This document provides an overview of classroom activities used to analyze Barry Lopez's essay "Gone Back into the Earth." Students were asked to:
1. Embody passages from the essay through movement, choral reading, tableau, or sound collage.
2. Select words or phrases that resonated with them and discuss in a circle reading activity.
3. Write responses to their selected words or phrases.
4. Discuss in pairs their understanding of passages from the beginning of the essay.
5. Create found poems by selecting and arranging descriptive excerpts from assigned passages.
6. Analyze the found poems and discuss remaining ambiguities in the text.
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1. Close Reading of Barry Lopez’s
“Gone Back Into the Earth”
(Reading as an Aesthetic Act)
Mary Ann Reilly
Blueprints for Learning
04.29.13
2. Word/Phrase Can define it Heard of it Don’t know it Definition
box canyon A canyon with steep walls
on 3 sides allowing access
only though the mouth of
the canyon.
terminal wall End boundary wall
cleft Split or crack
precipitous Very steep
languid Lacking vigor, weak
trill of a phoebe A fluttering or tremulous
sound
immobile Fixed
In the extreme
remove
remoteness
wade Walk in
3. Read.
“I am up to my waist in a basin of cool, acid-clear water, at the
head of a box canyon some 600 feet above the Colorado River.
I place my outstretched hands flat against a terminal wall of
dark limestone which rises more than a hundred feet above
me, and down which a sheet of water falls—the thin creek
whose pooled waters I now stand. The water splits at my
fingertips into wild threads; higher up a warm canyon wind
lifts water off the limestone in a fine spray; these droplets
intercept and shatter sunlight. Down, down another four
waterfalls and fern shrouded pools below, the water splits into
an eddy of the Colorado River, in the shadow of a huge
boulder. Our boat is tied there.”
From Lopez, Barry. (1989). “Gone Back into the Earth.” (pp. 41-53). Crossing Open Ground. New York: Vintage Books.
4. Embody the Text (Groups of 5) Through…
1. Narrative pantomime: Create movements/dance that
illustrate the text and as one or more in your group reads key
sections of the text aloud, the rest will move with purpose.
2. Choral Reading: Reset the paragraph to be performed chorally.
Think about how 5 voices would perform this and do so.
3. Use your bodies to create a tableaux that represents this
opening paragraph. You may move into it, freeze, and move
out of it.
4. Create a sound collage that represents what one might hear if
standing where Lopez was standing. Sound collages are
different sounds created with voice to make a dramatic effect
and represent a feeling tone of a work.
5. Entering the Essay…
1. Read pages 41 - 43 (stop at “After lunch…”).
1. As you read, select one word, phrase or
sentence that resonates and practice reading
it.
2. When finished, copy the word, phrase of
sentence into your notebook at the top of a
page.
6. Entering the Essay…
1. Join the class circle and have with you your notebook,
opened to the word, phrase, or sentence on a piece of
paper.
2. One person will begin by stepping slightly into the
circle and then reading aloud what s/he selected.
When finished, s/he will step back into place.
3. Listen to what is read and if your selection connects
to it, step into the circle and say your word, phrase, or
sentence aloud. Do not raise your hand . Look around
and take turns.
4. We will read aloud like this for 5 minutes.
7. Writing Off the Page…
1. Create a written response to the
word, phrase, or sentence you copied.
2. Beginning with the quoted text, write a
response that is one full page.
3. Date your entry.
8. Entering the Essay
1. (5 minutes) Talk with a partner and determine:
• Where is Lopez?
• Who is he with?
• What is his purpose?
• Reread the closing two sentences. What does he mean
here?
2. (5 minutes) Join with another set of partners
and discuss your understanding of the closing
two lines. What does he mean literally?
Figuratively?
9. Sketching the Essay: Found Poems
1. Compose a found poem based on passages you have been
assigned.
2. Read/reread the assigned text.
3. Select descriptive words, phrases and lines from the text
and then arrange and format the excerpts to compose
your own poem.
4. Place the poem you found/made on chart paper and place
the page #s on the chart paper
5. Try to use no more than 50 to 75 words to capture the gist
or feeling of the selection you read.
6. You may add up to three of your own words.
7. Title the work and then post it on the wall in the order it
appears in the essay.
10. Dwelling: Making Found Poems
1. pp. 43-44: After Lunch…the landscape opens.
2. pp. 44-45: There are forty-one…intent on private thoughts.
3. pp. 45-46 : On the second day…there is exploration.
4. pp. 46-47 Each day we see of hear…seem so eerie.
5. pp. 47-48 Two kinds of time...for each other have washed
out.
6. pp.48-49:There are threats…The canyon seems like a
grandfather.
7. pp. 49-50: One evening, Winter…what we had not imagined.
8. pp. 50 -51: That last evening it rained…the translation of
what we had touched, began.
11. Dwelling: Gallery Walk of Found
Poems
1. Beginning with the first poem, read each of the found
poems.
2. What insights and understandings do you now have as a
result of reading the found poetry. Consider how these
poems, collectively, help you to understand the tenor of the
essay.
3. What ambiguities remain?
12. Reading the End of the Essay
• Let’s return to the essay and read the
ending, beginning on page 52, “I sat in the
airport in San Francisco…”
13. Art Conversation
1. After you finish reading, engage in 20-minute art
conversations discussing the sense you are making of
the essay.
1. Art conversations are nonverbal dialogues that happen
between two or more people. Seated with a piece of
finger paint paper between the partners use finger
paint as the medium through which they converse.
1. Consider color, line, movement as you and your
partner create this visual conversation.
16. Follow Up Work
1. Now students are ready to reread the
essay, mining for meaning through double
entry notebooks.
1. HW: Ready 2 questions based on your
readings of the text that will be used to guide
our small group and whole class discussions.