Ian Bickford Writing and Thinking Script Bard High School Early College Queens Fall 2011 The

e following script might follow a homework assignment in which students choose one of the selections from First Loves and respond to it. 1. FW (10 min) 2. Read aloud Miltons On Shakespeare three times: on the first reading, simply listen; on the second reading, underline words or phrases that are exciting, confusing, or otherwise notable; on the third reading, make notes in the margins. (5 min) 3. FFW: Respond to one word, phrase, or line of the poem. (10 min) 4. Text explosion: read the poem aloud again; this time, upon reaching the word or phrase to which an individual has responded, that individual should interrupt, repeat the word or phrase, and read his or her FFW aloud. (15 min) 5. In writing, ask a specific question about the poem (i.e. Why does Milton say? What does Milton mean by? (2-3 min) 6. Turn to a partner. Together, take a stab at answering each others question. (5 min) 7. Share questions and answers with the entire group. (10-15 min) 8. Loop writing: a. What is Miltons opinion of Shakespeare? (2 min) b. How can we make sense of the following lines: Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving / Dost make us marble of too much conceiving? (2 min) c. How does Milton feel about his own relationship to Shakespeare? (2 min) 9. Read around, two or three readers for each question (15 min.) 10. On the board, copy the following quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson: Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. Finish the session with a round of Believing and Doubting. (Emerson has a point when he writes.; Emerson is mistaken when he writes.). The next session can begin with a Thought Chain from this. (10 min) I imagine this script then leading into a reading in class of the first few paragraphs of Blooms Anxiety of Influence, which is challenging but opens nicely from Miltons ambivalence about Shakespeares influence upon him. Familiarity with Anxiety of Influence will also inform a later reading of Lethems Ecstasy of Influence, as well as of The Snow Man (Bloom offers Stevens as an example of a strong poet who denies having ever been influenced by anybodyand the snowman kind of echoes this

position, acknowledging nothing that is not there in favor of the nothing that is, which Ive always taken to be the self).