You’ve eagerly anticipated this announcement: the date of the next Literary Arts Festival!
The 2015 Literary Arts Festival will be held on Thursday, March 26th!
Save the date! Spread the word! Tell your friends and classmates! Get ready!
The City Tech Literary Arts Festival
Celebrating literary arts throughout the City Tech community
You’ve eagerly anticipated this announcement: the date of the next Literary Arts Festival!
The 2015 Literary Arts Festival will be held on Thursday, March 26th!
Save the date! Spread the word! Tell your friends and classmates! Get ready!
If you’re teaching “The Gardenia,” this is a lovely video– Lady Day sings with Louis Armstrong here.
http://youtu.be/CJb5mxuZ-9g
If you haven’t already, please try to incorporate Cornelius Eady’s work in your classes. Even just reading and discussing a poem or two with your students will enrich the experience of then seeing the author read at the Literary Arts Festival next week. Also, the English Department sent out some activities and assignments; if you misplaced these or would like to ask any questions about them, please don’t hesitate to email me (rostrom AT citytech.cuny.edu). My students really enjoyed doing the negative image assignment– it’s low-stakes and without even realizing it, the students end up doing a close reading of the poem. I also had one of my classes choose their favorite lines and create a cento poem. This is quick and fun to see how they connect the different poems.
Watch some video of Cornelius Eady now!
Introductions
Part 1: Starting and setting it up
Part 2: Poetry
Part 3: Music!
Part 4: missing?
Part 5: More music
Where are you finding your samples of Cornelius Eady’s fantastic writing? Let’s crowdsource the effort and share what we’ve found by commenting on this post. Just click above where it says how many replies there are, and add yours.
Your wishes were granted: the Writing Competition deadline was extended until today! Just an hour remains for you to submit your work. Be sure to follow the instructions and submit your best work in the appropriate category. Best of luck!
Are you a City Tech student, faculty member, or staff member interested in submitting your work for the Literary Arts Festival? If so, please consider submitting your work for the Writing Competition–you can win fame and fortune if yours fares well with the judges. The catch? the deadline is TODAY! Mere hours remain in the competition!
For more information, refer back to this earlier post about the competition, or check out this poster:
From Prof. Robert Ostrom in the English Department, here are a series of assignments instructors might use with students to bring Cornelius Eady’s work into the classroom. Students might use these to interact with Eady’s writing outside of class. Some of these assignments involve critical writing, and others involve creative writing. Refer to this earlier post linking out to some of Eady’s writing to have poems to work with. If you have further suggestions, want to offer feedback, or want to share how a particular assignment worked for you, please feel free to reply to this post with a comment.
I. Poetry Explication Assignment
1. Response
Read and respond to one of Cornelius Eady’s poems. How does the poem make you feel? Does it remind you of a personal experience you’ve had or a story you’ve heard?
2. Answer the following questions.
A.    Voice
B.    Form and Word Choice
C.    Imagery
D.   Theme
3. Response
Revisit your initial response to this poem. Write a paragraph explaining how your understanding and feelings about the poem have changed.
II. Narration Description Assignment
 Write a short personal narrative using one of Cornelius Eady’s lines as a title or epigraph. Be sure to incorporate narrative elements such as setting, plot, point of view and pacing. In addition, use descriptive (sensory) details to paint a vivid picture for your reader.
III. Compare and Contrast Assignment
 Write an essay comparing and contrasting Cornelius Eady’s “The Gardenia” and Langston Hughes’ “Song for Billie Holiday.” Be sure to include a discussion of form and content. You may also include your own response to these poems.
Song for Billie Holiday
by Langston Hughes
What can purge my heart
Of the song
And the sadness?
What can purge my heart
But the song
Of the sadness?
What can purge my heart
Of the sadness
Of the song?
Do not speak of sorrow
With dust in her hair,
Or bits of dust in eyes
A chance wind blows there.
The sorrow that I speak of
Is dusted with despair.
Voice of muted trumpet,
Cold brass in warm air.
Bitter television blurred
By sound that shimmers–
Where?
IV. Negative Image Poetry Activity
How can you “negate” or otherwise alter a poem?
Quite literally, you may take the opposite or antonym of each word you come across, keeping in mind that some words, which seem to have no opposite, have dozens of opposites. For example, the opposite of potato is clearly …pineapple, or kudzu, or sweetheart…
V. Scaffolding Poetry Activity
 After reading Cornelius Eady’s “Crows in a Strong Wind,” go through the poem and cross out all nouns, adjectives and main verbs. You may leave the pronouns and helping verbs. Next, rewrite the poem using your own nouns, adjectives and verbs.