Name: ________________________________________
Ms. Gardner
English
AIR Packet - Poetry
Accountable Independent Reading POETRY Packet
POETRY ANTICIPATION GUIDE:
Directions: Place the letter A or D to indicate whether you Agree or Disagree with the
statements below.
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1. The true meaning of a poem can only be understood by the person who wrote it.
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2. Poems look different from other types of writing.
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3. Poems are always about emotions.
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4. Poems always rhyme.
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5. Poems are boring.
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6. A poem cannot be fun or funny.
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7. No poem can ever be completely understood.
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8. The sound of words is important in poetry.
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9. Every poem uses symbols.
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10. Line breaks and stanzas tell you how to read a poem.
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11. Each poem has its own rhythm.
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12. A good poem makes you feel something.
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13. Poems are quick and easy to write.
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14. Poems are hard to understand/figure out.
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15. Poems should use standard English/conventions of grammar.
Week 1:
FOCUS QUESTION(S): What is poetry? What is a poem?
Weekly Goal: Construct a definition of poetry
Directions:
Step 1: Read “Eating Poetry” by Mark Strand and annotate using the following symbols:
Box unfamiliar words.
Star (*) important or repeating ideas.
Put a question mark (?) next to a section you’re questioning or confused about.
Use an exclamation point (!) for connections between ideas or ideas that strike you or surprise you in some way.
***Remember to write notes in the margin as you read to record your ideas and thoughts.
Eating Poetry
Mark Strand
Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man,
I snarl at her and bark,
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
Step 2:
Please go to my website for links to other poems for WEEK 1. (Go to WCS’s new website, click on academics,
find my name and click the AIR:Poetry link) Choose two poems to print, read, and annotate under Week One.
Step 3: Based on the poems you have read and annotated, please come up with your own definition of poetry.
Write your definition here:
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Week 2:
FOCUS QUESTION: How do we make meaning of poetry?
WEEKLY GOAL: To read, reread, question and think about poems for deeper meaning and analysis
to identify a poem’s theme.
Step 1: Read the poem “Mentor” on the following page and annotate using the same symbols as last week.
Mentor
For Robert Francis
Had I known, only known
when I lived so near,
I'd have gone, gladly gone
foregoing my fear
of the wholly grown
and the nearly great.
But I learned alone,
so I learned too late.
—Timothy Murphy
What is a possible theme of “Mentor” by
Timothy Murphy?
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Step 2:
Please go to my website for links to other poems for Week Two. Choose two poems to print, read, and annotate.
Step 3:
After analyzing and annotating two poems of your choice, fill out the chart below identifying one theme you
have identified for each poem.
Title and Author of Poem
Theme
Week 3:
FOCUS QUESTION: What poetic devices do poets use?
Weekly Goal: To learn how Poets use figurative language to convey meaning.
Step 1: “She slithered into the room quietly and listened. After several days of observing, she
finally uncoiled her long limbs, stretched her neck, leaned against the desk and began speaking,
swaying as she spoke. With those first words, she began to slowly poison their minds .”
As a class, let’s answer the following questions:
1. What two things are being compared?
2. How is the woman described? What does she resemble?
3. Why would the writer liken a woman to a snake? Consider what effect the writer was after.
4. What type of figurative language is the passage above?
***Review Glossary of Figurative Language
Step 2: Read and annotate the poem below using the glossary as a reference.
Identity by Julio Noboa Polanco
Let them be as flowers,
always watered, fed, guarded, admired,
but harnessed to a pot of dirt.
I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed,
clinging on cliffs, like an eagle
wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.
To have broken through the surface of stone,
to live, to feel exposed to the madness
of the vast, eternal sky.
To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea,
carrying my soul, my seed,
beyond the mountains of time or into the abyss of
the bizarre.
I'd rather be unseen, and if
then shunned by everyone,
than to be a pleasant-smelling flower,
growing in clusters in the fertile valley,
where they're praised, handled, and plucked
by greedy, human hands.
I'd rather smell of musty, green stench
than of sweet, fragrant lilac.
If I could stand alone, strong and free,
I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed.
Step 3: Once you have a basic understanding of figurative language terms, you will hunt for figurative
language in two poems of your choice. Please go to my website for links to other poems for Week THREE.
Choose two poems to print, read, and annotate.
Next complete the chart with information from the poems you chose.
Title of Poem that
uses figurative
language
Type of
Figurative
Language
(simile,
metaphor,
etc.)
Definition in your
own words
Example of
figurative language
as used in poem
Your example
Week 4:
FOCUS QUESTION: What poetic devices do poets use?
Weekly Goal: Examine how tone and meaning are conveyed through the poet’s word choice.
Step 1: Brainstorm a list of words that convey strong feelings, be prepared to share a word with the class.
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Definition of tone in your own words: _________________________________________________
Step 2: Read and annotate the poem below. Think about the poem’s tone as you read.
My Papa's Waltz
By Theodore Roethke
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
Word or What
phrase
tone do
words
suggest?
Connotation:
Positive,
negative, or
neutral
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Step 3: Choose one poem from the folder Week FOUR to print, read, and annotate. Complete the chart below
for the poem you picked:
Poem: _____________________________________(Title and Author)
Word or phrase from
poem
What tone does this
suggest?
Connotation: positive,
negative, or neutral
Week 5:
FOCUS QUESTION: How does word choice help readers experience a poem?
Weekly Goal: To understand and appreciate how poets manipulate words and
language.
Step 1: “Fooling with words is the play of poets” What does this mean to you?
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Step 2: NEXT, read the poem below and annotate using the same symbols as last week
Adam Thinking – Lucille Clifton
she
stolen from my bone
is it any wonder
i hunger to tunnel back
inside desperate
to reconnect the rib and clay
and to be whole again
some need is in me
struggling to roar through my
mouth into a name
this creation is so fierce
i would rather have been born
Step 3: Go to my website under AIR Poetry Week 6 to choose two poems to print, read, and annotate.
* Be sure to look for ways that the poets have used language and how they have “fooled” with words.
Step 4: Fill out the following chart about each poem you have read.
Questions:
Title/Author of Poem 1:
Title/Author of Poem 2:
How does the poet use
language in this poem?
Provide examples from text to
support your thinking.
What are the strong words or
images in this poem?
Why do you feel that way?
Does this poem have a
profound effect on the reader?
Why or why not?
Week 6:
FOCUS QUESTION: What are some different poetic forms and structures and how do they affect
meaning?
Weekly Goal: to understand the form and structure of a sonnet.
Step 1: Read and annotate “Sonnet # 27” by William Shakespeare
Sonnet Number 27
by William Shakespeare
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired,
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind when body's work's expired;
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see;
(cont. on following page)
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.
Step 2: Choose two other sonnets to read and interpret. Choose TWO poems from the folder Week
SIX to print, read, and annotate.
Step 3: What do you see as a benefit to following traditional form when writing poetry?
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What are some possible drawbacks of using particular forms?
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Week 7:
FOCUS QUESTION: What are some different poetic forms and structures and how do they affect
meaning?
Weekly Goal: To familiarize yourself with one specific form of poetry of your choice (not the sonnet,
silly – we did that last week).
Step 1: Choose ONE poetry form from the list below:
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Villanelle
Sestina
Ballad
Blank Verse
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Pastoral
Ode
Ottava Rima
Epic
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Ghazal
Haiku
Step 2: Next, visit my website, and under Week Seven click on the form of poetry you are learning
about. Read the information you find there.
Define your poetry form in your own words:
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Step 3: Next, search the internet for some famous poems that are written in the particular form you
are researching. Print, read, and annotate one of these poems. On the following page, explain why
this poem is an example of the form you are studying.
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Week 8:
FOCUS QUESTION: What is the significance of a poem’s cultural and historical context?
Weekly Goal: To consider how a poem’s cultural or historical context enriches understanding.
Step 1: Read and annotate the poem below:
A Hymn to Childhood BY LI-YOUNG LEE
Childhood? Which childhood?
The one that didn’t last?
The one in which you learned to be afraid
of the boarded-up well in the backyard
and the ladder in the attic?
The one presided over by armed men
in ill-fitting uniforms
strolling the streets and alleys,
while loudspeakers declared a new era,
and the house around you grew bigger,
the rooms farther apart, with more and more
people missing?
The photographs whispered to each other
from their frames in the hallway.
The cooking pots said your name
each time you walked past the kitchen.
And you pretended to be dead with your sister
in games of rescue and abandonment.
You learned to lie still so long
the world seemed a play you viewed from the
muffled
safety of a wing. Look! In
run the servants screaming, the soldiers shouting,
turning over the furniture,
smashing your mother’s china.
Don’t fall asleep.
Each act opens with your mother
reading a letter that makes her weep.
Each act closes with your father fallen
into the hands of Pharaoh.
Which childhood? The one that never ends? O
you,
still a child, and slow to grow.
Still talking to God and thinking the snow
falling is the sound of God listening,
and winter is the high-ceilinged house
where God measures with one eye
an ocean wave in octaves and minutes,
and counts on many fingers
all the ways a child learns to say Me.
Which childhood?
The one from which you’ll never escape? You,
so slow to know
what you know and don’t know.
Still thinking you hear low song
in the wind in the eaves,
story in your breathing,
grief in the heard dove at evening,
and plentitude in the unseen bird
tolling at morning. Still slow to tell
memory from imagination, heaven
from here and now,
hell from here and now,
death from childhood, and both of them
from dreaming.
Can the poem stand on its own (without the reader’s understanding the historical references)? Why or
why not?
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Step 2: Go to my website and select ONE poem to print, read, and annotate.
Step 3: What poem did you choose to read? _________________________________
In the space below, describe the cultural and/or historical setting of the poem you choose. Use the
details in the poem to help you identify the setting. Make sure you use evidence to back up your
response.
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END OF QUARTER Project Choices:
Option 1:
For students who wish to write their own poetry (or song lyrics):
Create a poem anthology consisting of 6-12 original poems (or songs). Challenge yourself to
think about an overarching theme or strand (for example love poems, or poems about school,
family, etc,) that relates to all the poems in some way. The Poetry anthology must include a title
for the collection of poems, an introduction, a table of contents, and a short bio of yourself.
Option 2:
For students who wish to analyze and collect the poems of others:
Select 8-12 poems to include in a poetry anthology. For this project, you will act as an editor.
You will select the poems based on a specific theme or strand that appeals to you. Each poem
that is selected for the anthology must be accompanied by an explanation as to why this poem
is being included in the collection. The explanation should state why this poem is of particular
appeal to you and how it fits with the other poems in the collection. You will need to
determine a title for the collection, an introduction, table of contents, and a short bio of
yourself.
Option 3:
For students who wish to analyze a collection of poems by one poet:
Select 8-12 poems written by the same poet to include in an anthology. For this project you
will act as an editor. Each poem that is selected for the anthology must be accompanied by an
explanation as to why this poem is being included in the collection. The explanation should
state why this poem is of particular appeal to you and how it fits with the other poems in the
collection. You will need to determine a title for the collection, an introduction, dedication,
table of contents, and a short bio of yourself.
*Be creative and use illustrations!!!!