Aim: How do poetic elements create a thematic effect over the course of a poem?
Do Now:
The beginning of today’s lesson was a brainstorming session in which we were asked to come up with words that come to mind when we think of the word “identity” and put it into a word web. Every person is a unique individual with different values that make up our own identity, and thus, there were many correlating words to “identity”from each participant. Mariah led the discussion and said one’s name, while I said aspirations, as I believe that a person’s motivations and drive shapes character and is a defining characteristic in one's identity. Other words included personality, individual, culture, and, from a more scientific perspective, DNA and fingerprints. The class discussion is a great starter as it plants the idea of self-identity and what it means to us, as we make connections to outside points of view on the topic.
Poetic Devices:
After the do-now word web activity, we learned new vocabulary words to better understand poetic structure and to help us with our project by introducing new forms of writing.
Musical or Sound Devices: Convey or reinforce meaning (or experience) through the use of sound. Under this category, there are two main ones:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53zWcf9zJVU
Examples of synonyms for cacophonous and euphonious to better understand the difference:
As shown by the scholarly birds, cacophonous is used to describe things sounding or appearing to be negative and horrible, while euphonious is used to describe words that are satisfying to hear and positive in meaning. Cacophonous can be seen almost like a grating noise and euphonious is like classical music, except with words.
Rhythm: In poetry, the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqhPp-ptoJA
The video used examples of poems to show how rhythm works. She uses “d-dum, d-dum” to explain the unique beat of each poem. Poems don’t always have to rhyme to carry a rhythm, and as you get into the feel of a poem, the rhythm will come naturally. Rhythm isn’t always needed either, as is the case with freeverses, where there isn’t a single rule, form, rhyme or rhythm. It is merely an artistic expression used to stress upon an important point.
An example of a poem with rhythm:
This is a poem with alternating rhythm for every other line, with meters showing stressed and unstressed syllables to help keep the beat. The syllables might not match up, but if you get into the beat, the rhythm will be easy to get.
This is a free verse poem with no rhythm. Each line is different in syllables in beat to the other ones, but the emotion and message are still carried across a writing piece with a lot of artistic freedom.
For extra material on other sound devices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t16V38gZWE
Extended Metaphors:
Extended metaphor: A metaphor developed over several lines or throughout an entire poem. Consider an extended metaphor that’s mentioned at the start of one paragraph and mentioned again later in that paragraph, or later in the text, perhaps several chapters later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3nDkXKDp0Y
Examples of extended metaphors used in class:
From “As You Like It” (By William Shakespeare)
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.”
Shakespeare compares the world to a stage and describes all the people living in the world as actors/actresses, simply a prop for a scene before it ends. It describes people as having many roles in life to “act” and complete in this play before leaving through the exit where their scene, or their life, ends. This can be linked to another popular quote, “The show must go on.” where it means that life won’t wait for anybody and the scenes in the play of life will continue, whether you’re present for it or not.
From “Habitation” (By Margaret Atwood)
“Marriage is not / a house or even a tent / it is before that, and colder: / the edge of the forest, the edge of the desert / the unpainted stairs / at the back where we squat / outside, eating popcorn / the edge of the receding glacier / where painfully and with wonder / at having survived even this far / we are learning to make fire”
Atwood describes marriage using the habitats and biomes of different living things. She believes that marriage isn’t a rigid thing like a house, or even a tent, even though tents are already relatively unstable. In marriage as something vast and easily subjected to change, like the edge of a forest and desert, which are two different environments. Sometimes there can be happy moments, and sometimes there is pain in a relationship. Learning to make fire was the starting point of advanced human civilization, and in comparison to marriage, it means going through many hardships to be able to progress into something beautiful.
Functions of the Extended Metaphor
Extended metaphors can be an important way to make comparisons to further emphasize the idea being conveyed, and it gets straight to the point as readers start to see the comparison for themselves and interpret it in their own way. Within an extended metaphor, there are two different types of metaphors: direct and implied. Knowing which metaphor an author or poet is trying to depict, will lead to better recognizing of such metaphors, and in turn more comprehension on the text.
Direct Metaphor: Compares two things by directly stating that one thing is another.
Example of a direct metaphor:
The comparison in this example is between life and a piece of bubblegum. Like how bubblegum is delicious and promising in the beginning, everybody starts off seeing life in an optimistic way, believing that there will be amazing opportunities and memories to come. All of a sudden, the taste of the gum disappears and it’s bad now, just like how as time goes by, you see how life isn’t what you expected it to be. You have to now throw the gum out, which is the equivalent of tossing out those hopes and dreams you had before even if they meant a lot to you as you now know better than to keep something that went bad.
Indirect Metaphor: Doesn’t give the comparison directly, and instead uses words that suggest the nature of the comparison.
Example used in class of an indirect extended metaphor poem:
This example compares a poem to an apple. It tells readers that there is no need for manners or preparation because a poem is always available, ready to be read, and anybody can read one. A poem can be messy or insightful, but all you need to do is just go into one without thinking to truly see the contents. A poem doesn’t have the undesirable parts of an apple, showing that there’s nothing difficult about reading or creating one yourself and all you have to do is convey the inner message, just like the juicy insides of the apple. This is an indirect poem because it’s never stated the comparison was to an apple, yet it provides enough wording and hints for the assumption to be an apple. The description of the insides of the fruit suggest that the apple is in fact what they’re trying to compare it to.
THEME:
After the vocabulary, we steered into the direction of theme- what theme is and what it entails because it’s not as simple as we thought it would be.
Theme: The meaning of a work; a central idea, point, and underlying meaning of a literary work that may be stated directly or indirectly; critical belief about life that the author is trying to convey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIuKNVny9cM
We have been taught already that theme is the main point of a literary work that may or may not be present in the writing. However, theme goes beyond what we know as only one word descriptions. In actuality, a theme is like an umbrella of phrases that fall under that topic. For example, a topic can be friendship, but the actual theme can be “True friendship is the ability to overcome adversities together”. Both mean about the same thing-friendship-but the latter phrase is more in depth and specified towards a story. Friendship can have many themes, so that one word itself doesn’t dig into the deeper meaning of a story as much as using a thematic statement meant for the plot and lesson of the literary work.
This is an example of topic and theme in which the topics are supposed to be the root of inspiration for the real interpretation of the theme. Many stories may have one theme, while others may have multiple-it’s up to interpretation and one’s wording from the topic found in the literary work. Theme is the point being made about the topic, and thematic statements are the point.
Themes also come in many different forms. It can appear as a lesson, moral, message or motif, and it’s important to be able to distinguish between them with guiding questions to make it easier to understand. where to look for underlying themes when reading or working on a literary work.
Spirit Reading and Annotating:
After learning what the vocabulary is, and understanding the comparisons in extended metaphors, we applied it to a poem. We took turns spirit-reading “Identity” by Julio Noboa Polanco. As a former social studies professor, he is a poet known for advocating for better representation of Latin American history in U.S social studies classes. Knowing this background, we can see the impact this poem has made, since he has been involved in trying to better the portrayal and help appreciate the identities of Latin Americans and himself..
The purpose of this poem was to provide a different perspective to what society thinks by comparing people, or the poet himself, to flowers and weeds. Whilst annotating, a lot of the phrases stuck out. One in particular, states “...where they’re praised, handled and plucked by greedy human hands.” This shows that the same people helping you and giving you what you need to grow will also be the ones to knock you down. Is it really worth it to be a beautiful and perfect flower if it’s only temporary? On the outside, the flower may be pampered for and taken care of very well, but in reality, they are confined to a pot, losing uniqueness from being like every other flower in its bunch, and at the height of its beauty, they are plucked, showing the lack of freedom and dreams in a society where only physical beauty matters and people lose the meaning of their identity. On the other hand, the weed may be ugly and undesirable to everybody, but they stand confident and tall, able to appear wherever they want, whether it be on the side of a cliff or in a crack on the sidewalk. They are free to go wherever they want, almost being able to explore the world carefree from mountains to the sea, as weeds are not confined to the social construct of beauty. Given a choice, the weed would be the most appealing choice every time because you are yourself and it’s okay to be shunned, since you know you are a distinct person, without needing to rely on others to help you grow and give you character.
Teamwork:
Since there can be many different points of view for the poem “Identity”, we were split into our respective groups to come up with what we think the extended metaphor is and what the flowers and weeds both represent to the group as a whole.
Other groups were able to come up with interesting interpretations that our group didn’t think of. For example, for the flower, Daniel P.’s group said that the flower was an extended metaphor for being in a large group of people, and blending in with the crowd. For the weed, Leslie’s group says that it was an extended metaphor for confidence in a person, standing up tall and independent, ready to face anything, even if it means being undesirable. This showed the unique mindset of students and allowed us to further understand their depiction of self-identity.
Think/Pair/Share:
The second portion of teamwork includes working with a partner to further analyze Julio Noboa Polanco’s poem, using the TWIST strategy. The TWIST strategy is an important method to use in literary analysis. TWIST stands for Tone, Word Choice, Imagery, Style, and Theme, which are important topics to touch upon to fully comprehend a literary work.
This was picked as the theme because we interpreted the poem as being someone confident, with the ability to stand up for yourself, to be yourself and to have freedom for yourself. It doesn’t matter what people think of you as long as you’re satisfied with your own individuality.
REFLECTION:
Today’s lesson allowed me to reflect on the topic of self identity, as well as understand new poetic devices to help me with my writing journey. The poem was very impactful as it changed the way I thought about my identity through the portrayal of the theme. As someone who values external validation, Polanco praising something as ugly as a weed and preferring to be one himself over a flower, made me realize that it’s ok to be disliked because I’m my own person and I have the freedom still to chase my aspirations and be what I want, contrary to a flower who is constrained to one fate-to be just like everyone else. It has taught me that poems aren’t as bad as I thought and they can offer life changing points. This brings me to the poetic elements reviewed in class and how they affect the way a poem is perceived. Using sound/musical devices like cacophonous and euphonious words, as well as rhythm assist with the smoothness and fluidity of a literary piece. In relation to the aim, these elements go hand in hand with theme, more specifically, thematic statements. The entire purpose of the lesson was theme, which was found during independent work and group work. In the do now itself, identity was the topic of inspiration to give way to other smaller topics which in turn gives theme. In the poem, the deep discussions showed how one story can have many different interpretations of the theme, even if the topic was “identity”. The TWIST strategy was a new way of breaking things down, and provides deep mastery on a literary writing, with easy interpretation of theme and its meaning. It would be a nice tool to use with future stories and poems because everything is broken down with the main idea laid out. With the upcoming anthology project we are assigned, with a need for an extended metaphor poem, diving deeper into extended metaphors and breaking it down into different types, are an amazing way of understanding the criteria. This lesson has been inspirational in letting me see a different side of poetry, and connecting it back to my experiences. I have a new gained respect and appreciation for poems because I realize they can be about anything, and inspiration for them is everywhere. I have a new understanding now on wording and specific ways on how to draw out a raw emotion from my writing, which will be applied on future inspirational pieces to come.
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