{"id":25905,"date":"2020-03-29T12:23:50","date_gmt":"2020-03-29T17:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=25905"},"modified":"2020-03-29T12:23:50","modified_gmt":"2020-03-29T17:23:50","slug":"coronaviraschooling-day-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/29\/coronaviraschooling-day-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronaviraschooling: Day 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

So every day of this last week, their first at home because of the coronavirus lockdown, the boys and I (and sometimes my beautiful wife) have taken a poem and hand-copied it to keep up with our handwriting and to talk about poetry. We started with “If” by Rudyward Kipling, and apparently it’s a thing now because I’ve seen it on a couple different blogs (here<\/a> and here<\/a> this very week). I was going to have them do “The Gods of Copybook Headings”, but it’s pretty long–“If” took the slowest writer an hour (complaining included).<\/p>\n

So we did a couple of shorter poems–a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost, “Ozymandias” by Shelley on Friday.<\/p>\n

Continuing the theme of Romantic poets writing about ancient Asian things, yesterday we went with “Kubla Khan<\/a>” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:<\/p>\n

\nIn Xanadu did Kubla Khan
\nA stately pleasure-dome decree:
\nWhere Alph, the sacred river, ran
\nThrough caverns measureless to man
\n    Down to a sunless sea.
\nSo twice five miles of fertile ground
\nWith walls and towers were girdled round;
\nAnd there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
\nWhere blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
\nAnd here were forests ancient as the hills,
\nEnfolding sunny spots of greenery.<\/p>\n

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
\nDown the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
\nA savage place! as holy and enchanted
\nAs e\u2019er beneath a waning moon was haunted
\nBy woman wailing for her demon-lover!
\nAnd from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
\nAs if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
\nA mighty fountain momently was forced:
\nAmid whose swift half-intermitted burst
\nHuge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
\nOr chaffy grain beneath the thresher\u2019s flail:
\nAnd mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
\nIt flung up momently the sacred river.
\nFive miles meandering with a mazy motion
\nThrough wood and dale the sacred river ran,
\nThen reached the caverns measureless to man,
\nAnd sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
\nAnd \u2019mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
\nAncestral voices prophesying war!
\n    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
\n    Floated midway on the waves;
\n    Where was heard the mingled measure
\n    From the fountain and the caves.
\nIt was a miracle of rare device,
\nA sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!<\/p>\n

    A damsel with a dulcimer
\n    In a vision once I saw:
\n    It was an Abyssinian maid
\n    And on her dulcimer she played,
\n    Singing of Mount Abora.
\n    Could I revive within me
\n    Her symphony and song,
\n    To such a deep delight \u2019twould win me,
\nThat with music loud and long,
\nI would build that dome in air,
\nThat sunny dome! those caves of ice!
\nAnd all who heard should see them there,
\nAnd all should cry, Beware! Beware!
\nHis flashing eyes, his floating hair!
\nWeave a circle round him thrice,
\nAnd close your eyes with holy dread
\nFor he on honey-dew hath fed,
\nAnd drunk the milk of Paradise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After about an hour (including complaining), we finished. We talked about the rhyme scheme, the meter, and the way the poet uses strange contractions to make meter. I mentioned that Coleridge is best known for writing the Iron Maiden song “Rime of the Ancient Mariner<\/a>“. <\/p>\n

And then we watched the film version of the poem.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I told my beautiful wife I had just picked it up. Wherein “just” in this case means three years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My wife and youngest son watched the whole thing with me; the oldest son wandered off, and when he returned, he asked what was happening, as though it was making real sense between the Olivia Newton-John numbers. We told him it would have made more sense if he hadn’t missed the animated interlude in the middle. Which was not true, but.<\/p>\n

Today, I think we will continue our mythology unit with the 1980 Clash of the Titans<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Confession: I did select “Kubla Khan” just so we would get to watch the movie thereafter. There, I said it.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So every day of this last week, their first at home because of the coronavirus lockdown, the boys and I (and sometimes my beautiful wife) have taken a poem and hand-copied it to keep up with our handwriting and to talk about poetry. We started with “If” by Rudyward Kipling, and apparently it’s a thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,24,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-movies","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25906,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25905\/revisions\/25906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}