A.P. Senior English/2016-2017
Blindness and Vision
Berger-White
First Wave of Poems
We now begin our study of poetry in earnest. Our work last month was a good rehearsal, and you
should return to those strategies Helen Vendler suggested that worked well for you.
Please read each poem multiple times, including at least one reading aloud. You should come
into class with some serious annotations—a good sense of what you understand and what you do
not about each poem—and a full, thoughtful entry that puts all this in writing.
You do not need to use Vendler’s approaches, and you do not need to even look at the writing
prompts below, but if you get stuck or need a good starting place, I’ve listed a set of questions
for each poem that should help you get grounded. These are questions (not in any way an
exhaustive list) that will help you unlock the poem. They are intended to be a guide.
Your work with the poems is about the intersection of meaning and construction. To say it
another way: how does the way a poem is built give it meaning?
Although each entry should not feel like a formal essay, it should show curiosity, insight,
organization, and development. Above all else, it should be a thoughtful exploration of the poem.
You are not limited to writing directly about the text—you may make connections to your own
experiences, history, other works of literature, film—but you should use any connections you
make as a way to get back to the poem, to illuminate the poem and its ideas with greater
complexity and nuance. So go ahead and run with any connections you make (if you wish), but
make sure that you return to an analysis of the text with a deeper sense of the ideas.
If you consult the keys—and it would be wise not to for some poems at least until after you have
wrestled with them and written about them—do not simply answer the questions. You are not
answering a discrete set of questions—nor are you writing essays. Think of these as explorations
in which your main task is to think deeply about each poem and its ideas.
Several of Many Keys
“The Writer” by Richard Wilbur
1. What words are most helpful to look up in this poem? Look them up and write about how
they work in the poem.
2. What metaphors guide the poem?
3. What does the poem say or suggest about the subject? The speaker? Their relationship?
4. What is revealed in the final stanza?
5. What do you notice about line-length and stanza-length? How might that contribute to the
poem’s meaning?
“Digging” by Seamus Heaney
1.
2.
3.
4.
What does the poem suggest about tradition?
What particular language does Heaney use to highlight his speaker’s origins?
What does it mean to depart from one’s roots? What is the speaker’s attitude toward that?
Notice the repetition and variation from the beginning and end of the poem. What might
you say about this?
“Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest” by B.H. Fairchild
1. Look up occult and explain how each definition adds something to your understanding of
the poem.
2. What is the function of the italicized words?
3. What does the poem suggest about time? About memory? About the relationship between
these concepts?
4. What might you say about the perspective of the poem?
“The Centaur” by May Swenson
1.
2.
3.
4.
When does the poem take place?
Where does it take place? What are its key locations?
What does the poem suggest about freedom? About power? About gender?
What observations might you make about the poem’s form? How might these contribute
to your sense of the poem’s meaning?
“In the Waiting Room” by Elizabeth Bishop
1. This is a poem that is interested in the relationship between voice and identity. How does
Bishop explore this relationship in the poem?
2. What other factors or forces contribute to the speaker’s sense of herself?
3. How does the title, the setting of the waiting room outside the dentist’s office, function in
the poem?
4. What might you see about the speaker’s mind, her consciousness in the poem?
“A Hill” by Anthony Hecht
1. In the last stanza, the poem’s speaker explains a fuller sense of the chronology at play in
this poem (and in the making of the poem). What are the different time periods that the
speaker identifies?
2. In her essay, “Memory and Imagination,” Patricia Hampl writes, “We store in memory
only images of value.” How might that be true in “A Hill”? What value does each
memory hold?
3. What is the relationship between these memories? In what ways are they linked?
“At the River” by Louise Glück
1. Identify and explain how Glück uses humor in the poem.
2. Where are the shifts in the poem—in time, in tone?
3. Spend some extra time with the last three stanzas.
(a) First, explore the two stanzas about the stars and the river. How does Gluck unite
abstraction and vivid image? How do these stanzas enlarge the reach of the poem?
(b) How does the final stanza work in the scheme of the whole poem? What makes it so
effective?
“The Same City” by Terrence Hayes
1. Hayes briefly makes two biblical allusions. To what end?
2. Midway through the poem, the speaker says, “Let me begin again.” This signals a
revisiting of the material, a revision of sorts. What are the differences between the two
versions of this story?
3. What does the poem suggest about vulnerability? About love?
4. What do the final lines of the poem achieve?