Learning target: We can name the connection between a topic and how a poet decides on line breaks
We started today with some more unconventional digital stories. Failed Rap shows the power of language and rhyme on our perception of a story. Poems pull our attention to language. Stories pull our attention to plot. Balancing these two is difficult. Songs do this often, but notice that songs usually take advantage of repetition and push out their stories with verse-chorus-bridge format. This allows the listener to digest the story. The music also gives cues to the emotional changes. In a piece like this, the straight ahead, non-repeating rhyming makes it challenging to follow what’s happening. But that is perhaps not the entire point. Note how the first and last verses echo each other.
I then showed this digital story about a single photo. To me, this isn’t a story because it doesn’t have a real moment of change. But it is still entertaining because the visual is really interesting and the narration gives some great detail.
We spent the rest of the time studying the effects you can create with line breaks. I showed this list that you can refer to. You will be reading your script and it’s good to think about how and when you will pause. I would encourage everyone to break the lines in your script so you know how to pace your reading of your lines.
I divided everyone into two groups and gave them a block of text to divide up. I took everyone outside to “walk out the lines” according to their group’s line breaks. We then walked out the line breaks of the actual poem. The point of this is for you to physicalize the impact of a line break on a poem, the pause that it creates in poem. One poem, Morning After 6.1 by Suzanne Lummis is about an earthquake. It breaks the line on natural pauses and with punctuation. This fits a poem that is about rocking back and forth. The hard stops fit the poem. By contrast, A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walk Whitman, uses long lines to describe a spider unfurling its silk. Again, the topic determines the best way to break the line.
What does your digital story suggest about where you should break the lines? Should you have long lines like Whitman or short, hard stops like Lummis.
Homework due on Wednesday, September 16th
I passed out the story Living Like Weasels by Annie Dillard
We started today with some more unconventional digital stories. Failed Rap shows the power of language and rhyme on our perception of a story. Poems pull our attention to language. Stories pull our attention to plot. Balancing these two is difficult. Songs do this often, but notice that songs usually take advantage of repetition and push out their stories with verse-chorus-bridge format. This allows the listener to digest the story. The music also gives cues to the emotional changes. In a piece like this, the straight ahead, non-repeating rhyming makes it challenging to follow what’s happening. But that is perhaps not the entire point. Note how the first and last verses echo each other.
I then showed this digital story about a single photo. To me, this isn’t a story because it doesn’t have a real moment of change. But it is still entertaining because the visual is really interesting and the narration gives some great detail.
We spent the rest of the time studying the effects you can create with line breaks. I showed this list that you can refer to. You will be reading your script and it’s good to think about how and when you will pause. I would encourage everyone to break the lines in your script so you know how to pace your reading of your lines.
I divided everyone into two groups and gave them a block of text to divide up. I took everyone outside to “walk out the lines” according to their group’s line breaks. We then walked out the line breaks of the actual poem. The point of this is for you to physicalize the impact of a line break on a poem, the pause that it creates in poem. One poem, Morning After 6.1 by Suzanne Lummis is about an earthquake. It breaks the line on natural pauses and with punctuation. This fits a poem that is about rocking back and forth. The hard stops fit the poem. By contrast, A Noiseless Patient Spider by Walk Whitman, uses long lines to describe a spider unfurling its silk. Again, the topic determines the best way to break the line.
What does your digital story suggest about where you should break the lines? Should you have long lines like Whitman or short, hard stops like Lummis.
Homework due on Wednesday, September 16th
I passed out the story Living Like Weasels by Annie Dillard