Name: ____________________________________________________________________ Hour: ___________
William Stafford, Oregon's poet laureate wrote: "Poetry is the kind of thing you have to see from the
corner of your eye . . . It's like a very faint star. If you look straight at it you can't see it, but if you
look a little to one side it is there."
The Pasture
Robert Frost
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
How many stanzas? __________________
Label the rhyme scheme.
Circle the end rhymes in the poem.
Define quatrain:
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
Why might the speaker want a companion?
How would you describe the speaker’s
attitude toward nature?
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan’t be gone long.—You come too.
How many stanzas? ______________________
Label the rhyme scheme.
Does this poem have end rhymes? Circle them if so.
Does this speak think it’s more important to get work
done or to visit with a friend? Give proof by using a
quote from the poem.
A Time to Talk
Robert Frost
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.
Identify three phrases that appeal to the sense of
hearing by underlining them.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
Fire And Ice
For a friendly visit.
Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
What could fire and ice stand for?
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
How do we struggle with “fire and ice”?
The Gift Outright
Interesting fact about this poem:
Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.
Nikki Giovanni
Year Born:
What was Frost going to read instead of this
poem?
What was the gift? How was it a gift?
Write down an unfamiliar word to you from
the poem. Now give the definition.
The World Is Not A Pleasant Place To Be
Birthplace:
What does she do now?
Number of stanzas. __________________
Define inference:
the world is not a pleasant place
to be without
someone to hold and be held by
a river would stop
its flow if only
a stream were there
to receive it
What can we infer about how the author
feels?
an ocean would never laugh
if clouds weren't there
to kiss her tears
Define personification:
the world is not
a pleasant place to be without
someone
Give 1 example of personification from the
poem.
Name:______________________________________________________________ Hour :____________________
Langston Hughes: Born:
Died:
Langston Hughes was popular during what time
period?
“Dream Deferred” was written when? _________________
What does deferred mean?
What “dream” could Langston Hughes be referring to?
Dream Deferred
--Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream
deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Dreams
--Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
Or does it explode?
Write the two similes Hughes uses in “Dreams.”
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
What is the tone of this poem?
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Does Langston Hughes believe in the importance of dreams?
Write a line as proof from the poem.
Frozen with snow.
Still Here
--Langston Hughes
been scared and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,
How many stanzas?__________________
Identify two phrases that appeal to the sense of
touch.
Define tone:
Looks like between 'em they done
Tried to make me
Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'-But I don't care!
I'm still here!
What is the tone of this poem?
To You
--Langston Hughes
To sit and dream, to sit and read,
To sit and learn about the world
Outside our world of here and now--our problem world--To dream of vast horizons of the soul
Through dreams made whole,
Unfettered free---help me!
All you who are dreamers, too,
Help me to make our world anew.
I reach out my dreams to you.
Label the rhyme scheme of the poem.
What do the dashes contribute to the poem?
What does unfettered mean?
What/who is personified in the poem?
The Bat
--Theodore Roethke
Label the rhyme scheme.
What is a couplet?
By day the bat is cousin to the mouse.
He likes the attic of an aging house.
Write down a metaphor.
His fingers make a hat about his head.
His pulse beat is so slow we think him dead.
Write down an example of personification.
He loops in crazy figures half the night
Among the trees that face the corner light.
But when he brushes up against a screen,
We are afraid of what our eyes have seen:
For something is amiss or out of place
When mice with wings can wear a human face.
What is a cliché?
What does the speaker’s candle symbolize?
Why will the candle “not last the night?”
Define foe.
What message does this poem make?
First Fig
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
The Pasture - The rhyme pattern suggests the rhythm of farm life.
A Time to Talk- The rhyme pattern suggests he doesn’t mind being interrupted
Quatrain: a four line verse. A verse of poetry consisting of four lines, especially one with lines that
rhyme alternately
Fire and Ice - Frost is a master at making simple words say profound things. Here, he takes an idle
daydream, a whimsical (albeit slightly dark) musing, and converts it into a telling insight into the
destructive power of desire and hate, fire and ice respectively. The metaphor is apt, and powerful:
just as fire and ice may one day destroy the external, physical world, desire and hate destroy the
internal, spiritual one.
The Gift Outright - Frost wrote a longer poem, "Dedication" for the inauguration, but the glare of
the sun on the snow blinded him (he was 86 years old) and he recited this, which he knew by
heart. The inauguration was on a freezing day, the whole northeastern coast was snowed in.
The land was the gift…the gift was the unknown, the possibility, and the potential.
Nikki Giovanni – born 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Still teaches in Virginia
The World is not a pleasant place to be – no punctuation, no capitalization,
Inference: a logical guess you make based on evidence or your own knowledge
Personification: the giving of human qualities to an animal, object, or idea “the warm smile of the
sun”
I’m not lonely - What I love about this poem is the aching simplicity of it - the almost tearful
courage of lines like "i'm a big girl / i don't cry or anthing" and the bitter irony of getting over your
bad dreams by having them come true (also the brilliant double edge to "now that you're gone / i
don't dream"). The real beauty here is that Giovanni does not protest too much - there's a part of
you that's tempted to believe her and there's a part of you that knows it isn't true and you kind of
get the sense that she doesn't believe herself either, but would like to.
Langston Hughes
Born: February 1, 1902
Died: May 22, 1967
Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the
Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the
1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was
influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American
neighborhood. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics.
Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of
racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he
promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African
American culture, humor, and spirituality.
Dream Deferred - Not sure what exactly to say about this poem. It's great, sad, and it seems to
give me goose bumps every time I read it. It makes me ask "What is the American Dream,
exactly?" and has it changed since the 1950's when this poem was written?
Ted Hughes/Thistles: One of the marks of a great poet is the ability to take a perfectly ordinary
object and cast it in an entirely new light. Hughes does this with the thistles
of today's poem - transforming them from humble weeds into a symbol of strength
and resistance. As George Macbeth says,
"[Thistles] is a short paean of praise to the unkillable virtue of heroism. By
presenting this quality through the nature of part of the vegetable, rather than
the animal, kingdom, Hughes contrives to give it an air of naturalness and
inevitability, as if heroism like the flowers in spring is something which must
go on for ever."
"My candle burns at both ends" symbolizes her "carpe diem" lifestyle and philosophy.
"It will not last the night" is her acknowledgement that death is always imminent.
"But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-" What is life without friends and enemies?
"It gives a lovely light." Though living in such a manner can be hazardous, it will be a beautiful life
worth living.
Life is short, make the most of it while you can. Live fast die young.
The title is a bit troublesome to me. First of all, you should know that the name of the book from
which the poem came was called A Few Figs from Thistles. The fig has much immediate symbolism.
It recalls the fig tree of the Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve fashioned their first
garments after eating the fruit of the tree of wisdom. The fig tree has been associated with
sexuality for this reason, and also due to its pendulous fruit and its milky nectar.
According to my handy Dictionary of Symbols (Tressider, Jack. 1997 Duncan Baird Publishers), the
fig symbolized maternal nourishment, abundance, and procreation.
One must also consider another poem by Millay which has perhaps the same theme.
Mooses
--Ted Hughes
The goofy Moose, the walking house-frame,
Is lost
In the forest. He bumps, he blunders, he stands.
With massy bony thoughts sticking out near his ears--Reaching out palm upwards, to catch whatever might be
falling from heaven--He tries to think,
Leaning their huge weight
On the lectern of his front legs.
He can’t find the world!
Where did it go? What does a world look like?
The Moose
Crashes on, and crashes into a lake, and stares at the
mountain, and cries
“Where do I belong? This is no place!”
He turns and drags half the lake out after him
And charges the cackling underbrush--He meets another Moose.
He stares, he thinks “It’s only a mirror!”
“Where is the world?” he groans, “O my lost world!
And why am I so ugly?
And why am I so far away from my feet?”
He weeps.
Hopeless drops drip from his droopy lips.
The other Moose just stands there doing the same.
Two dopes of the deep woods.
I’m Not Lonely
--Nikki Giovanni
i'm not lonely
sleeping all alone
you think i'm scared
but i'm a big girl
i don't cry
or anything
i have a great big bed
to roll around
in and lots of space
and i don't dream
bad dreams
like i used
to have that you
were leaving me
anymore
now that you're gone
i don't dream
and no matter
what you think
i'm not lonely
sleeping
all alone
How many stanzas?______________
What is the tone of this poem?
(More than one answer.)
How many stanzas?________________
Before you read the poem, what could she be referring
to?
What is the tone of this poem?
Do you believe her? Why/why not?
I Wrote a Good Omelet
--Nikki Giovanni
I wrote a good omelet...and ate a hot poem...
after loving you
Buttoned my car...and drove my coat home...in the
rain...
after loving you
I goed on red...and stopped on green....floating
somewhere in between...
being here and being there...
after loving you
I rolled my bed...turned down my hair...slightly
confused but...I don't care...
Laid out my teeth...and gargled my gown...then I stood
...and laid me down...
to sleep...
after loving you
Write out three more examples that could go in Nikki Giovanni’s poem, “I Wrote a Good Omelet.”
1.
2
3.