Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Ohio For the Soundscape illuminated text project, I chose to create a podcast of James Wright's "Autumn Begins In Martins Ferry, Ohio." This poem deals with the cycle of blue-collar disillusionment in mid-20th Century Middle America. Men who worked dead-end jobs in mills and factories often projected their languishing hopes for a better life on their teenage sons, who, these fathers thought, might earn a football scholarship to a major university or perhaps even play in the NFL. This poem has long been one of my favorites, and I settled upon using it before considering how it may or may not work well within the parameters of the assignment. Two issues arose, which I think eventually resolved themselves. First, a poem is arguably musical in nature without a third party imposing a backing track, and so I labored for a while before settling on a tune I liked and thought worked well with the poem's pacing and tone. Second, in contrast to a passage from a lengthy narrative such as a novel, a poem doesn't necessarily lend itself to easy "scene" translation in the mind eye's -- that is, I think it's more abstract in nature. To that end, I felt uneasy at first about working with sound effects, which are relatively concrete sensory experiences, but once I fiddled with them for a while and heard them with my voice and the musical backing, my concerns were quelled. Otherwise, I was quite pleased with the final product, and the time invested in the project felt well spent upon listening to the track in its final incarnation. Shifting perspectives from that of a student to that of a future teacher, I truly look forward to using this assignment with my students. It's pretty clear to me that students will enjoy the synthesizing component of the project and really look to take ownership of their newly created work. Sources: The background song is "No Tomorrow" by Strange Republik, accessed on Jamendo (http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/8780). Sound effects were downloaded from Find Sounds (www.findsounds.com). |