11.27.11

I.

We sank like planks into my mattress

And drifted like sticks to opposite ends.

A termite clung to the ceiling,

Persistent in its attempt to tap an exhausted resource

“No wood left. You’re fat and greedy and you ate it all.”

“I’m what?” you muttered

“The wood doesn’t replenish itself. You ate it and now it’s gone.”

The hollow ceiling seemed to ascend,

And the glutinous termite, its belly filled with wood chips,

squirmed, trying to keep hold.

When it fell, it fell down straight and slow.

It dropped, like a pebble, guided by the weight of its stomach,

Onto the white sheet between us,

And then like an ink stain with legs, it crawled toward my open hand.

I closed in on it, feeling its legs separate from its body as I crushed it to death.

“Goodbye” I said.

“Goodbye”, you said and stumbled out the door.

See the link below for details on the A.P. exam.

http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html

For more information on Connally HS visit the link below.

http://www.pflugervilleisd.net/CHS/

Next week I'll be teaching a lesson on visual rhetoric. Below is an in class exercise included in the lesson. Expect the lesson in full soon.

Visual and verbal texts are not composed and published in vacuum. As you practice reading and writing about visual texts, I encourage you to to consider the various contexts within which they function. Gather information about the the circumstances behind the original composition: Who created the text? Who was the intended audience? Where was it originally published? For what purpose? To what extent does the contextual information deepen your reading of the text?

To widen your perspective on a text, consider the larger cultural and historical context in which it was created. What cultural assumptions do you think the artist or author relies on? Asking questions about the larger cultural context of a particular text or image means recognizing the assumptions that are made about a shared body on knowledge on the part of the audience.

Exercise: Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother is one of the most recognizable images in American history. What observations and inferences can you make about the context of this image?