7TH GRADE POETRY. I m Nobody! Who are you? --Emily Dickinson (Elements of Literature pages ) Answer these questions on your own paper:

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Harold Douglas
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1 Directions: Read the poems, then answer the questions with your group. You must each write the answers on your own papers. The writing sections should be done alone. You should come up with your own, original poems. Bolded words are defined in the glossary of the Elements of Literature book (yellow book) or on the pages listed under the author s name for each poem. I m Nobody! Who are you? I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell! They'd banish -- you know! How dreary to be somebody! How public like a frog To tell one's name the livelong day To an admiring bog! --Emily Dickinson (Elements of Literature pages ) 1. How do you think the speaker feels about fame? What gives you this idea? 2. What does the speaker mean by the word nobody in the poem? (Who in life is a nobody?) 3. What does somebody mean? 4. Who are they in line 4? 5. Why would they banish the speaker? 6. The simile in the second stanza compares a celebrity to a frog. How could a frog and a public person by similar? 7. Is this a flattering comparison? 8. In the metaphor in the last line, admirers of famous people are compared to a creatures in a bog (a large marshy swampy area) that admire a croaking frog. How do you think the poet feels about people who idolize celebrities? 9. Whom do you think the speaker is speaking to in this poem? Page 1 of 7

2 I Like to See It Lap the Miles I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step Around a pile of mountains, And, supercilious, peer In shanties by the sides of roads; And then a quarry pare To fit its sides, and crawl between, Complaining all the while In horrid, hooting stanza; Then chase itself down hill Prodigious: enormous Supercilious: haughty, stuck up Peer: to look Shanties: poor areas Quarry: a pit or hole Pare: to trim or cut close to Boanerges: biblical name meaning sons of thunder And neigh like Boanerges; Then, punctual as a star, Stop--docile and omnipotent-- At its own stable door. --Emily Dickinson (Elements of Literature pages ) 1. Although Emily Dickinson uses an extended metaphor (a metaphor that goes through the entire poem), she never says directly what she is describing or what she is comparing that thing to. What clues in the poem tell you that she is writing about a train and comparing it to a horse? 2. List all the adjectives (words that describe nouns) Dickinson uses to describe the train. 3. How does Dickinson feel about the train, based off the adjectives she uses to describe it? 4. Did Emily miss any comparisons between the horse and the train? What other comparisons could be added to this poem between a horse and train? 5. What machine would be as awesome today (2000s) as the train was in Emily Dickinson s time (1800s)? Writing: Do this on your own, not with your group. Choose a mechanical object (car, vacuum, lawn mower, scooter, hair dryer, helicopter, space shuttle, etc.) and write a brief 8-12 line poem comparing it to something living. Try to keep the mechanical object and the living object unnamed, as Dickinson does. Hint at the identity of your mystery items by including sounds, smells, feel, appearance, and actions of both the object and the living thing. Page 2 of 7

3 Compare two poems: I Am of the Earth I am of the earth She is my mother She bore me with pride She reared me with love She cradled me each evening She pushed the wind to make it sing She built me a house of harmonious colors She fed me the fruits of her fields She rewarded me with memories of her smiles She punished me with the passing of time And at last, when I long to leave She will embrace me for eternity --Anna Lee Walters (Elements of Literature pages ) Early Song As the sun rises high enough to warm the frost off the pine needles, I rise to make four prayers of thanksgiving fir this fine clear day, for this good brown earth, for all brothers and sisters, for the dark blood that runs through me in a great circle back into this good brown earth. --Gogisgi/Carroll Arnett (Elements of Literature pages ) 1. How does each speaker connect to the earth? 2. In what ways do you feel similar connections? Page 3 of 7

4 3. Tone refers to the way a writer feels about a subject. Tone is communicated by word choice, including figures of speech (personification, metaphor, simile, etc.). What words tell you how each of these speakers feels about the earth? 4. What words in the poem tell you that Walters personifies the earth as her mother? 5. What message or feeling about our world does this comparison convey? 6. What does Arnett mean by the great circle (line 14)? 7. How does Walters get to this same idea in her poem? 8. Are people always grateful children of the earth? How do some people show that their feelings about the earth are very different from the feelings of these two poets? 9. The following quotations use features of the earth to teach lessons. Choose one that you like, and write a short paragraph about what the words mean to you. Include any of your own experiences to illustrate the lesson. a. There is no hill that never ends. Masai proverb (There is no trouble (hill you climb) that doesn t eventually end) b. Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Tao-te Ching (suggests that the process of discovering one s true self takes time and patience. Writing: Do this on your own, not with your group. Write a short 8-12 line poem that focuses on a special place you feel connected to (a home, a vacation spot, a place in nature, etc.). Try suing personification in your poem like Walters did in her poem. Page 4 of 7

5 Compare two poems Harlem Night Song Come, Let us roam the night together Singing. I love you. Across The Harlem roof-tops Moon is shining. Night sky is blue. Stars are great drops Of golden dew. Down the street A band is playing. I love you. Come, Let us roam the night together Singing --Langston Hughes (Elements of Literature pages ) Winter Moon How thin and sharp is the moon tonight! How thin and sharp and ghostly white Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight! --Langston Hughes (Elements of Literature pages ) 1. Which image in Hughes poems stands out most clearly in your mind? Why? 2. Poems, like songs, often repeat lines, stanzas, or words. What sentences are repeated in Harlem Night Song? 3. Describe the tone you hear in the lines you wrote down in #2. 4. Explain the sensory images in Harlem Night Song. 5. What do the images in Harlem Night Song reveal about the speaker? Page 5 of 7

6 6. Draw a picture of the moon the speaker sees in Winter Moon. 7. Which words in particular helped you visualize the moon in Winter Moon? Writing: Do this on your own, not with your group. Write a poem about the night. Your poem can be as short as Winter Moon or as long as you d like. Be sure to use imagery in your poem. See how many of the five senses you can appeal to in your poem. I Ask My Mother to Sing She begins, and my grandmother joins her. Mother and daughter sing like young girls. If my father were alive, he would play His accordion and swing like a boat. I've never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace, nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers running away in the grass. But I love to hear it sung: how the waterlilies fill with rain until they overturn, spilling water into water, then rock back, and fill with more. Both women have begun to cry, But neither stops her song. --Li-Young Lee (Elements of Literature pages ) 1. Why do you think the mother and grandmother cry when they sing this song? 2. Take a look at how the poet fits his thoughts into the structure of a sonnet (a 14-line poem that consists of three quatrains and one couplet). What is the topic of each of the first three quatrains (quatrains are a group of 4 lines)? 3. How do the last two lines sum up the point of the poem? 4. It might seem at first that the speaker changes the subject in the second stanza. What inference do you have to make in order to understand how the second stanza connects to the first? 5. A lyric poem expresses the speaker s thoughts and feelings. How does the speaker react to the song his mother and grandmother sing? 6. What images do you see as the two women sing? Make a list of at least five images from the poem, and explain which senses the images appeal to (sight, sound, taste, smell, touch). 7. The last two lines of the poem say Both women have begun to cry. / But neither stops her song. This is showing a bittersweet feeling. Compare this experience of the mother and grandmother with an experience you have had where you have been happy and sad at the same time. Writing: Do this on your own, not with your group. Write a poem about a song that makes you especially happy or sad. Be sure to tell who sings the song, what it says, and what it makes you think about. Try to create some images to describe your response to the song. Page 6 of 7

7 Ode to Family Photographs This is the pond, and these are my feet. This is the rooster, and this is more of my feet. Mama was never good at pictures. This is a statue of a famous general who lost an arm, And this is me with my head cut off. This is a trash can chained to a gate, This is my father with his eyes half-closed. This is a photograph of my sister And a giraffe looking over her shoulder. This is our car's front bumper. This is a bird with a pretzel in its beak. This is my brother Pedro standing on one leg on a rock, With a smear of chocolate on his face. Mama sneezed when she looked Behind the camera: the snapshots are blurry, The angles dizzy as a spin on a merry-go-round. But we had fun when Mama picked up the camera. How can I tell? Each of us is laughing hard. Can you see? I have candy in my mouth. --Gary Soto (Elements of Literature pages ) 1. Did you imagine yourself or anyone else in Soto s pictures? (Maybe you saw yourself as the photographer.) Which images in this ode made you smile? 2. What details in the poem tell you that the poet s mama was not a very good photographer? 3. Odes are written in praise of something. What do you think this poet is praising? (It s not just family photographs!) Writing: Do this on your own, not with your group. Write an ode celebrating something you love or find important. Try to convey your feelings for all aspects of your subject. For example, if you write An Ode to My Baseball Bat, you might praise its balance, weight, and power; the comfortable grip of the rubber; the way it swings through the air; the satisfying whonk it makes when it hits the ball; how you got it; how long you have had it; how it helps you win games. When you write your ode, you can talk directly to the reader, as Gary Soto does, or you can talk directly to the object you are celebrating ( Bat, you are... ). Page 7 of 7

Vocabulary Collectors

Welcome! Vocabulary Collectors This presentation will teach you how to create a personified word character that makes use of one vocabulary word you have collected for the week. It will also provide the