Day 88: Bunco and Two Hearts Beating

Student will be able to: understand, make inferences, and draw conclusions about the structure and elements of poetry and provide evidence from the text to support understanding; analyze the structure of prosody and graphic elements in poetry 


Poem du jour: Meeting at Night by Robert Browning, a.k.a. the dude with sweet beard

Meeting at Night

BY ROBERT BROWNING

I

The grey sea and the long black land;

And the yellow half-moon large and low;

And the startled little waves that leap

In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

II

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

And blue spurt of a lighted match,

And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each!

We had a pretty intense discussion over who the speaker of this poem was meeting.  It was definitely someone at a farm, most likely some sort of lover, but there was debate over whether it was a boy meeting a new love, or an old man returning from a long journey, or an illicit affair conducted silently at night.  I think it was when someone suggested the speaker's reason for being in a boat at night was due to his penchant for shark hunting that I decided the day was over.  However, I was pleased - I had intended to go over three poems from the textbook today, thinking I would get done drastically early.  I found clips of "Casey at the Bat" to watch in case I had extra time, since we read that yesterday.  Instead, I barely got through the first two poems in most of my classes.  We actually got kind of into them...or possibly, I got really into them and the classes were so quiet and sleepy they let me verbally wander.  

Tonight, I was formally accepted into The Teacher Pack at the high school when I was added as a sub to monthly bunco.  I've never played bunco, but as promised, it's just like Candyland - no strategy whatsoever, and you only win by chance...but there were so many fun ladies there, it was a lovely evening not spent grading.  Woo!  

Also, if you are interested in Casey at the Bat, here's James Earl Jones' reading.  My students needed a minute to digest the fact that the speaker was both the voice of Mufasa AND Darth Vader AND, apparently, played in the Sandlot.  Their pop culture knowledge never ceases to astound me.