Poetry questions-English

A portrait in Georgia by Jean Toomer 1. What is this poem about? 2. Discuss use of imagery 3. Discuss use of juxtaposition

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Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen 1. Why does the speaker regard the poem's closing thought as a lie? 2. What "friend" (line 25) does he address? 3. What nightmare image haunts him? 4. How would you describe the imagery of this poem?

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interpose

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Death be Not Proud by John Donne 1. What type of poem is this? how do you know? 2. Who is the audience? therefore, the entire poem is an...? 3. Cite a metaphor 4. Cite a paradox 5. What are some of the arguments that the speaker uses? 6. What is the speaker's goal?

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The Pardon by Richard Wilbur 1. What is the paradox in stanza five? 2. What is the mood? 3. Discuss poet's use of imagery 4. What is the speaker able to do by the end of the poem?

1. 2. reminiscent and sad 3.

Reapers by Jean Toomer 1. Why did Toomer choose this form? What does it add to the tone? 2. What is the implied message? 3. Explain the use of understatement

1. 2. the implied message is that the grim reaper shows up when someone is about to die, grim reaper showed up when the plows are about to kill the rat, implied message is that in the midst of suffering, life goes on 3. understatement is used because rat has just been brutally killed yet everyone continues cutting the grass as if it never happened

Oranges by Gary Soto 1. What are some striking examples of small revealing details that conjure up this scene from the past? 2. How does this poem develop and take shape? 3. What are some high points? 4. What is the mood here?

1. "a porch light burned yellow" "a dog barked at me" "I was making a fire with my hands" are small details that really show how much he loved the girl 2. this poem takes place as a memory, a story is being told 3. high points are when the dog barks at him and then the girl comes out and the speaker feels warm again, another example is when the speaker refers to the girl as "his girl" because she let him buy the candy for her 4. mood is uplifting and warm in the heart of December

A Day Begins by Denise Levertov 1.Cite an example of onomatopoeia 2. Cite an example of alliteration 3. Explain the use of juxtaposition. 4. What is the theme of this poem?

1. "oozing" is an example of onomatopeia 2. "bruise blue" is an example of alliteration 3. an example of juxtaposition is the contrast between "oozing from the unevenly chewed off neck" and "lies in rainsweet grass" 4. the theme is that nature can be so cruel and yet so beautiful

Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson 1. What do the rhyme and rhythum contribute to the poem? 2. Who is the speaker? What is the speaker's tone? 3. Explain the use of juxtaposition in the poem. 4. Give a statement of theme

1. The rhyme the rhythem make the poem seem as if the story will have a happy ending but it doesn't, rhymes almost as if he was gittering 2. the speaker is the downtrodden, unimportant people who don't have enough to eat and are homeless, tone=happy and sing songy, his suicide therefore catches the reader by surprise, almost the same way the people were caught by surprise 3. juxtaposition is used to show contrast between the perception Richard ory gave off as the ultimate human being who has everything, and how unhappy he was with himself and his life-> "one calm summer night, put a bullet through his head", accentuates this 4. theme:money doesn't buy happiness, material things does not bring happiness

Design by Robert Frost 1. What kind of poem is this? 2. What is the central metaphor? 3. What is the irony of the image of the white satin cloth? 4. what questions does Frost raise here?

1. a partrician sonnet 2. central metaphor is that the spider is going to kill 3. the irony is that the cloth rep 4. if there is an aweful fait for the moth, which is so small, what about the fait for the rest of us??

For my Grandmother by Countee Cullen: 1. Why is the title important? 2. What is the central metaphor? In what ways are the two similar?

1. allows reader to understand who the flower is is in the poem, flower=grandma 2. central metaphor=flow symbolizes Grandmother who has recently died, there were lots of emotions over her death and grandma held it as her statement of belief that she would live on through her grandchildren, circle of life=circle of life of flower

Women by Alice Walker 1. What is the prevailing mood? 2. Who is the speaker? 3. Audience? 4. Explain the war metaphor 5. Find and explain the paradox

1. impowering and inspiring 2. speaker is black women during 1920's that fought hard for black womens education for their daughters (future generations) 3. black women in this generation who are now able to obtain an education because of the way their mothers faught the year before 4. the metaphor is that black women were fighting their own wars to get education, had all odds against them due to those two things 5. the paradox is that even though women from previous generation were not educated, they knew had to do something for their daughters to have a better education

Grape Sherbet by Rita Dove 1. What childhood memory is the speaker thinking about? 2.Cite examples which illustrate the speaker's innocence as a child 3. Where exactly does the speaker bring her adult point of view to the scene? 4. What are the speakers feelings about her father? Cite proof. 5. Why can she not remember the taste of lavender? 6. What does the speaker understand now that she did not grasp as a child? 7. State the theme of this poem. What about the mood?

1. memorial day when her dad would make the grape sherbet for everyone 2. when she says its just how lavender would taste, when they are playing in the graveyward and don't understand that dead bodies are beneath their feet 3. she brings her adult point of view at the end of the poem when she says the taste of sherbet doesn't exist anymore because her father died,symbolic because she's lost her innocence so she can't taste it anymore 4. she really respects him->last few lines 5. because she has lost her innocence and is all grown up now 6. the speaker understands that memorial day is about respecting the dead, she also understands that graveyards are not something one can play in 7. the theme is that

Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden 1. Who was Brueghel? 2. Who was Icarus? 3. both of these references are examples of what? 4. state the theme of this poem. 5. What poem seems to have the same message?

1. see other paper 2. see other paper 3. methodical allusions 4. in the midst of suffering, life goes on, people are too concerned with their affairs to care about everyone else's 5. Reapers has the same message

Let me not to the marriage of true minds by William Shakespeare 1. What kind of poem is this? 2. What is the rhyme scheme? 3. Where is the eye rhyme? 4. Cite Shakespeare's use of personification. 5. What is a quatrain? A couplet? Where are they here? 6. What is the theme of this poem?

1. shakespearean sonnet 2. abab cdcd efef gg 3. last two lines: proved loved 4. hes treating love as if it had human condition through describing how time can take rosy lips and cheeks away 5. quatrain=4 rhyming lines, couplet=2 rhyming lines, 3 quatrains and then one couplet at the end 6. true love lasts until death, if two people truely love eachother for who they are, their bond is unseparable and will not deteriorate over time

This Is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams 1. Explain the title 2. What is the setting? Where would you find this poem? 3. What dos the poem imply about the speaker? What about the reader? 4. Williams believed that there are "no ideas but in things". Apply to this poem

1. the author chose to name the poem "This is Just to Say" because the speaker is simply explaining that he ate the plums, and lacks empathy and is insecure (SARCASTIC) in his appology 2. you would find this poem attached to a refrigerator, or a note on a kitchen counter, left to the person who owns the plums 3. the poem implies that the speaker is selfish and is impulsive, while the reader is not, as the reader was saving those plums for breakfast 4. its not the actual act of eating the plums that was bad, what was bad was eating the plums when the speaker very well knew they were probably being saved for breakfast

A Barred Owl by Richard Wilbur 1. Why is this poem broken into two stanzas? 2. What is meter? Rhyme scheme? 3. Why, perhaps, does Wilbur choose to write this poem in rhymed couplets? 4. What does the speaker mean by "who cooks for you"? 5. Wherein lies the power of the poem? 6. Explain the theme AND tone.

1. the poem is broken into two stanza's because the first stanza is used to explain how you can tame a fear, while the second stanza is used to explain what is really going on outside in the real world 2. 3. 4. the speaker means to ask the child who makes food for her, these are her parents, which are warm and friendly people, this is a way of calming down the child nerves about the hoo ing in the middle of the night without lying to her about what is happening 5. facing fears can actually calm oneself down, as you can twist them in a way to make them less scary and intimidating for you 6. the theme is that words can be used to tame our fears. The tone is comforting in the first stanza and disturbing in the last stanza

Music Swims Back to Me by Anne Sexton 1. What is the settng of this poem? 2. Describe the mask 3. Describe the situation 4. What images stand out to you?

1. the setting is in a mental institution talking to her therapist 2. 3. she is imprisoned in a mental institution and cant leave to get back home 4. four ladies over eighty in diapers

I heard a Fly Buzz When I Died by Emily Dickinson 1. What is the setting? 2.What is happening to the speaker? 3. What does interpose mean? 4. where exactly is the fly? 5. Who is with the speaker? 6. What is dickinson suggesting about death and immortality?

1. the setting is the speaker on her deathbed with loved one's around her weeping about her death 2. the speaker is about to die, and waiting to see god, but then a fly lands on her nose and she isn't able to see god 3. interposed means to be or come between, ot introduce, to insert between other elements or to get involved 4. the fly is beezlebub or the devil that keeps her from seeing god 5. the speaker is 6. Dickinson suggests that dying is not this wholey sacred act people make it out to be, it actually kindof sucks, flys get in the way and you aren't even able to see god before you die

Traveling Through the Dark by William Stafford 1. What does the speaker mean by "to swerve might make more dead"? 2. What figure of speech do you see in line 11? Explain. 3. Why does the speaker "hesitate" in line12? 4. What is interesting about Stafford's word choice "purred"? 5. Why does the "wilderness listen"? 6. Explain the second to the last line of the poem.

1. the speaker means that if he swerved around the deer and did not pick it up and push it over the canyon, he next person driving down the road might not see the deer and as a result, they could die trying to not hit the deer and go over the canyon 2. "alive, still, never to be born"->a paradox, the fawn is alive yet not born yet 3. the speaker hesitates because the speaker is caught in a moral delema: should he push the deer over and kill the newborn, or leave the deer for other cars to swerve and get in accidents over? the speaker hesitates because he's not sure pushing the deer and fawn into the canyon is the right thing to do->he wants to do the right thing 4. "the hood purred the stead engine"->the stead engine inside the car is like the fawn inside the deer 5. the "wilderness listens" because the speaker is torn between saving nature (the fawn) and saving human lives. The wilderness also serves as a moral compass 6. the speaker thought about himself, the deer and the newborn fawn, going back and forth as to what he should do because he couldn't decide for a second about whether to risk human lives or kill the fawn, he thought long and hard about what he should do for him future people and the fawn->human lives are more valuable than that of the fawn, represents moral ambiguity, sometimes in life there's not as much of a clearcut right and wrong

Incident by Countee Cullen 1. How does the tone shift in the poem? 2. Is this traditional or free verse? 3. Why do you think Cullen chose to write this poem in this form? 4. What details make this poem powerful?

1. tone shift from gleeful to sorrow 2. traditional verse because it rhymes 3. because the rhyming makes it seem sing songy and happy when in reality its a racial poem :( 4. "heart-filled with glee", "he was no whit bigger than me", "that's all I remember" makes racial epathet that much stronger