Sunday, November 1, 2009

A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson, Houghton, 2004(?)
Our poetry selection is very somber indeed. Sonnets, Petrachan or Shakespearean are a difficult concept for middle and early high schoolers. The pairing of a sonnet wreath and the subject of Emmett Till's murder/lynching elevates this piece to either accelerated Freshman, or Junior/Senior English. One aspect that could make this more accessible would be to look at the author's purpose, and show how sonnets can say so much more than the surface images. This is where the author notes both before and after could come in handy. I have not taught this but I am sure that if I were to add it as a unit, I would need to do a lot more background information on meter, lyrical structure, and allusions.
As far as how she incorporates illustrations, I felt that this is where my inderstanding broke down alittle. The obvious images, like the boot, the tree or the shadowy figures, I got, but some of the full page spreads picked up on images that I did not think important. I kept going back to the sonnet from that page trying to figure out how it meshed. In a few instances, I just chaulked it up to my lack of knowledge of the allusions. Now that I have learned that artists and author do not always collaborate I wonder if the illustrations are just not representative.
The use of figurative language, and allusions, I think, could be used in an honors or accelrated classroom to show how a modern day topic can be addressed with a poetic straucture. This would be a very rigorous unit, but because many of the allusions and images are known, or covered in high school history. I think students could relate to it somewhat.
I myself enjoyed the way she addressed different aspects of this dispicable crime, how she tied in other monstrousities from not only our history, but other countries as well. I thought her use of symbols to express the extreme pain and anger was effective. Sometimes the symbol can be stronger than a profuse description. The horror of this lynching and the horror of the mother's pain is more precisely expressed through a few strong images, at least, this is my opinion.
Liz
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2 comments:

  1. Camel MomNovember 1, 2009 at 4:29 PM

    Camel Mom said...
    Blog for, A Wreath for Emmett Till, by Marilyn Nelson, Houghton Mifflin 2005

    I had no knowledge of who Emmett Till was until after I read this poem book about him.

    I am not a fan of poetry. Perhaps because of the reasons our textbook states. I did enjoy the fun Nursery rhymes as a child and poems by Edgar Allan Poe because I could understand them and they were unique. I think what I disliked in school was the analyzing. I really began to dislike them when teachers asked what the author was thinking about when writing the poem. This always bothered me. How was I supposed to know what a poet of the 18th or 19th century was thinking when he or she wrote the poem? When I did give an answer, it was always wrong. Maybe because I didn't have any background knowledge of the poet or the setting of the poem. My teachers didn't ever explain those things to the class.
    I think that's the reason I had a difficult time with some of the sonnets in this poetry book. I understood some of the symbolism after I researched who Emmet Till was and why his story was so important. Even then, I wasn't sure about all of them. I appreciated having Emmet's story and the sonnet notes at the end of the book. This really helped in my understanding of some of the symbolism I was unsure of.

    I understood the reference Nelson made between Emmett's mother and Mary, the mother of Jesus and the reference to Hamlet because I am familiar with both but had difficulty with others. I had no idea that there had been poems written about lynchings so I didn't understand Nelson's reference to the haunted tree until I read the sonnet notes.

    I think what I like most, was being introduced to a part of history that I had not known before and learning a new style of poetry. I liked that each sonnet began with the last line of the one that came before it to connect them together.

    Thank you for suggesting this book. It is one that I think that if I were a Language Arts teacher I would definitely have this on my shelf. This is also a powerful book for a History teacher to have in order to introduce the real reason for the start of the Civil Rights movement in the United States.
    November 1, 2009 12:31 PM

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  2. Camel MomNovember 1, 2009 at 4:49 PM

    Liz I'm with you on the illustrations. There are some that are quite obvious and others I couldn't understand until after I read the author's notes about Emmet's story and the sonnet summaries.

    On the full page with the wreath made of what looks like thorns rope and chains, with a boy looking through and the 5 crows looking on I wondered why the chain in the wreath? When I read the summaries I was able to put together that the crows were the men who lynched Emmett and the one standing alone on the first page is the husband of the woman who Emmett allegedly whistled at. The wreath is made up of the items the men used to torture and tie Emmett up with and of course the boy is Emmett. What I find interesting is that the illustrator chose black crows to represent the men. Is it because crows aren't really black but a dark blue/purple color? Is it to represent that they had malintent in their hearts when they did this to Emmett represented by the color black? Is it that the color black and crows can represent death? So many way to interpret. I guess it's all in how one looks at it.
    I also agree that Nelson's use of symbolism was very effective in this poem to help illustrate the horrible way these men murdered an innocent young man for something that he used as a strategy to help him with his stuttering and the pain his mother felt losing him. A very powerful poem.

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