Great Personal Essays

AGENDA:

WRITING:  Work on your nature essay.

Here are some more powerful essays to read:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/sandraeallen/17-personal-essays-that-will-change-your-life

Check out E.B. White "Once More to the Lake"
Emerson  "Self-Reliance"
Barry Lopez (great nature writer)
Annie Dillard
Virginia Woolf
among the others

Writing Nature Essays

AGENDA:



Read aloud Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” and discuss basic questions:
1. Why does Annie Dillard use the account about the weasel fixed by the jaws to the eagle’s throat? What does this suggest about a weasel’s life and what is Dillard trying to suggest about our lives, including her own?
2. Is it possible for humans to “live any way we want”? Can we live like the weasel? Or in what ways are we able to live like the weasel?
 3. Analyze the author’s use of figurative language to achieve her purpose.
4. Any echoes of Thoreau’s “Where I Lived”? Students silently read Brian Doyle’s “Fishering” and annotate it.

In small groups, read Brian Doyle’s “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever.” As a group, determine the criteria/formula for successful nature writing according to Doyle’s essay and answer the following question, providing specific examples from the texts. Do you think that the organization of Dillard’s nature essay on weasels is similar to the organization of Doyle’s “Fishering”? Does it follow the formula from “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever”?

Thoreau: Where I Lived and What I Lived For
http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/CS/Walden.pdf

Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse":
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/annie-dillards-total-eclipse/536148/

Diane Ackerman "Love's Vocabulary"

AGENDA:

READ Ackerman essays.  Defining a word...

Love's vocabulary:

https://delatorreliterature.weebly.com/uploads/5/5/8/2/55824613/lovesvocabulary.pdf

“from Love’s Vocabulary, from “A Natural History of Love”

by Diane Ackerman

Read the selection from the essay “Love’s Vocabulary” by Diane Ackerman.  Then, reread the lines indicated with each question below. Answer each question, citing text evidence.  Post your answer on the blog.

1.       Lines 1–3: What is being compared in these lines? What connotations do the words have? What is their cumulative effect?

2.       Lines 1–7 (paragraph 1): What is the central idea Ackerman presents at the very beginning of the essay? How does she support this idea?

3.       Lines 8–15 (paragraph 2): What is the simile in the paragraph? Explain whether it has a positive or negative connotation.

4.       Lines 32-37 (from “Since all we have. . .”): What is the author’s tone in this passage? Explain how the author’s choice of words creates this tone?

5.       Lines 40-45: Explain the simile in these lines. What comparison is made? What does it say about love?

6.       Lines 43–45: Explain the tone of the description in these lines. What word choices create that tone?

WRITING: Work on Definition essay

Ackerman web page:
http://www.dianeackerman.com/



Poetry:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/diane-ackerman

Brainpickings:
https://www.brainpickings.org/tag/diane-ackerman/

Sedaris Essay

AGENDA:

Continue to work on your Sedaris essay.

How to add humor to your writing:
https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/how-to-mix-humor-into-your-writing

VIDEO: Me Talk Pretty One Day

HMWK:  Read to pg. 181

Sedaris Essay

AGENDA:

Continue to work on your Sedaris personal narrative.  Try to find the humor in your subject or difficult situation or conflict.

Sedaris questions 1-4 (see previous post for questions)

HMWK: Read to pg. 141 for Monday

How to Write Like David Sedaris

David Sedaris videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExcpcPZKWpU&list=PLA86A504AA10A73C9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5apZmwR9UI&list=PLA86A504AA10A73C9 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKDW-MQR-QI
How to write like David Sedaris:

http://www.voxmagazine.com/arts/books/how-to-write-like-david-sedaris/article_4dbf9f48-9eca-11e6-9c0e-b719b8a0a942.html 

http://remainingawriter.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-write-like-david.html 

http://ydrstorytelling.blogspot.com/2012/04/david-sedaris-on-writing-write-everyday.html

http://thecopybot.com/2011/08/sedaris-first-sentence/ 

http://www.missourireview.com/archives/bbarticle/a-conversation-with-david-sedaris/ 

https://www.missourireview.com/more-than-talking-pretty/ 

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1812072,00.html 

David Sedaris

AGENDA:

“Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

AGENDA:
Select a Natalie Goldberg prompt to writew about (HANDOUT on topics)
Natalie Goldberg exercise--brainstorming for autobiographical essay.

Go to:
http://keepwriting.net/prompts.htm

Continue to read Me Talk Pretty One Day

THINK, PAIR, SHARE:

Discuss and post a reply to questions 1-4.

Begin to work on your own autobiographical "Sedaris" essay.  What techniques that Sedaris uses can you use as you write your own essay? (Refer back to previous posts) 

1. What better place to start a discussion of a Sedaris book than with the parts you find the funniest? Which parts make you LOL (laugh out loud)?

2. Are there sections of the book you feel are snide or mean-spirited? Perhaps his criticism of Americans who visit Europe dressed "as if you've come to mow its lawns." Or perhaps the piece about his stint as a writing teacher. Is petulance a part of Sedaris's schtick...his charm?

3. Talk about the Sedaris family, in particular his parents. How do they come across? Whom does he feel closest to? Sedaris makes an interesting statement about his father: it was a mystery that "a man could father six children who shared absolutely none of his interests." Is that unusual?

4. David Sedaris is a descendant of Woody Allen's brand of humor—personal idiosyncrasies or neuroses raised to an art form. What does Sedaris reveal about himself, his insecurities, angst, secret hostilities, and do you find those parts funny or somewhat touching, even sad? Actually, do you like Sedaris as he reveals himself in his book?

5. Sedaris has a number of obvious biases. Identify at least two of them and explain why this bias may exist for him.

 6. Sedaris uses humor to touch on several sensitive topics, homosexuality for instance. Does this comic tone take away from these issues? Does the fact that he makes light of these issues make them easier to discuss?

 7. Several essays begin with a flashback to an earlier time in Sedaris's life, which generally sets up the topic for the essay. Discuss how Sedaris uses this mechanism to continue the themes of growth/self-improvement and self versus society through the book.

8. A number of significant places are discussed in this book, but France is particularly important. Discuss how Sedaris's perception of American life has changed after moving to France.

9. Sedaris writes of his encounters with several different people, and how these people altered his perception of the world and/or himself. Identify at least two of these important people. Discuss how and why Sedaris's perception changed because of this person.