Lesson Plan for Week 3: General Thoughts and Notes

Patrick Mooney, TA
Eng 10, Prof. Waid
17 April 2013

Major topics:

1. Thought for the day:

   Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared but that of the man who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed.

   — E.M. Forster, Howards End, ch. 12

2. Administrative Issues:
   • General feedback on thesis statements:
     • Try to avoid the use of "hedging" words (or phrases). Be bold, make strong claims, and then back them up.
     • Use specific phrasing to the greatest extent possible. Specific phrasing is important throughout your paper, but your thesis statement is the single most important sentence in your paper. Polish it until it shines.
     • Remember that all five thesis statements are mandatory if you want to get a passing grade for the quarter. Remember that you can never turn one in more than two weeks late. Remember that you cannot turn in a thesis statement after the final exam.
   • Distribution of Thesis Statement Assignment Requirements handout
     • Questions?
3. Group scansion and rhyme exercises:
   • John Keats, On the Sonnet (Italian sonnet, 1819):

     If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,
        And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
     Fetter'd, in spite of painèd loveliness;
     Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,
        Sandals more interwoven and complete
     To fit the naked foot of poesy;
     Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
     Of every chord, and see what may be gained
        By ear industrious, and attention meet:
     Misers of sound and syllable, no less
        Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
        Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
     So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
        She will be bound with garlands of her own.

   • William Wordsworth's Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802

     Earth has not anything to show more fair:
     Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
     A sight so touching in its majesty;
     This City now doth, like a garment, wear
     The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
     Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie
     Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
     All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
     Never did sun more beautifully steep
     In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
     Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
     The river glideth at his own sweet will:
     Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
     And all that mighty heart is lying still!

   • John Berryman's Sonnet 25 (English sonnet, 1967):

     Sometimes the night echoes to prideless wailing
     low, as I hunch home late and fever tired
     near you not, nearing the sharer I desired
     toward whom till now I sailed back, but that sailing
     yaws, from the cabin orders like a failing
     dribble, the stores disordered & then fired
     skid wild, the men are glaring, the mate has wired
     'Hopeless'. Lockt in & humming, the Captain's nailing
     a false log to the lurching table. Lies
     & passion sing in the cabin on the voyage home,
     the burgee should fly Jolly Roger. Wind
     madness like the tackle of a crane—outcries
     second—around to heave him from the foam
     irresponsible, since all the stars rain blind.

   • William Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 (English sonnet; p. 192 in course reader):

     Let me not to the marriage of true minds
     Admit impediments, love is not love
     Which alters when it alteration finds,
     Or bends with the remover to remove.
     O no, it is an ever fixèd mark
     That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
     It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
     Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
     Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
     Within his bending sickle's compass come,
     Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
     But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
       If this be error and upon me proved,
       I never writ, nor no man ever loved.