- •Unit one
- •I will teach you in my verse
- •I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
- •Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
- •Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
- •Is a paling stout and spiky?
- •It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
- •Islington and Isle of Wight,
- •I like them all!
- •Unit two
- •I'm Joe Linn, I come from San Francisco. I'm leaving for Peking.
- •I'm going to learn Chinese. I know some words already
- •I hope you like Peking.
- •Unit three
- •It’s cuz we're concentrating
- •Is reality’s accordion. Unexpectedly
- •I thought this was
- •I took drama
- •Into my own hands and alongside
- •I told you not to do it and you did it again!
- •Unit four
- •Violently engaged. But it was the artists
- •I looked left toward the little bridge,
- •Incredibly enough, being led
- •In servizio sulla Linea Mediterraneo - Nord America sailing 1968
- •Unit five
- •It was “about breeding.”. Breeding yes, I flashed the thought of all the deaths
- •In the birdcage
- •In the face of “what counts
- •It’s pennies”. In o-eight
- •Unit six
- •In the feminist fable
- •Into activist or choose to manifest
- •In smokey loops
- •Unit seven
- •Is That Why They Call Them Flower Children?
- •In a high school senior play, shouting
- •In broken English and rapid Greek about tanks
- •Into citizens, just now, in the streets of Prague.
- •I was running
- •In the gutters
- •I still see blue sky and sea under sun and wind
- •Is a little dock, still a black rock beach, footprints
- •Unit eight
- •In search of Athena and Apollo’s
- •In different, steaming jungles in Vietnam.
- •Unit nine
- •Voice spilling. He will not
- •Voices soften thick air and as they sing every
- •If you run after two hares you will catch neither.
- •Unit ten
- •In rural Turkey?
- •I feel sure that was the afternoon
- •Unit eleven
- •In Athens the Greek music
- •I squint myself into your eight and ten year old eyes to conger
- •Into a monster. Other answers are better buried.
- •Sideducking Your Question
- •Family Game
- •Irresistible
- •Is a room whose boundaries invite me to compose
- •Is a room
- •Answering Machine
- •Into the room where only
- •The Business of a Clean Sweep
- •The Night House
- •Into half truths. Simply an issue of light.
- •In her house in the middle
- •University Weather
- •Clinic Wait
- •Is in an exam.
- •The Baroness of Ballard
- •In hers. He says
- •Is dying but she is hanging-on.
- •Salzbergwerk Berchtesgaden in Germany
- •I forget where we were headed but it rained.
- •It was dark, a musty smell and the guide’s voice
- •Passages in the Bad-Hotel Zum Hirsh
- •Milltown Maltbay, Cookery School
- •Fourth Day at the Literary Seminar
- •In pink overstuffed
- •You Hated to Practice
- •Our Teacher Says Music is Her Mission
- •In a room that is the color of ice. First Rehearsal of the Opera, "Andrea Chénier"
- •Emanuel Ax, Hunger & Taste
- •Barometric Pressure
- •Its little ledges of blue slow motion
- •Inflaming the cheek after the slap.
- •The Question of the Color of the Walls
- •In splats of blistering gold & refresh ourselves in grapefruit.
- •Eau de California
- •The Perfumer
- •Afterimage of the Bird of Passage
- •The Most Important Thing to Save When the House is Burning Down
- •I needed that.
In different, steaming jungles in Vietnam.
Thorny branches and oblong
pointed leaves had been standing since
the Bronze age. Here, the Goddess
Athena made peace with Zeus by offering
these olive trees bearing fruit, a healing shade.
Exercise 4. Discuss the poem with your friend or group-mate. Remember that you are not in competition with anyone, and that you will progress at your own rate:
Exercise 5. Listen and decode a song, translate and transcribe every line. Write down the unknown words into your dictionary. Use them in sentences of your own.
Exercise 6. Discuss the decoded song with the group.
Exercise 7. Read the list of synonyms. Work for precision with a minimum of tension. After you have accurately mastered the words for clarity, work for speed in repetition. Use the words in sentences of your own:
Desire, longing, craving, yearning, appetite, lust, long for, crave, covet, want, request, ask, need, wish, aspiration, urge.
Exercise 8. Imagine you and your friend are at one of the London theatres. Speak on the play you have seen. Repeat proper names for clarity of articulation.
Exercise 9. You have found a strange object. Describe it. Express your astonishment. Mind the usage of adjectives: amazing, awesome, hilarious, funny, cute, bright, awkward, nice, tiny, fine, antediluvian, ancient, old, prehistoric, mysterious, enigmatic etc. Repeat them for clarity of articulation.
Exercise 10. Read and transcribe the idioms below. Explain how you understand them: holy cats, well met; where are you snailing; where are you snuffling, get lost; how goes the enemy; I have it on the tip on my tongue, come down; still dishing your friends; you’ve got a fat city.
Exercise 11. Read, translate, transcribe and memorize a poem or a short text in prose. Repeat for clarity of articulation.
Unit nine
Exercise 1. Read, translate and transcribe the following poem by American poet Carol Levin from the collection “Place one foot here”. Write down all unknown words into your dictionary. Use them in sentences of your own:
A Tender Ordinary Down Home Boy Before He No’ed
Against the surge and surprised
as a spawning salmon suddenly
plunging upstream--
pushing against.
Urge forces my friend forward
fear should
be talking him back. No.
Greetings in his pocket neatly folded.
On time. Informed
by the cayenne
smack of the word on his lips--
his voice refuses
to take the oath.
He looks past the impliable neck
and raised right hand
of the Induction
Sergeant, no
no conscription
no military,
no yes sirs and Yes
Sir, no servant of manipulation,
no uniform. The no
sweeps him into the surge
of lawyers and hearings
and prison ahead and he tightens
his gut, keeps from soiling
his pants as he hears his own
Voice spilling. He will not
war. Not this war. Surprised at
the rush of energy that impels
him to say no
Nam---. Touched by the cold
spray of events wishing
to undo death. Fiercely longing
for mother’s goodnight
don’t-let-the-bedbugs-bite, kiss.
Exercise 2. Speak about your family. Use more adjectives to characterize your “folks”: tender, kind, polite, caressing, thoughtful, delightful, quick, bright, accurate etc. Repeat for clarity of articulation. Work for precision with a minimum of tension. After you have accurately mastered the phrases for clarity, work for speed in repetition.
Exercise 3. Repeat the following poem by Carol Levin over and over, pay your special attention to the usage of adverbs and adjectives . Mind your intonation. Be able to comment on the Intonation patterns:
Geography of Harmony
After an eyeful of ancient ruins
on an island in the Aegean, we’re
crammed tight as humanly possible. Lucky
with two seats, one each and one
child on each lap, people pushing over us.
Approximately fifty French teenage girls
share straps or seats swaying as they ride giggling
against the weary villager’s dejected faces, sweat
drenched trousers and shirts. A few at first, then all
the girls begin to sing old French folk songs. Fresh