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Stages and Strategies
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This section will develop the fundamental skills you need to analyze poetry. As you saw in the Introducción: Getting Started, all of the literary genres share the first two stages of reading, but the strategies for poetry differ in the third and fourth stages. This has to do with the physical nature of the text. In poetry, every word is critically important, so the reading strategies for poetry must treat each word as a part of the whole.

Remember that the stages and strategies for reading any genre represent a process that builds on itself. With practice, tasks that at first seem awkward or tedious eventually become second nature. Many students find that the ability to analyze poetry is a skill more easily acquired working in groups. What you might not see, someone else will. Therefore, you are strongly encouraged to work with your study group even when not specifically instructed to.

Stage I. Develop Cultural/Historical Framework

Strategy 1. Create/Add to Graphic Organizer

Task 1. Create Graphic Organizer. If you began your study of literature with the narrative, you already should have a cultural/historical framework into which you can insert the information on poetry. If you are beginning with poetry, you will have to create a graphic organizer. For more specific guidelines, see Stage I, Strategy 1, in Chapter 1: La narrativa.

Task 2. Enter Information. Using your course syllabus, determine the chronological placement of all the poets you will be studying. Enter them into your graphic organizer. As you study these poets and their poetry, you will add the information you discover to your cultural/historical framework, providing yourself with a broad overview of the chronological, cultural, and historical development of Hispanic poetry.

Strategy 2. Expand Background Knowledge

Task 1. Activate Prior Knowledge.

1.
Think about any high school or college class in which you have studied poetry, whether in Spanish or English. What do you remember? Ana María Fagundo wrote after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. What do you know about that historical time in Spain and Europe?

Task 2. Key Word Search.

2.
Look at the key words you listed in Task 2 of Panorama histórico. Now that you know when Ana María Fagundo wrote and published, what words might you add to that list? Use at least three of them within a broader category--for example, geography, language, music--to do a computer and/or library search of that era, relating the information to the poet. Document the key words you use, the category you research, and a brief summary of the information you find.

Task 3. Personal Research. Find a personal source of information (a professor, instructor, local teacher, friend, graduate student, librarian) who is interested in the genre, the poetry and/or history of Spain, the poet, or a related topic. Try to expand your knowledge base by talking to that person about the topic(s) of your research. Document your discoveries here.

3.
With whom did you talk?
4.
What did you learn?
5.
What could you do to find out more about the topic?

Strategy 3. Use Textbook as Resource

Task 1. Elaborate. Take the information you gathered from the Panorama histórico section and Strategy 2, and add it to the graphic organizer from Strategy 1.

Task 2. Skim.

6.
Skim Vida y obra in the introduction to Ana María Fagundo, on pages 230-231 of the text. How would you describe the quality of her life so far?

Task 3. Scan.

7.
Scan La autora y su contexto in the introduction to Fagundo. Note the key words and phrases that confirm and/or augment what you learned about her in the Panorama histórico section.
8.
Now find at least three additional pieces of information about Fagundo's life or her particular contribution to Spanish poetry--e.g., la poesía intimista--and add them to your graphic organizer.







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