Why 1950?

After learning all about the fall of WWII in our last unit, as a class, we jumped right into the raging rise of the Beat Generation. As we walked along side the white picket fences of the suburbs, we noticed the prominent dividing line between the house wives, and husbands out on their perfect green lawns, and the beat niks.   

From here, we were to study the works of these poets, the view on these poets (at the time), and the subjects they focused their poetry around. All so that we could use their techniques to create this style of poetry ourselves.

Driving Question: “How can we use poetry to reflect our perspectives on people, places, issues, and beliefs?”

 

As I learned about these poets, and their beliefs, I began to gain knowledge as to how important issues can be spread from person to person.

Curricular Competencies

Historical Perspective:

And because in PLP we never look at any subject only for what it is, we dug deeper to find a meaning that applied to us as students. 

Before I completed this unit, I thought of the 1950’s as a time of pinstriped dresses, and bubbly people, and it’s true, apart of the 50’s was like this, but there was a whole other side of society. Not everyone wanted to conform, to live in a neighbourhood surrounded by other neighbourhoods, and settle down in a house with a family by the age of 30. People rebelled, and wanted the freedom to experiment with foreign things, such as Buddhist religion, drugs, and free sexuality. All of this exploration was documented, and expressed through works of poetry, in which I studied deeply throughout this unit 

Create:

We focused on the 1950’s, specifically the beat poetry that emerged within this decade. After WWII people had the freedom to do what they wanted, a chance to express themselves for the first time in years. While studying the people during this time, I had to keep this in mind. The poetry that I watched, and read from the Beat Generation, always seemed to tie back to anti-conformity, or anti-establishment. It was important for me to remember the mindset of the Beat Niks as I studied them, because I was writing poetry of my own. This poetry I wrote for this project, was meant to be inspired not specifically by the Beat Generation, but their mindset. 

Building Knowledge

A big part of beat poetry was the rebellion against classical literature, and the poets who wrote it. And in order to get closer to understanding these poets, and their mindsets, we had to study them directly.

I studied Carolyn Cassady. I was suprised to learn that her only valid significance to the beat poets was her husband Neal Cassady, and her love affair with Jack Kerouac. Although I was disappointed to find out that my essay on beat poets would have to be written about someone who wasn’t a beat poet I still found a way to justify her significance in a different light.

Much of the recorded history of Carolyn Cassady was based around her having to take responsibility for Neal, Jack, and Allen, as they acted without their heads for most of their careers. She was also extremely genuine, when she was interviewed during the beat poet era, and in her later years, she was honest about the lives of the poets, and her own.

The Product

The goal was to dig deeper, to search my brain to locate the topics that meant the most, the parts of my life in which had the most effect on me. And from there, create poetry from them.

This is my collection of poetry that I created for this project. Its called “A Haunting Familiarity” and I’m really proud of it, I feel as though I’ve discovered a new way to explain my thoughts. I liked that I wasn’t restricted to one style of poetry either, I was able to create poems using rhymes, hyperboles, personifications, and many more literary devices. 

Above is one of my poems from “A Haunting Familiarity”, here, I’ve highlighted all the literary devices that I displayed within the poem. This amount of description was used in each of my poems.

It was a very refreshing process to write these poems, and even more refreshing to present them at the winter exhibition. 

The Big Night

Each winter, PLP creates a winter exhibition. And each year that a new Star Wars movie is released we celebrate by incorporating  the theme of Star Wars to our learning, and presentation at our winter exhibition. Each grade had a part of Star Wars to recreate in their space, my class had Tatooine, specifically: Mos Eisley’s Cantina.

This is my second set at the exhibition, where I read two of my poems from “A Haunting Familiarity”, called “Circle”, and “Count”. When the plan of the exhibition being a combination of Star Wars, and Beat Poetry was announced to our class, I was very skeptical. “Its two completely different topics, how is that gonna work?”, I thought to myself. But it worked out great, we created a bar just like in the cantina, set up spoke round tables facing our stage for our performances. 

What did I take away 

Poetry is for all the time, you can express your self in more than one way. Before this unit, if I was given an assignment where I had to write about myself I would probably go to (the most logical answer in my brain) an essay of sorts. But after working so closely with poetry, I’ve found a writing medium that works for me that I’m confident in. So much can be expressed with word choice, and organization. I hope to have the chance to work with poetry again this school year.