Class activity
Collage essay, exploring poetic meaning
The process of evoking stimmuli for their travel stories will begin as students write a collage essay that explores the meaning of a poem. Suggested are the poems Dog by Lawrence Ferlinghetti 42 or It Was by Luci Tapahonso 43. The poem Dog follows the wanderings of a dog as he trots down a city street. The things he notices there are his reality. It Was is a poem of longing for a place through remembrances of the sights and sounds and emotions lived there. Students will be given a copy of their choice of poems and asked to annotate the words or phrases that provide a mental picture. Students will then write in response to these annotations juxtaposing brief passages from the poem with incidents from their own travel experience or from their family's history of living in the city. Students will respond to ten to twelve annotations from the poem writing their papragraphs on small quarter size sheets of paper. These will then be spread out and rearranged as students look for the invisible thread that they will metaphorically weave into the writing of their own travel story. To summarize, the essential process of the collage essay is cut and paste revising. Students should be encouraged to avoid all rewriting, incoporate excerpts cleverly, prune out what sounds dull, and imaginatively rearrange the good bits allowing meaning to become evident. A collage essay requires that meaning is evoked through devices such as descriptions of scenes, portraits, small narratives, dialogues, or internal musings. In effect your writing should make your conceptual meaning "somehow give birth to itself in inside your reader's head." 44
Luci Tapahonso writes of sensate experiences that speak of the tradition among her people as each day begins such as the throwing prayers for seven generations. The following questions can serve to motivate students' written responses:
What are the sensate experiences of your daily journey? What daily rituals provide a sense of structure for you as you begin your daily journey? What do you see on your daily journey? What are the sayings of your journey such as morning prayers? What are the physical body movement routines you perform as you get ready for your day? What sounds do you hear, what patterns, are they pleasant or not? What songs or music do you like to listen to as your day begins? What are the smells of your daily journey? What blessings, kisses or hugs do you like to receive before you head out the door?
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