Poetry Unit Week One

Overview

For this unit, each student will complete a Poetry Portfolio, due January 13, which will:

• Showcase the student's original poetry
• Define poetic terms
• Define some of the more popular types of poetry
• Showcase examples of different types/styles of poetry
• Allow each student to practice writing in different styles of poetry
• Give students the opportunity to analyze poetry & poetic of forms, and recognize poetic devices within poems  

Due December 9:

1. Complete the following Pages of your Poetry Portfolio:

• Page 1: Define Catalog Poem & Include an example of a Catalog Poem
• Page 2: Write your own Catalog Poem
• Page 3: Define End Rhyme, metaphor and alliteration.  Include an example of a poem that uses metaphor
• Page 4: Write your own poem using end rhyme, metaphor, and alliteration

2. .  Answer the (2) Critical Thinking Questions about "Woman Work" and "Daily" (see below)

3. Begin Poetry Portfolio

• Design Cover (Due Jan. 13)  
• Decorate with images, designs, colors.  Be creative.  Please do your best.
• Make an original title
• Include your name
• Begin Table of contents (Due Jan. 13)

4.  Work on Ind.. Reading Project. (Due Dec. 16)

 Due December 16: (you will have other homework Due. Dec. 16 besides just these definitions!)

1. Define the following poetic devices (type your definitions). .  Test on Dec. 16

• Alliteration
• Assonance
• Allusion
• Ambiguity
• Anaphora
• Anthropomorphism
• Archetype
• Assonance
• Carpe Diem
• Ellipsis
• Figure of Speech
• Irony
• Metaphor
• Onomatopoeia
• Oxymoron
• Palindrome
• Persona
• Poetic License
• Simile
• Symbol
• Tone

2.  Define the following terms of rhythm and meter in poetry. (type your definitions).   Test on Dec. 16

• Blank Verse
• Cadence
• Caesura
• End stop
• Foot
• Meter
• Rhyme
• Scansion (scan a line of poetry)
• Stress
• Syllable

3. Ind. Reading Project Due!

Catalog Poem 

Skills Focus
Literary Skills: Analyze the characteristics of catalog poems

Writing Skills: Write a catalog poem.

Make the Connection

Quickwrite

Make a list of the things that you do during an ordinary day. What is the first thing you do in the morning? What is the last thing you do before bed? What is your favorite part of the day? The following two poems tell about the things that people do every day. As you read, think about your list. How does it compare with the poems?

Literary Focus

Catalog Poem

You’ve probably seen the kind of catalogs that come from stores, filled with pictures of almost anything in the world you’d want to buy. Like those catalogs, a catalog poem brings together many different images and presents them for your attention. Unlike a retail catalog, though, a poem does not want you to part with your money; it wants you only to enter the poem and, with your imagination, share an experience with the speaker.

The repetition of images in a catalog poem creates a rolling rhythm when the poem is read aloud. Try reading the two poems that follow aloud, and see how the piling up of images creates the poems’ rhythmic beat.

Woman Work by Maya Angelou

I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The cane to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own

Daily by Naomi Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips

These T-shirts we fold into
perfect white squares

These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl

This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out

This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of sky

This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it

The days are nouns:  touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

Thinking Critically- Answer the following questions using complete sentences.  Due Dec. 9

1.  What does the catalog of images in “Woman Work” tell you about the life of the speaker? Where do you think she lives? What do you learn from the images in “Daily” about the life of its speaker?

2.    Both catalog poems list daily activities in a woman’s life, but the tone of each poem is different—the speakers express different attitudes toward their lives. How would you describe the tone of each poem? Is it complaining? bitter? angry? resigned? accepting? loving? joyful? Is it something else? Cite details from each poem to explain the tone you hear in it.

WRITING

My Day

Poetry Portfolio Entry #1: Catalog Poem (Due Dec. 9)

Write your own catalog poem that lists the things you do every day. Choose images that make your day come alive for the reader. You might want to imitate the structure of one of the poems in the following ways:

•              If you imitate “Woman Work,” begin with I’ve got… Then, list the things—such as “a bus to catch”—that you have to do.

•              If you imitate “Daily,” begin each line with These/This… Write, for example, “This heavy backpack I carry…”

How do you feel about your daily work? Try to express that feeling.

Metaphor, End Rhyme & Alliteration

"Hope" is the thing with feathers - (314)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

WRITING

Poetry Portfolio Entry #2: Metaphor Poem (Due Dec. 9)

Using the structure of  "'Hope' is the thing with feathers" as a basis for your own poem, choose a metaphor that is meaningful to you.  Be sure to include end rhyme and alliteration.  

Example:

Bliss is the rays of sunshine -

that pour into my room -

And wake me from my slumber _

And make me dream - of noon -