Whitman – “America”

Levi’s commercial

Poem

Whitman audio clip

Whitman – “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”

Levi’s commercial

Poem

Smithsonian audio clip

Thomas – “Under Milk Wood”

VW commercial

Text

Even though I hate the commercialism of it, preferring to make the classroom as free of advertising as possible, what if you set students loose with a small snippet of a poem and had them create an ad campaign using it? They’d have to understand the poem enough to see how it would relate to a product. Have them set images to it and there’s a whole other layer of interpretation. Use this as prewriting to some larger analysis of the poem and this could be gold. You could give them copies of poems that are game for this project along with a list of products they could choose to advertise. That would certainly help those students who struggle with too much freedom in these matters.

Team up with an Economics teacher. Most Econ teachers I’ve talked to have a project where students create their own businesses. As part of that project, they also pick a poem to use as ad copy for their ad campaign.

Do you know of any other commercials that use poems? Have any ideas what to do with all this in the classroom? Do tell!Similar Posts:

• Tone
• Lit Terms In Modern Media
• AFI Curriculum
• Process Of Video
• Heavy Water

I’m reading Haunted right now, about 130 pages in after only 24 hours of ownership. Let me tell you, this thing starts off with a bang and you just wait for the other shoe to drop, cringing that each story will top that first one: “Guts.” You can’t start off a novel that big without any follow through and that story turns into the first ghost that haunts you throughout your reading. So you flip the page and think “is this something I can read while eating?” I trust Palahniuk so I’m sure this will get heavy quickly. Maybe American Psycho heavy because “Guts” and a few other spots show shades of Ellis. “We had no reason, none whatsoever, to bring a chainsaw.” Hmmm…

The book starts off with a poem called “Guinea Pigs.” Very Canterbury Tales, the poem seems gentle, a simple narrative that sets up the rest of the novel. But it turns at one decisive point. From that one spot on, you know that things are not sweetness and light. The tone of the poem shifts at a very precise line and it colors the rest of what follows. It even taints what came before it. Students should discover that spot all on their own. No one should miss that.

Combine that discussion of the poem with VW’s Night Driving, a video I stowed away a few months back after reading about it at Dan’s place, and you’ve got a good intro to tone. Students should leave the classroom with a firm understanding of what tone is and how authors achieve it. The authors of both pieces are playing with your emotions, using specific details (words and images) to set up an atmosphere. And the video even doubles as a nice intro to Dylan Thomas, if you’d like.

Download

Yes, yes, here’s that Night Drive video, as wrapped up in QuickTime (12MB) for you to download. And, just for safe keeping, here’s “Guinea Pigs,” that Palahniuk poem, again.Similar Posts:

• Commercial Poetry
• Process Of Video
• B&N Studio
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I started off trying to perfect the way I’ll have my students put together time lines in class (I decided to use the Excel version: not as cool as a Flash version I played around with, but much easier and less buggy), that’s what started me looking for Flash stuff. Then I just sort of started looking for magnetic poetry. I don’t know, it made sense at the time.

• http://thepixiepit.co.uk/magnets.htm
• http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-1998/step/poetry.html
• http://www.poemsthatgo.com/
• http://www.rhymer.com/
• http://www.magneticpoetry.com/poetgame/mpgpick.htm

I also ended up going to the Hot Potatoes, Quandary, Merlot, Shakespeare at eNotes (a pay site, so way less cool than it looks), Literature.org, StoryCorps, Center for Digital Storytelling, and Floatingsushi sites. Now that I look at it, I realize that I’ll be giving a presentation on interactive Web sites for teachers in about two months. I haven’t planned the details yet. Clearly, my subconscious is worried about that.Similar Posts:

• All About Communication
• A Look At Coudal
• Some Fortunate Discoveries And A Sad Realization
• PBS Rocks
• Your Beliefs And Who Said?