Harlem Poetry

March 29, 2017

E.Q: Connect the time period of the Harlem Renaissance to the period in the Great Gatsby.

Define connotation and denotation, and create examples.

Analyze Harlem Renaissance poetry.

Obj: I can connect the time period of the Harlem Renaissance to the period in the Great Gatsby.

I can define connotation and denotation, and create examples.

I can analyze Harlem Renaissance poetry.

Starter:

LIsten to Tupac's Me Against The World

Lyrics

What is the main message of this song?

Compare it to ideas in Harlem Renaissance poetry.

Vocabulary:

Word: Villanelle

Part of Speech: Noun

Dictionary Definition: a nineteen-line poem with two rhymes throughout, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain, with the first and third lines of the opening tercet recurring alternately at the end of the other tercets and with both repeated at the close of the concluding quatrain

Your Definition:

Activity: Analyze the villanelle Do Not Go Gently Into the Night

Activity

1.  Analyzing Poetry

As a class, we will analyze From the Dark Tower

Use TPCASTT.

From The Dark Tower

We shall not always plant while others reap

The golden increment of bursting fruit,

Not always countenance, abject and mute,

That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;

Not everlastingly while others sleep

Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,

Not always bend to some more subtle brute;

We were not made to eternally weep. 

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark,

White stars is no less lovely being dark,

And there are buds that cannot bloom at all

In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,

And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

2.  Analyzing with a parter

Use TPCASTT to analyze this villanelle.

Then compare this to the song in the starter.

"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"By Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

3. Use TPCASTT to analyze Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Sympathy

Related Poem Content Details

BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

I know what the caged bird feels, alas! 

    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;   

When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,   

And the river flows like a stream of glass; 

    When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,   

And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— 

I know what the caged bird feels! 

I know why the caged bird beats his wing 

    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;   

For he must fly back to his perch and cling   

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing; 

    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars   

And they pulse again with a keener sting— 

I know why he beats his wing! 

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, 

    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— 

When he beats his bars and he would be free; 

It is not a carol of joy or glee, 

    But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,   

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— 

I know why the caged bird sings!

4.  Harlem Renaissance Project

Art Criticism

Due: Wednesday, April 5

Closure

How confident do you feel analyzing poetry?

Use the learning target to explain.