Download Applying Reader Response Criticism

Applying Reader Response Criticism
ACTIVITY
1.7
SUGGESTED LEARNING STRATEGIES: Discussion Groups, Sketching,
Quickwrite, Rereading, Marking the Text, Metacognitive Markers, TP-CASTT
Poetry
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
by E.E. Cummings
in Justspring
when the world is mudluscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles
far
and wee
5
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.
when the world is puddle-wonderful
10
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far
and
wee
and bettyandisabel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan
far
and
wee
E. E. Cummings (1894–
1962) became known for
poems that experimented
with form, style, and
punctuation. During
his career, Cummings
examined traditional
themes such as love
and childhood, but he
explored these themes
with innovative methods,
such as incorporating
typography into the
poem’s meaning, or
using words such as if
and because as nouns.
His awards included
the Bollingen Prize in
Poetry (1958) and the
Charles Eliot Norton
Professorship at Harvard.
15
20
whistles
Unit 1 • Perception Is Everything
15
ACTIVITY 1.7
continued
Applying Reader Response Criticism
My Notes
Poetry
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Davison (1928–2004) was both a poet and an editor,
serving as poetry editor of The Atlantic Monthly for
29 years. The author of 11 collections of poetry, Davison
also wrote three prose works, including essays on
poetry and the memoir The Fading Smile, which includes
recollections of his mentor, poet Robert Frost. In his
writing and editing, Davison emphasized the power of
active language to engage with ideas and events: verbs,
he said, not nouns, show what a writer really means.
by Peter Davison
When I saw your head bow, I knew I had beaten you.
Bare for the blow I had been too frightened
Ever to deliver, even in words. And now,
5
In spite of me, plummeting it came.
Frozen we both waited for its fall.
Most of what you gave me I have forgotten
LITERARY TERMS
Free verse is poetry without
a fixed pattern of meter and
rhyme. In contrast, fixed
form is poetry in which
the length and pattern are
determined by established
usage or tradition, such as a
sonnet.
With my mind but taken into my body,
But this I remember well: the bones of your neck
10
And the strain in my shoulders as I heaved up that huge
Double blade and snapped my wrists to swing
The handle down and hear the axe’s edge
Nick through your flesh and creak into the block.
16 SpringBoard® English Textual Power™ Senior English
© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.
You shed no tear—not near me—but held your neck
Poetry
ACTIVITY 1.7
continued
by Sylvia Plath
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
5
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
10
15
© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
20
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
captured the intensity of
her turbulent life in an
autobiographical novel
and personal, revealing
poetry. An accomplished
scholar and writer,
Plath won many awards
as a young woman,
including a scholarship
to Smith College and
a Fulbright fellowship
to Newnham College in
Cambridge University.
In 1956, she married
poet Ted Hughes. As
their marriage dissolved,
Plath produced poems
of striking pain and
power. These poems
were published in the
collection Ariel (1965),
which appeared after her
suicide in 1963.
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible.
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
25
30
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.
Unit 1 • Perception Is Everything
17
ACTIVITY 1.7
continued
Applying Reader Response Criticism
A symbol is something (a person, place, or thing) that stands for
something else. A symbolic representation makes use of symbols to
represent an idea or concept.
Use the following chart to sketch a symbolic representation of the poem
you read in your small group. Your sketch should be in the form of a
three-panel narrative.
Panel 2
Your Interpretation
18 SpringBoard® English Textual Power™ Senior English
Panel 3
© 2011 College Board. All rights reserved.
Panel 1