What will your verse be?

We have discussed why we study literature. We have seen the impact it can have. We have seen how personal it can be.
So my question to you is the same that Robin Williams asked his students in Dead Poets Society: what will your verse be?

As part of this process, you are going to find the meaning and significance of literature to you. Sometimes in school, you
study a plethora of literature, but none of it seems to matter. Most likely it is because you havent found literature that
resonates with you. It is time that we change that! The first thing you need to do is find a poem by one of the following
authors that really sticks with you. That means it should have some kind of special significance or meaning to you. Your
options are:

A.R. Ammons James D. Emanuel Ralph Waldo Emerson

Alfred Lord Tennyson James Wright Richard Wilbur
Ambrose Bierce John Keats Robert Frost
Carl Sandburg Juliet Kono Rudyard Kipling
E.E. Cummings Langston Hughes Stephen Crane
Edgar Allan Poe Louisa May Alcott Sylvia Plath
Edna St. Vincent Millay Mark Twain T.S. Eliot
Elizabeth Barrett Browning Martin Espada Theodore Roethke
Emily Dickinson Maya Angelou Thomas Hardy
Ezra Pound Naomi Shihab Nye W.B. Yeats
Henry David Thoreau Oscar Wilde Walt Whitman
Henry Wadsworth Pablo Neruda William Blake
Longfellow Pat Mora William Wordsworth

Next, find another poem, song, etc. that represents you or holds special meaning to you. This can be from any author/artist
of your choosing.

You then need to take both of the poems you have found and find a unique way to represent them and their significance to
you. You can do this however you see fit, but it should involve effort and creativity and represent how these poems relate
to you. You must have two separate creative representations of the poems (one for each).

For your next step, you will actually answer the question, what will your verse be? Create a one-line verse that
represents you and what you hope to contribute to this world. Really think about this and come up with something that
truly sounds and feels like you.

Next, use that verse to inspire your own, original poem. This poem can take any form you like, but write a poem that is
inspired by your verse.

Last but not least, you should create a crest/coat of arms that represents you as an independent person. Crests and coats of
arms have been used for centuries to symbolically represent individuals, families, nations, or corporations (see my website
for a link to more information on coat of arms and crests). In Romeo and Juliet, one of the characters even recognizes
Romeos dagger because his familys crest is on it. To help represent who you are as an independent person, you will
create your own individual crest/coat of arms to represent you and what your verse will be. Your crest should include a
symbolic design that represents you, who you want to be, and what you want to contribute to the world. In addition, your
crest should include your verse somewhere on it, but outside of that, the rest is up to you. After you finish your crest, just
write/type a SPES paragraph on a separate sheet of paper that describes your crest and any symbolism that is included.

You will not be forced to present these in class (unless you really want to), and I am the only person who will see any
aspect of this project, so feel free to make it as personal as you like.