Good work last night!
For this week:
Please continue to work on memorizing and performing the selection you brought to class and performed yesterday!
Choose a SECOND selection to memorize and recite. Make sure your second selection is DIFFERENT from your first, in some way. Your second selection may be from the list I gave last week, or it could be a selection that you find on your own. It should be SHORT--approximately the length of one of the selections on my list. It could be a speech, a monologue from a play, an excerpt from a novel, or a poem.
Where could you find other selections?
http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poems-and-performance/find-poems Poetry Out Loud has a great database of short poems that are good for recitation.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html American Rhetoric is a terrific site--these are its selections for the "top 100 speeches" in American history.
Please COMMENT on this page listing BOTH of your selections (your first selection, which you recited last night, and your second selection, which will be new) by midnight tonight--that is, 11:59 PM on FRIDAY, October 7. Please note that I have extended the deadline. Because I have extended the deadline, I strongly recommend that you post BEFORE the deadline; do not be late.
Next week (October 12) please be ready to perform BOTH of your selections, entirely memorized.
I am going to continue to work on the excerpt from Huey Long's Every Man A King. I'm working on my emotions, the anger I need to project while performing this speech. I feel I will do better when I have the speech memorized.
ReplyDeleteFor my second selection I have chosen a poem, from the site www.poemhunter.com, titled "A Hero" by Josh Carew.
My first selection is 'What Lips My Lips Have Kissed' from Edna St. Vincent. The second selection is the speech from Rocky Balboa to his son that says:
ReplyDeleteLet me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.
Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!
My first selection is the excerpt from Edna St. Vincent "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed"(change the word lads for girls :p).
ReplyDeleteAnd second is a excerpt from John F. Kennedy. "The Decision to Go to the Moon".
I chose Edna St. Vincent's "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" for my first selection.
ReplyDeleteNext, I have chosen an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address.
This is Monica Poole, posting for Dan Sullivan. Dan is having technical trouble--let's resolve this in class tonight!
ReplyDeleteDan says: I know i am late but i would still like to display some effort. I set up an Email acc w/ gmail for this class and for whatever reason it dislikes me. My first choice is Walt Whitmans " I hear america Singing" My second choice of torture is Abrahams 2nd inaugural address...
Trying to comment...
ReplyDeleteNice:)
ReplyDeleteHi every one,
ReplyDeletemy first selection is the excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr ' I have a dream' and my second selection is the poem 'Life in a Love' by Robert Browning.
My first slection for my poem was originally After Apple Picking by Robert Frost, but I realized after much practice that it was way more than I could handle. I was in Maine last week and came across this poem in a boutique store and I love it! It is called I found a Tiny Starfish by Dayle Ann Dodds.
ReplyDeleteI found a tiny starfish
In a tide pool by the sand.
I found a tiny starfish
And I put him in my hand.
An itty-bitty starfish
No bigger than my thumb,
A wet and golden starfish
Belonging to no one.
I thought that I would take him
From the tidepool by the sea,
And bring him home to give you
A loving gift from me.
But as I held my starfish,
His skin began to dry.
Without his special seaside home,
My gift for you would die.
I found a tiny starfish
In a tide pool by the sea.
I hope whoever finds him next
Will leave him there, like me!
And the gift I've saved for you?
The best that I can give:
I found a tiny starfish,
And for you, I let him live.
Catherine Rosselli
AS for my speech selection, I chose an excerpt Elizabeth Cady Stanton's speech at the Women's Rights Convention of 1948:
ReplyDeleteBut we are assembled to protest against a form of government existing without the consent of the governed -- to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, thechildren of her love; laws which make her the mere dependent on his bounty. It is to protest against such unjust laws as these that we are assembled today, and to have them, if possible, forever erased from our statute books, deeming them a shame and a disgrace to a Christian republic in the nineteenth century.
-Catherine Rosselli
Breath Control by Nicole Blackman
ReplyDeleteWho wouldn't want a good girl, a soft hand, a gentle woman for a gentleman? He said, "It's been fine so far but after a while I want more than a soft style. I want some slashes to go with those long eyelashes." And so the bedroom became the black room but a year later he wanted something more, something I wasn't quite prepared for. He said, "Every woman has an itch and every nice girl secretly wants to switch." I like how the skins look on your white hands. I'd like you to deliver one of my demands." He said, "Every woman has an itch and every nice girl wants to switch." He led me in and lit the room with a hundred candles and said "God never gives you more than you can handle." I sat astride his chest, "It's just a thrill," he said, as he relaxed on the dark, dark bed, "it's just breath control." He whispered "Hold me here" and I did and his head fell back. He whispered "Press harder" and I did and his eyes rolled back. It's just breath control. Just breath control. I saw him go pale. I saw him seize up, I felt something creep up like a taste for this. Like a reward. A kind of love, a kind of lustmord. It was a minute then three then five then ten, he wasn't coming up again. I held on for twelve. I saw him seize and thrash and twist and when he was still, I lifted away my wrists and looked at my hands and tried to understand. "It's just a thrill" I said as he relaxed on the dark, dark bed. I sat aside his chest, "It's just a thrill," he said, "just a thrill. It's just breath control. Control, control, it's just breath control, control, control. When it was over, I slipped off the skins and drowned them in the river where we used to swim and a year later in a shop, I was stopped by a man. He said, "I know you're looking for something that's hard to find and I think I have what you have in mind." And he led me to a glass case and looked deep into my face... "It's just control."
My first piece is The Emperor of Ice Cream by Wallace Stevens
ReplyDeleteHello ??
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that my comments are not getting posted here on this blog...arrgghh !