Thomas and Beulah/Poetry Cycles

AGENDA:

READING: Poems in Beulah section
Finish reading Thomas and Beulah for discussion on Tuesday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7duHFUjieME 

The Oriental Ballerina:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV16g979jRM 

Canary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Cb7w7zF8A

WRITING: Work on poetry cycles.

Thomas and Beulah

AGENDA:

Morning Reflection:

Continue reading Thomas and Beulah, review "Mandolin"

Writing: Work on POETRY CYCLES

Thomas and Beulah Discussion Topics

• Morning Reflection: Austin Hammond   Neil DeGrasse Tyson  "The Most Astounding Fact"
  
• The use of color is prominent in Thomas and Beulah. Choose one color -- yellow, blue, white, black, or silver, most obviously -- and trace its progression in a series of poems. How does the significance and use of the color shift and evolve? Or, alternately, how does it help to ground our understanding of Thomas, or Beulah, or their shared relationship?
• Work and chores [labor] figure prominently throughout the poems in both sections; explore the role of labor in one or more poems from each section and how that defines Thomas and Beulah's lives, both apart from each other but also together.
• Explore the themes of aging, illness, and/or death in one or more of any of the following poems: "The Stroke," "The Satisfaction Coal Company," "Thomas at the Wheel," "Recovery," "Nightmare," "Wingfoot Lake," "Company," "The Oriental Ballerina."
• Look at the first poem in each of the two sections -- "The Event" in "I. Mandolin" and "Taking in Wash" in "II. Canary in Bloom" -- and explore the ways in which they inform our understanding of some or all the poems that follow.
• Look at the last poem in each section -- "Thomas at the Wheel" in "I. Mandolin" and "The Oriental Ballerina" in "II. Taking in Wash" -- and consider the ways in which that poem operates as a crucial capstone for the poems that precede it in that section. [capstone= the final stroke, crowning achievement, culmination, acme, high point]
• Explore the importance of music in Thomas's life in one or more of the poems in the first section of the book, "I. Mandolin."
• In what ways do Thomas and Beulah's notions of their gendered identities limit them? [Or perhaps, free them?]
• Consider Dove's treatment of racism in the collection as a whole. How does racism impact upon Thomas and Beulah's lives, and how does this shift over time?
• Look at two poems that are in different sections but that come into direct contact with one another ["Courtship" and "Courtship, Diligence" is one example]. How do the two poems build upon and/or contradict each other? When read together, side by side, how do they change our understanding of each figure [Thomas and Beulah]?
• Despire their more obvious differences, what connections do we see in the ways that Thomas and Beulah view their roles as parents, and why are these difference significant, in your opinion?
• Consider the poems in the second section that look at Beulah's life in the 6 years between Thomas's death and her own. How would you characterize Beulah in this period?

Rita Dove/Poetry Cycle (cont.)

AGENDA:

Morning Reflection: Austin Hammond   Neil DeGrasse Tyson  "The Most Astounding Fact"

EQ: Why are motifs important in creating a poetry cycle?

mo·tif

mōˈtēf

noun

noun: motif; plural noun: motifs

1. a decorative design or pattern.

   "T-shirts featuring spiral motifs"

   synonyms:

   design, pattern, decoration, figure, shape, device, emblem, ornament "a colorful tulip motif"

   • a distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition.

     "the nautical motif of his latest novel"

     synonyms:

     theme, idea, concept, subject, topic, leitmotif, element; through line "a recurring motif in her work"

   • Music

     a short succession of notes producing a single impression; a brief melodic or rhythmic formula out of which longer passages are developed.

     "the motif in the second violin is submerged by the first violin's countermelody"

     synonyms:

     theme, idea, concept, subject, topic, leitmotif, element; through line "a recurring motif in her work"

   • an ornament of lace, braid, etc., sewn separately on a garment.
   • Biochemistry

     a distinctive sequence on a protein or DNA, having a three-dimensional structure that allows binding interactions to occur.

       

     
     

     READING: continue reading poems in Thomas and Beulah
     
     Check out this blog about the book:
     http://english165h.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/2012/04/17/rita-doves-thomas-and-beulah-initial-responses/

     
     

     WRITING: continue working on your poetry cycles
     
     

Poetry Cycle Assignment

AGENDA:

 

 

Morning Reflections:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGZHY3BYm0I&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DFGZHY3BYm0I&has_verified=1

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Cycle Assignment Rita Dove

Go over Mandolin section:

Reader Response to a Poem:
Select one of the poems in "Thomas and Beulah". How does the poem make you feel? In what ways can you relate to the poem? What has Rita Dove done with imagery, form, theme, rhythm, language, etc. to make this poem work? Any lines that particularly strike you as interesting or powerful? Think about poetic technique: enjambment, caesura, metaphor, simile, alliteration, assonance, consonance, linebreaking, stanzaic form, apostrophe, onomatopeaia, etc.

Post your response



Begin working on Poetry Cycle assignment:
Similar to Thomas and Beulah, consider some characters in your own life, imagined characters, or actual historical characters. Imagine the significant chronological dates in their lives--high points and low points. consider how to construct a series of 8-10 (preferably more) poems that tell a story (narrative poetry) and explore these key moments and occasions.

• a. Your poetry cycle should consist of 8-10 poems
• b. Your poetry cycle should be accompanied by a chronology to support the key dates and occasions you chose to write about.
• c. At least two of the poems should explore the same event from two different perspectives or viewpoints (like "Courtship" in Thomas and Beulah). These poems can have the same title.
• d. Place one poem per page, single-spaced, 12 point type in a clean font and be sure to title each poem. you may want to title the entire cycle as well. Use italics for dialogue, songs, memories, etc as you observe in Rita Dove's work. Experiment with different stanzaic forms and poetic styles.
• e. Poems can, of course, be narrative or lyric, but remember that the overall cycle is a narrative and must tell a story of a life or lives although we only see "fragments" or moments/snapshot

Rita Dove

Rita Dove Thomas and Beulah

Begin reading aloud Thomas and Beulah
Check out link to her web site!
www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=6719 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/rita-dove 
Critical article: personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jpellegr/articles/dovearticle.html 
www.suite101.com/article.cfm/african_american_lit_retired/62567

The poem cycle set to music:
www.amazon.com/Thomas-Beulah-Rita-Amnon-Wolman/dp/B000065CWO

Flash Fiction/ Bloodsucking Fiends Closure

AGENDA:





Morning Reflection:


EQ:  What qualities of plot, character, and structure make these stories strong examples of flash fiction?  How do writers achieve compression in  shirt, short story (aka flash fiction)?
Please complete and turn in any missing work!

FLASH FICTION: 3 EXEMPLARS (MODELS)

Read Margaret Atwood's "My Life as a Bat"
http://www.sweetdave.com/moon_safari.htm.


Ron Carlson's "Bigfoot Stole My Wife"

Bigfoot Stole My Wife

By Ron Carlson

The problem is credibility.

The problem, as I'm finding out over the last few weeks, is basic credibility. A lot of people look at me and say, sure Rick, Bigfoot stole your wife. It makes me sad to see it, the look of disbelief in each person's eye. Trudy's disappearance makes me sad, too, and I'm sick in my heart about where she may be and how he's treating her, what they do all day, if she's getting enough to eat. I believe he's beeing good to her -- I mean I feel it -- and I'm going to keep hoping to see her again, but it is my belief that I probably won't.

In the two and a half years we were married, I often had the feeling that I would come home from the track and something would be funny. Oh, she'd say things: One of these days I'm not going to be here when you get home, things like that, things like everybody says. How stupid of me not to see them as omens. When I'd get out of bed in the early afternoon, I'd stand right here at this sink and I could see her working in her garden in her cut-off Levis and bikini top, weeding, planting, watering. I mean it was obvious. I was too busy thinking about the races, weighing the odds, checking the jockey roster to see what I now know: he was watching her too. He'd probably been watching her all summer.

So, in a way it was my fault. But what could I have done? Bigfoot steals your wife. I mean: even if you're home, it's going to be a mess. He's big and not well trained.

When I came home it was about eleven-thirty. The lights were on, which really wasn't anything new, but in the ordinary mess of the place, there was a little difference, signs of a struggle. There was a spilled Dr. Pepper on the counter and the fridge was open. But there was something else, something that made me sick. The smell. The smell of Bigfoot. It was hideous. It was . . . the guy is not clean.

Half of Trudy's clothes are gone, not all of them, and there is no note. Well, I know what it is. It's just about midnight there in the kitchen which smells like some part of hell. I close the fridge door. It's the saddest thing I've ever done. There's a picture of Trudy and me leaning against her Toyota taped to the fridge door. It was taken last summer. There's Trudy in her bikini top, her belly brown as a bean. She looks like a kid. She was a kid I guess, twenty-six. The two times she went to the track with me everybody looked at me like how'd I rate her. But she didn't really care for the races. She cared about her garden and Chinese cooking and Buster, her collie, who I guess Bigfoot stole too. Or ate. Buster isn't in the picture, he was nagging my nephew Chuck who took the photo. Anyway I close the fridge door and it's like part of my life closed. Bigfoot steals your wife and you're in for some changes.

You come home from the track having missed the Daily Double by a neck, and when you enter the home you are paying for and in which you and your wife and your wife's collie live, and your wife and her collie are gone as is some of her clothing, there is nothing to believe. Bigfoot stole her. It's a fact. What should I do, ignore it? Chuck came down and said something like well if Bigfoot stole her why'd he take the Celica? Christ, what a cynic! Have you ever read anything about Bigfoot not being able to drive? He'd be cramped in there, but I'm sure he could manage.

I don't really care if people believe me or not. Would that change anything? Would that bring Trudy back here? Pull the weeds in her garden?

As I think about it, no one believes anything anymore. Give me one example of someone believing one thing. No one believes me. I myself can't believe all the suspicion and cynicism there is in today's world. Even at the races, some character next to me will poke over at my tip sheet and ask me if I believe that stuff. If I believe? What is there to believe? The horse's name? What he did the last time out? And I look back at this guy, too cheap to go two bucks on the program, and I say: its history. It is historical fact here. Believe. Huh. Here's a fact: I believe everything.

Credibility.

When I was thirteen years old, my mother's trailor was washed away in the flooding waters of the Harley River and swept thirty-one miles, ending right side up and neary dead level just outside Mercy, in fact in the old weed-eaten parking lot for the abandoned potash plant. I know this to be true because I was inside the trailor the whole time with my pal, Nuggy Reinecker, who found the experience more life-changing than I did.

Now who's going to believe this story? I mean, besides me, because I was there. People are going to say, come on, thirty-one miles? Don't you mean thirty-one feet?

We had gone in out of the rain after school to check out a magazine that belonged to my mother's boyfriend. It was a copy of Dude, and there was a fold-out page I will never forget of a girl lying on a beach on her back. It was a color photograph. The girl was a little pale, I mean, this was probably her first day out in the sun, and she had no clothing on. So it was good, but what made it great was that they had made her a little bathing suit out of sand. Somebody had spilled a little sand just right, here and there, and the sane was this incredible gold color, and it made her look so absolutly naked you wanted to put your eyes out.

Nuggy and I knew there was flood danger in Griggs; we'd had a flood every year almost and it had been raining for five days on and off, but when the trailor bucked the first time, we thought it was my mother come home to catch us in the dirty book. Nuggy shoved the magazine under his bed and I ran out to check the door. It only took me a second and I holldered back Hey no sweat, no one's here, but by the time Ireturned to see what other poses they'd had this beautiful woman commit, Nuggy already had his pants to his ankles and was involved in what we knew was a sin.

It if hadn't been the timing of the first wave with this act of his, Nuggy might have gone on to live what the rest of us call a normal life. But the Harley had crested and the head wave, which they estimated to be three feet minimum, unmoored the trailer with a push that knocked me over the sofa, and threw Nuggy, already entangled in his trousers, clear across the bedroom.

I watched the village of Griggs as we sailed through. Some of the village, the Exxon Station, part of it at least, and the carwash, which folded up right away, tried to come along with us, and I saw the front of Painters' Mercantile, the old porch and signboard, on and off all day.

You can believe this: it was not a smooth ride. We'd rip along for ten seconds, dropping and growling over rocks, and rumbling over tree stumps, and then wham! the front end of the trailer would lodge against a rock or something that could stop it, and whoa! we'd wheel around sharp as a carnival ride, worse really, because the furniture would be thrown against the far side and us with it, sometimes we'd end up in a chair and sometimes the chair would sit on us. My mother had about four thousand knickknacks in five big box shelves, and they gave us trouble for the first two or three miles, flying by like artillery, left, right, some small glass snail hits you in the face, later in the back, but that stuff all finally settled in the foot and then two feet of water which we took on.

We only slowed down once and it was the worst. In the railroad flats I thought we had stopped and I let go of the door I was hugging and tried to stand up and then swish, another rush sent us right along. We rammed along all day it seemed, but when we finally washed up in Mercy and the sheriff's cousin pulled open the door and got swept back to his car by water and quite a few of those knickknacks, just over an hour had passed. We had averaged, they figured later, about thirty-two miles an hour, reaching speeds of up to fifty at Lime Falls and the Willows. I was okay and walked out bruised and well washed, but when the sheriff's cousin pulled Nuggy out, he looked genuinely hurt.

"For godsakes," I remember the sheriff's cousin saying, "The damn flood knocked this boy's pants off!" But Nuggy wasn't talking. In fact, he never hardly talked to me again in the two years he stayed at Regional School. I heard later, and I believe it, that he joined the monastery over in Malcolm County.

My mother, because she didn't have the funds to haul our rig back to Griggs, worried for a while, but then the mayor arranged to let us stay out where we were. So after my long ride in a trailer down the flooded Harley River with my friend Nuggy Reinbecker, I grew up in a parking lot outside of Mercy, and to tell you the truth, it wasn't too bad, even though our trailer never did smell straight again.

Now you can believe all that. People are always saying: don't believe everything you read, or everything you hear. And I'm here to tell you. Believe it. Everything. Everything you read. Everything you hear. Believe your eyes. Your ears. Believe the small hairs on the back of your neck. Believe all of history, and all of the versions of history, and all the predictions for the future. Believe every weather forecast. Believe in God, the afterlife, unicorns, showers on Tuesday. Everything has happened. Everything is possible.

I came home from the track to find the cupboard bare. Trudy is not home. The place smells funny: hairy. It's a fact and I know it as a fact: Bigfoot has been in my house.

Bigfoot stole my wife.

She's gone.

Believe it.

I gotta believe it.

Bruce Holland Rogers "Murder, Mystery"
http://flashfictiononline.com/author_bruce_holland_rogers.html

The Dead Boy at Your Window

This story is an illustration of a fixed form as described in Bruce’s column for November 2008. It’s a little long for flash — about 1,300 words — but it illustrates his points nicely and it’s a multiple-award winner: the Bram Stoker in 1998 and the Pushcart Prize in 1999.

In a distant country where the towns had improbable names, a woman looked upon the unmoving form of her newborn baby and refused to see what the midwife saw. This was her son. She had brought him forth in agony, and now he must suck. She pressed his lips to her breast.

“But he is dead!” said the midwife.

“No,” his mother lied. “I felt him suck just now.” Her lie was as milk to the baby, who really was dead but who now opened his dead eyes and began to kick his dead legs. “There, do you see?” And she made the midwife call the father in to know his son.

The dead boy never did suck at his mother’s breast. He sipped no water, never took food of any kind, so of course he never grew. But his father, who was handy with all things mechanical, built a rack for stretching him so that, year by year, he could be as tall as the other children.

When he had seen six winters, his parents sent him to school. Though he was as tall as the other students, the dead boy was strange to look upon. His bald head was almost the right size, but the rest of him was thin as a piece of leather and dry as a stick. He tried to make up for his ugliness with diligence, and every night he was up late practicing his letters and numbers.

His voice was like the rasping of dry leaves. Because it was so hard to hear him, the teacher made all the other students hold their breaths when he gave an answer. She called on him often, and he was always right.

Naturally, the other children despised him. The bullies sometimes waited for him after school, but beating him, even with sticks, did him no harm. He wouldn’t even cry out.

One windy day, the bullies stole a ball of twine from their teacher’s desk, and after school, they held the dead boy on the ground with his arms out so that he took the shape of a cross. They ran a stick in through his left shirt sleeve and out through the right. They stretched his shirt tails down to his ankles, tied everything in place, fastened the ball of twine to a buttonhole, and launched him. To their delight, the dead boy made an excellent kite. It only added to their pleasure to see that owing to the weight of his head, he flew upside down.

When they were bored with watching the dead boy fly, they let go of the string. The dead boy did not drift back to earth, as any ordinary kite would do. He glided. He could steer a little, though he was mostly at the mercy of the winds. And he could not come down. Indeed, the wind blew him higher and higher.

The sun set, and still the dead boy rode the wind. The moon rose and by its glow he saw the fields and forests drifting by. He saw mountain ranges pass beneath him, and oceans and continents. At last the winds gentled, then ceased, and he glided down to the ground in a strange country. The ground was bare. The moon and stars had vanished from the sky. The air seemed gray and shrouded. The dead boy leaned to one side and shook himself until the stick fell from his shirt. He wound up the twine that had trailed behind him and waited for the sun to rise. Hour after long hour, there was only the same grayness. So he began to wander.

He encountered a man who looked much like himself, a bald head atop leathery limbs. “Where am I?” the dead boy asked.

The man looked at the grayness all around. “Where?” the man said. His voice, like the dead boy’s, sounded like the whisper of dead leaves stirring.

A woman emerged from the grayness. Her head was bald, too, and her body dried out. “This!” she rasped, touching the dead boy’s shirt. “I remember this!” She tugged on the dead boy’s sleeve. “I had a thing like this!”

“Clothes?” said the dead boy.

“Clothes!” the woman cried. “That’s what it is called!”

More shriveled people came out of the grayness. They crowded close to see the strange dead boy who wore clothes. Now the dead boy knew where he was. “This is the land of the dead.”

“Why do you have clothes?” asked the dead woman. “We came here with nothing! Why do you have clothes?”

“I have always been dead,” said the dead boy, “but I spent six years among the living.”

“Six years!” said one of the dead. “And you have only just now come to us?”

“Did you know my wife?” asked a dead man. “Is she still among the living?”

“Give me news of my son!”

“What about my sister?”

The dead people crowded closer.

The dead boy said, “What is your sister’s name?” But the dead could not remember the names of their loved ones. They did not even remember their own names. Likewise, the names of the places where they had lived, the numbers given to their years, the manners or fashions of their times, all of these they had forgotten.

“Well,” said the dead boy, “in the town where I was born, there was a widow. Maybe she was your wife. I knew a boy whose mother had died, and an old woman who might have been your sister.”

“Are you going back?”

“Of course not,” said another dead person. “No one ever goes back.”

“I think I might,” the dead boy said. He explained about his flying. “When next the wind blows....”

“The wind never blows here,” said a man so newly dead that he remembered wind.

“Then you could run with my string.”

“Would that work?”

“Take a message to my husband!” said a dead woman.

“Tell my wife that I miss her!” said a dead man.

“Let my sister know I haven’t forgotten her!”

“Say to my lover that I love him still!”

They gave him their messages, not knowing whether or not their loved ones were themselves long dead. Indeed, dead lovers might well be standing next to one another in the land of the dead, giving messages for each other to the dead boy. Still, he memorized them all. Then the dead put the stick back inside his shirt sleeves, tied everything in place, and unwound his string. Running as fast as their leathery legs could manage, they pulled the dead boy back into the sky, let go of the string, and watched with their dead eyes as he glided away.

He glided a long time over the gray stillness of death until at last a puff of wind blew him higher, until a breath of wind took him higher still, until a gust of wind carried him up above the grayness to where he could see the moon and the stars. Below he saw moonlight reflected in the ocean. In the distance rose mountain peaks. The dead boy came to earth in a little village. He knew no one here, but he went to the first house he came to and rapped on the bedroom shutters. To the woman who answered, he said, “A message from the land of the dead,” and gave her one of the messages. The woman wept, and gave him a message in return.

House by house, he delivered the messages. House by house, he collected messages for the dead. In the morning, he found some boys to fly him, to give him back to the wind’s mercy so he could carry these new messages back to the land of the dead.

So it has been ever since. On any night, head full of messages, he may rap upon any window to remind someone — to remind you, perhaps — of love that outlives memory, of love that needs no names.

Writer's Workshop:  Share your own flash fiction stories
POST A COMMENT RESPONDING TO THESE STORIES:

Bloodsucking Fiends/FLASH FICTION FRIDAY FINISH DAY

AGENDA:

MORNING REFLECTION:

FINISH STUDY GUIDE for Part II Bloodsucking Fiends

FINISH FLASH FICTION project for Bloodsucking Fiends

HMWK: For Tuesday, FINISH reading Part III Hunters, Bloodsucking Fiends

Bloodsucking Fiends/Flash Fiction

AGENDA:

Scholastic Awards:
http://www.artandwriting.org/the-awards/how-to-enter/


Work on Bloodsucking Fiends STUDY GUIDE for Part II

MORNING REFLECTION:

WRITING:  Work on Flash Fiction

Bloodsucking Fiends/ Discussion/ Flash Fiction stories

AGENDA:

MORNING REFLECTION: Xavier  "Famous Failures"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLYECIjmnQs


DISCUSSION OF READING  Questions

WRITING: Work on Flash Fiction story


HMWK:  READ Part II of Bloodsucking fiends for WEDNESDAY (Finish book if you can)

FLASH FICTION/Tropes

AGENDA:

Morning Reflection: Alan Johnson  What Color is a Mirror?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yrZpTHBEss

WRITING:  Continue to work on your FLASH FICTION stories.

TV Tropes is a wiki^[2] that collects and expands descriptions and examples on various conventions and devices (tropes) found within creative works. Since its establishment in 2004, the site has gone from covering only television and film tropes to also covering those in a number of other media such as literature, comics, video games, and even things such as advertisements and toys.^[3][4] The nature of the site as commentary about pop culture and fiction has attracted attention and commentary from several web personalities and blogs.
The content was published as free content from April 2008,^[5] and changed its license over the years to one allowing noncommercial distribution.

tvtropes.org


READING: continue to read Bloodsucking Fiends to pg.

Bloodsucking Fiends Discussion Quesions

AGENDA:

HMWK: Read through Ch. 17, pg. 141

 

Discussion Questions for Bloodsucking Fiends

Reading Group Guide

Questions for Discussion

1. Everyone has been exposed to Vampire lore, either through books, movies, or television. How does Jody's transformation into a vampire differ from how you always thought someone became a vampire? In what ways is it similar?

2. Jody and Tommy's relationship moves at a rather alarming pace, and within a week of meeting each other, they are in love. Is love at first sight possible? Or in their case, at first bite? Why do they connect so instantly?

3. The book is filled with religious connotations, whether intentional or not — from the mention of "the pyramid" (The TransAmerica Tower), to the use of crosses to ward off vampires, to the Animals being referred to as "Crusaders." How intentional do you think this was on the part of the author? What do these add to the story?

4. The book touches upon the idea of euthanasia — the practice of ending the life of a terminally ill person in a painless or minimally painful way in order to limit suffering — in that Elijah Ben Sapir, the vampire who creates Jody, only kills those who are about to die or whose lives are limited in some way. What are your feelings about "mercy killings"? Do vampires have an ethical standard?

5. When Simon threatens Jody after she refuses to turn him into a vampire, she ends up killing him in the front of his truck. Jody then blames the killing on Elijah, however, and never confesses it to Tommy. Why not admit to it when Elijah has been restrained?

6. Why are Jody and Tommy "set up" as the culprits in the recent crimes? What would it mean if they were caught? Why do these crimes need to be pinned on anyone? Couldn't the criminals cover up thecrimes in another way?

7. By the end of the novel, both detectives — Cavuto and Rivera — begin to believe in the supernatural and that vampires could exist. To what extent do you believe in the supernatural, either vampires, ghosts, or even just that some people may or may not have psychic ability?

8. Tommy uses Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, which of course is fiction, as his "Owner's Manual" for learning about Jody and her new powers. Discuss the author's use of fiction within fiction in order to tell a story. Have any members of your group read The Vampire Lestat? How do the two books compare?

9. Once Jody becomes a vampire, she finds that she has many new and different abilities, including superstrength, heightened senses, and superspeed. Which do you think is her most needed new superability?

10. Though Jody finds herself immortal, she also retains many of her normal human characteristics and failings, including vanity, fear, anger, and disgust. Discuss how even though she has become immortal, and can protect herself from many of the regular dangers of everyday life, she is still unable to disassociate herself from normal human emotion.

11. At the end of the book, the reader is left with the impression that Jody is about to turn Tommy into a vampire. If she does change him into a vampire, how do you imagine their story continues? How would it continue if she does not?

Enhancing Your Bookclub

1. Would you be willing to give up your normal life — being able to go out in the daylight, not being immortal — in order to become a vampire? You'd be able to live forever, have superstrength and -speed, among many other different gifts. Would it be worth it? Why? Why not?

2. To read more about vampires, take a look at the following titles: The Society of S by Susan Hubbard, Vamped by David Sosnowski, The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula by Tim Lucas, and Happy Hour at Casa Dracula by Marta Costa.

3. Learn more about vampires: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampires.

Christopher Moore is the bestselling author of You Suck, A Dirty Job, The Stupidest Angel, Fluke, Lamb, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, Bloodsucking Fiends, and Practical Demonkeeping. Visit the

Flash Fiction

AGENDA:

 Chris Moore video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbo2Ae-pj-4

Here it is:
FLASH FICTION:

Write a Flash Fiction story (2-3 double-spaced pages) that PARODIES (makes fun of) an established genre (your choice--Science Fantasy, Horror, Romance, Western, etc.).   Choose this option if you want to try your hand at HUMOR and PARODY.
or

Write a Flash Fiction story that follows the conventions and uses the familiar tropes of a HORROR STORY  (vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, etc.) or a LOVE STORY.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction

and http://www.flash-fiction-world.com/

Vampires and Parody

 

Morning Reflection:  Jaymee Pride  Mos Def "Mathematics"

EQ:  How does Christopher Moore utilize parody, genre, and conventions in his writing?

DEFINITIONS:

The Inner Workings of Parody

par·o·dy

   ˈpærədi Spelled [par-uh-dee]  IPA noun, plural -dies, verb, -died, -dy·ing.

noun 

1.   a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of literature or writing: his hilarious parody of Hamlet's soliloquy.

2.   the genre of literary composition represented by such imitations.

3.    a burlesque imitation of a musical composition.

4.   any humorous, satirical, or burlesque imitation, as of a person, event, etc.

5.    the use in the 16th century of borrowed material in a musical setting of the Mass (parody Mass).

verb (used with object)

6.   to imitate (a composition, author, etc.) for purposes of ridicule or satire.

7.   to imitate poorly or feebly; travesty.

Source: www.dictionary.com

GENRE: A type or category of literature or film marked by certain shared features or conventions. The three broadest categories of genre include poetry, drama, and fiction. These general genres are often subdivided into more specific genres and subgenres. For instance, precise examples of genres might include murder mysteries, westerns, sonnets, lyric poetry, epics, tragedies, etc. Many bookstores and video stores divide their books or films into genres for the convenience of shoppers seeking a specific category of literature.
CONVENTION: A common feature that has become traditional or expected within a specific genre (category) of literature or film. In Harlequin romances, it is conventional to focus on a male and female character who struggle through misunderstandings and difficulties until they fall in love. In western films of the early twentieth-century, for instance, it has been conventional for protagonists to wear white hats and antagonists to wear black hats. The wandering knight-errant who travels from place to place, seeking adventure while suffering from the effects of hunger and the elements, is a convention in medieval romances. It is a convention for an English sonnet to have fourteen lines with a specific rhyme scheme, abab, cdcd, efef, gg, and so on. The use of a chorus and the unities are dramatic conventions of Greek tragedy, while, the aside, and the soliloquy are conventions in Elizabethan tragedy. Conventions are often referred to as poetic, literary, or dramatic, depending upon whether the convention appears in a poem, short story or novel, or a play.

Source: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/index.html

 

 

Mini Writing Exercises

1.      Write a paragraph that describes a monster (whether it be a vampire or another magical being that you know well).  Make sure that this description fits with the conventions of the genre to which the being belongs (i.e.—a vampire might have fangs; a zombie might eat brains, etc.).  Use rich language and adjectives to create a vivid image for your reader.

 

2.     Parody a vampire attack (or a part of one) in a paragraph.  Use the Moore reading as well as the more serious, short readings from class for ideas of conventions you might want to twist.

HMWK: For Monday, read to Ch. 14