Monthly Archives: January 2019

Grapes of Wrath Stage Reading/Performance on Wednesday, February 6th, at The Santa Monica Broad Stage

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Dear Students,

As discussed in class, we will be visiting The Santa Monica Broad Stage on Wednesday, February 6th, to experience the powerful reading/performance of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (play version). Below you will find the play in PDF form. The play is to be completed by Tuesday, February 5th.

grapesofw.jpg

2018-19 the grapes of wrath script

Poem For Friday’s Class In Preparation For George Wallace Visit

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Axe Handles

One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
“When making an axe handle
                 the pattern is not far off.”
And I say this to Kai
“Look: We’ll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with—”
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It’s in Lu Ji’s Wên Fu, fourth century
A.D. “Essay on Literature”-—in the
Preface: “In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand.”
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.                                                                                                                                                      
Gary Snyder, “Axe Handles” from Axe Handles. Copyright © 1983 by Gary Snyder.  Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press.
Source: Axe Handles (North Point Press, 1983)

 

Happy New Year! An Outside Reading List For You To Peruse. And, East of Eden.

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East of Eden on New Year's Eve.jpg

Dear Students,

To begin, I want to wish you a Happy New Year! I hope that you are enjoying your break and are getting the restorative opportunities in order to enter the second semester with great investment and fervor. Below you will see the list of outside reading books you may choose from. Once you do your research and peruse a few authors and pages, please feel free to email me your first and second choice. You will have until Friday, January 11th, to make your choices. Once your book has been recorded, you will have the opportunity to prepare individually or within a group that has chosen the same book. Presentations will begin on Monday, February 11th, and will end on Friday, February 22nd. On that same Friday, a new list of outside reading books will be posted, along with new dates for choosing and presenting. Please note that many of the titles from this first list will also be available for the second outside reading assignment. Feel free to email me with any questions or if you want me to make some individual suggestions for you. And finally, I hope you’re enjoying East of Eden (my favorite book [along with One Hundred Years of Solitude]), as it will be a critical text that propels us into the 2nd semester. Onward!      

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Light in August by William Faulkner
Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner                                                                                  As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Jazz by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (Please note that I may end up teaching this book, so if this is one of your two choices, add a third choice).