Summer Reading Writing Task—Poetry
(English IV Academic and World Mythology)
ASSIGNMENT
SUMMER READING WRITING TASK—POETRY
RUBRIC
CLOSE READING GUIDE
TP-CASTT STRATEGY
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LEVEL 1 POEMS (SELECT 2)
“HOW I DISCOVERED POETRY” MARILYN NELSON
“SIREN SONG” MARGARET ATWOOD
“SAFE IN THEIR ALABASTER CHAMBER” EMILY DICKINSON
“THEME FOR ENGLISH B” LANGSTON HUGHES
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LEVEL 2 POEMS (SELECT 1)
“TO HIS COY MISTRESS” ANDREW MARVELL
“WINTER SYNTAX” BILLY COLLINS
“MENDING WALL” ROBERT FROST
“IN THE WAITING ROOM” ELIZABETH BISHOP
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Summer Reading Writing Task—Poetry
Goal: For this writing assignment, you are going to demonstrate your understanding of how to “close read” and
analyze an unfamiliar poem.
Directions:
1. Close read either TWO LEVEL 1 POEMS (#1-4) OR ONE LEVEL 2 POEM (#5-8).
2. Go line by line and make annotations as footnotes. (Keep your “Close Reading Guide” and sample model by
your side at all times! This will help you when you have reached a roadblock.)
3. Answer the following questions for EACH poem:
• Analyze the TITLE of the poem. Is it symbolic? Descriptive? Ironic? Why do you think the author
chose this title? How does it relate to the overall poem?
• PARAPHRASE the poem. Provide a brief summary in your own words. What is the poem about?
Are there any conflicts?
• Is there a SETTING? If so, how does the author make use of the setting?
• Analyze the FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE in the poem. (ie: simile, metaphor, personification,
imagery). How does the author use these elements to convey meaning?
• Does the poem use ALLUSIONS? How does the use of other works of literature relate to or add to the
meaning of the poem?
• Identify the TONE in the poem. What is the author’s attitude toward the subject matter?
• Is there a SHIFT in the poem? A change in tone, point of view, speaker, meaning? How does the shift
relate to the overall meaning?
• Read the poem out loud. How does the SOUND contribute to the meaning? Does the RHYTHM
affect the meaning of the poem?
• Identify the THEME of the poem. What is the overall message? What does the author expect the
reader to learn or experience from the poem? Is there a historical (world event, period of time) or
cultural (gender, race, class) aspect?
• How does the poem make YOU feel?
Note: You may use your poems to aid in your close reading assignment; however, you may NOT use any other
supplemental/electronic sources.
Requirements:
1. Level 1 poems (10 annotations EACH); Level 2 poems (20 annotations)
2. Question answers must be typed in Times New Roman, 12-point font, 1-inch margins, double-spaced.
3. Rubric must accompany the final product.
Note: Only typed and printed copies with a rubric and typed annotated poems will be accepted as on time.
How to add footnotes in Microsoft Word:
1. Take your cursor and highlight a portion of the text that you want to comment on.
2. Click on “References”, then click on “Insert Footnote”.
3. A number will appear on the bottom of the page, that is where you begin typing your annotation.
Note: Be sure the footnotes appear at the “end of the page” and footnotes are in numerical order “1, 2, 3…”
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Rubric
Annotations
______/40
• Shows a clear understanding of the entire poem.
• Demonstrate knowledge of close reading strategies and exhibits a variety of comments, connections, and
interactions with the text that may include:
o Rewriting, paraphrasing, or summarizing a particularly phrase/line;
o Defining words or slang and exploring why the author would have used a particular word/phrase;
o Asking questions;
o Making connections to other parts of the poem;
o Identifying the speaker(s) thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions, and interactions with others that are
noteworthy or significant to the poem as a whole;
o Explaining the historical context or traditions/social customs that are used in the poem;
o Offering an analysis or interpretation of what is happening in the text;
o Discussing literary techniques that the author is using;
o Reflecting on the figurative language the author implements.
Questions
______/40
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Analyzes the TITLE of the poem.
PARAPHRASES the poem.
Explores the SETTING.
Analyzes the FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE in the poem.
Identifies the TONE in the poem.
Identifies the SHIFTS in the poem.
Explores RHYTHM and SOUND.
Identifies the THEME of the poem.
Answers: How does the poem make YOU feel?
Grammar/Mechanics
______/20
• Demonstrates competency in conventions of Standard English.
• Uses appropriate word choice and avoids slang.
• Annotations are error free (Ex: spelling, punctuation, mechanics, etc.)
____________________________________________________________________________________
TOTAL
______/100
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Making Annotations: A User’s Guide to Close Reading
What is “close reading”?
A method of analyzing and evaluating a piece of text by concentrating on the writer’s use of:
• Voice—a speaker’s distinctive use of language
• Language—(diction, syntax, imagery, tone, connotation, denotation)
• Literary devices—(simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, onomatopoeia)
Why should we close read?
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Develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for literature
Enhance the reader’s meaning-making skills (ability to analyze) across various subjects
Understand various cultural, historical, and social points of view
Reflect and make personal connections to a text
How do we close read?
As you work with a text, consider all of the ways that you can connect with what you are
reading. Here are some suggestions that will help you with your annotations:
! Rewrite, paraphrase, or summarize a particularly difficult passage or moment.
! Define words or slang; make the words real with examples from your experiences; explore
why the author would have used a particular word or phrase.
! Ask questions. (Ex: Why does the character do this? Why does this author use this word?)
! Make connections to other parts of the book. Feel free to use direct quotes from the book.
! Make connections to other texts you have read or seen, including:
o Movies
o Comic books/graphic novels
o News events/Current events
o Other books, stories, plays, songs, or poems
! Make meaningful connections to your own life experiences.
! Identify the speaker(s) thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions, and interactions with others
that are noteworthy or significant to the text as a whole.
! Describe a new perspective you may now have.
! Explain the historical context or traditions/social customs that are used in the passage.
! Offer an analysis or interpretation of what is happening in the text.
! Point out and discuss literary techniques that the author is using.
! Reflect on the language the author implements:
o Syntax—the arrangement of words and the order of grammatical elements in a
sentence
o Diction—the word choice intended to convey a certain effect
o Imagery—the words or phrases a writer uses to represent persons, objects,
actions, feelings, and ideas descriptively by appealing to the senses
o Tone—a speaker’s attitude toward the subject. Tone is conveyed through the
writer’s choice of words and detail.
o Connotation—the emotional or cultural meaning of a word
o Denotation—the dictionary definition; what is literally meant
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TP-CASTT Analysis
A good way “into a poem” especially during a high-pressure situation (timed exam).
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Title: Ponder the title before reading the poem
Paraphrase: Translate the poem into your own words
Connotation: Contemplate the poem for meaning beyond the literal
Attitude: Observe both the speaker’s and the poet’s attitude (TONE)
Shifts: Note shifts in speakers and in attitudes
o Devices that help readers discover shifts:
" Key words (but, yet, however, although)
" Punctuation (dashes, periods, colons, ellipsis)
" Stanza or paragraph divisions
" Changes in line or stanza length, or both
" Irony (sometimes irony hides shifts)
" Structure (how the work is written can affect its meaning)
" Changes in sound (may indicate changes in meaning)
" Changes in diction (ex: slang to formal language)
Title: Example the title again, this time on an interpretive level
Theme: Determine what the poet is saying (Use what is IN the poem to come up with a
the theme) This should NOT be something trite (Ex: Don’t judge a book by its cover OR
Life is like a box of chocolates.)
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“How I Discovered Poetry”
Marilyn Nelson
It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne
by a breeze off Mount Parnassus. She must have seen
the darkest eyes in the room brim: The next day
she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me
to read to the all except for me white class.
She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder,
said oh yes I could. She smiled harder and harder
until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing
darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished
my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent
to the buses, awed by the power of words.
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“Siren Song”
Margaret Atwood
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique
at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time
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“Safe in their Alabaster Chambers”
Emily Dickinson
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers Untouched by Morning and untouched by noon Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection,
Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone Grand go the Years,
In the Crescent above them Worlds scoop their Arcs and Firmaments - row Diadems - drop And Doges surrender Soundless as Dots,
On a Disk of Snow.
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“Theme For English B”
Langston Hughes
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you.
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
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“To His Coy Mistress”
Andrew Marvell
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
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Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
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“Winter Syntax”
Billy Collins
A sentence starts out like a lone traveler
heading into a blizzard at midnight,
tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face,
the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.
There are easier ways of making sense,
the connoisseurship of gesture, for example.
You hold a girl’s face in your hands like a vase.
You lift a gun from the glove compartment
and toss it out the window into the desert heat.
All of these moments are blazing with silence.
The full moon makes sense. When a cloud crosses it
it becomes as eloquent as a bicycle leaning
outside a drugstore or a dog who sleeps all afternoon
in a corner of the couch.
Bare branches in winter are a form of writing.
The unclothed body is autobiography.
Every lake is a vowel, every island a noun.
But the traveler persists in his misery,
struggling all night through the deepening snow,
leaving a faint alphabet of bootprints
on the white hills and the white floors of valleys,
a message for field mice and passing crows.
At dawn he will spot the vine of smoke
rising from your chimney, and when he stands
before you shivering, draped in sparkling frost,
a smile will appear in the beard of icicles,
and the man will express a complete thought.
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“Mending Wall”
Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
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Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."
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“In The Waiting Room”
Elizabeth Bishop
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
"Long Pig," the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
--Aunt Consuelo's voice-not very loud or long.
I wasn't at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn't. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I--we--were falling, falling,
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our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you'll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
--I couldn't look any higher-at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How I didn't know any
word for it how "unlikely". . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn't?
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.
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