Audio - British Victorian Literature

 The four poems are by Houseman - the two stories are my own.  The first story is about the censorship of Houseman's "To an Athlete Dying Young."  The second story is about the importance of poetry and how memorizing one poem "When I was One and Twenty," had a profound affect on my life.  Perhaps the most important poem in the bunch - "Terrance this is stupid stuff," answers the ques

 The four poems are by Houseman - the two stories are my own.  The first story is about the censorship of Houseman's "To an Athlete Dying Young."  The second story is about the importance of poetry and how memorizing one poem "When I was One and Twenty," had a profound affect on my life.  Perhaps the most important poem in the bunch - "Terrance this is stupid stuff," answers the ques

 The year before this recording, we were unable to get to Matthew Arnold - so this year I was quite enthusiastic about this lecture/discussion on two of Arnold's poems - Dover Beach, and Self Dependence.  The former poems sums up for me what it means to be a human being - the latter poem sums up what I strive to be as a teacher.

This year we got to this lesson sooner than we have in modern memory - I usually do this lesson as the next to the last class as it sums up much of what we did in my class - and why we did it. The focus is on the poem by Houseman - "Terrance, this is Stupid Stuff," which asks (and answers) the question of why we read such sad verse and what it can do for us through the rest of our lives. This is the recording from 9th period.

We begin the class by reading aloud Kipling's poem, "The White Man's Burden."  We then talk about what the poem means - and I let the students know that different people have interpretted the poem in different ways - either for colonialism or an attack against it.  We then read aloud Kipling's werewolf story - "The Mark of the Beast" and discuss it along the way in a colonial context.  Finally, we read a contemporary response to Kipling's poem - "The Brown Man's Burden."

 A long time ago we were able to read poetry outside on many days during the school - with the loss of "seat time" we now are relegated to one day - and it always towards the very end of the year.  This year we got outside on a beautiful day and read poems by both Brownings (a copy of the poems can be found here) - as well as some quotes by Robert Browning - and we talked about what the poems meant - and how they fit in with out class this year.

This year we got to this lesson sooner than we have in modern memory - I usually do this lesson as the next to the last class as it sums up much of what we did in my class - and why we did it.  The focus is on the poem by Houseman - "Terrance, this is Stupid Stuff,"  which asks (and answers) the question of why we read such sad verse and what it can do for us through the rest of our lives.