Add this poem to your review for next week's short story/poetry tests.  All classes.


Gic to Har

by Kenneth Rexroth


It is late at night, cold and damp

The air is filled with tobacco smoke.

My brain is worried and tired.

I pick up the encyclopedia,

The volume GIC to HAR,

It seems I have read everything in it,

So many other nights like this.

I sit staring empty-headed at the article Grosbeak,

Listening to the long rattle and pound

Of freight cars and switch engines in the distance.

Suddenly I remember

Coming home from swimming

In Ten Mile Creek,

Over the long moraine in the early summer evening,

My hair wet, smelling of waterweeds and mud.

I remember a sycamore in front of a ruined farmhouse,

And instantly and clearly the revelation

Of a song of incredible purity and joy,

My first rose-breasted grosbeak,

Facing the low sun, his body

Suffused with light.

I was motionless and cold in the hot evening

Until he flew away, and I went on knowing

In my twelfth year one of the great things

Of my life had happened.

Thirty factories empty their refuse in the creek.

On the parched lawns are starlings, alien and aggressive.

And I am on the other side of the continent

Ten years in an unfriendly city.

Wed 9/27 and Thurs 9/28
Vocab/Essay #3

Tuesday 9/26
Full short story review.
Vocab test tomorrow/Thurs.
Short Story/Poetry Unit tests Tuesday of next week: Part 2 for Eng 10, Full Test for English 10H

Monday 9/25
I was absent, but most time was spent getting caught up on the short story/poetry unit in all classes

Friday reflection on G-Class for all classes.

10
Short Story Test Part 1 return and review.  All students have the ability to revise/rewrite short answer questions if turned in by next week.

10H
"Opportunity" poem used as model for next week's Teaching Groups prep for the upcoming Short Story/Poetry Test (probably going to be beginning of week after next)

 Write down every observation you can about the picture.  Focus on individual elements as well as the picture as a whole.

Vocabulary List 3

ambiguous

dissident

embellish

fritter

ambivalent

inane

juxtapose

lethargic

sporadic

subsidize

Friday's poem:

Opportunity

by Edward Rowland Sill

THIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:--

There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;

And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords

Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner

Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel--

That blue blade that the king's son bears, -- but this

Blunt thing--!" he snapped and flung it from his hand,

And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,

And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,

Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout

Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,

And saved a great cause that heroic day.

Tuesday, 9/19

After expanding/finishing High Tide in Tucson discussion, time to read Into Thin Air in textbook and answer questions 2,4,6.  I have also included question extensions on G-Class.

All classes:

G-Class three part response on goals.
Discuss responses in connection to "Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy?" text questions #9,10,11 and "High Tide in Tucson" text questions #9 and #11.
Next short read for each is "Into Thin Air" excerpt.

English 10
Short Story Test Part 2 date will be announced in next week.  SS Test Part 1 will be returned/reviewed prior

English 10H
Short Story Test date will be announced in next week.