Tag Archives: poetry

Book of Answers: Countee Cullen

Posted on April 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Was Countee Cullen male or female? The poet of the Harlem Renaissance was male.

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

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Harlem Renaissance

Posted on April 28, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Harlem Renaissance: With the largest concentration of African-American, West Indian, and African populations in the U.S., Harlem had become the ‘Negro Capital’ (as it was then called) of America by the early 20th century. After World War I, the flourishing intellectual, artistic, musical and political scene focused on historical recollection and redefinition of the African-American experience. Among the best-known artists are Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, and Jacob Lawrence.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Matsuo Basho II

Posted on April 24, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Refinement’s origin:

The remote north country’s

Rice-planting song.”

Matsuo Basho

Poem (translation by Bernard Lionel Einbond)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Matsuo Basho I

Posted on April 17, 2020 | Leave a comment

“An old pond—

A frog tumbles in—

The sound of water.”

Poem (translation by Bernard Lionel Einbond)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Evelyne Accad

Posted on April 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Evelyne Accad: (1943-) Lebanese poet, novelist, and literary critic. Born in Lebanon, she emigrated to France in her twenties. Among her critical works is Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East (1990), which draws upon her experience of the civil war in Lebanon, feminist and antiwar theory, and an extensive reading of such authors as Tahar Ben Jelloun and Etel Adnan. Accad’s only novel available in English, L’Excisee (1982; tr The Excised Woman, 1989), analyzes ritual clitoridectomy and its effects on young Muslim women, usually ‘female excision’ as a metaphor that includes the suppression of women on a broader, cultural level. Accad has authored five other works of criticism, fiction, and poetry.”

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Cultural Literacy: Limerick

Posted on April 15, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the limerick as a poetic form. This might be something to use with English language learners.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Term of Art: Alliteration

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Alliteration (noun) Recurrence of stressed sounds in words near one another, usually of initial consonants. Adj. alliterative; adv. Alliteratively; v. alliterate.

‘Even a writer who doesn’t, as Chandler usually did, clean as he goes, would normally liquidate so languorous an alliterative lullaby long before the final draft.'”

Clive James, First Reactions

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Matuo Basho: The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by.”

Matsuo Basho

The Narrow Road to the Deep North (translation by Nobuyuki Yuasa)

Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Symbolist Movement

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Symbolist Movement: A literary movement in France (Stephane Mallarme, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine) which got underway about 1885 in reaction to Realism and Impressionism. In painting, Gustave Moreau, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Odilon Redon, and Gustav Klimt produced lyrical dream fantasies, combining mystical elements with an interest in the erotic and decadent.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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Cultural Literacy: Leaves of Grass

Posted on April 13, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Leaves of Grass ; the book actually went through numerous editions, depending on how one counts them. That count, in any case, includes the famous “deathbed edition,” which had grown to almost 400 poems from the 12 in the first edition.

Walt Whitman is a central figure in American letters and Leaves of Grass a milestone in American poetry. I can’t imagine why high school students shouldn’t learn something about him. Moreover, Whitman can serve as a means of introducing students to the concept of free verse–again, something high school students should understand, and be able to understand.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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