Email me at jmayhew at ku dot edu
"The very existence of poetry should make us laugh. What is it all about? What is it for?"
--Kenneth Koch
“El subtítulo ‘Modelo para armar’ podría llevar a creer que las
diferentes partes del relato, separadas por blancos, se proponen como piezas permutables.”
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16 feb 2011
Master's Exam
On the oral section of the Master's exam, I often ask a very simple question. If I showed you a poem by Lorca, by Guillén, by Salinas, that you had never seen before, how could you tell who wrote it? This tends to throw some students off. The point is not just to know a particular text, but to know how and why it is typical of its author. You could ask a student what the difference between a sentence of Galdós and Ramón Gómez de la Serna.
Are you asking them to make the call in a specific case, or to discuss how the call might be made in general? Pretty different. Someone who answered the general question illuminatingly might fail if put on the spot.
ResponderEliminarIn general. That's what makes it a bit tricky. But if they don't know something general about the poet's style, then they haven't really thought about the poet at all.
ResponderEliminar