Name: __________________________________Period: __________ Packet # _____
Modernist Poetry
A comprehensive study of poetry as a means of artistic expression in art, music, and words
“Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.”
- Voltaire
Assignments & Points
What is Poetry? _____ / 5
Can Songs be Poems?: Poetic Literary Elements in Songs _____ / 5
Introduction to Poetry: Response Poem _____ / 5
The Merchant’s Wife: LRA Questions _____ / 5
The Merchant’s Wife: Paraphrasing _____ / 5
Imagery in Poetry: Red Wheelbarrow & This is Just to Say _____ / 5
TOTAL POINTS
Unit Standards
Reading Standard 3.3: Analyze the ways in which the author’s style and the “sound” of language achieve
specific rhetorical or aesthetic purposes
Reading Standard 3.4: Analyze ways in which poets use imagery, personification, figures of speech, and
sounds to evoke readers’ emotions.
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Page 2
What is Poetry?
DIRECTIONS: With a partner, brainstorm thoughts and ideas that come to mind when you hear
the word “poetry”. One example is done for you. Then, use the words and phrases you came up
with you create your personal definition of poetry at the bottom of the page.
English class!
POETRY
MY GROUP’S DEFINITION OF POETRY:
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
Page 3
Can Songs be Poems?
DIRECTIONS: Below is a chart of literary elements that authors often use for artistic and
literary effect in poetry. Take a moment at define each term. Then, as an ongoing assignment,
provide an example from a song where it is used as we study them in class.
Literary Device
Imagery
Metaphor
Allusion
Symbolism
Stream of
Consciousness
Paradox
Definition
Example from a Song
Page 4
Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Response poem to:
Introduction to Poetry
Page 5
The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter
by Ezra Pound
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
Played I about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand.
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
Annotations & Notes
Start Here!
Page 6
1. In lines 1–6, what feelings
are evoked by the images of
the children playing?
3. Re-read lines 11–14. The
speaker’s desire to be with
her husband, even after
death—“my dust to be
mingled with yours”—is a
symbol of her eternal love.
What does her lack of
interest in climbing the
lookout tower represent?
2. Re-read lines 7–9. How would you describe the
speaker’s early relationship with her husband?
4. Paraphrase, or describe
in your own words, what
happens in lines 15–17.
Literary Response
and Analysis
Questions
“THE RIVER
MERCHANTS
WIFE”
5. How does the imagery in line 18 reflect the
speaker’s own feelings?
6. In lines 23–25, why does the speaker say the paired
butterflies hurt her?
Last one! Make it count!
Paraphrasing: The River-Merchant’s Wife…
Reading Skills: Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing can help you understand what a poet is saying. In the chart below are three
passages from “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter.” In the right-hand column,
paraphrase each passage in your own words.
Passage From the Poem
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked
back. (lines 7–10)
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
(lines 11–14)
The paired butterflies are already yellow
with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older. (lines 23–25)
Paraphrase
Page 8
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
This Is Just to Say
William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Page 9
Imagery in Poetry
Imagery is the use of ______________ to evoke a picture or a
concrete sensation of a person, a thing, a place, or an experience.
Images appeal to one or more of the five ____________—sight, hearing,
smell, touch, and taste.
DIRECTIONS: Fill in the chart below with examples of images that appeal to the senses.
(Not all selections will have images that appeal to all senses.)
Imagery that appeals to…
Sight
Why does the author use this appeal?
Hearing
Why does the author use this appeal?
Taste
Why does the author use this appeal?
Touch
Why does the author use this appeal?
Smell
Why does the author use this appeal?