What ANIMAL reminds you of yourself?

Transcription

1 Before Reading The Fish Poem by Elizabeth Bishop Christmas Sparrow Poem by Billy Collins The Sloth Poem by Theodore Roethke What ANIMAL reminds you of yourself? RL 4 Determine the connotative meanings of words and phrases; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning. RL 5 Analyze an author s choices concerning how to structure a text. L 4b Identify and correctly use patterns of word changes that indicate different meanings or parts of speech. Think about your pets or other animals you ve seen at the zoo or on TV nature shows. Do animals ever behave in a way that seems almost human? Have you ever thought you knew what they were feeling? In the poems that follow, you will meet three animals with distinctive human qualities. DISCUSS Choose one animal you identify with the most. Explain to a partner why you relate to it and what characteristics you share with it. 794

2 Meet the Authors poetic form: free verse Most modern poems are written in free verse, a poetic form with no regular pattern of rhyme or rhythm. A free verse poem can be structured as one long, unbroken stanza, as in The Fish, or with many stanzas of varying length, as in Christmas Sparrow. The lines in free verse poems may also vary in length. Without a strict meter, the rhythm of free verse poetry often seems more like everyday speech. As you read, notice how the line length, sounds of words, and punctuation create a rhythm in each poem. text analysis: imagery Sometimes a poem can seem like a portrait. Sensory language, or words and phrases that appeal to the reader s senses, can help create imagery visual portraits that reinforce ideas about the subject described. For example, in The Fish, Bishop appeals to the senses of sight and touch when she describes the fish s skin. Lines like these help depict a fragile old fish. hung in strips / like ancient wallpaper shapes like full-blown roses / stained and lost through age As you read the poems, record strong, evocative imagery on a chart like the one shown. Identify the sense the word or phrase appeals to the associations the imagery conjures up the idea that is being reinforced Poem Title: Imagery Sense(s) Associations Idea Reinforced reading strategy: visualize Listen carefully as y0ur teacher reads aloud the poems. Visualize the animals, settings, and events. Then read along with your teacher as he or she reads the poems a second time in a shared reading. Use your imagination and the word clues to see what the animals might look like. Then, read the poems again with a partner. Discuss how the shared and repeated readings helped you visualize the animals and understand the poems. Complete the activities in your Reader/Writer Notebook. Elizabeth Bishop Soulful Poet The poetry of Elizabeth Bishop is marked by its exact and tranquil descriptions of the physical world. Hidden beneath her poems air of serenity and simplicity, however, are underlying themes of great depth. When writing about loss and pain, the struggle to belong, and other themes, Bishop worked hard to ensure that the spiritual [was] felt. Billy Collins born 1941 Poet for the People Billy Collins remembers publishing a poem in his high school newspaper that was later confiscated. Rising to national and popular prominence years later, Collins became U.S. Poet Laureate ( ) and launched the Poetry 180 program, which aimed to get more high school students to read well-written, understandable poetry each day during the 180-day school year. Theodore Roethke Passion for Nature When I get alone under an open sky, wrote Theodore Roethke, where man isn t too evident then I m tremendously exalted.... A passion for nature pervades Roethke s poetry. His poems also explore love, mortality, and the quest for spiritual wholeness. Authors Online Go to thinkcentral.com. KEYWORD: HML

3 The Fish Elizabeth Bishop I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth. 5 He didn t fight. He hadn t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely. Here and there a 10 his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper: shapes like full-blown roses 15 stained and lost through age. He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice, 20 and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in the terrible oxygen the frightening gills, 25 fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones, 30 the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, a FREE VERSE Notice the different lengths of the lines in this poem. How do the short lines affect the poem s rhythm? RL 4 Language Coach Connotations The images and feelings connected to a word are its connotations. In line 18, infested literally means overrun or permeated. What connotations do you associate with infested? Would you want to eat an infested fish? 796 unit 7: the language of poetry

4 and the pink swim-bladder like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. b I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw, and then I saw that from his lower lip if you could call it a lip grim, wet, and weaponlike, hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached, with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away. Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw. c I stared and stared and victory filled up the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts, the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go. b c VISUALIZE Reread lines What aspects of the fish s character can you see in this description of its eyes? IMAGERY What senses does this description of the fish s face appeal to? What associations form in your mind about the fish? the fish 797

5 Christmas Sparrow BILLY COLLINS The first thing I heard this morning was a rapid flapping sound, soft, insistent wings against glass as it turned out downstairs when I saw the small bird rioting in the frame of a high window, trying to hurl itself through the enigma of glass into the spacious light. d Then a noise in the throat of the cat who was hunkered on the rug told me how the bird had gotten inside, carried in the cold night through the flap of a basement door, and later released from the soft grip of teeth. On a chair, I trapped its pulsations in a shirt and got it to the door, so weightless it seemed to have vanished into the nest of cloth. But outside, when I uncupped my hands, it burst into its element, dipping over the dormant garden in a spasm of wingbeats then disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks. d IMAGERY What images describe the bird in lines 1 7? What senses do these images appeal to? L 4b Language Coach Suffixes The word pulsation (line 14) is formed by adding the suffix -ion, meaning the action of to the base word pulsate, meaning to throb or beat. Restate the definition of pulsation in your own words. Can you think of other words formed from a base word and the suffix -ion? 798 unit 7: the language of poetry

6 25 30 For the rest of the day, I could feel its wild thrumming against my palms as I wondered about the hours it must have spent pent in the shadows of that room, hidden in the spiky branches of our decorated tree, breathing there among the metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn, its eyes open, like mine as I lie in bed tonight e picturing this rare, lucky sparrow tucked into a holly bush now, a light snow tumbling through the windless dark. e VISUALIZE What details help you imagine how the bird looks and feels as it hides in the Christmas tree? christmas sparrow 799

7 The o Sloth Theodore Roethke 5 10 In moving-slow he has no Peer. 1 You ask him something in his Ear, He thinks about it for a Year; And, then, before he says a Word There, upside down (unlike a Bird), He will assume that you have Heard A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug. But should you call his manner Smug, He ll sigh and give his Branch a Hug; f Then off again to Sleep he goes, Still swaying gently by his Toes, And you just know he knows he knows. g 1. peer: equal. f g IMAGERY Reread line 9. What does this image suggest about the sloth? RL 10 ELEMENTS OF POETRY Poets often use punctuation to help illustrate their thoughts. In The Sloth, Roethke uses a dash at the end of one line and hyphens in the middle of words to help bring to life the subject of his poem. Reread lines 6 7. What effect does this punctuation have on the way you read and interpret the poem? 800 unit 7: the language of poetry

8 After Reading Comprehension 1. Recall How does the fish in Bishop s poem react when it is caught? 2. Recall How did the bird in Collins s poem get trapped inside the house? 3. Summarize What is the sloth s response when asked a question? Text Analysis 4. Visualize Describe in detail the mental picture you form of each animal in the poems. 5. Analyze Imagery Review the examples of imagery that you recorded in your chart. Identify some images that appeal to your sense of sight and others that appeal to your sense of touch. What is the most striking image in each poem? Why? 6. Analyze Free Verse How is the experience of reading Bishop s and Collins s free verse poems different from that of reading Roethke s more traditional poem? 7. Interpret Themes How are the three animals in these poems like people? What does each poem suggest about the relationship between human beings and animals? 8. Compare and Contrast Texts Compare and contrast The Fish and Christmas Sparrow. In a chart like the one shown, consider the similarities and differences in subject, mood, and theme. RL 4 Determine the figurative meanings of words and phrases; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning. RL 5 Analyze an author s choices concerning how to structure a text. Subject The Fish Christmas Sparrow Similarities Differences Mood Theme Text Criticism 9. Critical Interpretations According to Billy Collins, the best poems begin in clarity and end in mystery. Would you say that this is true for each of the three poems in this lesson? Why or why not? What ANIMAL reminds you of yourself? What can animals teach us about being human? the fish / christmas sparrow / the sloth 801