Wednesday, Dev. 12: Work on your Map

Our honors poet, Dante Alighieri (1265--1321), is painted in black above.  Interestingly, this was painted by another Dante, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828--1882).  Rossetti was a master artist himself (both a painter and a poet) and had actually been named after Dante Alighieri.  Rossetti translated La Vita Nuova and painted this fine piece by inspiration: "Dante's Dream at the Time of Beatrice's Death." 

* Open

• "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"

* Note

• Honors: On Monday the poet laureate visits during your 2nd and 3rd periods.  Get the slip from me.  Your teachers are also being emailed today.  If your teacher permits you to go, go to the MSPAR after you check in with your teacher.  Per. 2 starts in B22 and goes down.  Per. 3 meets me at the MSPAR. 

* Dante Check

• Work on your map and glory  
• Study: The Exam Plan 

* Extra Practice poem

• David Swanger
• Read "Wayne's College of Beauty"
• In your notes, write down key images 
• Write down a couple of questions for the poet (since you may meet him shortly)
• Below is the poem by W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) that provides Swanger's epigraph.  Can you find the line?  How does the allusion affect the connotation of Swanger's piece?  The poems' title is "To a Young Beauty." 

• DEAR fellow-artist, why so free
  With every sort of company,
  With every Jack and Jill?
  Choose your companions from the best;
  Who draws a bucket with the rest
  Soon topples down the hill.
  You may, that mirror for a school,
  Be passionate, not bountiful
  As common beauties may,
  Who were not born to keep in trim
  With old Ezekiel's cherubim
  But those of Beauvarlet.
  I know what wages beauty gives,
  How hard a life her servant lives,
  Yet praise the winters gone:
  There is not a fool can call me friend,
  And I may dine at journey's end
  With Landor and with Donne.

• Notes on the poem
•  The cherubim of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 10:14) refers to the living creatures we discussed earlier with Chesterton and Revelation.  Here in Ezekiel, they
• Beauvarlet was a famous engraver/artist who depicted great aristocrats.  The idea from Yeats then, is that some people's physical and spiritual "trim" is more fitting to the falsely painted world of aristocrats than the living splendor of God.  Yeats is admonishing the artist to take care in choosing friends.  
• Yeats may dine, he thinks, with Landor and Donne, two great poets who died before Yeats was born.  

HW: CWP and Contest (honors)