[etni] Re: Billy and Jimmy
- From: רחל עמנואל <remanuel@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:39:59 +0200
One of the literary terms we have to teach is irony - so what better way to
do so!!
Happy Pesach
By the way, the Hebrew date of the launching of the Titanic exactly one
hundred years ago is the day we come back from vacation.
I am using that opportunity to review the third conditional - Had it not
been a moonless night ... Had it not been an uncommonly calm sea.....Had
another ship not turned off its radio equipment....
And of course, so that future generations would know --- If the iceberg had
inflicted more damage, had there been no rescue ship in the vicinity, had
the lifeboats encountered stormy seas, etc., none of the passengers would
have been saved and the world would never have known what happened......
My source is in a 1999 Jewish Observer article by Yaakov Astor - "Titanic
Lessons: The Famed Ship and the Message it Its Demise."
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Hellmann" <steveh@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 10:40 AM
Subject: [etni] Billy and Jimmy
> In a recent posting Jimmy Backer pointed to the irony of choosing
> "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins for the Bagrut literature
> program:
>
>
>
>
> "How curious it is that the HOTS selection of poetry includes his plea not
> to "tie the poem to a chair with a rope and torture a confession out of
> it"
> and not to beat "it with a hose to find out what it really means." How
> ironic that his "Introduction to Poetry" is made to go through the
> one-size-fits-all, hyper-analytical HOTS process!"
>
> I am sure that there are not many of us who have taught this poem who have
> not had students recognize and question the irony of studying poetry in
> precisely the way Collins derides. I would be grateful for any suggestions
> as how to explain this to them. without sharing my serious reservations
> about what they the students, and we the teachers are expected to achieve
> in
> teaching literature in this way.
>
>
>
> Chag Sameach,
>
> Steve Hellmann
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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