Myth and Spirituality

Dear Students: Below are some poems that invoke or respond to mythical characters and/or spirituality in their connection to our physical world. I'd like you to read them, and come up with one original question on myth, spirituality, religion; a question you could use in your own research of your specific cultures. Put this question in your Ethnography Journals.

In addition, I'd like you to write what we'll call a Halloween Cultural Encounter in your journals. This is to be short narrative where you write on something that happens to you in the next few days that involves Halloween in some way! This is kind of vague, so within each of our classes we will discuss it more. The last explanation: after telling your true story, you are to then give some brief analysis to what you learned about a culture, or American culture, or what was reinforced about either, from this encounter. Think of our topic of myth and spirituality and how that plays a role in the encounter . . . .

A REMINDER: We will meet on the THIRD FLOOR of the library on Monday for class. BRING YOUR JOURNALS so that I can grade them. 

The poems

Jack Gilbert's "Failing and Flying"

Yusef Kumonyakaa's "Instructions for Building Straw Huts"

Mary Karr's "Field of Skulls"

Michael Collier's "All Souls"

Sylvia Plath's "Edge"

Eamon Grennan's "The Cave Painters"

Percy Bysshe Shelly's "Hymn of Pan"

John Keat's "Hyperion"