Writer’s Clinic Some tips for potency

Tip: Use ADJECTIVE PHRASES (aka appositives) Innocence is what Blake is showing in the first poem, a picture of heavenly innocence contrasted with dark injustice.

Tip: How do I get students to write with RS? What are the best ones doing? What’s an EASY way to get stylistic and smart? DENSITY

DENSITY in… T extual E vidence A nalysis R hetorical S ophistication

Tip: ADJECTIVE PHRASES (appositives) How do they work? #2 They choose early, middle, or late sentence They always talk about a NOUN in the sentence (not some other verb or adj) They comma, then speak the phrase Blake, the late Romantic poet, objects to child labor, which he presents in black contrast to the white innocence children should enjoy.

Tip: ADJECTIVE PHRASES (appositives) How do you use them work? 1. Repeat the noun, in fuller detail  I bludgeoned him with a chair, a chair that splintered with my repeated blows. 2. Use that or which  I bludgeoned him with a chair, which splintered with my repeated blows. 3. Describe the noun with -ING  I bludgeoned him with a chair, crushing his larynx with the front leg.

Tip: ADJECTIVE PHRASES (appositives) How do they work? Innocence is what Blake is showing in the first poem, a picture of heavenly innocence contrasted with dark injustice. Both poems occur under very similar circumstances, where the child has been abandoned by parents and born into solemnity and servitude—and of course is a chimney sweep. NOT ADJ PHRASE: Both poems occur under very similar circumstances and the child has been abandoned by parents and born into solemnity and servitude and of course is a chimney sweep.

Tip: ADJECTIVE PHRASES (appositives) How do they work? In Blake’s first poem, God is portrayed as a loving entity who strives to embetter the lives of his people. This is done with Blake’s sense of imagery, linking God and His angel to visions of a “green plain,” “a river,” “the sun,” and “clouds.” These images, juxtaposed with “soot” and “coffins of black”, both linked to the real world, present God as a compassionate being, taking a small boy away from his toils in life and raising him into a Garden of Eden, if you will. --Will Dahlen

Tip: ADJECTIVE PHRASES (appositives) support sophistication DASH Make your idea sophisticated…  Once again, Blake conjures up an image of divinity, but—unlike the paradise created in the former poem--Blake’s idea of divinity is represented in words such as “church” (4), “pray”, “praise”, all humanistic outreaches to God, versus the Angel who reaches down to the children.