Walter Bowne may pontificate on the glories of Walt Whitman; or regale listeners to his travels to the Frost Farm in New Hamposhire; or speculate on the miracles in Emily Dickinson; he may lecture long on Greek and Roman rhetoric; he may sopar box on college costs; and he may even say something wise about literature, writing, and the human condition.
The Teacher Dude reads this narrative essay for his English class.
A discussion between two Honors students, Megan and Maria, about the Broadway play and the changes made to suit Hollywood.
What were we doing ‘hangin' round' in Colorado, anyway? The original essay can be be accessed here: https://medium.com/the-riff/michael-nesmith-saved-us-on-phantom-canyon-road-b5521bbb52f4?sk=f89829fa4e958d30b0697d5ea203bc67
This should have recorded video, but here is only the audio. If time allows, I will redo.
Laura Silenzio '23 reads Helen Keller's famous essay for English III Honors.
Read by Faith Lee '23 for AP Lang and Comp. This essay first appeared in Newsweek in 1998.
Read by Rachel Boroda '23. This essay was published in the NYT Magazine in 1986.
Read by Mahawa Bangoura '23. Mr. Raymond wrote this essay for the NY Times in 1976. He was a high school student in CT.
Salvage Your Writing from The Wrath of Readers and Editors and Bowne
Varying the sentence structure will make your writing more engaging and less tiresome to read
Walter Bowne dissects his award-winning essay to reveal the art and craft of writing
Walter Bowne discusses the aspects of the research paper for fiction. Image by No Lubos Houska on by Pixabay
Here are the first set of directions for the nonfiction research paper
Never trust your inner navigator when traveling in the wilderness.
Walter Bowne reads, coldly and with his mask on, Miller's introduction to The Crucible for context to the play
AP Scholars have the choice of a novel from the Golden Age of the Novel: the 19th Century or a book from contemporary nonfiction. After this project, we'll flip the list for the following month, and if you read a novel, you'll get a chose a nonfiction work.
Walter Bowne talks about what makes the character of Jay Gatsby "great." Let's just say it's complicated.
Walter Bowne lectures from the back of his Kia Sorento during lunch at school about Flannery O'Connor's famous short story.
From the back of his Kia Sorento, Walter Bowne speaks about John Steinbeck's amazing story of an isolated woman in an isolated valley in December who so wants to compete in a world run by men. Who is the only one who sees her children, her art? A con man who symbolically "uses her" and her husband who only sees profit in her "art." Her husband cannot even recognize her "as a woman." Does he even know his own wife? Why does it a take a stranger for her to remove her "costume" of "men's clothing"?
Audio version of Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums. Background music: Kevin MacLeod's "Sad Trio." Heartfelt Melodies 2006
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this famous "gothic" short stort in 1892, two years before "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. The stories from women writers offer insight into the plight and loneliness and isolation of women. Such isolation is often equated with madness. Let's take a quick look at this story and a short summary of Gilman's biography.
Walter Bowne reads from the back of his Sorento during Covid this tale of power and domination. When is the use of force necessary? Was it necessary in this story?
Let's take an intimate look at the characterization of Tom Buchanano: a vile, powerful, wealthy, hypocritical, and racist character by picking at the words that Fitzgerald uses to describe such a man who existed in numerous manifgestiations in the eugenics of the 1920s and 1930s, leading up to World War II and The Holocaust. Eugenics: "the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups."
Walter Bowne analyzes the first few pages of The Great Gatsby where Fitzgerald establishes the credibility and morality of the teller of his tale.
William Bradford, John Smith, Ben Franklin, and Frederick Douglass: all famous for personal narratives; all written for a specific purpose and auidence; consider how the past impacts the present; what can we learn from these writers? Can we believe everything they write? Why not? What type of persona are they crafting? What is the danger of believing what may be fictionalized as being passed off as truth. Think about writing a "conversational essay" where you address a topic from one or more of these narratives in an informal manner: divergent, digressive, pulling in current events and personal story, to create an essay that's interesting, engaging, and insightful.
Walter Bowne reviews the following with examples from the short fiction unit. 1) Symbol 2) Foreshadowing 3) Conflict: Internal and External Conflict 4) Plot, linear narrative verses nolinear narrative narrative 5) Characterization 6) Setting 7) Theme: think about authorial intention. 8) Tone/ Mood
Walter Bowne describes the Art of the First-Person Literary Narrative.
Must by: Arcadia by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3377-arcadia License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This essay is all about effective descrition. Use imagery when writing. Concrete details. Concrete nouns and active verbs. Metaphor. Simile. Analogy.
Walter Bowne talks about how we often become the person we admire in the books we read and the stories we hear; as you write your own autobiography, a condensed bildungsroman, a novel of the development of a character, listen to this passage from David Copperfield; notice the long list of books, and what youg David felt about these books, and characters; he reveals much about himself, and no one really cared for this tiny room with his father's books except young David, That young David, is course, or will become, the great Charles Dickens.
On a Tuesday morning, Walter Bowne reads, sometimes poorly, and with much haste, and a cold read at that, this amazing story for his hopefully attentive students. A better version may follow while recording from home studio. idk. Enjoy, I hope.
Walter Bowne takes us to the train station on the line from Barcelona to Madrid to understand the conversation of this very troubled couple.
Walter Bowne discusses power and submission and the educated class and the working class in this powerful short story that still resonates today.
Walter Bowne gets his wife to stop what she was doing to help record this audio of Hemingway's short story. So what is the "it"? that the couple are talking about, anyway?
Walter Bowne muses and considers the deeper meanings to this penetrating short story that Hemingway considered as "his favorite."
Ethan is an AP Language and Composition scholar from Eastern High School.
Arianna reads Kaufman's essay from Models for Writers for AP Language and Composition.
Walter Bowne reads Zinsser's useful essay about how to "cut the fat" from writing.
David wrote this essay when he was in high school. It appeared in the New York Times in 1976. He graduated from Curry College in 1981. This comes from the compilation of essays, "Models for Writers."
This episode comes from Gregory's autobiography "N****" that was published in 1964.
What makes this humorous essay effective? How does he make us laugh? Consider the framing device he uses. Consider the effectiveness of the dialogue and the decsription. Can we all relate to early love stories? What is the main point of the essay? What's the takeaway? How does the "elavated diction" convey the author's personality and tone of the piece?
Walter Bowne reads this great essay from Langston Hughes. Notice his use of dramatically short sentences and his effective use of ethos and pathos, and how much emotion we feel toward him, and the irony of the end. Also, take notice of extended metaphors like "sea of shouting" and "waves of rejoicing." The essay contains a ton of vivid description to make the reader or listening feel like we're in that church with him: "jet black faces " and "work knarled hands." It also has a very effective "hook" at the beginning: It's an antithesis: I was saved, but not really. "It happened like this." It's a great set-up for what will happen, and the story has a frame: it's all about the church scene, and the consequence of this scene, and the irony that he was supposed to be close to Jesus but could not believe in Jesus anymore because He did not come to save him. This true story reveals many ironies and subtle humor: Adults work in a symbolic world and young people live in "reality." Adults use words like "see" and kids take that word very literally. The essay also has brilliant dialogue that reveals the personality of Westley and the earnestness of the preacher and Sister Reed. Essays like this work on our own expereince with religion and the rough intersections between the kid world and the adult world. We wonder: when has something like this happened to me? What can I learn from Hughes' experience? Should I, too, pressure my own chidlren to attend church? Should I be more atuned to the "literal" world of children? What is my relationship with God?
On Episode #1, Walter Bowne introduces himself and this crazy course called "How Much Stuff Can One English Scholar Do in Ten Months?" aka, English III Honors with That Dude Who Teaches English. Welcome, scholars. Hold on tight.
Walter Bowne provides an argument to prove that independent reading is a major way we can "get smart" and learn to love to read again. Episiode #2
Mr. Bowne introduces AP Lang and Comp to his incoming scholars.
COVID-19 has moved the lecture hall to the North Patio of my house. More details soon to come about this deeply disturbing story.
Walter Bowne discusses the 20 reasons why reading The Scarlet Letter is worth it.
Dickinson has a passport to other worlds. Through her poetry, we can gain a deeper knowledge of this world and perhaps the next.
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