Brooks, "The Bean Eaters"
"A Song in the Front Yard"
Roethke, "In a Dark Time"
"The Geranium"
Lowell, "Sailing Home From Rapallo"
"Epilogue"
Ginsberg, "Howl"
Plath, "Lady Lazarus"
Baraka, "A New Reality is Better than a New Movie!"
Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues"
From The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction:
--Silko, "Tony's Story," 579
--Lahiri, "A Temporary Matter," 321
--Bass, "The Hermit's Story," 22
Directions: After reading the lecture, answer one of the questions below. This answer is due no later than Thursday, November 10.
A well thought out answer will probably be two or three substantial paragraphs (250-350 words on average).
Your responses to other students' answers are due by midnight on Saturday, November 12. Remember: in order to get the full 20 points, you MUST respond thoughtfully to at least 3 or 4 other people's postings.
This set of discussion questions is worth a possible 20 points. Late answers receive 0 points, so post early :)
Click on the button below to visit the English 208 Message Board:
Just answer one of the following questions.
1. Choose ONE of the poems from the list above and discuss the techniques the poet uses (word choice, rhyme, meter, imagery, tone, etc.) to express his or her ideas.
2. Choose ONE of the poems from the list above; what influences of Modernist or earlier poetry do you see in it? Explain.
3. Read the description of Postmodernism in Lecture 11. Then choose ONE of the short stories from the list above. Is the story "postmodern" or not? Why? Explain, using specific examples and direct quotes from the story for support.
4. Choose ONE of the short stories from the list above. What are the conflicts in the story? How are the conflicts resolved (or are they resolved)? Explain, using specific examples and direct quotes from the story for support.
For further information on these works, see the Links page.