1. Learning Objectives Poetry 19 Date: Family Ode
To examine the theme of family.
To examine Odes.
To revise every technique we’ve done so far 

2. Learning Objectives To examine the theme of family. To examine Odes.
To revise every technique we’ve done so far 

3. Warm-up - In your exercise copy
List five people you know who deserve to be celebrated and treated well.

4. Notes
Ode: A poem that praises something or someone. It celebrates the ordinary as quite extraordinary.
(It can rhyme or not, it can be in stanzas or not. Any poem that praises someone can be an ode.)

5. An Ode to my Brother  
Oh brother. You are like The Rock, With strange one-liners that make no sense but are still cool. Oh brother, You pick the peppers, pickles and peanuts out of my food when cooking because they taste yucky. Thanks. Oh brother, Your brain is a giant computer. I don’t know how it works but I’m glad it does so well.
Oh brother,
Your Xbox games bring me so much joy.
They ask me to play them all and I cannot say no.  
You are smarter than Einstein,
Tougher than Cena and could beat Mcgregor.
Oh Brother,
Like Arny, you’ll always “be back”.

6. Exercise One - Creating your own Ode
The following are just tips. What’s most important is that you talk nicely about this family member or relative. Resist the urge to make fun of them.
The title should be ‘Ode to .....’
Speak directly to them.
Use lots of adjectives and verbs.
Use repeated lines (called a ‘R )
Remember every technique we have seen.

7. Homework
This is more a request than an order. Show the Ode to the person you wrote it about to be nice.

8. Learning Objectives Poetry 20 Date: Nature Prose
To examine prose poetry to revise.
To examine the theme of nature to stress our five senses.

9. Warm-up - In your exercise copy write down:
Two powerful outdoor memories.
Describe these memories using your senses:
I saw, I heard, I smelled, I felt, I tasted.

10. Notes
Prose Poetry: Poems written in ordinary form without the use of verses or stanzas. Poetic techniques such as alliteration, repetition and internal rhyme are used, otherwise it is just prose.
(Advice: Adjectives are bad – make sentences to ‘wordy’.)
(Interesting fact: Prose poetry started in France where people said it could never be used in English.)

11. I Am the Last… By Charles Simic
I am the last Napoleonic soldier. It’s almost two hundred years later and I am still retreating from Moscow. The road is lined with white birch trees and the mud comes up to my knees. The one-eyed woman wants to sell me a chicken, and I don’t even have any clothes on. The Germans are going one way; I am going the other. The Russians are going still another way and waving good-by. I have a ceremonial saber. I use it to cut my hair, which is four feet long.

12. Warning to the Reader By Robert Bly
Sometimes farm granaries become especially beautiful when all the oats or wheat are gone, and wind has swept the rough floor clean. Standing inside, we see around us, coming in through the cracks between shrunken wall boards, bands or strips of sunlight. So in a poem about imprisonment, one sees a little light.      But how many birds have died trapped in these granaries. The bird, seeing freedom in the light, flutters up the walls and falls back again and again. The way out is where the rats enter and leave; but the rat’s hole is low to the floor. Writers, be careful then by showing the sunlight on the walls not to promise the anxious and panicky blackbirds a way out!      I say to the reader, beware. Readers who love poems of light may sit hunched in the corner with nothing in their gizzards for four days, light failing, the eyes glazed . .      They may end as a mound of feathers and a skull on the open boardwood floor...

13. Exercise One - Creating your own Prose
What you need:
Like a sonnet, a problem and answer structure is effective.
It is a story so describe what is there using your senses.
Short, to the point lines are recommended.
Remember your poetical techniques .
Two paragraphs look nicer than a block of writing any day.

14. Homework
Revise and good luck