1. READ each of the following poems OUT LOUD, AT LEAST TWO TIMES and by TWO DIFFERENT GROUP MEMBERS.
IN YOUR JOURNAL, RESPOND to the following PROMPTS then DISCUSS as GROUP before moving on to the next:
What is your FIRST IMPRESSION, FEELING or RESPONSE to the IDEAS, WORDS or IMAGES in the POEM? Explain.
What UNKNOWN, MYSTERIOUS or INTERESTING WORD CHOICES did the author make to trigger strong responses – DEFINE IF NEEDED.
Are there any RECURRING SOUNDS, WORDS or IMAGES?
Can you make any CONNECTIONS between the sensory or concrete DETAILS and SPECIFIC LANGUAGE or WORD CHOICE? Similes, Metaphors, Personification, ETC.
How does your OWN LIFE EXPERIENCE influence your response or understanding of the poems ideas or themes?

2. Those Winter Sundays Robert Hayden, 1913 - 1980
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

3. The Road Not Taken by 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 Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

4. Coming Up by Ani DiFranco
Our father who art in a penthouse Sits in his 37th floor suite And swivels to gaze down At the city he made me in He allows me to stand and Solicit graffiti until He needs the land I stand on I in my darkened threshold Am pawing through my pockets The receipts, the bus schedules The urgent napkin poems The matchbook phone numbers All of which laundering has rendered Pulpy and strange Loose change and a key Ask me Go ahead, ask me if I care I got the answer here I wrote it down somewhere I just gotta find it

5. Adrienne Rich, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers”
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

6. My Papa’s Waltz
Related Poem Content Details
BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The whiskey on your breath   
Could make a small boy dizzy;   
But I hung on like death:   
Such waltzing was not easy. 
We romped until the pans   
Slid from the kitchen shelf;   
My mother’s countenance   
Could not unfrown itself. 
The hand that held my wrist   
Was battered on one knuckle;   
At every step you missed 
My right ear scraped a buckle. 
You beat time on my head   
With a palm caked hard by dirt,   
Then waltzed me off to bed   
Still clinging to your shirt.