1. The Voice That is Great Within Us
The role of the speaker in poetry

2. Independent Reading
Tuesday’s log: Read the first 4-5 pages of your new book. What do you know to be fact about your character? What can you infer? Provide evidence.
Wednesday’s log: Identify a conflict your character is already facing.
In The Fault in our Stars, the main character struggles with how to remain a normal teenager while battling cancer.

3. Speaker vs Poet
Poems may read like true confessions, but it is not biography we are looking for when we read a poem. It’s a record of how the real or imagined experiences of these poems give greater insight into the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of everyone who reads them.

4. “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath
Read “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath.
Highlight lines that seem to be confessional. Annotate with your reaction.
Share your thoughts with your group.

5. Digging Deeper into “Daddy”
Look for a turning point in the poem. Explain what it signifies.
This poem contains several extended metaphors that describe the father. Find them and talk about why Plath might feel it is more effective to present several different metaphors to describe this man.

6. Shift in Perspective
1st 13 stanzas use some child-like language (achoo, gobbledygoo)
1st stanza references a nursery rhyme (children who live in a shoe)
1st 13 stanzas seem to be trying to recapture a father who doesn’t exist and recount failed attempts to mold this father into the man he never was
Last 4 stanzas show an adult who sets out to destroy the image of her father in her mind(“. . . daddy, I’m finally through.”)
Child-like anger replaced with adult venom

7. Shift in Imagery
a vampire who sucks life from her and whom she kills with a stake in the heart
A father-Nazi who chuffles her off like a Jew to a concentration camp and who has his boot in her face
She replaces father with a husband just like him

8. Words to Describe Tone in “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath
Resentful
Spiteful
Vengeful
Venomous
Angry

9. Analyzing a Poem Choose 1 of the poems we have read so far to analyze:
Norman Morrison (2 different poems)
Of Late
Out Out –
Daddy by Patrick Middleton
Daddy by Sylvia Plath
Happy Father’s Day

10. Analyzing a Poem
Use “Guidelines for Reading a Poem” to collect evidence about the following
levels of understanding:
Grammatical level (literal meaning)
Rhetorical level (tone, theme, diction, figurative language, symbolism, etc.)
Poetic level (how all the individual parts contribute to the total experience)

11. Poetry Analysis
Write a 2-3 page analysis that looks at one of the poems we’ve read.
Analyze it on the three levels (grammatical, rhetorical and poetic), looking at how those levels help create meaning for the reader.
Be sure you include an introduction that follows the inverted pyramid format and a conclusion that restates the thesis and circles back to the introduction.