Friday Assignment and Roll

Come to class ON TIME and sign the roll sheet that Jake will have for you.
Head over to the museum and choose a piece of art from which to write a sestina.
Look to William Carlos William's Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, Auden's Musee de Beaux Arts and Elizabeth Bishop's Sestina (a google search can find these for you, we looked at them all in class.)

1. One stanza that animates a figure or object within the artwork.

2. One stanza the involves some kind of research. The research can involve the artist's bio., information about the medium (the history of cadmium yellow, etc.)

3. One stanza that changes its point of view. It can become a letter to a figure in the piece or to the artist or from one of those two "characters." If you're already working in that mode, the piece can become more third-person and distant for this stanza or you can use a series of quotes.

The other stanzas can work in any mode or fashion that you'd like.

Remember you can find more information on how to construct the sestina online and you can bend a rule or two if need be (ie: a wildcard end-word or one that is an off-rhyme, synonym or homonym to the other words of its station.)

Once you go to the museum, find a place (home, labs, etc. and jot down the images--lots of concrete terms--that you'll be working with) and write the poem. Do note the artist and title of the art.