Mitski. "Nobody." Be the Cowboy, 2018, Dead Oceans.

Wordsworth, William (1770-1850). "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Poetryfoundation.org. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45521/i-wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud. Accessed 23 Mar. 2020.