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Activities on "A Supermarket in California" by Allen Ginsberg
activites ginsberg
Warm-up:
the teacher will introduce the next
activities telling the class some details about the author and why a
friend
of Ginsberg’s had called him a
"first rate ranter", how his early poetry had its
natural background in the coffeebars and
art galleries of San Francisco and especially how Ginsberg conceived
poetry as
communication and a collective ritual.
(5 minutes)
Listening:
First activity- while listening to the
teacher reading the poem aloud, learners
will have to take notice of the tone of voice, of the pauses and of
what
Ginsberg called "breath units" (“a line ought to end when breath
ends” ).
(5 minutes)
While-reading:
Second
activity- then, each student will be
given the text
of the poem and will read the text silently, underlining names of
people and
natural elements in it.
At this point,
the comprehension of the vocabulary will be checked by the teacher.
(10 minutes)
Third
activity - students
will have to circle, with a colored pencil, the personal pronouns"I"
and "you", in order to make out who is talking and to whom the poetry
may be dedicated (Walt Whitman, that
is).
(5 minutes)
activites ginsberg
Fourth activity -
once the scene, the speaker and the
addressee are identified, students will have to read lines 6-16 and
correct the
following statements:
1. the poet sees housewives shopping while their
husbands are at work
2. he meets the poet Garcia Lorca buying
tomatoes
3. Walt Whitman is quarreling with the
grocery boys
4. Whitman wants to know the price of pork
chops
5. the store detective is following a
customer
6. the speaker buys artichokes
(10 minutes)
Fifth activity-
then,
learners will be asked to answer the following questions:
1.What is the speaker/poet wondering about?
2.How does he feel?
3.What image of the future does he have in
mind?
4.Who is Walt Whitman to him?
(5 minutes)
Sixth activity
- in plenary, the teacher will ask the
class to
tell him/her what kind of verse the poem is written in ( traditional,
experimental, or free) and, considering the use of punctuation, what
sentences
prevail in the text.
(5 minutes)
Seventh activity- now the learners, individually, will
have to find examples of irony in the text and explain them to the rest
of the
class.
(5 minutes)
Post reading:
As a last
activity, the teacher will discuss with the class about the main points
emerged
from the analysis: the first point may be the criticism that
Ginsberg wants to convey, juxtaposing Walt Whitman's America to his modern
America, doomed by consumerism and heartlessness; another
point that the poet makes is the dearth of illuminating
images in the present, in contrast
with a sort of past Eden.
(10 minutes)
Homework:
As a homework, students
will have to write a short (50 words) rap song,
with or without rhymes, in which they will express criticism against
something
they do not like in their own society.
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