4/23/2014- Understanding Poetry

I can determine the impact of poetic devices within a text.

Today started with a pop quiz. The questions on the quiz are similar to the ones on the test. Take the quiz and turn it in.

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Next, people finished their presentations from yesterday.

After the presentations we worked in groups of 4 to read poems and answer questions about them. Use the worksheet and poems below to analyze the poems and determine the impact of the figurative language.

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STATION #1
1.    Read the poem “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out” on page 582 of the Holt Literature Anthology.
2.    On your record sheet, write down the answers to the following questions:

1. What is the MAIN IDEA, or THEME, of this poem?

              a) There is a good example of alliteration in the title.
              b) Garbage is unpleasant to have in the house.
              c) It is important to not procrastinate things, even if you don’t want to do them.
              d) Children should be the ones to take the garbage out, not parents.

1. The title of the poem is an example of what two poetic devices?
   
2. Why do you think Shel Silverstein doesn’t split his poem up into STANZAS? How does it copy what is happening in the poem?   
   
3. Name one example of PERSONIFICATION in this poem. How does it affect the poem?
   

SARAH CYNTHIA SYLVIA STOUT
by Shel Silverstein Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out.
She'd wash the dishes and scrub the pans
Cook the yams and spice the hams,
And though her parents would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.
And so it piled up to the ceiling:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas and rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the windows and blocked the door,
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peels,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans, and tangerines,
Crusts of black-burned buttered toast,
Grisly bits of beefy roast.
The garbage rolled on down the halls,
It raised the roof, it broke the walls,
I mean, greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Blobs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from old bologna,
Rubbery, blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk, and crusts of pie,
Rotting melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold French fries and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.
At last the garbage reached so high
That finally it touched the sky,
And none of her friends would come to play,
And all of her neighbors moved away;
And finally, Sarah Cynthia Stout
Said, "Okay, I'll take the garbage out!"
But then, of course it was too late,
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate;
And there in the garbage she did hate
Poor Sarah met an awful fate
That I cannot right now relate
Because the hour is much too late
But children, remember Sarah Stout,
And always take the garbage out.


STATION #2

1.    Read the poem “I Ask My Mother to Sing” on page 569 of the Holt Literature Anthology.
2.    On your record sheet, write down the answers to the following questions:

1. Read back through the poem. Why does the narrator of the poem love to hear his mother and grandmother sing? 
   
2. Read the white box on pg. 568 titled “Background” and then read the poem again. Based on what you read, why are the mother and daughter likely crying in the poem? 
   
3. Identify the one simile in this poem. How does it affect the poem?
   
4. Read the “Background” information on page 568 in the white box. Now, reread the poem. What do you understand now that you didn’t understand before in the poem?
   

I ASK MY MOTHER TO SING
by Li-Young Lee

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.

STATION #3

1.    Read the poem “The Burning of Books” on page 628 of the Holt Literature Anthology.
2.    On your record sheet, write down the answers to the following questions:

1. In line 4 of the poem, Brecht compares the bonfire in which books are burned to what? Why would the poet use this metaphor?
   
2. What historical event is this poem about?
   
3. How does the “exiled poet” feel when he finds out his writings are not be burned? Why would he feel this way?
   
4. Identify the poetic device used in lines 9-13. What does this do to the poem?

The Burning of The Books
by Bertolt Brecht

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cart loads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the
Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me! he wrote with flying pen, burn me. Haven’t my books
Always reported the truth? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you:
Burn me!



STATION #4

1.    Read the poem “Arithmetic” on page 607 of the Holt Literature Anthology.
2.    On your record sheet, write down the answers to the following questions:

1. What two TONES, or FEELINGS, are expressed in the 5th stanza of this poem?
   
2. What repeated words tell you that this poem is written in a list format?
   
3. Read the simile in the first line of the poem.  Why might Sandburg compare numbers to “pigeons flying in and out of your head?”  How are these two things alike?
   
4. Which stanza is your favorite? Why?
   

Arithmetic
by Carl Sandburg


Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
    head.
Arithmet ic tell you how many you lose or win if you know how
    many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven -- or five
    six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
    to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
    you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the
    answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again
    and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
    double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
    and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
    what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply -- and you carry the
    multiplication table in your head and hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you
    eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the
    other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
    offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
    Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
    gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
    better in arithmetic, you or your mother?