Name _______________________________________
Period: __________
Rhythm, Rhyme, and Review
1 & 2. Mark the rhyme scheme and meter in the following lines:
The Termite
Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it and found it good
And that is why your cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
-- Ogden Nash
I’ll tell you how the sun rose, -A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrel ran.
The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”
-Emily Dickinson
3. Identify and explain the metaphor in the above poem:____________________________________
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4. Identify and explain the simile in the Emily Dickinson poem (the explanation should indicate
that you understand the image the poet wants to suggest by using that simile):
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5.Identify one example of personification: _____________________________________________________
from “Boy at the Window”
by Richard Wilbur
Seeing the snowman standing all alone
In dusk and cold is more than he can bear.
The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare
A night of gnashings and enormous moan.
His tearful sight can hardly reach to where
The pale-faced figure with bitumen eyes
Returns him such a god-forsaken stare
As outcast Adam gave to Paradise.
6. Mark the rhyme scheme of the poem: _________________________________________________
7. Identify two examples of alliteration: __________________________________________________
8. Identify two examples of assonance: __________________________________________________
9. Identify one example of personification: _______________________________________________
Read the poem below several times and look up any unfamiliar words before answering the next
two questions.
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.
Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag today
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory.
As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
--Emily Dickinson
10. What is the literal meaning of the poem? __________________________________________________
11 & 12. What is the deeper meaning/theme/big idea in the poem? Explain.______________________
Read the following poem and answer the questions that follow.
Tumbleweed, by David Wagoner
Here comes another, bumping over the sage
Among the greasewood, wobbling
diagonally
Downhill, then skimming a moment on its
edge,
Tilting lopsided, bouncing end over end
And springing from the puffs of its own
dust
To catch at the barbed wire
And hang there, shaking, like a riddled
prisoner.
Half the sharp seeds have fallen from this
tumbler,
Knocked out for good by head-stands and
pratfalls
Between here and wherever it grew up.
I carry it in the wind across the road
To the other fence. It jerks in my hands,
Butts backwards, corkscrews, lunges and swivels,
Then yaws away as soon as it's let go,
Hopping the scrub uphill like a kicked maverick.
The air goes hard and straight through the wires and the weeds.
Here comes another, flopping among the sage.
13. Identify two examples of personification in this poem:
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14. Identify one example of imagery in this poem:
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15 & 16. On a literal level, this poem is a detailed description of tumbleweeds, plants that break
off from their roots and are carried away by the wind. But the tumbleweeds in this poem are
symbols of certain kinds of people. Describe the kinds of people that the tumbleweed might
represent. Use examples from the poem to support your answer.
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