Week 3 Poems
METAPHOR
Morning is
a new sheet of paper
for you to write on.
Whatever you want to say,
all day,
until night
folds it up
and files it away.
-Eve Merriam
Clucking Away the Day
Banana cream pie clouds
baking in the sun,
last tasty morsels
melting in the blue.
Chewing grass, I watch,
content as a hen on her nest,
clucking away the day.
-David Harrison
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l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
As you may have noticed, this short poem by E.E. Cummings (or, as he preferred, e.e. cummings) is actually a double metaphor. He
associates loneliness with the falling of a leaf, and also visualizes the experience by isolating letters as they fall down the page.
Metaphor for a Family
My family lives inside a medicine chest:
Dad is the super-size band aid, strong and powerful
but not always effective in a crisis.
Mom is the middle-size tweezer,
which picks and pokes and pinches.
David is the single small aspirin on the third shelf,
sometimes ignored.
Muffin, the sheep dog, is a round cotton ball, stained and dirty,
that pops off the shelf and bounces in my way as I open the door.
And I am the wood and glue which hold us all together with my love.
By: Belinda
-TeacherVision.com
The Meal
Timothy Tompkins had turnips and tea.
The turnips were tiny.
He ate at least three.
And then, for dessert, he had onions and ice.
He liked that so much
that he ordered it twice.
he had two cups of ketchup,
a prune and a pickle.
"Delicious," said Timothy.
"Well worth a nickle."
he folded his napkin
and hastened to add,
"It's one of the loveliest breakfasts I've had."
-Karla Kuskin
Nothing Gold Can Stay
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.
- Robert Frost
The Pool Players.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool” from Selected Poems. Copyright © 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted with the permission of
the Estate of Gwendolyn Brooks.
Aunt Sue's Stories
Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.
Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.
Summer nights on the front porch
Aunt Sue cuddles a brown-faced child to her bosom
And tells him stories.
Black slaves
Working in the hot sun,
And black slaves
Walking in the dewy night,
And black slaves
Singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river
Mingle themselves softly
In the flow of old Aunt Sue's voice,
Mingle themselves softly
In the dark shadows that cross and recross
Aunt Sue's stories.
And the dark-faced child, listening,
Knows that Aunt Sue's stories are real stories.
He knows that Aunt Sue never got her stories
Out of any book at all,
But that they came
Right out of her own life.
The dark-faced child is quiet
Of a summer night
Listening to Aunt Sue's stories.
-Langston Hughes
In this poem try to figure out the mental images and mood the author is creating with the use of:
“heart full of stories,”
“summer nights on the porch,”
“cuddles a brown-faced child,”
“singing sorrow songs,”
“mingle themselves softly,” and
“the dark-faced child is quiet”
After considering the images and mood, what is the author's meaning of this poem?
What is the author's attitude towards Aunt Sue?
What might the author be saying about Aunt Sue?
First Snow
Snow makes whiteness where it falls.
The bushes look like popcorn-balls.
And places where I always play,
Look like somewhere else today.
-Marie Louise Allen
What is the simile?
What is the author's point in using the simile in this poem?
Which other line proves this?
Some People
Isn't it strange some people make
You feel so tired inside,
Your thoughts begin to shrivel up
Like leaves all brown and dried!
But when you're with some other ones,
It's stranger still to find
Your thoughts as thick as fireflies
All shiny in your mind!
-Rachel Field
What are the two similes in this poem?Why does the author use the first simile?Why does the author make the second
simile?What is the point the author is making about the title of the poem.
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over the harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then, moves on.
-Carl Sandburg
Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.