EWKB+Understanding+and+Teaching+a+Poetic+Device

**Teach a device to the world -- or least to our own version of the world**

In this part of the project, you will work in groups of two or three and to teach an assigned poetic device (metaphors, symbols, figurative language, etc). You'll create an audio or visual expression of your device (this is your chance to make a video, use animation, create and upload a Podcast, figure out Jings, etc) as well as write about your device on your Wiki page to demonstrate its meaning and your collective understanding of why it's important to the larger concept of poetry. This device offers readers a different way to access the poet's purpose -- what is it? What is lost without the device? How does it take our understanding of the poem to a different level?

Your group will use the following information and images to teach the poetic device to others.
 * Original embedded video: Jing, Animoto, or student-made video
 * How to make a Jing
 * How to make an Animoto
 * Mnemonic Device/Original Analogy: create a way for us to remember your device with words or sounds or images
 * The 'Big Idea': why do we need to know this device?
 * Two examples of the device being used, either in your own poetry or that of another published poet and you explain clearly how the device is used and how this use enhances the poem's overall meaning or effect.

Here's a practice version:
Let's assume my poetic device is simile. The dictionary -- as well as our working memories from elementary school -- tells us a simile is a comparison of two unlike things, typically using 'like' or 'as'. It is a piece of figurative language -- language that has meaning beyond the literal or concrete meaning. Similes evoke images and provide a deeper understanding of the subject. Metaphors also allow for comparison of unlike things, but similes let the two things remain clear and separate.

__Jing of Similes__ A very famous pair of similes was used as a form of self-expression by Muhammad Ali to describe himself as a boxer. He said he could 'float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.'

__Mnemonic Device or Original Analogy__ First of all, I always remembered the difference between a metaphor and a simile (similes are comparisons using 'like' or 'as') because simile starts with S and 'as' has an S. Might seem silly and unlikely to be helpful, but it worked for me every time. Consider an acrostic, a rhyme, a song, a funny list of similes about 9th grade, etc.

__The Big Idea__ Similes - the idea of contrast - plays a key role in exploring poetry.  Examples of Similes Used in Poetry Using similes in Toi Dorricotte's poem The Weakness, you can see how you should explore the literal and figurative levels of ideas presented in two poems.

That time my grandmother dragged me through the perfume aisles at Saks, she held me up by my arm, hissing, “Stand up,” through clenched teeth, her eyes bright as a dog’s cornered in the light. She said it over and over, as if she were Jesus, and I were dead. She had been solid as a tree, a fur around her neck, a light-skinned matron whose car was parked, who walked on swirling marble and passed through brass openings–in 1945. There was not even a black elevator operator at Saks. The saleswoman had brought velvet leggings to lace me in, and cooed, as if in service of all grandmothers. My grandmother had smiled, but not hungrily, not like my mother who hated them, but wanted to please, and they had smiled back, as if they were wearing wooden collars. When my legs gave out, my grandmother dragged me up and held me like God holds saints by the roots of the hair. I begged her to believe I couldn’t help it. Stumbling, her face white with sweat, she pushed me through the crowd, rushing away from those eyes that saw through her clothes, under her skin, all the way down to the transparent genes confessing. —Toi Derricotte, 1989
 * The Weakness**

  