sep 9, 2011

Choose two poems you wish to analyze for your Poetry Assignment.  Then choose two alternates in case you don't get to do your first choices.

The Great War Poetry Assignment:

Until the outbreak of World War Two, the First World War was known as The Great War.  Soldiers went off to war believing they were fighting the "war to end all wars."  They were fighting the first war waged with armies supplied with machine guns and artilliary. While machine guns were used in the conquest of Africa by European imperial powers, Africans could only fight back with bows and arrows and spears.  When Europeans turned their machine guns upon one another, warfare was forever changed.  The horrors of trench warfare quickly displaced the romantic, valourous and honourable ideals of warfare of the young men who had eagerly enlisted. 

World War One was the first total war.  It was a war that required the mobilization of  entire nations to fight it.  An entire generation who went to war, in many senses, felt betrayed by the previous generation who had sent them to war, a war that became an apparently senseless slaughter.  Many of these young men wrote home, wrote diaries and journals,  wrote bereavement letters to the families of their dead comrades, and composed poetry, expressing their varied views about the war, based on their personal experiences.  Like the book All Quiet on the Western Front, these poems were written not just to exorcise the demons of the trenches, but to make the public aware of the incomprehensible experiences of the soldiers.

Robert Owen wrote that his poetry was "not about heroes.  English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them."  He wrote that his subject was war, and that "all a poet can do today is warn.  That is why the true Poets must be truthful."  So in this assignment we will be looking into the meaning and message of the poems written by the poets who found themselves in the trenches of World War One.  We will look at the lives and deaths of the poets and their friends and how the events of the war impacted their writing.  We will try to imagine through our research into the poets and their poetry what it was like to experience World War One.  Would we have been supporters of the war, cheerfully enlisting, or would we have been pacifists?  Would our opinions have changed if we had discovered the nature of this new type of warfare?  And with application to our lives in Canada today, should Canada go to war for any reasons?

Assignment: 

1.  Choose two shorter poems, or one long one to analyze.  Poems to choose from are available for you on pcshwk.blogspot.com.

            -analyze poem's meter and rhyme scheme

            -analyze meaning

            -identify poem's message or purpose

            -put poem into poet's context if possible

            -what did you learn about WWI from this poet?

2.  Research the poet's life and experience in World War One.

            -apply this information to your analysis

3.  Present your analysis to the class, using powerpoint.

            -powerpoint presentation of poem's text

            -include photos or paintings or drawings to illustrate the poems you are           analyzing.  There are many image resources available on the web.

            -include author bio in powerpoint

            -use flash cards as memory aids for the text of your speech to the class.

            -I expect you to use approximately five minutes to present your speech to class.

Grading:

Speech:  25

Powerpoint:  25

Total:          /50