| The Experience
 |
After
students decided on a specific time period, they read, selected
and analyzed the work of earlier students. For example, a student
wrote, after reviewing the following poems from INSCAPE: |
| "Laura’s
Moments with Annie is the story of Annie preparing
for her move into a nursing home. In other words, Annie is
facing a major change in her life, a revelation that she is
no longer able to do many of the things that she had been
capable of doing by herself, so her son and daughter-in-law
wants to put in a nursing home. . . .All things must come
and go, time passes, the faces around her change, but her
memories (though some might fade) will always be there in
the end.”
~
Wendi Brichacek |
|
Wendi
analyzed the work of a student author, Robin Herrington Bowen
'90, and added her own interpretation: |
|
"
...a poem by Robin Bowen [from the 1989 issue of INSCAPE]
called Introspection ... says:
What have I planted lately?
A seed sprouting doubt
a bulb fat with fear
a tuber turned tumor
or
Shall I dig deeper to
find what I planted an age ago?
Hidden and frozen but
ready to rise at the slightest
warmth of compassion.
This
poem says all that a person buries in his or her past
might eventfully needs to come out again into the sunshine,
to shed light on it with new eyes, a different perspective,
one with more wisdom from getting older."
~
Wendi Brichacek
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Lindsay
Price looked at works from the late sixties and early seventies.
Analyzing a poem by Pat Stuart written for the 1968 INSCAPE,
she wrote: |
|
"The
poem’s theme is learning through experience. The style
of structure of the poem can be compared to the style and
structure of Jack Kerouac in that the author pays no attention
to punctuation or grammar. For example, experience is spelled
xperience and many of the lines are written without
spaces, making one word. The last line of the poem which reads,
'Oftearsandlaughter,' is one
example. The first line of the poem reads, 'When
1 (one) is not afraid,' then further into the
poem, the subject is changed to he. Instead of using they
or she, the author uses he. I found this to be true in many
of the pieces I read."
| ~
Lindsay Price |
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Decades
The decision of which era to review and which examples to
analyze was a challenge. Students had to analyze and interpret
the writing selections, as well as try to put this into some
kind of historical framework. They learned that student interests
reflected the context and circumstances in which they lived.
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