Final Blog Post of the Two Years!

Please post this on your blogs by Wednesday May 29. We will not meet during our Final Exam period as this is the very last thing you need to complete for this course.

Final Blog Post Assignment: 600-800 words

Look back on your experience in IB Literature and Performance, and reflect on what you have learned and how you have grown. You can talk about your own experience as a:

person
student
reader of plays, stories, novels, poetry
writer of essays, clog posts, scripts
thinker
performer
actor
director
tech theater person
public speaker
audience member of many different types of performances
theater reviewer
etc

Throughout the two years, what are your lessons learned (about life or literature or theater)? What are your successes? What challenged you or frustrated you? What excited or exhilarated you? What made you laugh? What inspired you?

Go back through your blog posts to get some starting points for this final piece and see how your thinking has changed and grown over the course of two years. Also think back to the first day when I asked you the following questions: "What is Literature? What is Performance? How are they related and how can we learn differently about literature through the process of performance?" Revisit those questions. How do you read plot, character, dialogue, poetry, etc. differently now that you have studied it through the lens of performance? What connections have you made throughout the year as we have used literature as a basis for performance and used performance as an enhanced way to study literature?  Use specific details and examples from the course to back up your ideas. Additionally, include 5 images from the course to spice up your last post.

This is a personal piece of writing, but that doesn't mean it should be boring. Be creative, use captivating language, tell a story like a vivid scarf... Above all, be honest in assessing your growth and examining where you still need to go as a reader, writer, thinker, performer, etc. as you leave CA and embark on your college adventure.

Paper 2 Samples

Answer one question. Refer closely to the works of at least two poets you have studied.

1. Poetry sometimes aims to quiet our fears about the present or the future, or alternatively, to

intensify them. In what ways and with what success have at least two poems you have studied

addressed such fears or anxieties?

2. “Structure matters!” The way a poet structures thoughts and feelings can either engage the reader or cause a loss of interest. Show how at least two poems you have studied have used their choice of arrangements, both in words and visual effect, to ensure your interest or not.

3. “Some poets seek to portray; others seek to persuade.” In at least two poems you have studied, explore the ways in which you have observed the intent to persuade and how you have responded positively or negatively.

4. “The imagination seeks to see the world through resemblances.” In at least two poems you have studied, demonstrate how they have sought to clarify and express their way of seeing the world by including various forms of comparison.

5. A sense of invisible forces or entities is sometimes explored in poetry. In at least two poems you have studied, show how poets have created and used such elements to add a sense of mystery or nostalgia.

6. What are often called “domestic matters” can form the basis of poems in which a poet builds a compelling portrait or reflects on these areas of life. In at least two poems you have

studied, explore the way such aspects as marriage, housekeeping, being part of a family, etc, have effectively shaped poetic materials and attitudes.

Naomi Shihab Nye info and poems

We are beginning a unit on the poet Naomi Shihab Nye who we read a bit last year. Look her up to get some information about her. 

Here is some biographical information about her from the Academy of American Poets:

 "Naomi Shihab Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Palestine, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas"

 (www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/naomi-shihab-nye)

 She writes a lot about family, nature, and humanity. Like most poets, she tries to create a new way of seeing the world, and she explores complex meanings while painting a simple picture with words.

Here is a video of Nye reading a poem written from a child's perspective of the world. You can see how she sees children as having an innocent yet unique (even knowledgeable) perspective: https://youtu.be/biJ3FP8aDjY

 Here is a link to an interview with the poet that aired on PBS:

 http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_nye.html

 Finally, here is a famous letter that she wrote after 9/11. I think the letter will help you understand some of why she writes and what she is trying to accomplish in her poetry:

 http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/shihabnye.html

My Father and the Fig Tree

 For other fruits, my father was indifferent.
He'd point at the cherry trees and say,
 "See those? I wish they were figs."
In the evening he sat by my bed
weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.
They always involved a figtree.
 Even when it didn't fit, he'd stick it in.
Once Joha was walking down the road
and he saw a fig tree.
 Or, he tied his camel to a fig tree and went to sleep.
Or, later when they caught and arrested him,
his pockets were full of figs.

At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged.
"That's not what I'm talking about! he said,
"I'm talking about a fig straight from the earth –
gift of Allah! -- on a branch so heavy
it touches the ground.
I'm talking about picking the largest, fattest,
sweetest fig
in the world and putting it in my mouth."
(Here he'd stop and close his eyes.)

Years passed, we lived in many houses,
none had figtrees.
 We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets.
"Plant one!" my mother said.
 But my father never did.
 He tended garden half-heartedly, forgot to water,
let the okra get too big.
"What a dreamer he is. Look how many things
he starts and doesn't finish."

The last time he moved, I got a phone call,
My father, in Arabic, chanting a song
I'd never heard. "What's that?"
He took me out back to the new yard.
There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,
a tree with the largest, fattest,
sweetest fig in the world.
"It's a figtree song!" he said,
 plucking his fruits like ripe tokens,
 emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.

 -Naomi Shihab Nye

 from 19 VARIETIES OF GAZELLE

* Joha - A trickster figure in Palestinian folktales

Blood

RELATED POEM CONTENT DETAILS

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,” 

my father would say. And he’d prove it, 

cupping the buzzer instantly 

while the host with the swatter stared. 

In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. 

True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. 

I changed these to fit the occasion. 

Years before, a girl knocked, 

wanted to see the Arab. 

I said we didn’t have one. 

After that, my father told me who he was, 

“Shihab”—“shooting star”— 

a good name, borrowed from the sky. 

Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?” 

He said that’s what a true Arab would say. 

Today the headlines clot in my blood. 

A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page. 

Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root 

is too big for us. What flag can we wave? 

I wave the flag of stone and seed, 

table mat stitched in blue. 

I call my father, we talk around the news. 

It is too much for him, 

neither of his two languages can reach it. 

I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, 

to plead with the air: 

Who calls anyone civilized? 

Where can the crying heart graze? 

What does a true Arab do now?

The Words Under the Words

for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem

My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,   

the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.   

When I was sick they followed me,

I woke from the long fever to find them   

covering my head like cool prayers.

My grandmother’s days are made of bread,   

a round pat-pat and the slow baking.

She waits by the oven watching a strange car   

circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,   

lost to America. More often, tourists,   

who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.   

She knows how often mail arrives,

how rarely there is a letter.

When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,   

listening to it read again and again

in the dim evening light.

My grandmother’s voice says nothing can surprise her.

Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.   

She knows the spaces we travel through,   

the messages we cannot send—our voices are short   

and would get lost on the journey.

Farewell to the husband’s coat,

the ones she has loved and nourished,

who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.   

They will plant themselves. We will all die.

My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.   

When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,   

when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,   

He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—

otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,   

difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.”

Naomi Shihab Nye, “The Words Under the Words” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995).

Two Countries

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a 
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

Here is a quote from Naomi Shihab Nye:

“Why should it be a surprise that people find solace in literature? Literature slows us down, cherishes small details.…We need literature for nourishment and noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it to ourselves.”

 A lot of Nye's poetry deals with her identity as a Palestinian- American and her experience navigating two cultures. But her poetry also delves into her cultural and family heritage and the experience of people living in Palestine.

Here are two more poems:

Arabic Coffee

It was never too strong for us:
make it blacker, Papa,
thick in the bottom,
tell again how the years will gather
in small white cups,
how luck lives in a spot of grounds.

Leaning over the stove, he let it
boil to the top, and down again.
Two times. No sugar in his pot.
And the place where men and women
break off from one another
was not present in that room.
The hundred disappointments,
fire swallowing olive-wood beads
at the warehouse, and the dreams
tucked like pocket handkerchiefs
into each day, took their places
on the table, near the half-empty
dish of corn. And none was
more important than the others,
and all were guests. When
he carried the tray into the room,
high and balanced in his hands,
it was an offering to all of them,
stay, be seated, follow the talk
wherever it goes. The coffee was
the center of the flower.
Like clothes on a line saying
you will live long enough to wear me,
a motion of faith. There is this,
and there is more.

My Grandmother in the Stars

It is possible we will not meet again
on earth. To think this fills my throat
with dust. Then there is only the sky
tying the universe together.

Just now the neighbor’s horse must be standing
patiently, hoof on stone, waiting for his day
to open. What you think of him,
and the village’s one heroic cow,
is the knowledge I wish to gather.
I bow to your rugged feet,
the moth-eaten scarves that knot your hair.

Where we live in the world
is never one place. Our hearts,
those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us
moons before we are ready for them.
You and I on a roof at sunset,
our two languages adrift,
heart saying, Take this home with you,
never again,
and only memory making us rich.

Paper Two Sample Questions and Grading Rubric -- note that there are also graded exams on the portal

Answer one question. Refer closely to the works of at least two poets you have studied.

1. Hope and/or pessimism are sometimes reflected in poetry. In the work of at least two poets
you have studied, examine either or both of these attitudes and the way in which the poets have
chosen to convey them.

2. “The language of a poem is often that of one thing compared to another.” In the work of at least
two poets you have studied, explore how poets have made their subjects come alive through
different means of comparing them.

3. “Poets often withhold certitude, which can at the same time empower readers to think creatively.”
Consider the works of at least two poets you have studied in which ambiguity has enabled readers
to reach their own conclusions about meaning and implications.

4. What poets do with historical materials can be delivered with very different intents and effects.
Choosing at least two poets you have studied, compare two approaches found in their work and
discuss in what ways these contribute to the overall effect of the poems.

5. Poets may arrange their material to encourage the reader to move rapidly through the lines or in a
way that encourages reflection. In the work of at least two poets you have studied, consider how
the pace of poems is created and its relation to the way meaning is delivered.

6. Choose a similar subject that is covered by at least two poets you have studied and compare both

Answer one question. Refer closely to the works of at least two poets you have studied.

1. Attentive readers discover much about a poem’s meaning though its tone, ie the attitude a
poet takes to the subject or audience of a poem. In the tone, the emotional attitude a poet takes
to a subject, attentive readers hear many clues about the intended meaning. In the work of at
least two poets you have studied, discuss how they have used tone to shape your understanding of
and response to poems.

 

2. The passage of time and its significance can be handled in many ways in poetry. Consider
the ways in which at least two poets have included aspects of time in their poetry through their
effective use of stylistic techniques.

 

3. Resistance and rebellion at either a personal or a larger, social level, can lead to very
interesting poetic explorations. By what means and with what effects have at least two poets you
have studied included such impulses and actions in their poetry?

 

4. Colour and sound provide some of the most vivid effects in poetry. How have at least two
poets that you have studied used such visual and auditory aspects as these to enrich their poems?

 

5. Patterns, aimed at the mind, the heart or the ear of the reader, are used by poets to
achieve their purposes. In the work of at least two poets you have studied, examine various
patterns and their effects.

 

6. While some poems focus exclusively on a personal or private experience, others reflect on
the place of the individual in the larger human community. In the work of at least two poets,
explore the ways in which poems have conveyed the poet’s sense of the world beyond the private
sphere.

Grading Rubric

Paper 2: Poetry

Criterion A: Knowledge and understanding of texts

• How well does the student know the texts studied?
• How much understanding has the student shown of the texts studied in relation to the question answered?
• How detailed and/or appropriate are the student’s references to the texts studied?

Marks	Level descriptor
0	The work does not reach a standard described by the descriptors below.
1	There is limited knowledge of, or familiarity with, the texts used to answer the question.
2	There is some knowledge of, or familiarity with, the texts used to answer the question. There is superficial understanding of the texts used.
3	There is adequate understanding of the texts used to answer the question. There are relevant references to the texts.
4	There is good understanding of the texts used to answer the question. There are detailed and appropriate references to the texts.
5	There is perceptive understanding of the texts used to answer the question. There are detailed and well-chosen references to the texts.

 

Criterion B: Response to the question

• How well has the student understood the specific demands of the question?
• To what extent has the student responded to these demands?
• How well has the student illustrated claims?
• To what extent has the student expressed a relevant personal response?

Marks	Level descriptor
0	The work does not reach a standard described by the descriptors below.
1	There is limited awareness of the main implications of the question. The ideas are mainly insignificant and/or irrelevant, or The essay consists mainly of paraphrase and/or narration and/or repetition of content.
2	There is some awareness of, or response to, the main implications of the question. The ideas are sometimes irrelevant. The essay consists mainly of unsubstantiated generalizations.
3	There is an adequate response to the main implications of the question. The ideas are generally relevant. The analysis of the ideas is adequate and sometimes illustrated by relevant examples.
4	There is a good response to the main implications of the question. The ideas are relevant and include a personal response, where appropriate. The analysis of the ideas includes some detail and is illustrated by relevant examples.
5	There is an excellent response to the main implications as well as some of the subtleties of the question. The ideas are carefully considered and show some independence of thought, where appropriate. The analysis of the ideas is detailed and well illustrated by good examples.

Criterion C: Appreciation of literary features

• To what extent is the student aware of the presence of literary features in the texts, such as diction, imagery, tone, structure, style and technique?
• To what extent does the student appreciate the effects of the literary features in relation to the question?
• How well has the student supported claims about the effects of the literary features?

Marks	Level descriptor
0	The work does not reach a standard described by the descriptors below.
1	There is limited mention or consideration of some of the literary features of the texts in relation to the question.
2	There is mention or consideration of the literary features of the texts in relation to the question. There is a superficial analysis of the literary features mentioned.
3	There is some analysis of the effects of the literary features of the texts in relation to the question. The analysis is illustrated by some relevant examples.
4	There is adequate analysis of the effects of the literary features of the texts in relation to the question. The analysis is appropriately illustrated by relevant examples.
5	There is detailed analysis of the effects of the literary features of the texts in relation to the question. The analysis is well illustrated by carefully chosen examples.

Criterion D: Presentation

• How well organized is the essay?
• How effectively have the student’s thoughts and feelings been presented?
• To what extent are supporting examples integrated into the body of the essay?

Marks	Level descriptor
0	The work does not reach a standard described by the descriptors below.
1	Ideas are presented with limited evidence of a structure to the essay. The ideas presented are not ordered or in a logical sequence.
2	Ideas are presented with some evidence of a structure to the essay. Ideas are sometimes presented in an ordered or logical sequence.
3	There is adequate structure to the essay. Ideas are generally presented in an ordered and logical sequence. Supporting examples are sometimes appropriately integrated into the body of the essay.
4	There is a clear and logical structure to the essay. Supporting examples are appropriately integrated into the body of the essay.
5	There is a purposeful and effective structure to the essay. Supporting examples are well integrated into the body of the essay.

Criterion E: Formal use of language

• How accurate, clear and precise is the language used?
• How appropriate is the choice of register and style for this task? (“Register” refers, in this context, to the student’s use of elements such as vocabulary, tone, sentence structure and terminology appropriate to the task. Terminology relates to the forms of prose and drama.)

Marks	Level descriptor
0	The work does not reach a standard described by the descriptors below.
1	Comprehensible language is used to a limited degree. There are significant lapses in grammar, spelling and sentence construction. The vocabulary used is rarely accurate or appropriate.
2	There is some degree of clarity and coherence in the use of language. There is some degree of accuracy in grammar, spelling and sentence construction. The vocabulary is sometimes appropriate to the literary analysis.
3	There is clear and coherent use of language. There are only a few significant lapses in grammar, spelling and sentence construction. Some care is shown in the choice of vocabulary, idiom and style. The register is generally appropriate for literary analysis.
4	The use of language is clear, varied and precise. There are no significant lapses in grammar, spelling and sentence construction. The use of vocabulary, idiom and style is effective and appropriately varied. The choice of register is suitable for literary analysis.
5	The use of language is clear, varied, precise and concise. There are no significant lapses in grammar, spelling and sentence construction. There is precise use of wide vocabulary and varied idiom and style. The choice of register is effective for literary analysis.