READING POETRY
Name:
A. The Initial Experience: HEARING THE POEM
1. READ THE POEM SLOWLY—AT LEAST TWICE. Stop at the line breaks, but pause only slightly, and then
continue reading as if the poem were written in prose. (This is called “reading to punctuation.”)
Remember to read slowly, and let the words soak in.
2. THE FIRST REACTION TO THE POEM—What is your first response to the poem? Write down a specific word or
phrase that you like—anything. Write it down and briefly explain why you like it.
3. WHO’S THE SPEAKER?— Who is speaking in the poem? Or what kind of person is speaking? Is the speaker
also the author, or do you think they’re different?
4. WHAT’S GOING ON?—Write a one-sentence summary that states the literal level what is happening in the
poem.
B. An Examination of Poetic Techniques: SEEING THE POEM
5. IMAGES—Write down the specific images or comparisons (similes or metaphors)
C. The Culminating Experience: UNDERSTANDING THE POEM
6. MEANING OF THE POEM—What do you think the poet is trying to say? Write a one-sentence statement (or
two) that expresses the BIG IDEA that you think the author is getting at.
7. IMPORTANCE OF THE TITLE—How does the title help you to say what the poem is really about?
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Introduction to Poetry (Billy Collins)
The Red Wheelbarrow (William Carlos Williams)
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
so much depends
upon
or press an ear against its hive.
a red wheel
barrow
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
glazed with rain
water
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
beside the white
chickens
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
This is just to say (William Carlos Williams)
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
(Robert Frost (1874-1963))
Fifteen
William Stafford (1914-1993)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
South of the bridge on Seventeenth
I found back of the willows one summer
day a motorcycle with engine running
as it lay on its side, ticking over
slowly in the high grass. I was fifteen.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
I admired all that pulsing gleam, the
shiny flanks, the demure headlights
fringed where it lay; I led it gently
to the road, and stood with that
companion, ready and friendly. I was fifteen.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
We could find the end of a road, meet
the sky on out Seventeenth. I thought about
hills, and patting the handle got back a
confident opinion. On the bridge we indulged
a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Thinking, back farther in the grass I found
the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped
over the rail. He had blood on his hand, was paleI helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand
over it, called me good man, roared away.
I stood there, fifteen.
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The Road Not Taken (Robert Frost)
Richard Cory
(Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935))
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And he was rich - yes, richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
1919
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Sick
Shel Silverstein, 1930 – 1999
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow’s bent, my spine ain’t straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?
What’s that? What’s that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G’bye, I’m going out to play!”
“I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
“I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I’m going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I’ve counted sixteen chicken pox
And there’s one more--that’s seventeen,
And don’t you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut--my eyes are blue-It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I’m sure that my left leg is broke-My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button’s caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle’s sprained,
My ‘pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
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