Instructions 1. Read a student written review of Counting Descent. 2. Then answer the following questions, supporting your answers with examples from the text: • o 1) Broad Audience: How is this review successful in writing for a broad audience — one that, say, may not be poetry fans, or feel the way she did about the 2016 presidential election? What lines can you point to to make your case? • o 2) Helps Makes Sense of Work: Poetry may be a harder genre to review than, say, pop music or television since many find it difficult to understand and appreciate. Where and how does this writer help us make sense of Clint Smith’s work? Does she make you want to read it? If so, what lines do that? o 3) Fits into Lit Tradition: Where and how does Foretia show how this work fits into a larger literary tradition? (In other words, where does she reference other works to show us how this book fits?) Quote specific lines and explain. o 4) What else do you notice or admire about this review? Resources How do I submit an assignment? (Links to an external site.) What does "literary tradition" mean? Rubric Counting Descent Analysis Counting Descent Analysis Criteria This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeAudience How is this review successful in writing for a broad audience — one that, say, may not be poetry fans, or feel the way she did about the 2016 presidential election? What lines can you point to to make your case? This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeMakes Sense of Work Poetry may be a harder genre to review than, say, pop music or television since many find it difficult to understand and appreciate. Where and how does this writer help us make sense of Clint Smith’s work? Does she make you want to read it? If so, what lines do that? Ratings Pts 2 pts 1 pts 0 pts Meets requirements Needs improvement Your annotations discuss how this review is successful in writing for a broad audience and annotates several different lines to make your case. Your journal discusses audience but needs to go further and/or needs to quote more lines to make your case. Does not meet requirements Your journal does NOT discuss how this review is successful in writing for a broad audience and does NOT quote lines to make your case. 2 pts 1 pts 0 pts Meets requirements Needs improvement Your annotations discuss where and how this writer help us make sense of Clint Smith’s work. You should annotate several lines. Your annotations discuss where and how this writer help us make sense of Clint Smith’s work, but you need to annotate more than one place. Does not meet requirements Your journal does not discuss where and how this writer helps us make sense of Clint Smith’s work or quote lines to support your point. 2 pts 2 pts Counting Descent Analysis Criteria Ratings Pts This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeFits into Lit Tradition 2 pts 1 pts 0 pts Meets expectations Needs improvement Where and how does Foretia show how this work fits in to a larger literary tradition? (In other words, where does she reference other works to show us how this book fits?) Highlight specific lines and explain. Annotations show where and how Foretia tells us how this work fits in to a larger literary tradition and annotations explain how the lines do this. Annotations show where and how Foretia tells us how this work fits in to a larger literary tradition but annotations need to explain more how the lines do this. Does not meet expectations Annotations do NOT show where and how Foretia tells us how this work fits in to a larger literary tradition and annotations do NOT explain how the lines do this. Total Points: 6 PreviousNext Crystal Foretia Ms. Sayre English 120 24 Sept 2020 Counting Descent: A Post-Mortem on Black America Imagine you were a black fifteen-year-old on Nov. 9, 2016. You woke up, having gone to bed before the election results came out. Your phone was buzzing all night with people reacting to the results on Twitter. You finally saw the headline: “Donald Trump wins 2016 Presidential Election.” Meanwhile, you heard reports documenting numerous incidents of vandalism. The one that hit home is graffiti reading, “Black Lives Don’t Matter And Neither Does Your Votes.” Despair, confusion, and fear creeped in and then crashed down all at once. If there was a book capturing the strife and anxiety that you felt in that moment, it would 2 pts be Counting Descent by Clint Smith. Smith’s poetry, published that same year, transcends the boundary between personal and universal by imbuing his parables with the realities of Black America through creative poetic form. If you’ve ever felt frustrated trying to uncover the literary purpose of a sestina or sonnet, don’t fret: Each poem’s unique structure directly feeds into its narrative. “Playground Elegy” resembles a slide as the act of having your hands up, which conveys a sense of freedom, shifts to a similar, but more desperate connotation in police confrontations. “For the Boys Who Never Learned How to Swim” extended the spacing between the final two words to symbolize a black man’s final breath prior to being killed, mimicking a fish’s dying gasp. The numbered format and Foretia 2 blank space at the end of “How to Make an Empty Cardboard Box Disappear in 10 Steps” highlights the frequency and lack of progress made on police brutality; it warns that inaction will guarantee another Tamir Rice or Philando Castile incident. The influences of Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin reflect heavily in Smith’s work. Counting Descent echoes Invisible Man through its ideas on identity and power, as each poem strains against unfair expectations, violence and self-doubt that plague Black youth, despite the progress made since the 20th century. The epigraph from Ellison also introduces the relationship between protest and artistic expression. Smith explores this dichotomy in two poems alluding to Baldwin’s “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” ultimately concluding that we cannot separate literature from political advocacy. This theme brilliantly unifies the collection, as Smith critiques the lionization of slaveowning presidents, microaggressions middle-class black students receive and the criminalization of black bodies. Bottom line: If you loved The Hate U Give, The New Jim Crow or any work detailing modern-day struggles African Americans face, then read this. Counting Descent lambasts the notion of “post-racial society,” which washed over the American populace after Obama’s triumph in 2008. The collection serves as a cathartic read for those who lost their innocence to systemic discrimination. Counting Descent is a poignant addition to the Black literary canon. Foretia 3 Work Cited Smith, Clint. Counting Descent. Write Bloody Publishing, 2016. Counting Descent By Clint Smith My grandfather is a quarter century older than his right to vote & two decades younger than the president who signed the paper that made it so. He married my grandmother when they were four years younger than I am now & were twice as sure about each other as I've ever been about most things. They had six children separated by nine years, three cities & one Mason-Dixon line; there were twice as many boys as girls but half as many bedrooms as children which most days didn't matter because poor ain't poor unless you name it so & kids prefer playing to counting so there was never much time to wallow in anything but laughter. My mother was the third oldest or the fourth youngest depending on who you ask. She was born on a federal holiday which my grandmother was thankful for, said the Good Lord only got one day off when he built the world, so one day is all she needed too. Mom says Pops was persistent wouldn't give up when he asked if he could take her down the street to get some coffee which back then cost two dollars less than it is now. Now Mom is trying to stop drinking coffee but still loves Pops, they've been married for thirty-one years and have three kids who are six years & 1,517 miles apart. My birth took twelve hours, forty-three minutes which is probably because my head is five times too big. Mom said that my head was big because I needed enough room to read all the books in the library, which seemed like infinity, even though I didn’t really know what infinity meant, but I had heard my teacher say it once when she talked about the universe & books felt like the universe to me. I was pretty good at math too, until about fifth grade when they started putting numbers & letters together which didn't make much sense. My brother is seventy months younger than me but is taller & knows more about numbers so it doesn't always feel like this is true. My sister is twenty-four years of loyal & eight years of best friend. I am the oldest of three but maybe the most naïve, I still believe we can build this world into something new, some place where I can live past twenty-five & it’s not a cause for celebration because these days I celebrate every breath, tried to start counting them so I wouldn’t take each one for granted. I wish I could give my breath to the boys who had theirs taken, but I’ve stopped counting because it feels like there are too many boys & not enough breath to go around. 
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