As another example of how fiction presents human interactions and interconnectedness, Ezra Pound's poem "Portrait d'une Femme" ties up the end of the short story unit in this lesson. Based around an allusion to the Sargasso Sea - a polluted and threatened ecosystem that you explored in your science class - the poem requires our scientific background knowledge to understand why the poem's female protagonist and her various London men are in a mutually parasitic relationship. After a before-reading vocabulary activity to pre-teach the poem's jargon and a whole-class close reading, we examined the unit theme of interconnectedness in the text. Presenting the idea that humans merely engage in a constant exchange of useless goods with one another so they merely become empty vessels of other people's garbage, "Portrait d'une Femme" adds to the fictional evidence against the value of interconnectedness. However, its negativity is discussed in light of the few positive examples of interconnectedness that we've come across in the unit, so it calls us to ask an important question: do the times when people help us because of our interconnectedness - even if they are rare - outweigh the times when people hurt us because of our interconnectedness - even if they are frequent?
Pre-Teaching Tier 3 Vocabulary:
NAUTICAL JARGON With Tier 3 vocabulary being content area-specific jargon - and thus vocabulary less able to be inferred from context - we took a look at the nautical terms (and other types of jargon - i.e. "deciduous" and "inlays") that we would come across in the poem before-reading. First, scan the six words on the list and rate them based on your immediate knowledge of them. The following table outlines the rating system to be used: After rating our prior knowledge of the jargon, we split up the list and looked up the definitions in our classroom dictionaries. Sharing our findings in a whole-class discussion, we used our new understandings to draw quick pictures to represent the terms and reinforce the definitions in a visual format. Click on the pictures to the left to be linked to their Wikipedia pages for more information on their nautical jargon!
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CLOSE READING:
"Portrait d'une Femme"
Ezra Pound Focusing on the character relationships in the poem, we close read and annotated the poem in a whole-class setting. Working with an enlarged version on the SmartBoard, the teacher modeled the annotation process to ensure quality note-taking. We paid special attention to the use of nautical phrasing and jargon, as they were diction that extended the Sargasso Sea allusion. We mapped out the main character interactions - the woman and various London man - on a graphic organizer as we read, listing and translating (into our own words) the "inputs" and "outputs." Then, through the allusion of the woman to the Sargasso Sea, we discussed - in a Think-Pair-Share activity - why these interactions were negative - or "parasitic"! Instead of the typical feminist critique that the poem usually receives, we navigated the poem more as a commentary on human interactions - and social parasitism - in general. Click the photograph of Pound to the left to navigate an online version of the poem or download the worksheet we used in class to annotate the poem.
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Allusion: a direct or indirect reference to an object or circumstance from an external context (i.e. movie, TV show, mythology, etc) in a literary work.
Diction: word choice and use.
Parasitism: a close and long-term interaction between two species in which one organism (the parasite) benefits and the other (the host) is harmed.
Interconnectedness: the quality or condition of people or things being meaningfully and/or complexly related or connected.
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PORTRAIT D'UNE FEMME
(PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN)
EZRA POUND
(PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN)
EZRA POUND
Human Interaction leaves woman with what types of things? Who might be considered a "great mind"? What type/occupation of people?
Human interaction. Opposite of first. Woman gives others things, too. How are these things different/similar to the things others give the woman? Gives many items, but all are useless?
Ultimately, what are we? What do we accumulate over the years? How do we internalize others? Do we do so for our betterment? How do we let others define us? Human interactions have drained us of anything that is our own. How? What does this mean? |
Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years And bright ships left you this or that in fee: Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things, Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price. Great minds have sought you — lacking someone else. You have been second always. Tragical? No. You preferred it to the usual thing: One dull man, dulling and uxorious, One average mind — with one thought less, each year. Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit Hours, where something might have floated up. And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay. You are a person of some interest, one comes to you And takes strange gain away: Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion; Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two, Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else That might prove useful and yet never proves, That never fits a corner or shows use, Or finds its hour upon the loom of days: The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work; Idols and ambergris and rare inlays, These are your riches, your great store; and yet For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things, Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff: In the slow float of differing light and deep, No! there is nothing! In the whole and all, Nothing that's quite your own. Yet this is you. |
Allusion to aquatic ecosystem. What are its unique features? How is the woman filled with garbage? What kind of garbage?
Hierarchical. Implies that all humans are not seen as being equal in value, in individual worth. "...lacking someone [better]"? Tune In to Interesting Words!
Unpacking sea-related imagery - If someone "fishes up" a trophy, what does that mean? It's not a trophy anymore; it's pollution. Tune In to Interesting Words! - Describes trees that lose their leaves seasonally. Things that die? Things that don't stay the same - constant cycling of trash? |