Homework“To a Daughter Leaving Home,” Linda Pastan

Rita Dove, Mother Love read all by Friday

Creative Assignment Due 9/20

“Longings for Home”

1. How does Whitman depict his “home” region of the South?

2. What is the tone? Describe the poem’s pathos, or emotional charge.

3. What tensions are present in the poem?

4. How does he use genre to produce this representation of home?

5. How does “Home as a Region” fit in?

“Sweet Home Alabama”

•Lynyrd Skynyrd, southern rock 70s•sprouted from American folk/Americana, adds electric guitar•Influences include Elvis and Buddy Holly•working class focus, concerns of common man•response to Neil Young’s “Alabama” and “Southern Man”

“Sweet Home Alabama”

•How do the genre, music, and lyrics relate to their representation of south?

•How does Whitman’s depiction of the South relate to “Sweet Home Alabama”?

•How does “Home as a Region” fit in?

“This Land is Your Land”

•Woody Guthrie, young in the 30s-40s, from Oklahoma, Okie/dustbowl

•Associated with communist groups

•1940 response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”

“This Land is Your Land”

•American folk music, one of the fathers

•roots music, originated Great Depression/dust bowl

•sources are blues, honky tonk

•source OF rock n roll

•usually focuses on common man, problems of work, economic inequality

“This Land is Your Land”

“A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is or who's out of work and where the job is or who's broke and where the money is or who's carrying a gun and where the peace is.” –WG, http://www.woodyguthrie.org

“This Land is Your Land”

How does the song relate to “Sweet Home Alabama” and Whitman?

How has “Home as a Region” expanded in this incarnation?

“My Wife’s Hometown”

•Bob Dylan, 60s American folk revival

•civil rights and anti-war, political commentary, usually leftist, focused on common man, inspired by Guthrie

•Dylan went from folk to electric to experimental, “My Wife’s Hometown” 2009 album back to folk

•How does My Wife’s Hometown play with generic expectations of home as region?

“Letter From Home”

1. What is the poetic situation?

1. What is the meter? What is the mood? How are the two related?

1. What is the tension in the poem? How do objects in the poem relate to its tension?

1. In what way can we see the influences of Thoreau and Whitman?