This week you are reading “I Found Orpheus Levitating” by Nick Carbo and “A Latin Primer” by Derek Walcott

This week you are reading “I Found Orpheus Levitating” by Nick Carbo and “A Latin Primer” by Derek Walcott. Both poems deal with themes of cultural dominance, hegemony, and assimilation. Watch the two videos about these poems and then contribute to the discussion thread.

In your first post, choose a few lines from each poem and compare and/or contrast how these two poems comment on or represent cultural dominance, hegemony, or assimilation. (Make sure you watch the videos before you do this.) Practice using poetry terms like rhyme, meter, and enjambment in your post. In particular, rhyme and meter are important in Walcott’s poem. Practice using cultural terms too, like hegemony and assimilation.

In the video about Carbo’s poem, I discuss these terms and how they relate to Carbo’s text. Do these two poems say the same things about culture? Or do they say something different? What about the perspectives of the speakers in each poem – what about these perspectives seems similar and what seems different? As always, end your first post with a question that will prompt others to think through the ideas in these poems. Did a particular line seem confusing to you or make you rethink the way you understood how culture was being thought about in one of the poems? Did an image or line seem particularly important, but you aren’t sure why? Did a question occur to you as you compared and contrasted the lines from these two poems?

In your second post, Use ideas as another opportunity to practice using poetry terms and culture terms. See if you can tie you’re an idea to a specific line or lines from one or both of the poems.