Block, 1/31 - The Age of Wit (and Sadtire)

  • P&P
  • Check and discuss Bedford 34 (rules and Exercises)
  • Work on J10 for 10-15 minutes and then discuss
Take this assignment (and your audience) for a ride. Enjoy it!
For your CWP this quarter, you will consider witty and/or satirical selections we have already enjoyed, in addition to some you have not sampled as of yet. Take a while and peruse some of the ones linked below, as well as check out their introductions that will give you a greater context for the selections you will then read.

After considering the genre you would like to imitate, try your hand at your own witty or satirical work. If you pursue verse, it must be single-spaced; if prose, double. You must properly punctuate your work, even the verse (poetry). 

For satirical subject matter, consider the following: Are there any social vices in our country that you believe need to be satirized to instigate change? Consider the victims, the perpetrators, and possible solutions. Will you write a mock epic like Pope's Rape of the Lock, juxtaposing social trivialities and literary grandeur? Or will you write an essay like Swift's Modest Proposal, a more straightforward, below the belt/sand in the eyes form of satire? The choice is yours.

Length: no longer than thirty pages . . . no shorter than two typed MLA formatted. 
    • Mock Epic
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Reno Sonnets

Wifey Sonnet No. 4


The Holy Wind to Abyssinia bore
Us on the back of steel eagle’s wings
To land us in the orphan’s desert for
A royal orphan son from Judah’s King.
This fertile continent--heavy with child--
Bore for us our beloved Beniam boy.
Oh, Africa--womb of our son’s womb--wild
The Land where Spirit hovered for our joy.
The angel bard once likened childed womb
To sails big-bellied blown by wanton wind.
Your grace-filled fabric taut, a watery room,
Now harbors holy gift, a sacrament.
As Africa once bulged with right hand seed,
Inspired your belly is with ‘Vangeline. 

 Upon Mr. Davis' wedding, a toast in honor of
his trading in his glorious hair to gain the 
glory of the woman now known as Kristen Davis. 

As earthy Adam sang a lyric poem
When’s virgin eyes beheld Eve’s fem’nine form,
Transfiguring to fire God’s breathy loam,
Man’s worded glory signified a storm
Of mingling desires, souls, flesh now spent
In sacrificial othering, so here
A radiant new creation has been rent
From slumb’ring Joshua’s side, this waking year.
Your five and thirty years of blinded life
Like Sampson’s: hairless, impotent to grind;
His wavy glory giv’n to pagan wife;
His glory lost, his life through death he'd find.
Though Adam sinned and Sampson sold his mane,
Your severed glory has greater glory gained.


One to his seniors several years ago
(while he was home with the flu . . . and seniors
in school with sonnet disease)

When I consider sonnets I turn green.
I gag. I heave. Dry heaves, they will not stop
Until I write a quatrain . . . wait! I mean
An octave! (What I've written is mere slop.)
I cannot do this . . . meter? When will't end?!!!
As soon as meter's dial'd I kill the rhyme.
This casualty results when I don't tend
All sheep at once. I'm running out of time . . .
Shakespear'ean hydra! Come at me full force!
My loins I'll gird and stand my ground a man
Who will not shirk from war, nor from the course
will I depart. (my mind has hatched a plan!)
Submission to this yoke (the sonnet's weight)
Now means I've earned the right to graduate. 
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Tuesday, 1/29 - G. I. Jane

  • P&P
  • Tuesday is Cheeseday; therefore, let's kick things off with Bedford 34 - The semicolon.
    • Write out all the rules (in blue)
    • Do Exercises 34-1 and 34-2 by block day.  
  • Pick up where we left off with Johnson's satirical essay on women in the military.
  • Enjoy G. K. Chesterton's apropoem (apropos poem) "Comparisons":
    • If I set the sun beside the moon,
      And if I set the land beside the sea,
      And if I set the town beside the country,
      And if I set the man beside the woman,
      I suppose some fool would talk about one being better.  
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Small Group Chapel Options

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