Name____________________
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Lesson Objective: Analyze how a poem’s shift in tone contributes to its
theme
Background: The poem that you are about to read, “Cloudy Day,” was written by Jimmy
Santiago Baca, a former inmate at a maximum-security prison in Arizona.
It was in prison that 21-year-old Baca—after years of neglect, poverty, and
loneliness—learned to read and write and discovered the power of words. He began
to write poetry to occupy the long days and nights of prison life, to give voice to
his feelings and frustrations, and to find redemption from his past. As Baca once
said, “All of us who went to prison were lied to, and poetry is the only thing that
didn’t lie. Everything that is not a lie is poetry. In order to bring order to our world,
we were forced to write. Writing was the only thing that could relieve the pain of
betrayal, the only thing that filled the void of abandonment.”
Cloudy Day by Jimmy Santiago Baca
1
2
3
4
5
It is windy today. A wall of wind crashes against,
windows clunk against, iron frames
as wind swings past broken glass
and seethes, like a frightened cat
in empty spaces of the cellblock.
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
In the exercise yard
we sat huddled in our prison jackets,
on our haunches against the fence,
and the wind carried our words
over the fences,
while the vigilant guard on the tower
held his cap at the sudden gust.
13
14
15
16
17
I could see the main tower from where I sat,
and the wind in my face
gave me the feeling I could grasp
the tower like a cornstalk,
and snap it from its roots of rock.
18
19
20
21
22
23
The wind plays it like a flute,
this hollow shoot of rock.
The brim girded with barbwire
with a guard sitting there also,
listening intently to the sounds
as clouds cover the sun.
Please identify words or phrases in the first stanza that
identify tone. How does the speaker feel about his
situation based on this evidence?
Writers often choose words because
of their connotations, or the emotional responses
associated with them.
What words in lines 7–12 have negative connotations.
What feelings do these words convey?
What is being personified in lines 1 – 12? How do the
wind’s human-like qualities affect the speaker’s attitude
toward life in prison?
Identify what image recurs throughout the poem. How
do the wind and the speaker’s attitude toward the wind
change in stanzas 1–4?
24
25
26
27
28
29
I thought of the day I was coming to prison,
in the back seat of a police car,
hands and ankles chained, the policeman pointed,
“See that big water tank? The big
silver one out there, sticking up?
That’s the prison.”
30
31
32
33
34
35
And here I am, I cannot believe it.
Sometimes it is such a dream, a dream,
where I stand up in the face of the wind,
like now, it blows at my jacket,
and my eyelids flick a little bit,
while I stare disbelieving. . . .
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
The third day of spring,
and four years later, I can tell you,
how a man can endure, how a man
can become so cruel, how he can die
or become so cold. I can tell you this,
I have seen it every day, every day,
and still I am strong enough to love you,
love myself and feel good;
even as the earth shakes and trembles,
and I have not a thing to my name,
I feel as if I have everything, everything.
Summarize lines 36–46 and identify the tone, citing
examples that support their responses.
How the tone has changed
from the beginning to the end of the poem.
How do this shift in tone and the speaker’ words in line
46 relate to the poem’s theme?