Fully annotate the poem: You must identify punctuation, shifts, and style pieces (devices and techniques) -- you should have
an annotation for every line!
Situation
Speaker
1 dominant pattern/thread throughout the
poem - briefly explain how that pattern
works in the poem/how the pattern
illuminates a meaning (tie to a style or
structural element)
Theme Statement
“Ode to Salt”
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This salt
in the saltcellar
I once saw in the salt mines.
I know
you won't
believe me,
but
it sings,
salt sings, the skin
of the salt mines,
sings
with a mouth smothered
by the earth.
I shivered in those
solitudes
when I heard
the voice
of
the salt
in the desert.
Near Antofagasta
the nitrous
pampa
resounds:
a
broken
voice,
a mournful
song.
In its caves
the salt moans, mountain
of buried light,
translucent cathedral,
crystal of the sea, oblivion
of the waves.
And then on every table
translated by Margaret Sayers Pedeno
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in the world,
salt,
we see your piquant
powder
sprinkling
vital light
upon
our food.
Preserver
of the ancient
holds of ships,
discoverer
on
the high seas,
earliest
sailor
of the unknown, shifting
byways of the foam.
Dust of the sea, in you
the tongue receives a kiss
from ocean night:
taste imparts to every seasoned
dish your ocean essence;
the smallest
miniature
wave from the saltcellar
reveals to us
more than domestic whiteness;
in it, we taste infinitude.