Varsity Defensive End Kicked Off Team and Suspended For Writing a Poem

Poetry can be a powerful tool to express one's feelings. Confessional poets such as John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, or Anne Sexton often wrote poetry as a form of therapy, a way to vent one's frustrations about the world. This one particular student and varsity football player at an Ohio public high school was only writing a poem for an English class assignment, but it got him in hot water with his coach and principal. Is it fair that this student was kicked off the team and suspended from school for writing something he was passionate/frustrated about? Especially if it was for a class assignment? Read the following article, and we will discuss in class whether his poem was slander/harrassment or his freedom of speech. Defensive End Kicked Off Team For Writing a Poem

Emily Dickinson Writes About Her Man

As discussed in class, Dickinson had a few unrequited loves (the lawyer and the reverend), which possibly affected her reclusive nature. In her poem,I Cannot Live With You (640), we see a more confessional, yet still cryptic, poem about a love that cannot be. Read the poem, and the corresponding article if you have time, and look for the clues in the poem that would help you infer that she is indeed writing about one of the unattainable men in her life.

By the way, this picture of Emily is the only authenticated photo of her after childhood. Some people say she has an eerie, sly look about her that suggests that her secretiveness is her strength, like she has one over on us. Or she's just a kooky recluse.

The Awakening for Your E-Reader!

If you would rather read our novel The Awakening with your e-reader instead the tattered books I had to assign, there are two links here you can choose from, the PDF Version and the Word Document Version. Many thanks go out to Landon Clark for setting this up for us!