Hi. I'm a lurker on the Joni-only list, but I wanted to tell you about a little
project I undertook recently to acquaint some high school students with Joni. There
is a teacher at the high school where my wife teaches who teaches Advanced Placement
English to seniors. She taught my son and is an excellent teacher, so I decided to
see if she would like to teach a lesson on song lyrics as poetry and use some of
Joni's lyrics as the focus. I put together a lesson plan and gave it to her, and she
gladly agreed to use it. The first part of the lesson was done by the class as a
whole. They were given some biographical info on Joni first because I'm sure the
great majority would have no idea who she was. They also got a handout with
definitions of a dozen poetic devices, including the usual simile and metaphor, but
also apostrophe and metonymy. Finally, they got a copy of the lyrics to "The Last
Time I Saw Richard", and they were asked to find examples of various poetic devic!
es in the lyrics and to answer a couple of questions about the song. Then they
listened to the song to see how Joni put the words to music. In the next part of the
lesson, the class was divided into four groups, and each group was given a different
song on which to work. The four songs were "Furry Sings the Blues", "Little Green",
"Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire", and "Amelia". As before, they looked for poetic
devices and answered questions about the song. However, each group also got a sealed
envelope that they were not to open until after they had answered all the questions.
I put some interested info in each envelope to shed further light on the song. Then
they were asked to reconsider their answers and answer a couple of additional
questions. For example, on Furry I first had asked if they thought the song was
purely fictional or not and why. Then, in the envelope I gave them info on Furry
Lewis and his complaint about Joni putting him in her song. They were th!
en asked if they thought his complaint was valid or not and w!
hy, and t
thought the bronze statue of W.C. Handy or Joni's song about Furry was the better way
of "immortalizing" each musician. (end of part one)
