Since industrial and mechanical diction - and the imagery it evokes - heavily conveys the environmental message running throughout Allen Ginsberg's poem, "Sunflower Sutra," this lesson pre-teaches vocabulary, activates prior knowledge about industrial pollution from science class, and provides a during-reading graphic organizer on which to record and diagram the industrial appearance of the Sunflower. Examining the biological process of water/nutrient uptake in plants through a food coloring and carnation science experiment because it served as a means to infer the consequences of the Sunflower's trash-filled soil, we analyzed the internal effect of industrial pollution on the Sunflower. To determine the scientific accuracy of the poem, we even compared the external effect of industrial pollution on the Sunflower (i.e. "gray," veil of darkened skin," "dress of dust," etc.) to the effect of the Orange-O-Dyne factory on the nearby trees in your science class stimulation of air pollution. After also discussing the poem in terms of its commentary on individual worth and environmental accountability, we merged "Sunflower Sutra" with the persuasive essay by Joy Williams you read in science class - "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp" - in a writing assignment that required you to consider how the texts presented opposing views of how humans perceive nature - filled with salvageable potential or hopeless - in the midst of a declining environment.
Pre-Teaching Tier 3 Vocabulary:
Industrial 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 industrial terms (and a scientific term - i.e. "corolla") 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:
"SUNFLOWER SUTRA" Allen Ginsberg 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 industrial and mechanical phrasing and jargon, as it was the primary means by which the effect of industrial pollution on the Sunflower was revealed. Refer to the color-coded version of the poem below to see the sections and diction categories we discussed during-reading. The following are several during-reading questions we contemplated:
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SUNFLOWER SUTRA
Allen Ginsberg, 1955
Allen Ginsberg, 1955
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust—
—I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past—
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis’ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt—industrial—modern--all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown—
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos—all these
entangled in your mummied roots—and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,
—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust—
—I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past—
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis’ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt—industrial—modern--all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown—
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos—all these
entangled in your mummied roots—and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,
—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.
During-Reading Graphic Organizer: Diction & a Science Experiment: Diagramming the Effect of Pollution As we read the poem, we tracked the Sunflower's appearance by recording the descriptions on their appropriate place on an illustration of the flower. After we labeled the diagram with the descriptions, we discussed two categories - external and internal effect of pollution - that emerged based on how the descriptions fell into two general locations: around the flower head (blue on the annotated version above) and at the roots (green on the annotated version). Showing the class a premade, ten day-old carnation and food dye experiment and discussing the process of nutrient/water uptake in plants, the teacher launched a discussion on the metaphorical implications of the plant growing in industrial trash: internal industrial corruption. Going back to the poem for a second time, we found a third class of diction that signified the start of that whole-body transition from natural to man-made, since it discussed nature in mechanical/industrial terms (pink on annotated version). We labeled a mechanical Sunflower illustration with the third class of diction to diagram the inferred, ultimate effect of the Sunflower being both internally and externally affected by pollution. |
Diction: word choice and use.
Pollution: the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that cause negative change. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light.
Setting: when and where a story takes place.
Accountability: to be held responsible for something; to accept the consequences and/or responsibilities of an action or decision.
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Text-to-Text Connections: Opposing Viewpoints "Sad" v. "Lovely": How do humans perceive nature after they've polluted the environment - and how does that affect perceptions of accountability? Allen Ginsberg's poem, "Sunflower Sutra," and Joy Williams's essay, "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp" (read in your science class), present opposing human perceptions of the nature in an increasingly polluted environment. The narrator in "Sunflower Sutra" sees beneath the "grime" to the "golden beauty" nature once was. Williams's essay accuses the audience of only seeing nature as "messy, damaged, and sad." Therefore, together, the texts present two options for man's environmental outlook and ask: When we look at nature in its deteriorating state, is it better for accountability to see a ruined environment or the nature it once was? In this writing assignment, first discuss how each text reveals that man is self-aware of his role in the ruined environment, then identify how each presents our view of nature during man-made environmental collapse, and then offer an opinion on which viewpoint our society upholds - and if that viewpoint is the one that is necessary for accountability. Use text details from BOTH texts to support your ideas. Please refer to the "Newspaper Notes" you created in science class to help you revisit Williams's "Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp." |