1. Responding to Poetry Level I

2. BW What’s your favorite song right now? Copy a verse from it.

3. Step 1 Experience the poem before trying to “analyze” it. – How would you describe the mood it creates? – How do you visualize the speaker and/or the situation? How does he/she seem to be feeling about whatever he/she is talking about? – What “sticks out” in the poem, possibly because it doesn’t fit in with a sound pattern, an image pattern, or the development of a main “idea” in the poem?

4. Step 2 Trace your impressions (however vague they may be) back to specific causes in the poem. What specific words, images, sounds, or ideas create the poem’s mood? What specific words, images, sounds, or ideas give you a mental image of the speaker and/or situation? Why does whatever you noticed stick out in the poem? How does it either enhance or disrupt the “flow” of sounds, images, or ideas?

5. Step 3 Find other details in the poem that fit in somehow with your strongest initial impressions. – What details repeat (and thereby strengthen) those that created your strongest initial impression? – What details closely relate to those that created your strongest initial impression but add slightly different layers? – What details contrast with those that created your strongest initial impression? – What details seem strange in that they don’t seem to fit into any of the categories above?

6. Poems “Design” “Acquainted with the Night” “The Road Not Taken” “My Father’s Waltz” “The Gift Outright”