Excellent job leading the MLK Assembly, you brilliant people!
homework due tomorrow, printed out at 8:20am:
1. Read Bill Bryson’s “Wordplay” from his book I’m a Stranger Here Myself and David St. John’s poem “I have always loved the word guitar” (see below). Absent people–just read the poem below.
Then, write two poems about words, starting and ending with the lines “I have always loved the word __________ ” (or “I have always hated/disliked the word ________ “).
GUITAR
by David St. John
I have always loved the word guitar.
I have no memories of my father on the patio
At dusk, strumming a Spanish tune,
Or my mother draped in that fawn wicker chair
Polishing her flute;
I have no memories of your song, distant Sister
Heart, of those steel strings sliding
All night through the speaker of the car radio
Between Tucumcari and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Though I’ve never believed those stories
Of gypsy cascades, stolen hoses, castanets,
And stars, of Airstream trailers and good fortune,
Though I’ve never met Charlie Christian, though
I’ve danced the floors of cold longshoremen’s halls,
Though I’ve waited with the overcoats at the rear
Of concerts for lute, mandolin, and two guitars–
More than the music I love scaling its woven
Stairways, more than the swirling chocolate of wood
I have always loved the word guitar.