Name_____________________________________________
Poetry Work for English 10 (60 Points)
Directions: Use your yellow literature books and your poetry notes packet to complete the
work with the poems listed below. All the poems are in your yellow books, but the same poems
can be accessed online by Google searching the poem title with the poet’s name.
Poem #1: “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden pg. 532
1. List examples for each type of imagery from the poem:
Visual Imagery (2 examples):
Auditory Imagery (2 examples):
Tactile Imagery (2 examples):
2. Because the poem does not rhyme, it is an example of what type of poem?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Sonnet
Free Verse
Ode
Haiku
3. Who is the speaker of the poem?
4. What is the speaker’s tone towards his father? (one word)_______________________
What words from the poem indicated that tone? (List at least three):
5. What does the speaker now understand that he did not understand before?
6. What is the theme, or message/lesson, of this poem (write it out in a sentence)?
Poem #2: “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke, pg. 542
1. List two examples of repetition from the poem.
2. The use of the words “know” and “slow” in the second stanza is an example of what type
of rhyme?
a.
b.
c.
d.
End rhyme
Interior rhyme
Slant rhyme
Perfect rhyme
3. The use of the word “how” and “slow” is an example of what two types of rhyme?
a.
b.
c.
d.
End rhyme and interior rhyme
Interior rhyme and slant rhyme
Interior rhyme and perfect rhyme
End rhyme and slant rhyme
4. What is the mood of the fifth stanza (how does it make you feel)?_________________
List two words that create that mood:
5. Stanza five is an example of which of the following?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Couplet
Quatrain
Sestet
Octave
6. What is the rhyme scheme of the last stanza?
a.
b.
c.
d.
ABAA
ABBA
AAAB
ABBB
7. What is “another thing” that nature has to do “to you and me,” according to stanza five?
8. What does the speaker mean by the phrase, “I wake to sleep, and I take my waking
slow”? After reading the poem, write down in your own words what he means by this
line.
9. Roethke seems to be expressing a philosophy of how people should live their lives. What
is this philosophy? Explain.
Poem #3: “Reapers” by Jean Toomer, pg. 548
1. Write down two lines that clearly show the use of alliteration:
2. Write down the rhyme scheme of the poem. (You need eight letters total because the
poem is eight lines long).
____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____
3. The underlined letters in the words “reapers” and “steel” are which of the following?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Internal rhyme and Assonance
End rhyme and Assonance
Internal rhyme and Consonance
End rhyme and Consonance
4. What do the reapers do?
Using the first four lines, what are the reapers’ attitude, or tone, towards what they are
doing?
What words demonstrate this tone from the first four lines?
5. What are three possible similarities between the reapers and the horses?
How is the field rat different from the reapers and the horses?
Considering the three “animals” in the poem, explain the theme of the poem. Consider
the differences between the reapers/horses and the rat.
Poem #4: “Well, I Have Lost You; and I Lost You Fairly,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, pg.
595
1. Identify the rhyme scheme of the poem. The poem is 14 lines, so indicate a letter for
each line below.
____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____, ____.
2. What type of poem is this?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Ode
Haiku
Free Verse
Sonnet
3. When the speaker says, “I lost you…with my full consent,” what tone does this indicate
towards her feelings of losing her love?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Hate
Acceptance
Sympathy
Despair
Copy an example of any line other than lines 1 and 2 that demonstrate this tone.
4. The idea of being a caged bird on line 8 is an example of which of the following?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Simile
Metaphor
Personification
Alliteration
5. Explain what the speaker means by lines 9-12. Translate them into your own words.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly ___________________________________
I might have held you for a summer more, ___________________________________
But at the cost of words I value highly, ______________________________________
And no such summer as the one before. ______________________________________
6. What has made the speaker able to overcome her feelings for her lover?
What line numbers prove this? Lines __ - __.
Poem #5: Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” (poem listed below and not in book).
My Papa's Waltz
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
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.
Questions:
1. In the first stanza, it becomes obvious that who is the “small boy”?
2. By the second stanza, what scene/event is taking place?
3. The word countenance means, “face,” or “facial expression.”
Roethke’s uses personification in the lines, “My mother’s countenance
/ could not unfrown itself.” Why does Roethke make the countenance
responsible for unfrowning itself rather than the mother?
4. In general, what is happening in stanza #3?
Theodore Roethke
5. Is the use of the word “waltz” figurative or literal?
Explain.