



THEME
(1) broadly and commonly, a topic explored in a
literary work (e.g., "the value of all life"); (2)
more narrowly, the insight about a topic
communicated in a work (e.g., "All living things
are equally precious"). In other words, what a
poem says involves its theme while how it is said
involves its tone.
TONE:
The poem’s attitude or feelings towards its topic;
closely related to style and diction (word choice)
 Audio: http://www.poets.org/booth/booth.cfm
 How
would you describe this poem’s
• Topic?
• Tone?
• Theme?
 Why
do you think the poet calls this
poem “terribly autobiographical”?
 Discuss post-poem questions
The American toy company Mattel launched the Barbie Doll in 1959
to enormous commercial success. Unlike dolls produced in earlier
eras, which tended to represent infants or young children, Barbie was
modeled on an adult female body. While Barbie’s look has changed
over the decades, she has always been intended to serve as an icon
of feminine beauty and fashion, and the marketing surrounding the
doll emphasizes her clothing, make-up, hairstyle, and accessories.
Since the 1970s, critics of Barbie have warned of the dangers of the
doll’s power as a kind of aspirational ideal for young girls and
have condemned the doll’s implicit promotion of patriarchal norms.
Barbie’s designers’ assumptions about the professional and sexual
roles available to women have been perceived as demeaning; their
representations of various races and ethnicities have been viewed as
insensitive and sometimes racist; and their endorsement of
consumerism has been denounced. Perhaps most significantly, the
Barbie Doll has been criticized for promoting an unrealistic—and
unattainable—body image. The standard Barbie Doll, adjusted for
scale, represents a 5’9” woman with a 36” chest, an 18” waist, and 32”
hips.






What toys are presented to the “girlchild”? What values do
these toys seem to reflect? What kind of identity do they
seem intended to produce in the child who plays with
them?
What social expectations greet the girlchild when she
experiences the “magic of puberty”?
What discrepancies does the poem highlight between the
girlchild’s qualities and the way she is perceived by others?
To what are we supposed to attribute the girlchild’s death in
the final stanza? How do the funeral goers react to her
death?
How would you describe the tone of this poem?
How would you describe the speaker? What is her attitude
toward the girlchild as a character? What is her attitude
toward the social forces shaping the girlchild?
Knight was an African
American writer of the
Black Arts Movement
He served in the Korean
War as a medic and
later suffered from a
heroin addiction. He
spent time in prison,
which formed the theme
of his early writing, and
later focused on issues
of racism and love.

Think about the various examples of figurative
language describing Hard Rock. What do these
examples have in common? Think also about the
difference between Hard Rock before and after and
the way the descriptions of him change accordingly.
Fill in the blanks of this sentence: While Hard Rock is
described in terms of
before he is
lobotomized, he is described as a
after. Is
there a relation, logical or ironic, between the two
words you chose? Do the two characterizations of
Hard Rock have anything in common?
This poem is, in part, about the relation between
Hard Rock and the other prisoners. In the second
stanza, Hard Rock is described as a “stallion,”
while the other inmates are compared to
“indians.” What do you make of those
comparisons? Why do you think the poet is
borrowing the vocabulary of the Wild West for
his imagery here?
 This poem has a lengthy, descriptive title. What is
the effect of such a long title, and how does it
influence your response to the poem?
 What else might this poem have been called?

Intending at first to become a
scientist, Auden studied at
Oxford, where he became the
center of the “Oxford Group” of
poets and leftist intellectuals. His
travels during the 1930s led him
to Germany, Iceland, China,
Spain (where he was an
ambulance driver in the civil war),
and the United States (where he
taught at various universities
and, in 1946, became a
naturalized citizen). A prolific
writer of poems, plays, essays,
and criticism, Auden won the
Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his
collection of poems The Age of
Anxiety, set in a New York City
bar.




To whom or what do you imagine the speaker of this
poem is speaking?
What's the significance or effect of the poet's use of the
language of command or entreaty (Do this; do that.)?
What's the significance or effect of the way the poet
mixes references to telephones, airplanes, and traffic
policemen with references to stars, the moon, and the
ocean? Of the way the poet moves from more concrete
images from everyday life to more abstract and
traditionally poetic ones?
What's the significance or effect of the regular rhyme
scheme?

AUDIO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmJYs6PQKVc

Why does the poem begin “Sundays too” (rather than “On
Sundays”)?



What does the use of alliteration, as in “clothes,” “cold,” “cracked”
(lines 2–3) and “blueblack,” “banked,” “blaze” (lines 2, 5),
contribute to the poem?
What is the significance of the speaker's reference to his fear of
“the chronic angers of that house” (line 9)? What might this line
suggest about the relationship between father and son? What's the
significance of the fact that the speaker talks about “angers” in the
plural and without reference to any particular person (including
himself)?
How about the setting overall, especially the fact that the speaker
remembers winter in particular? What might this line suggest
about the relationship between father and son?
A leading figure in the Native American literary
renaissance that emerged in the 1960s, Simon J. Ortiz
has published short fiction and non-fiction prose in
addition to poetry. Whatever form his writing takes,
though, it is concerned with modern man’s alienation
from others, from himself, and from his environment—
urging as a solution our meaningful re-connection with
the wisdom of ancestral spirits and with our Mother
Earth.
Ortiz, who is an Acoma Pueblo Indian, was born and
raised near Albuquerque, New Mexico and grew up
speaking the Acoma tongue. “This early language from
birth to six years of age in the Acoma family and
community,” he has written, “was the basis and source
for all I would do later;” ironically, he was punished for
speaking it at school. Nicknamed “the reporter” by his
father for the absorbed attention he paid as a child to
tribal elders’ stories, he has continued to base his
creative work on his people’s powerful oral tradition.
 Why
does the author capitalize “Spring”
(line 8)? What is his tone when
describing the natural elements?
 What about the poem might conform to
your expectations of a Native American
voice? What aspects do not?
 How do the first-person narration and
conversational diction of the poem draw
the reader into the poem?