Unit I: Recollections of Childhood
Memories of School
“Credo” by Robert Fulghum
Target(s):
 I can think critically about society and growing up.
 I can both recognize and identify different types of poetry.
 I can write structured poetry.
I.
Robert Fulghum’s Inspiration
Each spring, for many years, I have set myself the task of writing a personal statement of belief: a Credo.
When I was younger, the statement far for many pages, trying to cover every base, with no loose ends.
It sounded like a Supreme Court brief, as words could resolve all conflicts about the meaning of
existence.
The credo has grown shorter in recent years - sometimes cynical, sometimes comical, and sometimes
bland - but I keep working at it. Recently I set out to get the statement of personal belief down to one
page in simple terms, fully understanding the naive idealism that implied.
The inspiration for brevity came to me at a gasoline station. I managed to fill an old car's tank with
supreme deluxe hi-octane go-juice. My old hoopy couldn't handle it and got the willies - kept sputtering
out at intersections and belching going downhill. I understood. My mind and my spirit get like that from
time to time. Too much high-content information and I get the existential willies- keep sputtering out at
intersections where life choice must be made and I either know too much or not enough. The examined
life is no picnic.
I realized then that I already know most of what's necessary to live a meaningful life- that isn't all that
complicated. I know it. And have known it for a long, long time. Living it- well, that's another matter,
yes?
Reflection
1. In your own words, explain the parallel relationship with the author’s car and his mind and
spirit.
2. What are your thoughts on cookies and milk? How could they relate to life?
What is a Credo?
A credo (Latin for "I Believe") is a statement of belief,
commonly used for religious belief, such as the Apostles'
Creed.
“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I
learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school
mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things
I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing
and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and
stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The
roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but
we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the
Styrofoam cup--they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you
learned--the biggest word of all--LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love
and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult
terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world
it would be if we all--the whole world--had cookies and milk about three
o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or
if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are-- when you go out into the
world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
II.
Application - Poem Excerpt
“Take any of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult
terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government
or your world and it holds true and clear and firm” (29-31)
In partners, you will be given an item from the poem to extrapolate in detail. Create a similar
metaphorical comparison to life, like Robert Fulghum.
III.
Poetry Writing
Choose one (1) type of poetry. Write a poem that focuses on memories of school from a child’s
perspective. The poem must be consistent with the poetic structure/form (rhyme, rhythm, rhyme
scheme). Also, you must include at least three (3) literary devices or figurative language.
Evaluation
Connection to Theme
Poetic Structure
Literary Devices/Figurative Language
Original Title and Poet’s Name
Typed
/20
/5
/5
/3x2
/2
/2
Types of Poetry
Narrative - poetry that stresses plot and action, has some characterization, and minimizes or ignores the
poet’s expression of his personal feelings.
 Ballad - are simple in structure, impersonal in tone, and often melodramatic. They tell
a
story usually stressing a basic theme such as love, death, or humor:
Two Types
1. Popular - a widely varying, usually anonymous narrative
2. Literary - a more polished imitation of popular ballad by a known poet
“Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)
"Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?"
"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren't good for a little child."
"But, mother, I won't be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free."
"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children's choir."
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know that her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
"O, here's the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?"
Ballad Structure
The ballad stanza, named for its frequent use in traditional ballads, is quatrains of
alternating tetrameter and trimeter, rhyming either abab or abcb.
Lyric - a short poem highly personal and emotional character. The structure is likely to be simple. In lyric
poetry, the mood is musical and emotional. The writer of a lyric poem uses words that express his state
of mind, his perceptions, or his feelings.
Two Types
1. Elegy - a poem or song mourning the dead.
2. Ode - a poem generally longer than a lyric and more serious and impersonal in
theme. It is usually rick in diction and charged with emotion.
“O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; 10
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; 20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Elegy Structure
There is no set metrical pattern or rhyme scheme for an elegy.10 An elegy,
therefore, is a creative opportunity in which the poet can let the spirit move
them. The following are a few forms you might want to try:
- Free Verse
- Rhyming Couplets
- Epigram
“Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Ode Structure
Pindaric Ode - Write three 10-line stanzas. The three parts of the Pindaric Ode consist of:
 strophe – “the turn”
 antistrophe - "the counterturn" (identical in form with the strophe)
 epode - "the stand”
 10-line stanza of iambic verse using an ababcdecde rhyme scheme; If you do this
correctly, the "a" of a stanza will rhyme only with the "a" of that same stanza
Horatian Ode - does not have a true pattern but tends to be more meditative in nature.
Sonnet - a 14-lined poem in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme varies according to the type.
Two Types
1. Shakespearean (Elizabethan)
2. Petrarchan (Italian)
“Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Shakespearean Sonnet Structure
The Shakespearean sonnet consists of 14 lines. It has three quatrains and one
rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. The rhythm is iambic
pentametre.
“When I Consider How My Light is Spent” by John Milton
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
Petrarchan Sonnet Structure
The Petrarchan sonnet consists of 14 lines. It has two quatrains and two tercets.
The rhyme scheme is abba abba cde cde. There are several variations for the two
terects: cdc dcd / cde ced / cde dce. The rhythm is iambic pentametre.
Villanelle - is a highly specialized form and is difficult to write without seeming trite or repetitive. It is a
French Verse form with 19 lines divided into 5 TERCETS and 1 QUATRAIN. Two rhymes or repeated lines
predominate. This often gives the poem a circular feeling.
“The Waking” by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Poem Structure
line 1 - a - 1st refrain
line 2 - b
line 3 - a - 2nd refrain
line 4 - a
line 5 - b
line 6 - a - 1st refrain (same as line 1)
line 7 - a
line 8 - b
line 9 - a - 2nd refrain (same as line 2)
line 10 - a
line 11 - b
line 12 - a - 1st refrain (same as line 1)
line 13 - a
line 14 - b
line 15 - a - 2nd refrain (same as line 2)
line 16 - a
line 17 - b
line 18 - a - 1st refrain (same as line 1)
line 19 - a - 2nd refrain (same as line 2)
Student: _____________________________________
Evaluation
Connection to Theme
/5
Poetic Structure
/5
Literary Devices/Figurative Language
/3x2
Original Title and Poet’s Name
Typed
Comment(s)
/2
/2