Final American Literature Assessment

Purpose: to assess your public speaking skills, dramatic literary interpretation skills, poetry explication skills, memorization skills.

Directions: You will choose your grade: an “A,” “B,” or “C.” The longer poems that require more memorization will earn you a higher grade ONLY if you complete the assignment effectively. You need to bring in your rubric the day it is due completely filled out. You may not use any index cards or prompts during your presentation. Come ready to impress. You will only be given three to four minutes to perform your poem. You may not go over four minutes. If you are not done, you will be stopped in the middle and graded accordingly.

“A” Poem

RANT, FROM A COOL PLACE /Diane DiPrima

I see no end of it, but the turning upside down of the entire world. -Erasmus

We are in the middle of a bloody, heartrending revolution Called America, called the Protestant reformation, called Western man, Called individual consciousness, meaning I need a refrigerator and a car And milk and meat for the kids so I can discover that I don't need a car Or a refrigerator, or meat, or even milk, just rice and a place with no wind to sleep next to someone Two someones keeping warm in the winter learning to weave To pot and to putter, learning to steal honey from bees, wearing the bedclothes by day, sleeping under (or

in) them at night; hoarding bits of glass, colored stones, and stringing beads How long before we come to that blessed definable state known as buddhahood, primitive man, people in a landscape together like trees, the second childhood of man

I don't know if I will make it somehow nearer by saying all this out loud, for christs sake, that Stevenson was killed, that Shastri was killed

both having dined with Marietta Tree the wife of a higher-up in the CIA both out of their own countries mysteriously dead, as how many others

as Marilyn Monroe, wept over in so many tabloids done in for sleepingwith Jack Kennedy-this isn't a poem- full of cold prosaic factthirteen done in in the Oswald plot: Jack Ruby's cancer that disappeared in autopsy the last of a long line-and they're waiting to get Tim LearyBob DylanAllen GinsbergLeRoi Jones-as, who killed Malcolm X? They give themselves awaywith TV programs on the Third Reich, and I wonder if I'll live to sit in Peking or Hanoi see TV programs of LBJ's Reich: our great SS analysed, our moneyexposed, the plot to keep Africagenocide in Southeast Asia now in progress Laos Vietnam Thailand Cambodia 0 soft-spoken SukarnoO great stone Buddhas with sad negroid lips torn down by us by the red guard all one forceone leveling mad mechanism, grinding it down to earth and swamp to sea to powder

till Mozart is something a few men can whistle or play on a homemade flute and we bow to each other telling old tales half rememberedgathering shells learning again "all beings are from the very beginning Buddhas or glowing and dying radiation and plague we come to thatfinal great love illumination"FROM THE VERY FIRST, NOTHING IS."

“A” Poem

Bowery Blues/Jack Kerouac  The story of manMakes me sickInside, outside,

I don't know whySomething so conditionalAnd all talk

" Should hurt me so.

I am hurtI am scaredI want to liveI want to dieI don't knowWhere to turnIn the VoidAnd

whenTo cutOut

For no Church told meNo Guru holds meNo adviceJust stoneOf New YorkAnd on the cafeteria

We hearThe saxophoneO dead RubyDied of ShotIn Thirty Two,

Sounding like old timesAnd de bombedE

mpty decapitatedMurder by the clock.

And I see ShadowsDancing into DoomShowing themselvesIn white u

ndergarmentsAt elevated windowsHoping for the Worst.

I can't take itAnymoreIf I can't holdMy little behin

dTo me in my room

Then it's goodbyeSangsaraFor meBesidesGirls aren't as goodAs they lookAnd Sam

adhiIs betterThan you thinkWhen it starts inHitting your headIn with BuzzOf glittergoldHeaven's AngelsWailin

g

Saying

We've been waiting for youSince Morning, JackWhy were you so longDallying in the sooty room?

This transcendental BrillianceIs the better part(of NothingnessI sing)

Okay.Quit.Mad.Stop.  

“B” P

oem

My Lover's Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun/Diana DiPrima

for Sheppard

The

se eyes are amber, they have no pupils, they are filledw/a blue light (fire).

They are the eyes of godsthe eyes of insects, straying godmen of the galaxy,

metallicwings. Those eyes were greenare still, sea green, or greytheir light

less defined. These sea-greeneyes spin dreams on the palpable air. They are n

ot yrsor mine. It is as if the deadsaw thru our eyes, other for a momentborro

wed these windows, gazing. We keep still. It is as if these windowsfilled for

a minute w/a differentlight.

Not blue, not amber. But the curtain drawnover

our daily gaze is drawn aside. Who are you, really. I have seen itoften enoug

h, the naked gaze of power. We "charge"the other with it / the leap into non-

betrayal, a windw/ out sound we live in. Whereare we, really, climbingthe sid

es of buildings to peer in like spiderman, at windows not our own

“\B” Poem[somewhere i have never travelled]/ e.e. cummings

somewhere i ha

ve never travelled,gladly beyondany experience,your eyes have their silence:i

n your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,or which i cannot touch b

ecause they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose methough i hav

e closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring open

s(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close

me,i andmy life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,as when the heart of this

flower imaginesthe snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we ar

e to perceive in this world equalsthe power of your intense fragility: whose

texturecompels me with the color of its countries,rendering death and forever

with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;

only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all ros

es)nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

“C” Poem “:

Looking, Walking, Being

DDenise Levertov

"The World is not something tolook at, it is something to be in."Mark Rudman

I look and

look.Looking's a way of being: one becomes,sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.Walking wherever looking takes one.

The eyesdig and burrow into the world.They touchfanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.World and the past of it,not onlyvisible present, solid and shadowthat looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythmsof echo and interruption?That'sa way of breathing.

breathing to sustainlooking,walking and looking,through the world,in it.

“C” Poem

The Secretary Chant/Marge Piercy

My hips are a desk, 

From my ears hang  chains of paper clips.  Rubber bands form my hair.  My breasts are quills of  mimeograph ink.  My feet bear casters,  Buzz. Click.  My head is a badly organized file.  My head is a switchboard  where crossed lines crackle.  Press my fingers  and in my eyes appear  credit and debit.  Zing. Tinkle.  My navel is a reject button.  From my mouth issue canceled reams.  Swollen, heavy, rectangular  I am about to be delivered  of a baby  Xerox machine.  File me under W 

because I once  was  a woman.

1973

Name:___________________________ Date of final test:__________________Period:____________My poem I have chosen is an: A/B/C (circle one) poemTitle:___________________ Poet’s name:_______________

Poetry Recitation Rubric/Mrs. Breaux1. Poem is recited exactly by memory, no prompts needed:Excellent good fair poor

2. The pacing is excellent—student pauses at internal and end-mark punctuationExcellent good fair poor

3. Student begins with three memorized INTERESTING facts about the poet’s life to give your audience a sense of who this poet is/was.

Excellent good fair poor

4. Student analyzes the meaning of the poem – explaining diction, syntax, literary terminology

Excellent good fair poor

5. Student does a DRAMATIC reading of the poemExcellent good fair poor

6. Student makes eye contact with audience throughout poemExcellent good fair poor

7. Student uses one visual aid to represent poem – a drawing or painting, or symbolExcellent good fair poor

8. Student explains how this poem fits the definition/characteristics of the genre of American Post-Modernism

Excellent good fair poor

9. Student tells Mrs. Breaux that he/she will miss her and keep in touch with her when she moves

Excellent good fair poor

10. Student state something he/she has improved on this year and one thing he/she will remember from this class this year.

Excellent good fair poor