Faith Frampton INTD 503 Casey and Gutierrez Pedagogical Paper – “Howl” One of the seminal texts of the Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems has stayed in print since 1956 (“Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,’” 2008). The Academy of American Poets attributes this success to its universal themes of “personal freedom, resistance to authority, the search for ecstasy (physical, aesthetic, and religious), and the nature of America” (2008). These ideas, along with disillusionment, permeated the Generation, therefore Ginsberg’s “Howl” would function very well as an anchor piece for an Advanced Placement Literature unit on the Beat Generation (“Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,’” 2008; Davidson, 2013, p. 67). Poet Michael McClure describes Ginsberg’s …show more content…
In my experience, AP Literature students are academically oriented and mature. I would not teach “Howl” to younger students, or even grade-level seniors. Still, as focused and mature these students would be, the material in Ginsberg’s poem is different. It challenges the idea of what a poem is and what is typical; likely, students will think “Howl” is weird or freaky and have a hard time getting through it. Additionally, many of my students in the past have had difficulty understanding poetry, probably because of its lineation. To combat all of this, I would give students a hard copy of the poem, but I would also present “Howl” to them as a flipped …show more content…
They should bring in the song on a CD and the lyrics. This task should be engaging for them, because many teenagers connect to music, and a lot of music today embodies the ideals of the Beat Generation; Lana Del Rey and Lorde come to mind. After we listen to several contemporary songs as a class, I will introduce students to music and artists from the time period, or who were influenced by the Generation, including Bob Dylan, Charlie Parker, and Frank Sinatra (Wilentz, 2010; Bloch). Students will listen to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Dylan, “Thrivin’ on a Riff” by Parker, and “Someone to Watch over Me” by Sinatra (Bloch, and an old classmate’s suggestion). They will receive the song lyrics to analyze and will explain how the songs relate to the Generation and to each other. They will do so individually, then we will have a Socratic Seminar in which they discuss preset questions as a group and I do very little talking. The fourth aspect of Beat Generation art students will explore is theatre. I will give groups of students scenes from The Beat Generation by Jack Kerouac, which they will read and perform for the class. They will have at least two class periods to practice their scenes, then, after each group as performed, I want students to explain how the play embodies the Generation and how it helped them further understand the period (Shea,