Name ______________________________________________________________________
The Base Stealer
By Robert Francis
Poised between going on and back, pulled
Both ways taut like a tightrope walker,
Fingertips pointing the opposites,
Now bouncing tiptoe like a dropped ball
Or a kid skipping rope, come on, come on!
Running a scattering of steps sidewise,
How he teeters, skitters, tingles, teases,
Taunts them, hovers like an ecstatic bird,
He's only flirting, crowd him, crowd him,
Delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate-now!
Accurate Text Quote
“the author’s exact words”
Find a simile
Find a simile
Find a simile
Find an example of repetition
Find an example of alliteration
Explain the imagery that the author creates
My thinking about the author’s words
Name ___________________________________________________________________
Metaphors By Sylvia Plath
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off
Accurate Text Quote
“the author’s exact words”
Metaphor
An elephant, a ponderous house,
Metaphor
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
Metaphor
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Metaphor
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
Metaphor
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf
Allusion
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples
What is this poem about?
My thinking about the author’s words
Name ______________________________________________________________________
School Fight
You can’t hear a pin drop
As all the kids gather around;
They are vultures
Waiting for the corpse
Of the one who loses.
The tall kid…
He swings his fist with his hurricane force.
A torrential spray of blood
Explodes from the smaller boy’s nose
And covers the tiled floor.
The vultures fly away
As the teachers quickly approach.
Accurate Text Quote
“the author’s exact words”
Metaphor
Hyperbole
Imagery
My thinking about the author’s words
Name _______________________________________________________________________
Brown Penny By William Butler Yeats
I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
Accurate Text Quote
“the author’s exact words”
Personification
Repetition
My thinking about the author’s words
Name ________________________________________________________________________
The Bells By Edgar Allen Poe (first stanza only)
Hear the sledges with the bells-Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Find three examples of onomatopoeia
1. _________________________________________________________________
2. _________________________________________________________________
3. _________________________________________________________________
Why does Poe repeat the word bells?