Exploring Poetry Final Project: Group Narrative. Spring and Fall

Exploring Poetry Final Project: Group Narrative
Worth: 30% of final grade / 30 points
For a second option, you can, with your peer review group, assemble a narrative that tracks your exploration of poems and those discoveries that you, as a group in dialogue, made. In this case you would each revise one response paper, and then write a 2 to 3 paragraph description of the discussion that your group had, and the ways it extended, challenged, or aided your understanding of the poem, or of poetry in general. You can use the forum or the written forms you submitted to jog your memories. In revising the response papers, be sure to focus on a) engaging with the poem’s language--its quirks, curiosities, difficulties, and b) the questions you had.
Basically each student will be responsible for one section (though you can co-write the follow up narratives), and you would assemble them with a short preface, a statement of 200-500 words that introduces the three pieces and the narratives of your meetings. This preface can have a very straightforward argument, something like “working together in our asynchronous group helped to illuminate the social value of poetry, bringing us together in a challenging time.”
You can be honest or upfront about the distractions of the pandemic, remote learning, and the elections, and how they may or may not have influenced your group work. Each “chapter” should also reference the way the discussion affected your thinking about other poems from the semester. It would be wise to bring WHY POETRY into the discussion, at least as a guide to some of our core concepts.
As with the anthology option, you should include an “about the authors” section at the end. Write about yourselves in the third person (because it’s weird and fun!), include some basic info like where you’re from, what you’re studying, what your relationship to poetry has been or is now. 
Elements
cover page, incl. an interesting title and your names
preface, 200-300 words
section 1 (one response paper + narrative follow-up)
about the authors (each one 50-100 words)
Work individually only need revise one response paper(spring and fall) as one section.
Reply by group member:
I really enjoyed reading your response! You did a great job of breaking down the poem and searching for the author's meaning. I liked the comparison you make between spring and fall with life and death. These concepts really caught my attention when I was reading the poem. I think that Hopkins was not only celebrating the beauty of life in this poem, but also being realistic and reminding us that death is inevitable. What I can't really figure out is if the author wanted to discuss death as something beautiful and natural, or as something that is sad and frightening. The comparison with fall can be interpreted in so many ways. At first, when the comparison was made between death and fall, I imagined it as something peaceful, yet cold. When I think of fall, I think of the fresh, cool air and I think of leaves falling. This image is so calming to me. So when death was compared to fall, I took it as Hopkins portraying death as something peaceful. But I can also see the comparison trying to portray death in a darker way.I also really liked how you interpreted the character Margaret. I thought she was simply a child who was sad that spring was ending. And that may be what Hopkins was going for, but she can also be, like you said, a daisy mourning her own death that was approaching.  
Reply by me:
Thank you so much for your comment.
At first, I was just as confused as you about the author's intentions. I personally think that as the whole poem progresses, the author has a different view of death. First of all, in the beginning, the reason for death was to answer Margaret's questions. The author initially laughed at Margaret's sadness for death and passing away. Because Margaret is still young and the author is old, at least in terms of the author's mentality reflected in the whole poem, the person talking to Margaret is quite an elderly person. Next is the second layer of death. As you said, the second layer is a very realistic interpretation of death. Here is also what you mentioned, depicting death in a darker reality. But in the end, there is still a third layer. Because at the end the author realized that he was talking to a child at this age, the child could not understand this reality, so in the end, the author gave the child a little hope and vigor. Because it is life, death actually means the born before. This is also my personal interpretation of the whole article. Although it is about autumn and death, if you look at it in reverse, you can find the author's description of spring and life.
So I think that for children, although this poem is about autumn and mourning, it also contains the fresh and cool air you mentioned, which is not completely depressing. For people with a certain experience to read this poem, they can appreciate the reality and inevitability of death, so the darker reality depiction is aimed at this part of the audience. Older people can see the hope hidden by the author. Among them are the expectations of the elderly for their children. Because they are getting old, they look forward to their children's growth and the ability to develop their own lives. This is also the meaning of spring at the end I mentioned.
I am also very curious about puns, besides Margaret, I also look forward to other interpretations.
Reply by group member:
Hey, 
I enjoyed reading your response paper. I think that you’ve done a really good job breaking down the Hopkin’s poem. You wrote about the rhythm in this poem and I think the structure is something to look at too. The poem has an odd rhyming scheme, with the center 3 lines rhyming, and the rest of the poem having two line rhymes. We know the narrator is talking to a child, so that point of view must have influenced the storytelling feel of the poem. I agree when you wrote that the rhythm makes the poem feel cheerful. I thought your connection to the Garden of Eden was a really unique and interesting thought. The narrator is sharing the knowledge of truth with the child- the affliction of mankind is that we die, just like the leaves on a tree during autumn. Before this, the child is naive and innocent, they simply are sad about the leaves dying. Possessing this knowledge, the narrator knows that the leaves are nothing to be sad about, it’s just part of the nature of life. I can definitely see how you connected the “Golden-grove” to the Garden of Eden.Reply by me:Thank you so much for your comment.Thank you for mentioning the structure of this poem. I focused too much on rhyme and forgot it. I think in this poem, Margaret is a crucial point of breaking the game. As I said before, Margaret is also a daisy, and it is also part of the decline in spring and autumn. I think a child is a misdirection. This poem can be seen as a dialogue with a child, self-talk with Daisy and an exploration of life.I also think the Garden of Eden is exciting because when connected with the Garden of Eden, this poem can be seen as God is imparting his omnipotent knowledge to others. Still, because he has not eaten the forbidden fruit, this person cannot understand it just as Margaret couldn't understand death.
Reply by Instructor:Nice work on a thoughtful response to a difficult poem! One of your best observations was regarding the shift in the poem's tone-- how, when it starts, it seems that he's teasing Margaret, but then this grows steadily more serious as he think about the relationship between mortality and autumn. Also, I think you're really onto something regarding the role of spring in this poem -- he doesn't really go into it, but it's related to that last line "It is Margaret you mourn for" -- if she is, indeed, like the golden groves, she'll "sprout" again, right? 
Reply by me:Thank you very much for your affirmation.Although this poem is very short, I think it has very detailed content, and as the conversation progresses, the author's intentions have changed again and again. And, thank you very much for your interpretation that Margaret will sprout again. At first, I thought it was very ruthless to let Margaret mourn for himself, although I interpreted the author's affirmation of people's courage because people are not afraid of death and continue to explore their own possibilities while they are alive. But I think your interpretation of Margaret's sprout is closer to the definition of spring in this poem. Death and life are like an endless cycle. The end of life is death, and the end of death can also be life.I think this is the most important reason why the poem is named Spring and Fall.
Check list:Basically one response paper that you have already written that you would revise one response paper by each group member and then a short description two paragraphs or so. After that response paper sort of summarizing and explaining you know how your group you know tackle the questions you were raising in that response paper and thinking about kind of what you got out of it. Right. What what what what what this group dialogue. Did for you in terms of advancing you're thinking about this, this particular poem or this particular problem, as well as poetry in general. Um, so you assemble a narrative that tracks your exploration of poems and those discoveries. Each of you would pick one paper and revise it. And then, and then you could, you know, you could write these together help each other right the two to three, paragraph description of the discussion. Obviously you can use your the forms you submitted on Google Drive to me as well as if you did these on the forum, then you have a written kind of record of your discussion. You don't have to like copy and paste everything in the forum kind of summarize it. I would suppose is what you do. A couple tips on revision right as you revise the papers, you know, you definitely want to be focused on engaging with the language. You can probably improve that in all of your response papers. You know, try to return to the questions you were posing and see if you can articulate them better clarify them perhaps. So basically, each student will be responsible for one section.
And then it would have a preface, a short preface two to 500 words that's like a page or two pages, right, that would introduce the three pieces. And your narratives and can have some, you know, I'd like to preface to have some kind of argument, but it can be very straightforward. Something like, you know, working together. You know, working together, help to eliminate a social value in poetry, etc, etc, or helped us. Get the idea of line. It could be something very particular about poems, get the idea of line breaks or metaphor or whatever. And you can totally be honest about the environment we're living in, and the role that it may have played in your group work on the pandemic. The challenge of remote learning. The crazy election season, all of these things, no doubt, are impacting us and impacting the way we think about all of our work, including poetry and what we get out of the different kinds of work we're doing, I would urge you strongly to bring material from my poetry into discussion in some form or another. And then, as with the anthology option. I like, I like to ask you to do this because it gives you a chance to be self reflective at the end included about the authors where you really write about yourself, your background. You know where you're from, what you're studying and your relationship to poetry, whether you had none or some and how it has evolved over the last few months. That's a short part. So here it is. Here's it all broken down crime.
Does it have to be in the peer review groups. Well, I could see a version of this where you do your own, And in which case you might revise one response paper and submit the other two response papers, but you don't have to revise them and then write a narrative that you know describes how your group influenced your thinking about, you know, if the group doesn't want to do it, but one of these things. This is a better option than the anthology option. You know you can. Like I said, revise one submit all three of your response papers and then reno right that narrative about generally about your group discussions and what it did for your, for your thinking about about poems generally Put something from your group and dialogue with Matthews apertures book poetry, etc, etc, something like that. I suppose you could do this with a way to Group members as well as opposed to all three, you know, something like that.
1) think of the preface as an introduction. Introduce the ideas of group discussions on the written forum, and an argument attempting to explain what you got out of it. Yes, it’s okay to base it on the written discussion. 
2) in revising your paper, try to dig deeper into the language— add quotations and specific questions. Take a look at my comments on the forum. 
3) the narrative, then, will follow the revised paper. It should discuss how your group approached the poem and how the group discussion affected your thoughts and understanding of the poem.