Name______POETRY PACKET 6
Introduction to American Poetry
Activity 1: Write down the first thought that comes to your mind when you view the following words, phrases, or pictures.
1. hook ______
2. around the world ______
3. ______
4. ______
5. school______
When reading poetry, you will have a similar experience—you will make your own meaning of it. But there are certain elements that will help you to analyze a poem, which we will learn about in this unit.
Activity 2: Your Reaction to Four American Poems
React to each poem that you read in the next 15 minutes by marking your COMMENTS, QUESTIONS, CONNECTIONS, or REACTIONS to what other people in your row have written on the paper.
Activity 3: Your poem—fill in the lines to create your own poem about any subject
Line 1=Subject ______
Line 2=3 expressive, descriptive words______,
______, ______
Line 3=1 simile/metaphor/personification______
______
Line 4=a line starting with “I wish I could…”______
______
Activity 4: PowerPoint—Poetry Terminology
Definition of Poetry:
I. Point of View in Poetry:
a. Poet=
b. Speaker=
II. Poetry Form:
a. Form=
b. Line=
c. Stanza=
i. Couplet=
ii. Triplet=
iii. Quatrain=
iv. Quintet=
v. Sestet=
vi. Septet=
vii. Octave=
III. Sound Effects:
a. Onomatopoeia=
b. Rhythm=
i. Meter=
1. Free Verse=
2. Blank Verse=
ii. Rhyme=
1. End Rhyme=
2. Internal Rhyme=
3. Near Rhyme=
4. Rhyme Scheme=
iii. Alliteration=
1. Consonance=
2. Assonance=
iv. Refrain=
IV. Figurative Language:
a. Simile=
b. Metaphor=
i. Extended Metaphor=
ii. Implied Metaphor=
c. Hyperbole
d. Idiom
e. Personification
V. Other Poetic Devices:
a. Symbolism=
b. Allusion=
c. Imagery=
As we begin to analyze poetry, we will keep these five questions in mind:
1. What aspects of the poem had the biggest impact on me?
- Was it the topic? The speaker? The language used? The ending? The intense description? The title? Etc.
2. What did the poem seem to be saying? Or what did it make me think?
- What was the general topic of the poem? The theme? The main idea? The author’s purpose for writing it?
3. How did the language used add to my response?
- Were there any specific words, or phrases, or uses of figurative language that really helped to create an emotional response from the reader?
4. How did the language help create the total effect of the poem?
- How would the poem have been different if the poet used different words to express his/her ideas? Why is the figurative language, diction (word choice), alliteration, etc., necessary in poetry?
5. Did anything I found out later about the work or its author change my feelings about it?
- After discussing the poem with others, or looking into the author’s life, and other interpretations of the poem, did it change your thoughts about the poem? Did you start out thinking it was about one thing, and then totally change your mind? Did you read it one time and hate it, then grow to like it after learning more about it?
Poem #1=”Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”, p. 814, by Randall Jarrell
1. What aspects of the poem had the biggest impact on me?
2. What did the poem seem to be saying? Or what did it make me think?
3. How did the language used add to my response?
4. How did the language help create the total effect of the poem?
5. Did anything I found out later about the work or its author change my feelings about it?
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”
by Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Background Information:
"A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine-guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose." -- Jarrell's note.
Poem #2=”Young”, p. 1058
1. What aspects of the poem had the biggest impact on me?
2. What did the poem seem to be saying? Or what did it make me think?
3. How did the language used add to my response?
4. How did the language help create the total effect of the poem?
5. Did anything I found out later about the work or its author change my feelings about it?
“Young”
by Anne Sexton
A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling over me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother's window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father's window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.
Poem #3=”Richard Cory”, p. 523
1. What aspects of the poem had the biggest impact on me?
2. What did the poem seem to be saying? Or what did it make me think?
3. How did the language used add to my response?
4. How did the language help create the total effect of the poem?
5. Did anything I found out later about the work or its author change my feelings about it?
“Richard Cory”
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Poem #4=”Nothing Gold Can Stay”, p. 721
1. What aspects of the poem had the biggest impact on me?
2. What did the poem seem to be saying? Or what did it make me think?
3. How did the language used add to my response?
4. How did the language help create the total effect of the poem?
5. Did anything I found out later about the work or its author change my feelings about it?
“Nothing Gold Can Stay”
by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.