English 8 Strategies students continued with yesterday’s work of quote integration. We came up with some good examples of effective quote integration when we did our individual practice today:

• For example, there are “people who just stop and talk” because they think they’re good and popular.
• For example, so many people are trying to get to class and “[y]ou can’t get through the hall.”
• For example, “[p]eople are pushing or shoving” because they’re mad, probably about something childish.
• For instance, during the class change, people “just stop and talk.”
• For example, Ms. Wade doesn’t like it when “[p]eople are pushing and shoving.”

English I Honors students finished the presentations in preparation for their coming poetry project (more information available at the Moodle site) and then turned to my personal favorite poem, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.”

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

We’ll be finishing up the poem (and two others similar) tomorrow.

Homework

• English I Honors: 
  • listen to the student samples of presentations in class today to get some idea of what to do (and possibly not to do) during your poetry project;
  • review “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” “One Art,” and “The Waking,” looking for a pattern in the poems’ construction (not their meaning, but how the words are put together).