Poetry
Poetry Notebook: Table of Contents
1. Table of Contents
2. Poetry Bingo Board
3. Robert Frost poems
4. Analyzing Literature: “A Time To Talk” & “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening”
Venn Diagram & 2 paragraphs—one comparing and one contrasting
5. “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman
6. Analysis: “O Captain! O Captain!”
7. Haiku—history and 3 examples
8. Analyzing Literature: “Oranges” Gary Soto
9. Cinquain—definition & examples
10. Diamonte—definition & examples
11. Analysis: “The Courage That My Mother Had” Edna St. Vincent Millay
12. Analysis: “Legacy II” Leroy V. Quintana
13. Analysis: “The Secret Heart” Robert T. Tristram Coffin
14. Analyzing Literature: Langston Hughes
15. Analyzing Literature: Sydney Lanier
16. Limerick—definition & examples
17. Analyze Choice of Lyrics
18. Analysis: “Identity” by Julio Naboa Polanco
19. Write your own poem (minimum of 3 stanzas)
20. Write your own poem (minimum of 3 stanzas)
1. onomatopoeia: The use of words whose sounds imitate or suggest their meaning. (Wow! Bang!
Screech!)
2. personification: An animal or object is given human characteristics (The cat requested food for a
reward, the train lazily ascended the hill)
3. metaphor: compares two things without using like or as (Her soft voice was a euphony to his ears)
4. alliteration: The repetition of initial sounds in words (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers)
5. prose: anything that is NOT poetry (essay, story, journal entry, novel)
6. simile: comparing two things using like or as (The warrior fought like a lion)
7. irony: When the unexpected happens (A man won the lottery and died the next day.) Can also be
when things seem one way but actually are another (spending thousands of dollars to replace a
diamond ring you borrowed only to find out it wasn’t a real diamond) Sarcasm is another type of irony
(It was as pleasant as a root canal procedure)
8. hyperbole: huge exaggeration (The path seemed to go on forever)
9. imagery: words that help you create a picture in your mind using the senses (sight, hearing, taste,
touch, smell)
10. foreshadowing: hints or clues of what will happen next
11. pun: a play on words (The coach keeps giving me the run-around when I ask him if I made the track
team.)
12. idiom: when the phrase is not taken literally (We were just shooting the breeze – meaning not
talking about anything important)
13. symbol: when something stands for something else. (The pearl represents avarice or greed in THE
PEARL)
14. flashback: interruption in the present action to show what has happened in the past
15. Allusion: A reference to someone or something from literature, history, religion mythology, politics,
sports or another field that many people are familiar with.
16. protagonist: The main character in a work of literature.
Page 4
“Stopping By Woods On A
Snowy Evening”
“A Time To Talk”
Robert Frost
 “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy
Evening”
 Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

 He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

 The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep
“A Time to Talk”
WHEN a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
Walt Whitman
“O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Poem
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
20
Civil War
Haiku
 A Japanese poem about
nature, seasons, or
landscapes. 17 syllables in 3
lines (5-7-5).
Dry green grassy hill
Sleeping plants in the freezing ground
Waiting for green spring
Cinquain
 The cinquain is a simple, 5 line verse form. Its structure
follows specific rules.
 Structure:




Line 1—one word of two syllables (may be the title)
Line 2—four syllables (describing the subject or title)
Line 3—six syllables (showing action)
Line 4—eight syllables (expressing a feeling or
observation about the subject)
 Line 5—two syllables (describing or renaming the subject)
Kitten
Frisky, playful
jumping, playing, looking
creep silently on padded paws
Meeko
Diamonte
 The diamonte is a concrete poem shaped like a diamond. The
purpose is to go from the subject at the top of the diamond to
another totally (and sometimes opposite) subject at the bottom.
 Structure:




Line 1—one noun (subject #1)
Line 2—two adjectives (describing subject #1)
Line 3—three participles (ending in –ing, telling about subject #1)
Line 4—four nouns (first two related to subject #1, second two
related to subject #2)
 Line 5—three participles (about subject #2)
 Line 6—two adjectives (describing subject #2)
 Line 7—one noun (subject #2)
Dachshund
Silly, sleepy
Running, playing, barking
Puppy, companion, lunch, weiner
Eating, grilling, picnicking
Yummy, delicious
hotdog
“The Courage That My Mother Had”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Plot
Figurative language
Connections
Author information
“Legacy II” by Leroy V. Quintana
Plot
Figurative language
Connections
Author information
“The Secret Heart” by Robert
Tristram Coffin
Plot
Figurative language
Connections
Author information
Langston Hughes
Hughes described how he came to write this poem: “Now it was just sunset, and we crossed the Mississippi,
slowly, over a long bridge. I looked out the window of the Pullman (train car) at the great muddy river flowing
down toward the heart of the South, and I began to think what that river, the old Mississippi, had meant to
Negroes in the past—how to be sold down the river was the worst fate that could overtake a slave in times of
bondage…Then I began to think about other rivers in our past…”




“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers”
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow if human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.






I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.


I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes





















“Mother To Son”
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair,
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Here a mother tells her son
to continue to strive
despite life’s hardships.
The poem contains one of
Hughes’s most memorable
lines: “Life for me ain’t
been no crystal stair.”
Langston Hughes
 “I, Too”
 I, too, sing America.
 I am the darker brother.
 They send me to eat in the
kitchen
 When company comes,
 But I laugh,
 And eat well,
 And grow strong.







Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
 Besides,
 They’ll see how beautiful I am
 And be ashamed—
 I, too, am America.
Hughes composed this poem
in 1924 at the age of twentytwo, when he found himself
broke in the Italian city of
Genoa. The first line of this
poem probably alludes to the
poetry of Walt Whitman, the
American poet who died ten
years before Hughes was
born. One of Whitman’s
poems is entitled “I Hear
America Singing.”
 I. Early Life





A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Sidney Lanier
II. Post Civil War
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
III. Musician
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
IV. Poet and Scholar
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
V.Posthumous honors
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
 A five line
humorous poem
with an AABBA
rhyme scheme.
Limericks
A Clumsy Young Fellow Named Tim
There once was a fellow named Tim (A)
whose dad never taught him to swim. (A)
He fell off a dock (B)
and sunk like a rock. (B)
And that was the end of him. (A)
Hickory, dickory, dock.
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one
and down he run.
Hickory, dickory, dock.
by Mother Goose
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!'
by Edward Lear
There was a small boy of Quebec
Who was buried in snow to his neck
When they said, "Are you friz?"
He replied, " Yes, I is —
But we don't call this cold in Quebec"
by Rudyard Kipling