Poets & Poems for Consideration

Robert Hayden – Those Winter Sundays
Elizabeth Bishop – Manners
Randall Jarrell – Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Alice Walker - I Said to Poetry
Stevie Smith – Not Waving But Drowning
Judith Ortiz Cofer – Latin Women Pray
Wilfred Owen – Dulce et Decorum Est
Charles Simic – To the One Upstairs
Robert Frost – Acquainted With the Night
Robert Frost – An Old Man’s Winter Night
Jane Kenyon – Surprise
Jane Kenyon – Otherwise
Galway Kinnell – Blackberry Eating
William Wordsworth – My Heart Leaps Up
A. E. Housman – When I was one-and-twenty
Carl Sandburg – Chicago
Theodore Roethke – My Papa’s Waltz
Dylan Thomas – Do not go gentle into that good night
Amy Lowell – Patterns
W.H. Auden – The Unknown Citizen
Paul Laurence Dunbar – We Wear the Masks
Paul Laurence Dunbar – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Theordore Roethke – Elegy for Jane
Robert Frost – Out, Out—
Robert Frost – Birches
Langston Hughes – Theme for English B
Langston Hughes – Mother to Son

Poem #4

Let Evening Come
by Jane Kenyon

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Poem #3

Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump
by David Bottoms

Loaded on beer and whiskey, we ride
to the dump in carloads
to turn our headlights across the wasted field,
freeze the startled eyes of rats against mounds of rubbish.

Shot in the head, they jump only one, lie still
like dead beer cans.
Shot in the gut or rump, they writhe and try to burrow
into garbage, hide in old truck tires,
rusty oil drums, cardboard boxes scattered across the mounds,
or else drag themselves on forelegs across our beams of light
toward the darkness a the edge of the dump.

It's the light they believe kills.
We drink and load again, let them crawl
for all they're worth into the darkness we're headed for.

Poem #2

Wild Geese

By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Poem #1

The Gift
by Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he’d removed

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.


I can’t remember the tale,

but hear his voice still, a well

of dark water, a prayer.

And I recall his hands,

two measures of tenderness

he laid against my face,

the flames of discipline

he raised above my head.


Had you entered that afternoon

you would have thought you saw a man

planting something in a boy’s palm,

a silver tear, a tiny flame.

Had you followed that boy

you would have arrived here,

where I bend over my wife’s right hand.


Look how I shave her thumbnail down

so carefully she feels no pain.

Watch as I lift the splinter out.

I was seven when my father

took my hand like this,

and I did not hold that shard

between my fingers and think,

Metal that will bury me,

christen it Little Assassin,

Ore Going Deep for My Heart.

And I did not lift up my wound and cry,

Death visited here!

I did what a child does

when he’s given something to keep.

I kissed my father.

Poetry Analysis

Poetry Analysis Rubric

Criteria

Presentation – 15%
• Title – how it anticipates/introduces the poem
• Speaker – identify whether it is the poet or a persona created by the poet; also, indicate audience
• Reading & YOUR initial reaction to the poem – if you do not read the poem aloud yourself, make sure you can easily access the poem (be prepared to read it, in case youtube.com fails)

Paraphrase the Literal & define/clarify vocabulary – 10%

Format/Style of poem & tone – 25%
• You need not identify whether it is a ballad or sonnet, but do indicate if the poem is structured, with regular rhyme & regular rhythm OR if it is in free verse (relatively unstructured)
• Tone: here YOU must draw an inference after you have studied the poem AND you MUST support your inference with specific words, phrases, lines from the poem (that’s the hard part)

Word Choice/Connotation/Imagery/Symbolism/Irony – 25%
• You NEED NOT know the term of the poetic device (simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, metonymy, etc.), but you MUST find the words, phrases, lines that create “word pictures” or imagery; MOST, but not all poems WILL contain symbolism—determine symbolism by the connotative meaning of the words in the poem; some—but not all—poems will contain irony—naturally, you must identify and explain the irony, if it appears in the poem

Identify the Shift/Change/Turning point in the poem AND the THEME – 25%
• AGAIN – the key is determining the shift or change and supporting your comments by specifics in the poem

Poetry

The Elements of Poetry
Take a look at this website: http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/ttravis-58691-Elements-Poetry-Lines-Stanza-Rhyme-Scheme-Rhythm-Free-Verse-of-poe-Education-ppt-powerpoint/
In clear, direct PROSE, the powerpoint goes over the primary elements of poetry AND provides examples of each. The examples may seem a bit simple, but even the most complex poetry builds from these devices. If you can see how poets manipulate language in these poems, understand what tools or devices poets use to create their poems, you’ll better understand the more difficult poems.
The following website: http://www.slideshare.net/mspata/poetry-powerpoint-1204716 is more complex but also gives great information—Don’t worry about slides 29-39. We won’t be lingering that long in the poetry unit

Topics for Essay #3

Essay Topics over the The Things They Carried:

We have discussed two things throughout our study of this novel: the story and the characters; therefore, there are only two topics. Please understand that you are meant to delve back into the book, to consider and study it further as you consider this essay. The bad news: this will be hard; the good news: studying this book is the hardest thing you will do all semester. It does get easier after this essay.

Use specific examples from at least 4-5 stories from the novel to support one of the following topics. This essay should be between 4-5 pages, with citations from the novel. You are encouraged to read and incorporate information from the following links--or other research--with correct MLA format:

http://www.illyria.com/tobhp.html -- citations will depend on which, if any, of the articles you choose to read and use; the two articles below are specific articles found on the above website:

http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WritingVietnam/obrien.html CITATION FORMAT: (O'Brien).

http://www3.wooster.edu/ArtfulDodge/interviews/obrien.htm CITATION FORMAT: (Artful Dodge).

When citing from the book, all that is required is the page number. CITATION FORMAT: (45).


1. CHARACTERS
War creates an automatic pressure cooker, one in which the characters must respond quickly, without the time to weigh their decisions, the consequences, or the long term effects of those decisions. What are the pressures or internal conflicts exerted on the men of Alpha Company--specifically Tim O'Brien, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitch Sanders, and Henry Dobbins--AND how does each individual respond to the pressure and conflicts exerted on them? Be sure to consider the pressure to comply with the expectations of "society"--before, during, and after the war. Consider the importance of pride and proving and maintaining bravery in the face of danger and fear to these men.

2. TRUTH
Tim O’Brien has said:
"Every reader is always seduced by a good work of fiction. That is, by a lie . . . . Huckleberry Finn did not happen, but if you're reading Huckleberry Finn you're made to believe that it is happening. If you didn't believe it, then it would be a lousy work of fiction. One wouldn't be seduced. . . . I'm like a seducer, yet . . . I'm not just tricking you, I'm letting you in on my game, letting you in on who I am, what I am, and why I am doing what I am doing."

What aspect of storytelling is the author Tim O’Brien concerned with in his novel, The Things They Carried? Which stories--and characters--are the author's greatest lies and creations and are the most believable? What truth is O’Brien the author attempting to convey to the reader by telling these lies? How does creating the character of the soldier/narrator Tim O'Brien contribute to the "seduction" of the reader? In what way is this a book about writing stories and about the truth that often lies buried within the greatest works of fiction--not just this book, but any book worth study? The stories and characters created by novelists are not real . . . Huck Finn wasn't real--neither the book nor the character; neither were George & Lennie in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men; neither were Hassan and Amir in Hossenni's Kite Runner-- but what was real?

Stories for All Time

Why tell stories, if they aren’t true?

In the August issue of Scientific American Mind, Jeremy Hsu said:

1. storytelling is a human universal, and common themes appear in tales throughout history and all over the the world.
2. These characteristics of stories, and our natural affinity toward them, reveal clues about our evolutionary history and the roots of emotion and empathy in the mind.
3. By studying narrative's power to influence beliefs, researchers are discovering how we analyze information and accept new ideas.

From: http://www.umass.edu/wmwp/DigitalStorytelling/Why%20tell%20stories.htm

Why tell stories?
We embark on this endeavor because stories are ways in which we pass down information from one generation to another. Words and language are the threads of life, and from Homer's epics to Mark Twain's Mississippi adventures, stories are way to engage the imagination of a reader or listener. . . .

. . . in the end, we tell stories to understand ourselves a bit better. By exploring our inner selves through words and stories, we come to understand the "real" us that lives inside this body.


From Tim O’Brien:

Stories, retold, carry the force of legend. There's a sense of legend in that the story is still going out there somewhere. Huck is still going down that river, Ahab is still chasing that whale. Legends have to do with the repetition of things. Though there's a narrative end to Moby Dick, there's a sense, as in all stories, that everyone is still out there, still doing these things, forever and ever.