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Teaching Grammar with Kumin’s “The Word”
Grade Ten
Skill Focus
Levels of Thinking
Remember
Understand
Close Reading
Literary Elements
Theme
Grammar
Literary Forms
Nonfiction
Verse
Apply
Analyze
Evaluate
Grammar
Parts of Speech
Clauses
Composition
Types (modes)
Narrative
Independent
Subordinate/Dependent
Phrases
Multiple Mode
Expressive
Imaginative
Style/Voice
Absolute
Appositive
Gerund
Infinitive
Participial
Prepositional
Conscious Manipulation of
Sentence Patterns
Experimentation with Sentence Variety
Sentences
Purpose
declarative
exclamatory
imperative
interrogative
Structure
compound
compound-complex
complex
simple
Analysis of a Text
Meaning and Effect related to parts of
speech, phrases, clauses, and sentences
Materials and Resources
• “The Word” by Maxine Kumin
Lesson Introduction
Many researchers believe students acquire knowledge “about” grammar through consistent
exposure, the same way children learn to talk. Through adapting the following strategies for
studying Maxine Kumin’s poem “The Word,” teachers can create rich experiences in language
for their students. Students working in groups could begin either by analyzing one of the stanzas
for all its parts of speech or analyzing the whole poem for a particular part of speech. This
beginning stage of identification of the components of sentences is objective, a necessary step in
leading to their subsequent subjective interpretations of the syntax of sentences.
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Grammar
Hastening syntactic growth is not necessarily a desirable goal, especially for those whose
syntax is already quite mature compared to that of their peers. The research suggests
that at least up to a point, such growth will probably take care of itself – particularly when
students read frequently, and read at least some materials with syntax that is more complex
than their own (131). Martha Kohln, Rhetorical Grammar
Note: When designing rubrics for the following assignments, teachers could reward
students who integrate one of the more sophisticated structures they have studied
into their own writing, but not punish those who do not. Weaver issues this
caution about trying to coax students into writing more sophisticated syntax:
• Rewrite the poem in prose. Explain the difference(s) between the two types of writing.
• Write a narrative prose piece about your own observations of a place in nature.
• After writing about the place in prose, write a poem based upon your observations.
(Or reverse these two ideas.)
• Compare the second and third writings. Do the same for a classmate’s pairing of prose
and poetry.
• Read James Wright’s “A Blessing” (Tenth Grade Level, Laying the Foundation), and
compare it to “The Word.”
• Find another poem (or additional poems) with a theme similar to the two poems above.
For example, write about how poets learn much about the world through nature.
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Grammar
Writing Prompts to Follow the Lesson:
Before assigning compositions, assign students individually and/or in small groups to practice
writing single sentences, then short paragraphs, modeling participles, participial phrases,
infinitives, appositives, and/or absolutes after Kumin’s examples.
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Teaching Grammar with Kumin’s “The Word”
Grade Ten
Grammar
Read carefully the following poem by Maxine Kumin, “The Word.” Then follow the
steps listed below the poem to analyze the poet’s use of language.
(5)
(10)
(15)
(20)
(25)
(30)
(35)
We ride up softly to the hidden
oval in the woods, a plateau rimmed
with wavy stands of gray birch and white pine,
my horse thinking his thoughts, happy
in the October dapple, and I thinking
mine-and-his, which is my prerogative,
Both of us just in time to see a big doe
loft up over the four-foot fence, her white scut*
catching the sun and then releasing it,
soundlessly clapping our reveries shut.
The pine grove shivers as she passes.
The red squirrels thrill, announcing her departure.
*a short, stumpy tail
Come back! I want to call her,
we who mean you no harm. Come back and show us
who stand pinned in stopped time to the track
how you can go from a standing start
up and over. We on our side, pulses racing
are synchronized with your racing heart.
I want to tell her, Watch me
mornings when I fill the cylinders
with sunflower seeds, see how the chickadees
and lesser redbreasted nuthatches crowd
onto my arm, permitting me briefly
to stand in for a tree,
and how the vixen** in the bottom meadow
I ride across allows me under cover
of horse scent to observe the education
of her kits, how they dive for the burrow
on command, how they re-emerge at another
word she uses, a word I am searching for.
Its sound is o-shaped and unencumbered,
the see-through color of river,
airy as the topmost evergreen fingers
and soft as pine duff underfoot
when the doe lies down out of sight;
take me in, tell me the word.
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**a fox
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Parts of Speech
Stanza 1
1. What does the first-person plural pronoun “We” add to the poem? What other points of
view might Kumin have used? How would the poem be different?
2. Kumin uses an adverb to describe how they ride. Which word is it? What does this word
add to the image of these people riding through the woods?
4. What does her use of the proper adjective add to the imagery? What effect does her use of
the adjective “wavy” have? What colors does she add through adjectives?
5. What is the effect of placing the adjective “happy” after “horse, thinking his thoughts?”
How would the effect differ if she had put “happy” before “horse”?
Stanza 2
6. What vivid verbs does Kumin use in this stanza? What other verbs could she have
substituted? How would these verbs alter the meaning?
7. Which adverb contributes the most to the imagery of the doe’s actions? What would happen
if it were omitted?
Stanza 3
8. What pronoun is implied in lines 13 – 14? To whom is the speaker speaking?
9. What contrasting adjectives (both present and past participles) does Kumin use in this
stanza? How do these words add to the imagery?
10. In the third stanza, Kumin uses a linking verb. What effect does this linking verb have?
Rewrite the sentence using an active verb. How does the effect change?
Stanza 4
11. What pronoun is implied in line 19? To whom is she speaking?
12. What details do her adjectives provide in this stanza?
13. How does the adverb “briefly” contribute to the imagery? Why is this word an effective
diction choice?
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Grammar
3. Through her nouns Kumin tells what kind of trees make up the woods – what kind? What
does she mean by her noun “dapple”? Why is “dapple” an effective diction choice?
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Stanza 5
14. What are the active verbs in this stanza?
15. Make the verb phrase active. How does this change affect meaning?
Stanza 6
16. What is the antecedent of the pronoun “its”?
17. Why is a linking verb necessary in this stanza?
Grammar
18. What image is Kumin attempting to capture through the adjectives in this stanza?
19. Why does she place the adjective “airy” after the noun it modifies? What noun does it modify?
20. What image does the noun “fingers” create?
21. Which adverb is the most vivid? Why?
22. What pronoun is implied in the last line? To whom is she speaking? Rewrite any sentence
containing a pronoun (or pronouns) without using any. Explain why pronouns are necessary.
Verbals (participles, gerunds, infinitives)
23. Which words look like verbs but act like some other part of speech?
24. Which of these words stand alone? How do they relate to the words near them?
25. Take one of the sentences containing one of these participles, and rewrite it without using
the participle(s). What happens when they are eliminated?
26. Which words appearing to be verbs are preceded by a preposition?
27. Rewrite one of the sentences containing an infinitive without using it. What is the effect of
elimination of the infinitive?
Phrases
Appositives
1. In lines 2 – 3, Kumin uses an appositive. What does it add to the sentence? Rewrite the sentence without using the appositive. What is the effect?
2. In line 30 is another appositive. Rewrite without the appositive; explain the effect.
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Prepositional Phrases
3. Which prepositional phrases tell “which one”? Which tell “what kind”?
4. Which prepositional phrases tell when, where, how, why, or to what extent?
Absolutes
6. In lines. 4, 6, 8 – 10, and 17, Kumin uses what appears to be a subject but only part of a
verb phrase. What word is missing? Rewrite one of these sentences without using the
absolute, and explain the difference.
Clauses
Dependent Clauses (adjective, adverb, noun)
1. Mark the relative pronouns that introduce clauses.
2. Mark the subordinating conjunctions introducing clauses.
3. What relative pronoun is “understood” in lines 26 and 30?
4. Rewrite any of these sentences containing clauses, eliminating them, and explain what you
had to do.
5. Discuss what happens to the main and lesser ideas when you don’t use dependent clauses.
6. Which clauses could be moved elsewhere in their sentences? How is the meaning changed
when you place them somewhere else?
7. In Stanza 5 Kumin has embedded three adjective clauses within other parts of the sentences
(two clauses and an appositive). Why?
Sentence Structure (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex)
1. How many sentences does the poem contain?
2. What is the structure of each sentence?
3. Why does Kumin write such a long sentence spanning stanzas 4 and 5? (The thoughts are
complex, and the syntax reflects this complexity.)
4. The last stanza consists of how many independent clauses? Why does Kumin put them all in
one sentence? Why doesn’t she use a semicolon between the last two independent clauses?
Explain why a “run-on” sentence can be more effective than a correctly punctuated sentence.
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5. How do these phrases help make things clear? Rewrite one of the sentences without its
prepositional phrases, and discuss what they contribute to the poem.
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5. Rewrite one of the complex or compound-complex sentences using only simple sentences.
How many sentences do you need? What is the effect on meaning of rewriting these
complex sentences as simple sentences?
6. What are the shortest sentences? Why do you think Kumin did not combine these sentences
with others? (See Foundation Lesson: “The Long and the Short of It.”)
Kinds of Sentences (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory)
7. Kumin uses which kinds of sentences?
Grammar
8. Which sentence provides the most “punch”? Why?
9. In stanzas 5 and 6, Kumin embeds one kind of sentence within another. Tell what kinds of
sentences are involved and why she does this.
10. What would be the effect if Kumin had used only declarative sentences?
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Grammar
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