Diane Ackerman essays

AGENDA:

Definition:
A form of creative nonfiction in which the natural environment (or a narrator's encounter with the natural environment) serves as the dominant subject.
"In critical practice," says Michael P. Branch, "the term 'nature writing' has usually been reserved for a brand of nature representation that is deemed literary, written in the speculative personal voice, and presented in the form of the nonfiction essay. Such nature writing is frequently pastoral or romantic in its philosophical assumptions, tends to be modern or even ecological in its sensibility, and is often in service to an explicit or implicit preservationist agenda" ("Before Nature Writing," in Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism, ed. by K. Armbruster and K.R. Wallace, 2001).

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-nature-writing-1691423

http://www.wildwords.org/blog/2016/5/17/the-new-nature-writing

https://www.crosbyisd.org/cms/lib6/TX02216626/Centricity/Domain/50/Grade_10-Bats-Ackerman.pdf

https://www.outsideonline.com/2409608/the-call-of-the-wild-movie-review
Read Ackerman essays.  Fill out graphic organizer.

Write: Begin working on your nature essays

Brian Doyle/Annie Dillard-Nature Writing

Brian Doyle/Annie Dillard-Nature Writing

AGENDA:

EQ: According to Brian Doyle’s essay, “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever, how should the ideal nature essay develop and affect the reader”? Do Annie Dillard’s “Living Like Weasels” and Doyle’s “Fishering” measure up to the criteria Doyle presents? 



 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”? 
Link: http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-lad/dillard.htm 

Silently read Brian Doyle’s “Fishering” and annotate it. 
Link: http://www.hcn.org/issues/317/16163

  

PERIOD TWO (Rm. 238): In small groups, read Brian Doyle’s “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever.” 
Link: https://orionmagazine.org/article/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”?

Please post a comment indicating some of the topics you could explore for a nature essay.

Sedaris Humor Essay

AGENDA:

Sedaris, the Santaland diaries:
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/25/788367771/david-sedaris-reads-from-santaland-diaries

1st Completed draft of Sedaris Humor essay due on Friday.  Work on it!

Contests:
ROC the sonnet deadline pushed to the 15th--Write a sonnet if you can.

Through Their Eyes---write a persona poem (see link in previous post)

READING:  Select another Sedaris essay (any one we have not read in class.  Post a summary and comment on it.

DAVID SEDARIS ESSAY

AGENDA:

Master class video.

Work on essay.

HMWK: Read pages 248-272

New Contest: Through Their Eyes

https://youngwritersusa.com/contests/through-their-eyes/#download_links

Sedaris: Big Boy/21 Down

AGENDA:

VIEW: Sedaris video--Master Class

READ: aloud "Big Boy" and "21 Down"

Post a comment:
What does Sedaris do to make this story funny?

WRITING:  Work on your first draft of Sedaris essay--print and turn in

Me Talk Prettty One Day

AGENDA:

View David Sedaris video Masterclsss.

READ: pg. 166  "Me Talk Pretty One Day"

Begin working on your Sedaris essay.