Verda Delp: Thursday morning

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Thursday morning

Writing and revising and teaching and learning:

Revision: John Updike

Yesterday's college writing class:

1:30 pm. I had conferences with three pretty darn wonderful students in my office in Wheeler Hall. I think these three will be fine. Perhaps just one more draft for this last essay of theirs.

3:00. I walked to Kroeber Hall where our official class meets. I walked by way of Faculty Glade so I could enjoy the beautiful day for a few extra minutes.

3:10 to about 3:45. I taught a tiny lesson about literary present and past tense and a regular lesson about analytic/reflective writing. Most especially, and heartbreakingly at this time in the semester, I showed my students how to construct a substantive and logically ordered paragraph to support their ideas/argument. And how to provide evidence rather than summary and/or speculation and/or extraneous ideas to uphold their positioning.

3:45 to 6:40. My students conferred with each other while I conferenced with individuals. By the end of class, I had met with all of my students. Mostly helping them with their revision. Both of us writing all over their papers and writing out notes for them on separate sheets of paper. So they will have a concrete rather than aural resource for further revision. So they can see the structure of their essay. And hopefully build a stronger paper.

My students' portfolios are due Friday December 9th at noon.

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A Poem by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look  Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled  And paced upon the mountains overhead  And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Books I Like

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Cutting for Stone

The Art of Racing in the Rain

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night

A Reliable Wife

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Olive Kitteridge

Little Bee

Tinkers

Plainsong

The Book Thief

Out Stealing Horses

One Man's Meat

The Sky Fisherman

Amy and Isabelle

To Kill a Mockingbird

Sweeping Up Glass

Gate at the Stairs

Half Broke Horses

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Motherless Brooklyn

My Dog Tulip

The Graveyard Book

Angle of Repose

Room

Reading My Father

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Brooklyn

The Tiger's Wife

The Samurai's Garden

Salvage the Bones

Vaclav and Lena

The Fault in Our Stars

Language of Flowers

A Month in the Country

House of Stone

Berlin Childhood around 1900

The Hare with the Amber Eyes

Canada

The Unusual Pilgrimage of Harold Frey

Eventide

The Tie That Binds

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

Shaggy Muses

Year of Wonders

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

The Sense of an Ending

Beautiful Ruins

The Orchardist

Great House

The Light Between Oceans

Man Walks into a Room

a land more kind than home

A poem by Raymond Carver


  
Happiness
So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.
[Thank you, Elizabeth.]

Reflections on "White Rabbits"

For me, upon discoverment [which is giving language/words/understanding to observations about the self that have been hidden or are hiding], it is both the letting go and figuring out how to be without a white rabbit that is very very hard. It makes me have to be brave, to close my eyes to my fear [perhaps it should be open my eyes, but when I am afraid, I want to not see the danger] and forge ahead [with tiny and careful steps—here again made up of language/words/understanding]. Only to find [and know] that there is no one moment when a white rabbit is let go [forever] but rather replaced [and this replacement resides with a lasting fragility]. I do think [and know] that this is good.

[an excerpt from a note to friend.]

[Read: Oh Dear, Too Late for the White Rabbits by SIMON WINCHESTER]

A Poem by Mary Oliver

DREAMS

All night the dark buds of dreams open richly.

In the center of every petal is a letter, and you imagine

if you could only remember and string them all together they would spell the answer. It is a long night,

and not an easy one--you have so many branches, and there are diversions--birds that come and go,

the black fox that lies down to sleep beneath you, the moon staring with her bone-white eye.

Finally you have spent all the energy you can and you drag from the ground the muddy skirt of your roots

and leap awake with two or three syllables like water in your mouth and a sense

of loss--a memory not yet of a word, certainly not yet the answer--only how it feels

when deep in the tree all the locks click open, and the fire surges through the wood, and the blossoms blossom.