For this assignment, you are asked to consider the important elements of comics and graphic novels as a literary genre – captions, dialogue, and images – to create a comic strip interpreting one of the poems provided below. You will: write an adapted script for your comic strip; storyboard your script; illustrate your storyboard; draft and create a final polished comic strip. No prior knowledge or outside research is required. By completing this exercise, you are encouraged to critically evaluate the language and imagery of your selected poem and reinterpret the poem’s meaning as your own. You are asked to think critically about what the selected poem’s words and imagery mean to you.
- First, review the two poems provided below. You are only responsible for interpreting one of them, so consider each poem carefully – its meaning and imagery, the emotional affect, or how it makes you feel – before you make your selection.
- Reread your selected poem, this time substituting your own words. This does not need to be line-for line; your script may be shorter than the poem. But be sure the original meaning is still inherent in the language change.
- How can you communicate this script visually? You may wish to use the Comic Strip Planning Sheet.
- Once your script and images are planned, create your comic strip. You may use any method you are comfortable with to create your illustrations including: web-based comic creators, collage, drawing, photos, powerpoint, etc.
Things to consider when preparing your comic:
- What are the important characteristics of a caption? What do the words in the captions tell you about the scene depicted?
- What kind of setting makes sense for the scene?
- What props or characters do you associate with the scene?
- What kinds of dialogue bubbles make sense for the interactions?
- What connects one scene to the next?
How your comic will be evaluated:
- Layout:Your frames are in a sequential and organized order, both images and words in the frames are supporting the narrative to make sense and have fluency, and space manipulation helps the reader understand the poem. You must have 10 or more scenes.
- Design:There is either a focus on an ongoing scene with a lot of action or a larger frame with a great deal of detail to create a story. A great use of color to help design characters and setting. Words (speech) are used appropriately within each frame. The central idea of the poem is clearly shown.
- Interpretation:Your interpretation demonstrates a clear understanding of the selected text.
Note: This assignment does not ask for an explicit representation of the poem’s words. You are responsible for reimagining the imagery presented. Any submission that does not modify the language or imagery, but just illustrates the poem as is will receive a zero for this assignment. Absolutely no images/text of literal birds/animals in cages or paths/woods will be accepted.
Select only one of the following poems
| Option One |
| Maya Angelou, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” (1969) |
| A free bird leaps on the back
Of the wind and floats downstream Till the current ends and dips his wing In the orange suns rays And dares to claim the sky.
But a BIRD that stalks down his narrow cage Can seldom see through his bars of rage His wings are clipped and his feet are tied So he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill Of things unknown but longed for still And his tune is heard on the distant hill for The caged bird sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze And the trade winds soft through The sighing trees And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright Lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged BIRD stands on the grave of dreams His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream His wings are clipped and his feet are tied So he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with A fearful trill of things unknown But longed for still and his Tune is heard on the distant hill For the caged bird sings of freedom. |
| Option Two |
| Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken” (1916) |
| Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergroth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. |
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