Why, What, Where, Who, How

1. Why, What, Where, Who, How The Importance of Questioning

2. Questioning “The most important questions don’t seem to have ready answers. But the questions themselves have a healing power when they are shared. An answer is an invitation to stop thinking about something, to stop wondering. Life has no such stopping places. Life is a process whose every event is connected to the moment that just went by. An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road. ~Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

3. What are three questions that come to your mind about this picture?

4. What are three questions that come to your mind about this picture?

5. What are three questions that come to your mind about this picture?

6. What are three questions that come to your mind about this picture?

7. What are three questions that come to your mind about this picture?

8. The photographer, Kevin Carter, committed suicide 3 months after taking this photo.

9. What are three questions that come to your mind about this picture? http://www.kevincarterfilm.com/synopsis.html

10. Key Concepts Proficient readers ask questions to:

11. Key Concepts a. Clarify meaning

12. Key Concepts a. Clarify meaning b. Speculate about text

13. Key Concepts a. Clarify meaning b. Speculate about text c. Determine an author’s intent, style, content

14. Key Concepts a. Clarify meaning b. Speculate about text c. Determine an author’s intent, style, content d. Answer a specific question

15. Key Concepts a. Clarify meaning b. Speculate about text c. Determine an author’s intent, style, content d. Answer a specific question e. Consider rhetorical questions inspired by the text

16. Key Concepts Proficient readers use questions to focus their attention on important parts of the text.

17. Key Concepts Proficient readers understand that many of the most intriguing questions are not answered specifically in the text but left to the reader’s interpretation.

18. Key Concepts When an answer is needed, proficient readers determine whether it can be answered by the text, whether they will need to infer the answer from the text and their background knowledge, or whether they will need to seek the answer elsewhere.

19. Key Concepts Proficient readers understand how the process of questioning is used in other areas of their lives.

20. Key Concepts Proficient readers understand how asking questions deepens their comprehension.

21. Key Concepts Proficient readers are aware that as they hear others’ questions, new ones are inspired in their own minds.

22. Key Concepts “I wonder...”

23. Key Concepts “Why...?”

24. Key Concepts “What...?”

25. Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942)

26. What questions do you have about this picture? Think of at least three questions to discuss with the rest of the class.

27. Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942)

28. While reading the following selection think of at least three questions to discuss at the end.

29. “Inventing My Parents”After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942 They sit in the bright cafe’ discussing Hemingway, and how this war will change them. Sinclair Lewis’ name comes up, and Kay Boyle’s and then Fitzgerald’s. They disagree about the American Dream. My mother, her bare arms silver under fluorescent lights, says she imagines it a hawk flying over, its shadow sweeping every town.

30. “Inventing My Parents”After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942 Their coffee’s getting cold but they hardly notice. My mother’s face is lit by ideas. My father’s gestures are a Frenchman’s. When he concedes a point, he shrugs, an elaborate lift of the shoulders, his hands and smile declaring an open mind.

31. “Inventing My Parents”After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942 I am five months old, at home with a sitter this August night, when the air outside is warm as a bath. They decide, though the car is parked nearby, to walk the few blocks home, savoring the fragrant night, their being alone together.

32. “Inventing My Parents”After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942 As they go out the door, he’s reciting Donne’s “Canonization”: “For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,” and she is laughing, light as summer rain when it begins.

33. “Inventing My Parents”After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942 By Susan Ludvigson

34. What kind of questions did this poem make you ask?

35. About: THE CANONIZATION.by John Donne The speaker asks the addressee to be quiet, and let him love. If the the addressee cannot be quiet, the speaker tells him to criticize him for his other problems, but not for love. He asks the person speaking to him to mind his own business. The speaker does not care what the addressee says or does, as long as he lets him love.

36. The speaker asks rhetorically, "Who's injured by my love?" He says that his sighs have not drowned ships, his tears have not flooded land, his colds have not chilled spring, and the heat of his veins has not added to the list of those killed by the plague. Soldiers still find wars and lawyers still find evil men, regardless of the emotions of the speaker and his lover.

37. The speaker tells his addressee to "Call us what you will," for it is love that makes them so. No matter what the addressee calls them it is only love that will make it true. He says that they can die by love if they are not able to live by it, and if their legend is not fit "for tombs and hearse," it will be fit for poetry, and "We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms."

38. A well-wrought urn does as much justice to a dead man's ashes as does a gigantic tomb; and by the same token, the poems about the speaker and his lover will cause them to be "canonized," admitted to the sainthood of love. All those who hear their story will invoke the lovers, saying that countries, towns, and courts "beg from above / A pattern of your love!"

39. We are going to read an excerpt from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections”

40. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” “Years ago, Ellin gave me a little book, The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper, that is a collection of writers’ responses--in poetry and prose--to various paintings by Edward Hopper. For several paintings, multiple responses are included, showing how varied reactions can be to the same painting. The poets capture brush strokes in words, creating moods and anecdotes from Hopper’s works, which in turn create new moods and anecdotes. A deepening understanding results as images are transformed into words and words into thoughts.

41. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” I pull out The Poetry of Solitude and land on ‘Inventing My Parents.’ As I read my mind fills with questions. Who are ‘they’? Where is the café? What led to their conversation about Hemingway? What war are they talking about? I notice the subtitle of the poem is ‘After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942,’ and immediately answer that question. It’s during World War II, fairly early in the war. Perhaps they are talking about Hemingway, because he wrote about the First World War in The Sun Also Rises and the Spanish Civil War in For Whom the Bell Tolls. War books that lead to war talk, I think.

42. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” They are a well-educated couple having an intellectual conversation about literature against the backdrop of a terrible war. Does this animated conversation keep them from thinking of the horrors that are going on across oceans? What is their disagreement about the American Dream? What is the American Dream? The United States is a country of immigrants. Is it that if you come here and work hard, you can better yourself, you can create a good life? How true is that today?

43. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” ‘Says she imagines it a hawk flying over, its shadow sweeping every town.’ Is ‘it’ the war, a hawk casting a nightmarish shadow over the land, leaving everyone downcast and afraid? It is an ominous image. Are they so engrossed in their conversation they don’t notice the coffee cooling or are they sad, worried, distraught about the war? When will it end and what price will be paid in destruction and loss? Have they eaten and are they now buried in conversation, oblivious to everything except each other? ‘My mother’s face is lit by ideas.’ Is she always that way or is it this connection, this moment with her husband, sitting in a quiet café, that lights up her face?

44. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” I want to know more about their relationship. I wonder what her background is, where she was raised, educated. ‘My father’s gestures are a Frenchman’s, quick and expressive? Has he conceded a point here? About the American Dream? I see the shrug, his hands raised and open in front of him, the tilt of his head, the smile of accepted defeat.

45. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” ‘I am five months old.’ Wait a minute. Where did this character come from? Why did the author make the narrator a five-month-old baby? Is a five-month-old picturing this scene? No, I’m guessing the narrator is much older now. She’s looking back, imagining her parents, or perhaps imagining the parents she wished she had. Is this time alone together something they rarely have? Is that why they come across as romantic? What is their love like five years hence, twenty-five years? Were they real people? How did their lives unfold? Are they still alive?

46. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” They leave their car and walk home. Can they do that and just pick it up the next day? Are there lots of parking spots and is it no problem to abandon a car for a night? Are they desperate to lengthen this sweet moment together and is that why they chose to walk?

47. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” I’m at the reference to Donne’s ‘The Canonization.’ They seem so well educated. Are they college professors, writers themselves? The quote ‘For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love’--is he using it to further seduce and delight her? If so, he is accomplishing that well. She laughs, ‘light as summer rain when it begins.’

48. from Mosaic -“Susan’s Reflections” I interact with the words, moving form trivial question about parked cars to questions about the nature of love, to questions about war and human nature that can never be answered. Questions lead me to unexpected places and keep me intrigued. For me, questions about war and human nature that can never be answered. Questions lead me to unexpected places and keep me intrigued. For me, questions are the glue of engagement.”

49. “Inventing My Parents”After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942 They sit in the bright cafe’ discussing Hemingway, and how this war will change them. Sinclair Lewis’ name comes up, and Kay Boyle’s and then Fitzgerald’s. They disagree about the American Dream. My mother, her bare arms silver under fluorescent lights, says she imagines it a hawk flying over, its shadow sweeping every town.

50. “Inventing My Parents”After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, 1942 Their coffee’s getting cold but they hardly notice. My mother’s face is lit by ideas. My father’s gestures are a Frenchman’s. When he concedes a point, he shrugs, an elaborate lift of the shoulders, his hands and smile declaring an open mind.