Your Poetry Response Journal should convince me that you have read and thought carefully about the assigned poems. To a limited extent, it is true that a poem means what the reader thinks it means; you must, however, be able to explain your interpretation by specific references to the poem. If your understanding of the poem is “wrong,” yet your journal clearly proves that you read (or misread) the poem, you may well receive full credit. Your grade is based on what you have to say and how well you say it ­­ your personal reaction to the poem and your explanation of the logic that led to your interpretation. Your grade is also based on following directions. I will not grade grammar and usage errors ­­ but to receive credit, you MUST include the following in every PRJ: ✔ the poem’s title in quotation marks ✔ the author’s name ✔ a quotation from the poem ­­ integrated with your own sentence, properly punctuated, and commented upon as necessary to show why you cited that particular line. No Quote Lumps! ✔ specific references to the poem ✔ careful thought After you’ve included the five MUSTs above, you may choose any of these MAYBEs to guide your response. You may even choose the same one every time. Consider the possibilities of this “baker’s dozen” ­­ [ 1 ] your opinion of the poem, good or bad, supported by specific references from the poem [ 2 ] an analysis of the poet’s persona, i.e. the poem’s speaker [ 3 ] a discussion of the title’s significance [ 4 ] a detailed response to a specific line or lines [ 5 ] a comparison to another poem, song, story, movie… [ 6 ] an examination of poetic techniques used, such as rhyme, rhythm, simile, metaphor, personification, allusion… [ 7 ] a close analysis of the poet’s diction, perhaps noting specific word choices, or connotation and denotation [ 8 ] a transformation of the poem to another form, such as a cartoon, a news story, a letter, a play, perhaps a different form of poetry (this would show your interpretation of the poem’s meaning or message) [ 9 ] an original poem developing in some way from the assigned poem [10] a paraphrase of the poem [11] a discussion of the writer's life and its relevance to the poem 1
[12] a statement relating the poem to your experience or ideas [13] an explanation of problems you had in understanding the poem Length: Approximately one page long for each PRJ­­typed and double­spaced­­start no more than 1.5” from the top of the page (.5” after the MLA heading). Due Date: Upload your entire journal on Turnitin.com by May 23rd for a quiz grade. Also, turn in a paper copy that is the same as what you submit on Turnitin.com (yes, I’m checking the document). Each response is worth 25 points total. Feel free to include more than four responses for extra credit. For the final exam essay, you will write a comparison/contrast about any two of the poems in this packet. At the end of the multiple choice section, you may use this packet with your annotations to help you write the essay. When reading the poems, think about how they are similar in the speaker’s tone (attitude) and the message (theme), as well as what devices the poets use to convey their message (alliteration, imagery, consonance, paradox, conceit, apostrophe, to name a few...). The poems in this collection are about growing up and starting a new chapter in your life. Hopefully, some of these will help you realize that people helped you reached this point, and you touched them along the way, too. You may have hurt someone (unintentionally) or taken someone for granted in this journey, but I also hope you are thankful for those people in your life and the opportunities you have had or are about to have. I think these poems will inspire you or invoke this realization about the possibilities you have available at this special time in your life, especially if you make the right choices for YOU.. 2
Quoting from a Poem When you write about a poem or refer to a poem in a literary response journal or an essay, you will frequently need to quote from it. Below are some rules to follow when you quote the words or title of a poem. Examples given in the rules are taken from the poem by William Stafford on page 13 of this packet. RULE 1: Whenever you mention the title of a poem, put quotation marks around it. In “Fifteen,” William Stafford uses the accidental discovery of an abandoned motorcycle to show the speaker caught between childhood and adulthood. RULE 2: Whenever you quote a word or phrase that appears in the poem, put quotation marks around it and INTEGRATE the quoted material within your own sentence. The boy describes the motorcycle as if it were alive, calling it his “companion, ready and friendly.” RULE 3: Whenever you quote a phrase that begins on one line but ends on the next, indicate where the first line stops by using A SLASH MARK. The speaker “indulged/a forward feeling, a tremble” as he is torn between mounting the motorcycle and riding away, or dutifully looking for its owner. RULE 4: Whenever you quote four or more lines, indent the passage from both margins, but do not use quotation marks. Cite such a long passage only if it is especially significant. Introduce the quotation, copy the lines EXACTLY as they are in the poem, and then explain the relevance of the citation afterwards. The speaker briefly indulges the childish fantasy of stealing the motorcycle and riding away. This moment, however, is truly a “bridge” between childhood and adulthood. Rather than daydream of freedom, he thinks about the situation and crosses over to responsibility. The speaker chooses to look for the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped over the rail. He had blood on his hand, was pale ­­ I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand over it, called me good man, roared away. This experience implies that being a grownup is dangerous, and perhaps even joyless. An adult, free to fulfill the speaker’s fantasy, risks real dangers. Stunned and wounded, the owner acknowledges the speaker’s maturity by calling him “good man.” Something magical has been lost, however, in the transformation. The motorcycle itself has changed from a “companion” to a lifeless “machine.” 3
i thank you God for this most amazing by E. E. Cummings i thank You God for this most amazing day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything wich is natural which is infinite which is yes (i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth day of life and love and wings:and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any­lifted from the no of all nothing­human merely being doubt unimaginable You? (now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened) How Much They Have Grown by Raymond A. Foss I heard the murmurs, the exclaiming the muted hushed knowing on the growing, the maturing the changes in all of them the little children who became students the girls and boys who walked into the class and the young learners leaving ready for more challenges greater lessons, with a foundation built laid brick by brick by their loving hands nurtured day by day throughout the year joy in their hearts, smiles on their faces each one of them, in the review of their year their first year in school memorialize in the pictures, yes; but more sure than that in the knowing of how much they have grown 4
Thank you Ambrose by Ivan Donn Carswell Thank you Ambrose for the kitchen door ajar, a sign your friendship never closed on me, an amity extended from afar although it was a distant glow I didn’t really know. Thank you Ambrose for staying staunch and true, a fellowship renewed in time of need, reviewed each time indeed concentric paths of earthy spheres we orbit in combine. Thank you Ambrose for appealing to the poet I became, the muse I never knew whose gentle protestations were disposed in subtle plays on words conveyed in hues of ever changing light. Thank you Ambrose for being right when I was wrong, being fair when I was strong in condemnation, patiently awaiting for the end of fancied flights of my self­righteous indignation. Thank you Ambrose for staying in my mind a sober voice, I always heard the choices you proposed. It took me time to talk with you although I made excuses disabusing what you know. Thank you Ambrose, I am giving you the home you have inside my head; if you were I instead of me you would have given me the key and lead me where I could recline in restful ease a long, long time ago. And rest I will with you my friend. © I.D. Carswell 5
Apology
BY JOANNA KLINK Lately, too much disturbed, you stay trailing in me
and I believe you. How could I not feel
you were misspent, there by books stacked clean on glass,
or outside the snow arriving as I am still arriving.
If the explanations amount to something, I will tell you.
It is enough, you say, that surfaces grow so distant.
Maybe you darken, already too much changed,
maybe in your house you would be content where
no incident emerges, but for smoke or glass or air,
such things held simply to be voiceless.
And if you mean me, I believe you.
Or if you should darken, this inwardness would be misspent,
and flinching I might pause, and add to these meager
incidents the words. Some books
should stay formal on the shelves.
So surely I heard you, in your complication aware,
snow holding where it might weightless rest,
and should you fold into me—trackless, misspent,
too much arranged—I might believe you
but swiftly shut, lines of smoke rising through snow,
here where it seems no good word emerges.
Though it is cold, I am aware such reluctance
could lose these blinking hours to simple safety.
Here is an inwardless purpose.
In these hours when snow shuts, it may be we empty,
amounting to something. How could I not
wait for those few words, which we might enter
My Heart Leaps Up
by William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
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If—
by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run-Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
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The Writer
by Richard Wilbur
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.
But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which
The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.
I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash
And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark
And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,
And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,
It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.
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It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.
An Instructor's Dream Many decades after graduation the students sneak back onto the school­grounds at night and within the pane­lit windows catch me their teacher at the desk or blackboard cradling a chalk: someone has erased their youth, and as they crouch closer to see more it grows darker and quieter than they have known in their lives, the lesson never learned surrounds them; why have they come? Is there any more to memorize now at the end than there was then" 9
What is it they peer at through shades of time to hear, X times X repeated, my vain efforts to corner a room's snickers? Do they mock me? Forever? Out there my past has risen in the eyes of all my former pupils but I wonder if behind them others younger and younger stretch away to a world where dawn will never ring its end, its commencement bell. Bill Knott 10
Up-Hill
by Christina Rossetti
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
Invictus
by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
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Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Friends, I Will Not Cease
by Vachel Lindsay
Friends, I will not cease hoping though you weep.
Such things I see, and some of them shall come,
Though now or streets are harsh and ashen-gray,
Though our strong youths are strident now, or dumb.
Friends, that sweet town, that wonder-town, shall rise.
Naught can delay it. Though it may not be
Just as I dream, it comes at last I know,
With streets like channels of an incense-sea.
Dreams
by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
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Fifteen
William Stafford
5
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.
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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.
15
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.
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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 pale—
I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand
over it, called me a good man, roared away.
I stood there, fifteen.
Teacher
by Patrick Sutton
On a dark and gray sunless day I put my thinking cap on,
and started writing like I always do on dreary days like this.
It's kind of interesting how things just start to happen.
I remember my English teacher trying to tell us students,
how to just let it form, It will happen, just give it a chance.
At that time I was;
"yeah right easy for you to say."
Of course I was young and dumb and full of...
Anyway, it appears that I finally have learned the lesson,
taught to me so many years ago.
I wonder sometimes how he's doing?
Is he still kicking or has he kicked the bucket?
13
Sometimes we as humans forget,
those that put so much time into adjusting our young minds,
to prepare us for the road ahead.
So much hassle though, they put up with so much crap,
for the pay they receive.
I honestly feel sorry for those teaching professionals.
I feel like I owe every teacher that ever taught me anything,
a huge apology for being such a handful about 60% of the time.
I can hear you in my mind, okay so where are you going with this?
Actually this is going to end real soon.
But I have to make this one point first.
Life is a beautiful orchestrated symphony,
of concentrated measures, for all to hear.
However those whom have chose,
to keep their ears closed,
May never know,
the joy of just,
listening.
14
To A Daughter Leaving Home When I taught you at eight to ride a bicycle, loping along beside you as you wobbled away on two round wheels, my own mouth rounding in surprise when you pulled ahead down the curved path of the park, I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up, while you grew 15
smaller, more breakable with distance, pumping, pumping for your life, screaming with laughter, the hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye. Linda Pastan Mother to Son Langston Hughes Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal stair. It's had tacks in it, 16
And splinters, And boards torn up, And places with no carpet on the floor— Bare. But all the time I'se been a­climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So, boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps. 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard. Don't you fall now— For I'se still goin', honey, I'se still climbin', And life for me ain't been no crystal stair. 17
The Road Not Taken Robert Frost
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;
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 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.
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.
The Abuelita Poem
BY PAUL MARTINEZ POMPA I. SKIN & CORN
Her brown skin glistens as the sun
pours through the kitchen window
like gold leche. After grinding
the nixtamal, a word so beautifully ethnic
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it must not only be italicized but underlined
to let you, the reader, know you’ve encountered
something beautifully ethnic, she kneads
with the hands of centuries-old ancestor
spirits who magically yet realistically posses her
until the masa is smooth as a lowrider’s
chrome bumper. And I know she must do this
with care because it says so on a website
that explains how to make homemade corn tortillas.
So much labor for this peasant bread,
this edible art birthed from Abuelitas’s
brown skin, which is still glistening
in the sun/
II. APOLOGY
Before she died I called my abuelita
grandma. I cannot remember
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if she made corn tortillas from scratch
but, O, how she’d flip the factory fresh
El Milagros (Quality Since 1950)
on the burner, bathe them in butter
& salt for her grandchildren.
How she’d knead the buttons
on the telephone, order me food
from Pizza Hut. I assure you,
gentle reader, this was done
with the spirit of Mesoamérica
ablaze in her fingertips.
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