the collection contains a few poems translated into English from Irish, Welsh, Swedish, (as far as I read), but still feels very limited. Arbitrary riches rather than engineered instruction: that was what we were after. There were no lesson plans implicit in either the contents of The Rattle Bag or in their arrangement. What we hoped to do was to shake the rattle and awaken the sleeping inner poet in every reader. We proceeded in the faith that the aural and oral pleasures of poetry, the satisfactions of recognition and repetition, constitute an experience of rightness that can make the whole physical and psychic system feel more in tune with itself. We implicitly believed that a first exposure to poetry, the early schooling in it, should offer this kind of rightness, since it constitutes one of the primary justifications of the art. One of our inclusions, after all, was Gerard Manley Hopkins's "The Woodlark", which begins:

Bags of enlightenment | Books | The Guardian Seamus Heaney: Bags of enlightenment | Books | The Guardian

I can't help but wonder if all the poems by Anon were by women unable to be published...just a thought. Works of Irish poet Seamus Justin Heaney reflect landscape, culture, and political crises of his homeland and include the collections Wintering Out (1972) and Field Work (1979) as well as a translation of Beowulf (1999). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995. As poetry anthologies go, this is a veritable treasure trove of the great and the good; a non-formulaic collection of personal favourites chosen by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. This is one of my favorite songs to use in ELA. Mulan is my favorite Disney movie, so of course I bust out this song when teaching irony. This song is a fun example of dramatic irony, since the audience knows Mulan is a woman, and Li-Shang doesn’t. But this song could get more mileage if you were so inclined — there’s a powerful message about determination and bravery, even in the face of doubters (Sorry, Li-Shang, but you’re a doubter, bud.).

Want to read more about teaching literary elements? In these posts, I share texts and ideas for teaching symbolism , setting , figurative language , suspense and pacing , conflict , metaphor, and characterization. When my wife and I lived in Belfast in the late 1960s, our neighbours were an elderly couple called Wilson. In those days we had two toddlers in the house and they used to spend as much time with the Wilsons as they did at home. And one of the things Mrs Wilson used to repeat to the elder of them offers a good way into this discussion. "Michael," she would tell him, "you and Christopher are growing up, Granda Wilson and I are growing down, and your daddy and mammy are standing still." urn:lcp:isbn_9780571119769:epub:35e8a06f-4531-4df4-961e-431e5f8418ac Extramarc Brown University Library Foldoutcount 0 Identifier isbn_9780571119769 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t15m7b27w Isbn 057111976X

The Rattle Bag: An Anthology of Poetry: 1 - AbeBooks

Arranging the poems alphabetically by first line results in some lovely serendipities - strange and refreshing pairings which might have been missed if they’d gone for a thematic or chronological structure. Are you looking to revitalize your short story unit? Are your students just not getting irony? I’m here to help! Here are 5 fresh texts for teaching irony with short stories. I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but this delightfully creepy story will turn the readers’ expectations on their heads. The ending provides an outstanding example of situational irony. And as I noted, you could use this story with middle schoolers or high schoolers. It’s chilling, but not gory or graphic.Plus, since the new remake just dropped on Disney+, now is the perfect time to introduce our students to the classic version that we grew up with. There’s also a heavy emphasis on nature - no surprise when Heaney and Hughes are involved - though far too much cloying William Blake and tepid Robert Frost for my taste (and unfair on the other poets who don’t get such preferential treatment). Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His poems, plays, translations, and essays include Opened Ground, Electric Light, Beowulf, The Spirit Level, District and Circle, and Finders Keepers. Robert Lowell praised Heaney as the "most important Irish poet since Yeats." As editors, in other words, we were both products of a system that was fundamentally the one established by Renaissance humanists and grammarians in the 16th century. For all the revision of syllabi and inflection of the educational aims that had occurred in the intervening 400 years, there was one respect in which the 20th-century schools we attended resembled those that the Elizabethan authors in our anthologies would have attended 400 years earlier: we were still expected to fill our minds with what was on offer from the past, to remember it, to prove by examination that we retained it, and to prepare ourselves to think, feel and act in accordance with it during the years to come.

The Rattle Bag by Seamus Heaney | Goodreads The Rattle Bag by Seamus Heaney | Goodreads

the anthology was very white Anglo-European/North American male poet dominated. it felt abit like they chose poems considered 'classics', with a purpose, rather than a more interesting and wide ranging selection.Essentially, then, we older people who were editors and the younger people for whom we were to cater had travelled the same poetry route. But now, simply by reason of age and experience, Ted and I had encountered much work we wished we had encountered earlier, when we were at school. As writers, moreover, we also knew that the humblest and most unlikely material could lie behind the officially sanctioned selections in the prescribed texts and we were therefore prepared, as anthologists, to lie down with Yeats, where all the ladders start, in the old rag-and-bone shop of the heart - that is to say, in the unofficial as well as the official cultural deposits. There was, however, something official-sounding about the book that was named on our first Faber contract. We had agreed to compile a volume called The Faber Book of Verse for Younger People - a title that seems to carry some sort of educational health warning - but once we got going, we discovered that enjoyment rather than improvement would be our first criterion. Our advice to ourselves was to look for things that we'd have liked to have been introduced to early on. And for that reason much familiar canonical work was not included, since we took it for granted that our putative audience would also have had a chance to know it already. No Shakespeare sonnet appeared, for example; no George Herbert; no Milton; no Tennyson. In the end, the volume was too abundant, too frolicsome and too unruly to go by the rather headmasterly title in the contract, so all of a sudden Ted suggested we call it by the name of a strange roguish poem translated from the Welsh of Dafydd ap Gwilym. It's about an instrument that sounds more like an implement, a raucous, distracting, shake, rattle-and-roll affair that disturbs the poet and his lover while they lie together in the greenwood. In the words of the translator, Joseph Clancy, it becomes a noisy pouch perched on a pole, a bell of pebbles and gravel, "a blare, a bloody nuisance". We were wanting to serve notice that the anthology was a wake-up call, an attempt to bring poetry and younger people to their senses. And we wanted to do so for precisely those ends I outlined at the beginning. For the present delight of younger people. For the future nurture of mature people. For the now of perception. For the then of recollection. We intended the same material to prove equally rewarding for the one growing up, the one "standing still" - and, if all went well, for the one "growing down". The title is drawn from a slightly eerie poem about (perhaps?) interrupted ecstasy - not quite sure of the significance of this. As a whole the scope needs tightening - this could be an excellent anthology of poems originally written in English; instead they’ve included a sprinkle of marvellous (razor-sharp and salty) poems in translation - Serbian, Chinese, Navajo. They’re amazing - but either incorporate these fully and give them equal weight, or not at all? You’ll find great fodder here for discussing characterization, the impact of an omniscient narrator, the effect of camera cut-aways and montages (Gob trying in vain to throw the letter into the ocean), and all types of irony. AD started its life as a network show, so it’s got nothing more objectionable than some very light innuendo at the beginning (between Michael and Maeby) and one instance of ‘S-O-B’. All around, this episode is a win.

The rattle bag : an anthology of poetry : Heaney, Seamus The rattle bag : an anthology of poetry : Heaney, Seamus

I was optimistic about this anthology of poetry - a selection compiled/chosen by a couple of poets I quite like... but I was disappointed. Which brings me, in conclusion, to the kit bag - which might have been the title of The School Bag . In the end, we were swayed to the school bag because the kit bag had such a strong association with military action and suggested the solidarity of massed ranks rather than the sympathies of a well-schooled and many-minded individual. It conveyed an impression of positive certitude and imperial destiny rather than negative capability and common humanity. In our time, after all, a post-colonial time, in a world of multi-ethnic populations, the image of the marching man in khaki uniform, with his gun and his gear, is more of a menace than a promise. Sure, “Gift of the Magi” and “The Lottery” are classics for teaching irony, but they offer little in the way of inclusive representation. There is nothing wrong with these stories, but we can serve our students better by including a wider selection of voices and identities. I’m not asking you to stop teaching “The Lottery” or “Gift of the Magi”, but encouraging you to add some more inclusive short stories and supporting materials to your curriculum. it also contains some poems that are pretty problematic wrt stereotypes and racism - these could easily have been omitted. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-01-10 18:33:44 Boxid IA176201 Boxid_2 BWB220141022 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City London DonorThe method employed in arranging and presenting [the contents of this book] must surely be the one for all the best anthologies . . . The Rattle Bag sets a standard which other anthologies will find it difficult to equal."— Alan Brownjohn, The Times Literary Supplement (London) urn:oclc:614272945 Republisher_date 20120419140321 Republisher_operator [email protected];[email protected];[email protected] Scandate 20120418141001 Scanner scribe8.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Source In this award-winning short story, a young man remembers his Chinese mother’s efforts to connect with him through origami. Her origami, a symbol of her culture and love, is infused with a magic that makes it come to life. I don’t want to say much more about this story because it’s such a lovely read (and short!), so I’ll leave it at this: it is one of identity, class struggle, and family. What matters most in the end is the value that attaches to a few poems intimately experienced and well remembered. If at the end of each year spent in school, students have been marked by even one poem that is going to stay with them, that will be a considerable achievement. Such a poem can come to feel like a pre-natal possession, a guarantee of inwardness and a link to origin. It can become the eye of a verbal needle through which the growing person can pass again and again until it is known by heart, and becomes a path between heart and mind, a path by which the individual can enter, repeatedly, into the kingdom of rightness. This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."