Gibson Guitars

Bozeman, Montana is home to the Gibson Guitar factory.

Guitars to Die For

Ten Stratocaster Guitars To Die For!
Read about Fender 50th Anniversary Stratocasters: Celebrating the Strat's illustrious first half century by Vince Eagleton and Hail to the king by Dmitri Wojnarowski.

And then there's Muddy's Telecaster -



See it up close here.

Modern American Poetry

is a collection of 161 poets from the Anthology of Modern American Poetry.

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Franz Wright, winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, is the son of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Wright. The band ill lit takes its name from the title of his anthology. Hear Franz Wright NPR interview.


Joseph Pulitzer

National Poetry Almanac

Earth Day 2004

Today is Earth Day - check out what The Wilderness Society has to say, visit Walden Woods at the Thoreau Society and read some thought-provoking ideas about conservation.

When the town speaks

In We the Characters Laura Miller - Sunday NYTimes Book Review - talks about stories told from the point of view of all of us.

Whitman, Dickinson and Spiders

Check out these metaphysical musings on poems about spiders by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson - Spiders, the Web and Whitman & Dickinson - sponsored by The Classroom Electric, "a constellation of web sites on Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and nineteenth-century American culture." Access various editions of Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Emily Dickinson's complete archive and The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime.

Essay: Compare and contrast a poem by either Whitman or Dickinson to a poem by a contemporary poet on the same or similar subject (but not spiders). Discuss each poet's use of language, figurative devices, and the overall experience created by each poem. Cite specific lines to explain each poem's dominant idea or theme and how it is accomplished. Include copies of each poem. Due Tuesday, April 20 - 350-500 words typed.

The Little Prince

Saint-Exupéry Lands at Last is a reflection on ANTOINE DE SAINT EXUPERY whose Lockheed P-38 has been extractd from the ocean a few miles off the coast of Marseille. Quotations by Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupery remind me of Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

William Bulter Yeats and Thea Gilmore

William Butler Yeats' "The Circus Animals' Desertion" inspires the songs of Thea Gilmore.

Woody Guthrie Biography

RAMBLIN' MAN: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie reviewed by Ed Cray in Easter Sunday's NYTimes book review.

Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton's Me and Mr. Johnson on NPR.



The Covers Project shows how many other artists have covered Robert Johnson.

Here's a link to the Crossroads Guitar Auction at Cristie's to support Eric Clapton's Crossroads Center.

See photos of several of the guitars here.

Chicago

The story behind the musical Chicago.

Independent Novel Speech

Choose from this list of 20th century American novels: English 11 Independent Novels. After reading your novel, prepare a 5-7 minute speech which includes the following:

1. Introduction
2. Oral reading - one to two page reading including introductory or concluding explanation of context.
3. Author background - include reference to at least one critical source.
4. Theme or conflict - include reference to at least one critical source. Discuss literal and philosophical connections to author’s life.
5. Reaction/opinion/response
6. Topic outline
7. Works cited of primary and secondary sources.

Due date: April 14, 2004

Toads and Moons

Marianne Moore's advice was to create "imaginary gardens with real toads in them."

Eudora Welty admonished to "be sure to get your moon in the right part of the sky." From her One Writer's Beginnings:
"In my sensory education I include my physical awareness of the word. Of a certain word, that is; the connection it has with what it stands for. At around age six, perhaps, I was standing by myself in our front yard waiting for supper, just at that hour in a late summer day when the sun is already below the horizon and the risen full moon in the visible sky stops being chalky and begins to take on light. There comes the moment, and I saw it then, when the moon goes from flat to round. For the first time it met my eyes as a globe. The word `moon' came into my mouth as though fed to me out of a silver spoon. Held in my mouth the moon became a word. It had the roundness of a Concord grape Grandpa took off his vine and gave me to suck out of its skin and swallow whole, in Ohio."

Here's a link to a story about Eudora Welty's garden.

T.S. Eliot Meets Beavis and Butt-head

Fire and Ice

Poets Laureate and Potato Chips

Last April Poets Laureate from 39 states gathered at the first ever Conference of State Poet Laureates entitled Poetry and Politics. Here are their names.

Last Fall Louise Gluck was named U.S. Poet Laureate. She is a member of the Academy of American Poets; her poems can be found here and here.


Route 11 Potato Chips from Middletown, Virginia.