Classroom Activities
Parts of a Metaphor
As I kept thinking about the role of dramatic metaphor in the poems of Lowell, Sexton, and Plath, it seemed obvious that we should look more deeply into varieties of comparisons. Metaphor and others are used in a variety of fields because of their effectiveness to convey depth of emotion or clarity of image. In English classes we never fail to teach (and re-teach every year) about comparisons, but we rarely take the time to analyze them, to break them down into their parts—tenor and the vehicle. The tenor is the object, idea to which the writer wants to give attributes. The vehicle is the image brought in to lend its attributes to the tenor. In the comparison (in this case actually a simile) “except where one black-haired tree slips / up like a drowned woman into the hot sky,” the tree is the tenor, the object the poet wants to better describe, and the vehicle is the drowned woman, brought in to suggest the appearance of the tree.
Now that we’ve put a spotlight on this comparison, we can follow up with questions? Why a drowned woman? What does this do for mood or tone? What does the tree look like to you, and what does your vehicle do the tone or mood?
For one image in each poem I will give students blank paper and colored pencils and have them draw the comparison. They will have to reckon with the details as they draw. What about the tree looks like a drowned woman? Does the tree get a face? A reaching arm? For “The Starry Night” we’ll use the simile above. For “The Disquieting Muses,” we’ll use “each teacher found my touch oddly wooden; and for “Epilogue,” we will use “the sun’s illumination / stealing like the tide across a map.”
Annotation and Tone Study
English language arts teachers encourage students to annotate texts as often as we can. We teach tips and strategies to help students annotate effectively, so that they must read closely to make sense of or find meaning in the text. In addition to other visual literacy strategies, this activity will encourage students find details they would not have otherwise. They will annotate at least one painting (Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter) in the same way that they annotate a text, by looking for and marking patterns, color choices, objects, unexpected things, arrangement, facial expressions, style—anything else they think is worth noting—along with making comments and asking questions. (This does mean that I have to splurge for color copies for each student, but it could be modified to be done in groups or as a whole-class activity on a Smartboard.) This thorough annotation will lead us to the next stage of the activity as we look at tone.
Tone can be a challenge to teach, but one can find a variety of tone words lists on Google. I have several that I use regularly with students depending on the needs of a particular group. I will give each student a tone word list and ask them to circle each word on the list that aligns with what they’ve found in the painting. The subtle colors or the idea that the woman might be pregnant might influence their decisions. Her facial expression is ambiguous. Students may have to justify their decisions to me or to a group or the class as they present and explain their personal lists of words.
Reductionist Reading Activity
This works best with shorter poems with more imagery. In stages students will make decisions on the importance of individual words or simple phrases and then justify them. I’ll use it with Sexton’s “The Starry Night.” Before students do a complete reading of the poem, give them copies of the poem they can write on and black and gray markers. Have them black out the least important words, such as articles and prepositions. With their gray markers, leave them alone to made decisions on which are the next less important words. Encourage them to have taken out about half of the words. Now that they have reduced the words in the poem to at least half, they can discuss in whole-class or smaller groups what they think the poem is about. Tell them to focus on only on the words in white space. Add in the gray words. Do thoughts about the poem change? Finally, pass out clean copies of the poem to read and study and with which to compare their initial thoughts about the poem.
Diction and Dictionary Page Challenge
A common goal of these units on ekphrasis is to get our students to write original poems about works of art. We will do several exercises to sharpen skills and build confidence, including this one. Often students’ word choices are haphazard and restricted by limited vocabulary. This assignment is intended to force them to think critically about word choice and the feel the potential power they have in the process.
Give each student both a photocopy of a dictionary page (or you could cut up one of the falling-apart out-of-date dictionaries on your shelf) and the same work of art (photocopied, shared electronically, or on a smartboard. After using whatever method you choose for students to study an image, ask them to study with equal intention the words on their dictionary pages, seeking words that they feel relate to the image in any way. The next steps can vary according to your needs for the lesson. Vivid nouns and verbs can become the base for work with figurative imagery; modifying words might suggest mood or tone. Students might find words that suggest theme or narrative. I will encourage my students to pick 7-8 words to be worked in to as many likes of verse. I might ask for the inclusion of a metaphor, or ask students to play with different kinds of rhyme or sound device. Regardless of one’s specific requirements for the students’ verse practice, the students will have had to reckon with critical word choice. Rather than have them create verse, another option for using their selected words would be to explain their word choices to the class.
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