English 9
Thinking about Poetry
Imagine that friends from out of town come into New York for the weekend. “Show us the
city,” they say. On one level this request is a simple one – you can get them to Manhattan
in no time – but it also poses its share of challenges. There’s so much in the city, so many
“right ways” to respond to their request - what will you show them, and how? When they
go back home, what is it that you want them to remember, to wonder about, to share with
their friends?
Now imagine that someone has asked you to show them a poem. How would you help
them?
This assignment asks you to act as a tour guide through one of the poems included in this
packet. Your job is not to solve the poem, to finish it, to close down any and all discussion
about it. Instead, your task is to show us how and where to start thinking about and
responding to it. Take us through the poem systematically, pointing out interesting and
important details along the way. Help us get to a point where we start asking questions that
matter, and give us strategies for developing answers. Remind us of the tools at our disposal
as we try to understand all that is going on in the poem. In the end, we, your audience, should
have a sense of how you’ve made sense of the poem, and what you hope we’ll take away and
remember from our “tour.”
Your presentation of the poem will between two and three minutes long, and while your
audience will have a copy of your poem to follow, all you’ll have to work with is an index
card with a few key things to discuss and your understanding and enthusiasm for the poem
you’ve chosen. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be discussing ways to think and talk about
poems, and we’ll have the chance to practice locating and making sense of some of the moves
that poets like to make. By the time we’re through, you’ll be armed with a number of really
helpful strategies for entering into a discussion of, or with, a poem; all you’ll have to do in
your presentation is to decide which ones work best for you in terms of the poem you’ve
chosen.
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, /To the last syllable
of recorded time;/And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle! /Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,/ That struts and frets his hour upon the
stage,/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.”
Macbeth (V,v,22-31)
“Out, Out - -“
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them 'Supper'. At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap-He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh.
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all-Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart-He saw all spoiled. 'Don't let him cut my hand off
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!'
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then -- the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little -- less -- nothing! -- and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs
-
Robert Frost
Ozymandias
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822
* *****************************************************
Some strategies you can use to talk to and about a poem
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“Notice What You Notice” – The Power of Association – sharing the “sensory
constellations” that are lit when you read the poem can help to bring both the poem
and your sense of it to life for your audience.
Start with the Literal – Before you begin writing, try to paraphrase the poem. If
you can’t put the story it’s telling or the image it’s presenting into your own words,
you probably don’t understand it as well as you could or should. Remember – you
can’t even think about what a poem (or any piece of writing) means until you
understand what it says.
Examining the Title – Does the title work with or against the poem itself? Is it
meant to clue you in or to keep you off balance?
Think about the Four Questions:
1. Who is the speaker?
2. What is/are the poem’s primary subject(s)?
3. How does the poem feel about its subject?
4. What are the “Hot Spots” that animate and complicate the poem?
Consider the major binaries in the poem - Locating the binaries or points of
tension will often reveal the moments of the greatest interest or importance in any
piece of literature.
Think about the tone of the Speaker’s Voice – what does it suggest?
Think about the mood the poem sets for its audience- what does it suggest?
Identify the moments of ambiguity, ambivalence, and irony – how do they work
in the poem? How do they deepen and complicate your sense of what’s interesting
or important in the piece?
Pay attention to figurative language – metaphor, simile, symbolism, hyperbole,
understatement, imagery, etc. Does it play a significant role in the poem? How
and where does it contribute to your appreciation and understanding of the poem?
What’s the “Take-away” from the poem? In the end, what part(s) of the poem –
what ideas, moments, images or questions – have stayed with you since you’ve
finished reading it? What questions are you asking now -what do you see, feel, or
know now - that you didn’t before?
And remember to ask yourself–
What conversation(s) does the poem want to enter?
What questions does it answer?
What questions does it ask?
Day 1 -
English 9 Poetry Unit
Do Now:
10-15 mins.
1. Please describe the first lesson you ever remember learning?
2. What do you imagine a poem entitled “First Lesson” might be about? Why?
Please complete question #3 on the back of this page:
3. Imagine that you are the parent of a child who is leaving home for the first time, and
describe what you are doing, thinking, feeling, going through, etc. from the perspective
and in the voice of that parent.
When you’re not sure how or where
to start, you can always ask yourself
these Four Questions:
1. Who is the speaker?
 What do we know about him or her? What can we reasonably
assume or infer? What can’t we know?
2. What is/are the poem’s primary subject(s)?
 What does the poem address literally or directly? What other more
figurative subjects or issues are addressed or suggested?
3. How does the poem feel about its subject?
 How do the tone of the speaker’s voice, the language the poem
uses, the mood it creates help us to understand about how the poem
feels about its subject(s) and perhaps why it is discussing it(them)?
4. What are the “Hot Spots” that animate and complicate the poem?
 What words, phrases, lines, or sections are most interesting, most
confusing, most important, and most meaningful to you and your
understanding and appreciation of the poem?
Key Terms:
Ambiguity - vagueness, uncertainty, doubt.
Writers and poets often use ambiguity to
illustrate complexity in their subjects, or in their experiences of their subjects.
Ambivalence - the co-existence of strong, conflicting emotions; the experience of
feeling conflicting emotions simultaneously. Writers and poets often discuss or consider
their own ambivalence, or attempt to generate it in their audiences, in order to illustrate the
complexity of their subjects or their own feelings about their subjects.
Binary -
a “controlling opposite”; a binary is made up of a pair of things that seem
different, yet help define one another.
Hyperbole -
intentional exaggeration in order to make a point.
Imagery -
any word, phrase or set of lines that engages the senses and helps us to see,
feel, hear, smell or even taste what a poem is describing for ourselves. Imagery can also
illustrate the TONE of a piece and help to establish its MOOD.
Irony - simply put, irony presents the opposite of what might normally be expected in
any situation. Sarcasm is a form of irony, where, thanks to the TONE in which they are
said, suggest the opposite of their normal or literal definition. Irony is often used to
surprise an audience or to highlight things that might otherwise get missed.
Metaphor – a situation in which one person, object, action or idea is substituted for
something else in order to illustrate their similarities. The best metaphors are surprising
and leave the audience with a new sense of the “original” item, sometimes called the
“tenor,” the “substitute,” also known as the “vehicle” and the ways in which they are like
and not like one another.
Mood – the emotions or atmosphere generated by a poem.
Mood describes how a poem
feels or makes the reader feel.
Simile – a comparison using “like” or “as.”
Symbol – an object with both literal and figurative/suggestive value.
symbol “means” both itself and something else.
In a poem, a
Tone - the “vocal attitude” of the speaker of a poem.
It is often a poem’s tone rather
than its content that reflects how the speaker thinks or feels about the poem’s subject. In
other words, how something is said often reveals what a speaker means by what s/he is
saying.
Understatement – the opposite of hyperbole; when something is intentionally
downplayed or given less emphasis and attention than might be expected in order to
inspire a certain response from the audience.
Day 2
First Lesson
Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A deadman's-float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.
~ Philip Booth
Day 2
To a Daughter Leaving Home
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.
~
Linda Pastan
Day 3
Rite of Passage
As the guests arrive at our son’s party
they gather in the living room—
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. One says to another
How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So?
They eye each other, seeing themselves
tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their
throats a lot, a room of small bankers,
they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you
up, a seven says to a six,
the midnight cake, round and heavy as a
turret behind them on the table. My son,
freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,
chest narrow as the balsa keel of a
model boat, long hands
cool and thin as the day they guided him
out of me, speaks up as a host
for the sake of the group.
We could easily kill a two-year-old,
he says in his clear voice. The other
men agree, they clear their throats
like Generals, they relax and get down to
playing war, celebrating my son’s life.
~
Sharon Olds
Day 3
The Writer
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
the forward part of a ship’s bow that cuts the water
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
the top edge of a side of a boat
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy.
I wish her a lucky passage.
the freight carried by a ship, train or other vehicle .
trip, journey, voyage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
a small bird
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a heedless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.
~ Richard Wilbur
Three Plans for Effective Use of
Quotations
The “Three C’s”
ICE ICE BABY
The “SQUAT” Method
Context
Introduction
Set Up
Content
Citation
Quote
Commentary
Explanation
Understanding
Analysis
Tie-back
When you’re writing a quotation-based response to a
poem, you must include these five things:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
An introduction to the poem (Title, Author) and the issue that you’re
addressing
Some back-ground/set up/CONTEXT for the lines you will be
discussing.
The lines themselves, set up and punctuated properly – as they appear in
the poem, or with /’s showing line separations.
Your explanation of what the quotation says and what it means in the
context of the poem
A tie back or reminder of how and why this quotation has shaped your
understanding of the issue you’re considering here.
Day 4
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.
~ Theodore Roethke
Day 5
Failure
To pay for my father's funeral
I borrowed money from people
he already owed money to.
One called him a nobody.
No, I said, he was a failure.
You can't remember
a nobody's name, that's why
they're called nobodies.
Failures are unforgettable.
The rabbi who read a stock eulogy
about a man who didn't belong to
or believe in anything
was both a failure and a nobody.
He failed to imagine the son
and wife of the dead man
being shamed by each word.
To understand that not
believing in or belonging to
anything demanded a kind
of faith and buoyancy.
An uncle, counting on his fingers
my father's business failures—
a parking lot that raised geese,
a motel that raffled honeymoons,
a bowling alley with roving mariachis—
failed to love and honor his brother,
who showed him how to whistle
under covers, steal apples
with his right or left hand. Indeed,
my father was comical.
His watches pinched, he tripped
on his pant cuffs and snored
loudly in movies, where
his weariness overcame him
finally. He didn't believe in:
savings insurance newspapers
vegetables good or evil human
frailty history or God.
Our family avoided us,
fearing boils. I left town
but failed to get away.
~
Philip Schultz
Day 5
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
~
Dylan Thomas
Day 6
I Go Back to May 1937
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
~
Sharon Olds
Day 6
On the Subway
The boy and I face each other.
His feet are huge, in black sneakers
laced with white in a complex pattern like
a set of intentional scars. We are stuck on
opposite sides of the car, a couple of
molecules stuck in a rod of light
rapidly moving through darkness. He has the
casual cold look of a mugger,
alert under hooded lids. He is wearing
red, like the inside of the body
exposed. I am wearing dark fur, the
whole skin of an animal taken and
used. I look at his raw face,
he looks at my fur coat, and I don't
know if I am in his powerhe could take my coat so easily, my
briefcase, my lifeof if he is in my power, the way I am
living off his life, eating the steak
he does not eat, as if I am taking
the food from his mouth. And he is black
and I am white, and without meaning or
trying to I must profit from his darkness,
the way he absorbs the murderous beams of the
nation's heart, as black cotton
absorbs the heat of the sun and holds it. There is
no way to know how easy this
white skin makes my life, this
life he could take so easily and
break across his knee like a stick the way his
own back is being broken, the
rod of his soul that at birth was dark and
fluid and rich as the heart of a seedling
ready to thrust up into any available light.
~ Sharon Olds
POEMS TO CONSIDER FOR THE TOUR GUIDE PRSENTATION
After My Arrest
among the everyday
pieces lost
a bright Indian cotton shirt
worn through months of
nursing, quickly unbuttoned
to bring the rooting baby to my breast
her head in its
soft, filmy folds
set adrift among the debris
of police searches, overturned lives
tossed into a pile of orphaned clothes
and taken to a tag sale
5
10
where my friend,
recognizing it,
bought it to keep me close
15
and wore it one day
to bring my daughter for a visit,
greeting me cheerfully,
“Remember this?”
and I laughed,
scooping up my baby
to carry her into the
toy-filled playroom
where she rode me, her horsey
among the other oversized stuffed animals
until visitors hours were over
when I stood at the great divide,
the visitor’s exit gate,
and watched my shirt and my child
leave
with my friend
20
25
30
~ Judith Clark
A Blessing from My Sixteen Years’ Son
I have this son who assembled inside me
during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared,
in a tiny blaze. Outside, pines toppled.
Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras.
Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous.
Look at the muscled obelisk of him now
5
pawing through the icebox for more grapes.
Sixteen years and not a bone broken,
nor single stitch. By his age,
I was marked more ways, and small.
He’s a slouching six-foot three,
with implausible blue eyes, which settle
on the pages of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
with profound belligerence.
A girl with a navel ring
10
15
could make his cell phone go buzz,
or an Afro-ed boy leaning on a mop at Taco Bell-creatures strange to me as dragons or eels.
Balanced on a kitchen stool, each gives counsel
arcane as any oracle’s. Rodney claims school
is harshing my mellow. Case longs to date
20
a tattooed girl, because he wants a woman
willing to do stuff she’ll regret.
They’ve come to lead my son
into his broadening spiral.
Someday soon, the tether
will snap. I birthed my own mom
into oblivion. The night my son smashed
the car fender then rode home
in the rain-streaked cop car, he asked, Did you
and Dad screw up so much?
He’d let me tuck him in,
my grandmother’s wedding quilt
25
30
from 1912 drawn to his goateed chin. Don’t
blame us, I said. You’re your own
idiot now. At which he grinned.
35
The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy
took it hard. He’d found my son
awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights,
where he’d draped his own coat
over her shaking shoulders. My fault,
he’d confessed right off.
40
Nice kid, said the cop.
-
Mary Karr
What lips my lips have kissed…
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply
And in my heart there is a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
5
10
Eating Poetry
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.
5
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.
~
Mark Strand
10
15
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
~
William Butler Yeats
5
10
15
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
5
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
10
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
15
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
20
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
~
James Wright
Novice
Tour Guide Presentation
Apprentice
Makes Effort to Engage
the Audience
Attempts to engage the
audience through personal
anecdotes, contextual
references, or relevant
connections with other
texts, ideas, or issues that
might appeal to them.
Subjective
reactions –
Discussion of
specific elements
from the poem
and the way they
work for or on
you
Objective
Responses –
Literary elements
and their
function and
value in the
poem
Take Away
Makes no personal
references to moments
from the poem and
seems to have no
personal connection to
or interest in the poem
Refers to only one
moment from the poem on
a personal level, or refers
to two or more moments
without clearly explaining
their significance.
Makes no references to
literary elements from
the poem
Presentation
Skills
Introduction
Practitioner
Expert
Engages the audience
through accurate and
appropriate use of
personal anecdotes,
contextual references,
or relevant
connections with
other texts, ideas, or
issues that might
appeal to them.
Refers to two or more
moments from the
poem and offers
clear, logical
explanations of their
“subjective” or
personal significance.
Engages the audience
through insightful,
original, energetic
presentation of personal
anecdotes, contextual
references, or relevant
connections with other
texts, ideas, or issues that
might appeal to them.
Refers to only one literary
element from the poem, or
refers to two or more
literary elements without
explaining, clearly and
convincingly, how they
work within the context of
the poem.
Refers to two or more
literary elements and
offers clear, accurate
explanations of these
elements and how
they work within the
context of the poem.
Refers to three or more
literary elements; offers
accurate, articulate
descriptions of these
elements and original,
sophisticated explanations
of how they work within
the context of the poem
Seems unclear about
what the audience
should take from the
presentation
Attempts to summarize
the presentation and to
provide an appropriate
“take away” for the
audience to consider once
the presentation has
concluded.
Offers a brief
summary of the
presentation and clear
and logical “take
away” for the
audience to consider
once the presentation
has concluded.
Offers a concise summary
of the presentation and a
thoughtful, sophisticated,
compelling “take away”
for the audience to
consider once the
presentation has
concluded.
No clear organizational
plan
Offers an organizational
plan that is vague or
illogical
Offers a clear and
logical organizational
plan, including
appropriate
transitional words or
phrases.
Follows an organizational
plan that includes
appropriate transitional
words or phrased and is
organic and compelling.
Does not highlight the
most important
moments
Begins to highlight the
most important moments
Emphasizes the
presentation’s
strongest points and
most important
moments
Grabbing the
Attention of the
Audience
Does not engage the
audience through a
clear, confident voice,
appropriate changes in
tone and tempo, or eye
contact.
Struggles to consistently
engage the audience
through a clear, confident
voice, appropriate changes
in tone and tempo, or eye
contact.
Engages the audience
through a clear voice,
appropriate changes
in tone and tempo, or
eye contact.
Refers to two or more
moments from the poem
and provides insightful,
articulate explanations of
their “subjective” or
personal significance
Gracefully highlights the
presentation’s strongest
points and most
significant moments
Involves and engages the
audience through a clear,
confident voice,
appropriate changes in
tone and tempo, or eye
contact.
Poem:______________________________
Paragraph
Introduction
Point #1
Point #2
Point #3
Take Away
Subject
Author:________________________
Significance