Unit+3+Poetry

Overview:

 * Students will now consider why poetry is different than prose. In particular, they examine the power and expressive potential of imagery and other kinds of figurative language. They are exposed to poetry from a variety of cultures, noting the ways in which the poetic form is universal to express particular ideas and themes. Finally, the unit is an opportunity to introduce students to the idea of craftsmanship and intentionality of "form" in art, examining masterpieces of art and architecture that exhibit an ideal execution of visual elements (e.g., line, color, space, tone, weight, etc.).

Focus Standards:

 * **RL.9-10.4:** Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of several word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone).
 * **RI.9-10.2:** Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
 * **W.9-10.8:** Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the usefulness of each source in answering the research question; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation.
 * **SL.9-10.5:** Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.
 * **L.9-10.3:** Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.

Student Objectives:

 * Define and offer examples of various forms of poetry.
 * Identify the form, rhyme scheme, and meter of poems studied.
 * Define and explain poetic devices, such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, and enjambment, and describe the ways in which they help reveal the theme(s) of the poem.
 * Recognize and explain the distinguishing characteristics of various kinds of poetry, such as ballads, odes, lyric poetry, blank verse, haiku, and sonnets.
 * Describe how poetry differs from prose and explain why authors would choose one form over another for a particular purpose.
 * Complete a literary research paper, citing at least three sources.

Suggested Texts:
Poetry:
 * “Dream Variations” (Langston Hughes)
 * “[|Ozymandias]” (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
 * “[|The Raven]” (Edgar Allan Poe)
 * “[|Sonnet 73]” (William Shakespeare)
 * “[|Ode on a Grecian Urn]” (John Keats)
 * “[|We grow accustomed to the Dark]” (Emily Dickinson)
 * “[|Mending Wall]” (Robert Frost)
 * “[|Love Is]” (Nikki Giovanni)
 * “[|A Lemon]” (Pablo Neruda)
 * “Saturday’s Child” (Countée Cullen)
 * “In Time of Silver Rain” (Langston Hughes)
 * “I Ask My Mother to Sing” (Li-Young Lee)
 * “The Gift” (Li-Young Lee)
 * “Phantom Limbs” (Anne Michaels)
 * [|Psalm 96] (King James Bible)
 * “Lord Randall” (Anonymous)
 * “Campo di Fiori” (Czeslaw Milosz)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“The Darkling Thrush” (Thomas Hardy)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“Poetry” (Marianne Moore)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard” (Thomas Gray)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“The Sound of the Sea” (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“I wandered lonely as a cloud” (William Wordsworth)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“The Lady of Shalott” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“The Underground”(Seamus Heaney)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Bogland (Seamus Heaney)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“In Trackless Woods” (Richard Wilbur)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">“The Reader” (Richard Wilbur)
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">Haiku selections

Suggested Terms:

 * Alliteration
 * Analogy
 * Assonance
 * Ballad
 * Blank verse
 * Consonance
 * Diction
 * Dramatic poetry
 * Enjambment
 * Figurative language
 * Free verse
 * Haiku
 * Heroic couplet
 * Imagery
 * Lyric poetry
 * Meter
 * Narrative poetry
 * Ode
 * Rhyme
 * Rhyme scheme
 * Rhythm
 * Sonnet (petrarchan, shakespearean)

Suggested Activities:

 * [|Poetry Out Loud]
 * [|Brave New Voices]