1. Review time. Students had 5-10 minutes to review their reading for The Odyssey so far (Book 1, 2 for Honors, 5, 8, and 9).
2. Oral quiz. Students answered brief questions about the reading, focusing on Telemachus’s plea to the townspeople and Antinous’s jerk-facedness, Calypso’s anger at how the gods are jealous of her relationship with Odysseus, Odysseus’s tale about sacking Circones after the war and then getting attacked for it, the joy of the lotus-flower (but not really), and finally Odysseus’s interaction with Polyphemous the cheese-making shepherd cyclops who he blinds.
3. Reading time. Students had some time at the end of class to read for tonight.
HW: Honors read Book 10 and 11; Regular read Book 11. Fill out your blue sheet as you go.
Check out this Suzanne Vega song called “Calypso” about Calypso’s last goodbye to Odysseus:
“Calypso”
My name is Calypso / And I have lived alone
I live on an island / And I waken to the dawn
A long time ago / I watched him struggle with the sea
I knew that he was drowning / And I brought him into me
Now today / Come morning light / He sails away / After one last night
I let him go.My name is Calypso
My garden overflows
Thick and wild and hidden / Is the sweetness there that grows
My hair it blows long / As I sing into the wind
My name is Calypso / And I have lived alone
I live on an island
I tell of nights / Where I could taste the salt on his skinSalt of the waves / And of tears / And though he pulled away / I kept him here for years
I let him go
My name is Calypso
I have let him go
In the dawn he sails away / To be gone forever more
And the waves will take him in again / But he’ll know their ways now
I will stand upon the shore / With a clean heart
And my song in the wind / The sand will sting my feet / And the sky will burn
It’s a lonely time ahead
I do not ask him to return
I let him go
ALEXA GARVOILLE 