This weekend, begin reviewing for your English final (either April 12th or 13th).
Please read "Circus in Town" and "Happyness for Sale" (happiness is misspelled on purpose), and complete the Venn diagram. In the Venn diagram, note the similarities and differences between the role of optimism in each story. That is, both protagonists are optimistic, but the quality of each person's optimism is different. You need to note how this is so.
Also, please just read the two poems "Those Winter Sundays" and " Wordsmith" to familiarise yourself with them. You do not need to answer the attached questions.
Here is the link to the two short stories:
virtualschool.ca/VirtualEnglish12/startupinfo/.../vesynCircHap.pdf
The comma make up quiz will be on Monday after class. Furthermore, our third Literature Circle will be on Tuesday.
Here is the first poem you need to read:
Wordsmith
by Susan Young
In my mind I call my
father the Pollyfilla king,
watch with something akin to awe
as he begins the arduous process
of filling in the gaps, the long winded
cracks that travel down the walls of my house
like run on sentences.
From the sidelines I watch as he
trudges up and down the stairs, carrying
with nonchalance an industrial-sized bucket,
shiny spatula tucked into back pocket
for easy access.
Over and over again
with precision and grace
he fills and smooths and sands
as filling in all of the empty crevices
with the words he didn’t know how to say,
the lost syllables and consonants springing up
from the bucket, stubbornly announcing themselves
home, until there is only smoothness,
my fifty eight year old house a perfect sentence,
the veritable sheen of its walls
privy to this father of mine,
whose love keeps him moving
from room to room, brightly asking,
Do you think you’ll be painting the other room
upstairs sometime? I could start work on it now.
Then it’ll be ready for painting later.
Yes, I say, yes,
my face aglow.
Pollyfilla: a brand of substance to fill cracks in plaster walls
Here is the second poem you need to read:
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
