Before Reading

Think about your pets or other animals youve seen at the zoo or on TV nature shows. Do animals ever behave in a way that seems almost human? Have you ever thought you knew what they were feeling? In the poems that follow, you will meet three animals with distinctive human qualities.

DISCUSS Choose one animal you identify with the most. Explain to a partner why you relate to it and what characteristics you share with it.

What ANIMAL reminds you of yourself?

The FishPoem by Elizabeth Bishop

Christmas SparrowPoem by Billy Collins

The SlothPoem by Theodore Roethke

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READING 3 Understand the structure and elements of poetry. 7 Understand how an authors sensory language creates imagery in literary text and provide evidence from text to support understanding. RC-10(A) Reflect on understanding to monitor comprehension.

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Meet the Authors

Go to thinkcentral.com. KEYWORD: HML10-795

Authors Online

Complete the activities in your Reader/Writer Notebook.

poetic form: free verseMost modern poems are written in free verse, a poetic form with no regular pattern of rhyme or rhythm. A free verse poem can be structured as one long, unbroken stanza, as in The Fish, or with many stanzas of varying length, as in Christmas Sparrow. The lines in free verse poems may also vary in length. Without a strict meter, the rhythm of free verse poetry often seems more like everyday speech. As you read, notice how the line length, sounds of words, and punctuation create a rhythm in each poem.

literary analysis: imagerySometimes a poem can seem like a portrait. Sensory language, or words and phrases that appeal to the readers senses, can help create imageryvisual portraits that reinforce ideas about the subject described. For example, in The Fish, Bishop appeals to the senses of sight and touch when she describes the fishs skin. Lines like these help depict a fragile old fish.

hung in strips / like ancient wallpapershapes like full-blown roses / stained and lost through age

As you read the poems, record strong, evocative imagery on a chart like the one shown. Identify

the sense the word or phrase appeals to the associations the imagery conjures up the idea that is being reinforced

Poem Title:

Imagery Sense(s) Associations Idea Reinforced

reading strategy: visualizeListen carefully as y0ur teacher reads aloud the poems. Visualize the animals, settings, and events. Then read along with your teacher as he or she reads the poems a second time in a shared reading. Use your imagination and the word clues to see what the animals might look like. Then, read the poems again with a partner. Discuss how the shared and repeated readings helped you visualize the animals and understand the poems.

Elizabeth Bishop19111979

Soulful Poet The poetry of Elizabeth Bishop is marked by its exact and tranquil descriptions of the physical world. Hidden beneath her poems air of serenity and simplicity, however, are underlying themes of great depth. When writing about loss and pain, the struggle to belong, and other themes, Bishop worked hard to ensure that the spiritual [was] felt.

Billy Collinsborn 1941

Poet for the People Billy Collins remembers publishing a poem in his high school newspaper that was later confiscated. Rising to national and popular prominence years later, Collins became U.S. Poet Laureate (20012003) and launched the Poetry 180 program, which aimed to get more high school students to read well-written, understandable poetry each day during the 180-day school year.

Theodore Roethke19081963

Passion for Nature When I get alone under an open sky, wrote Theodore Roethke, where man isnt too evidentthen Im tremendously exalted. . . . A passion for nature pervades Roethkes poetry. His poems also explore love, mortality, and the quest for spiritual wholeness.

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The FishElizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fishand held him beside the boathalf out of water, with my hookfast in a corner of his mouth.He didnt fight.He hadnt fought at all.He hung a grunting weight,battered and venerableand homely. Here and there ahis brown skin hung in stripslike ancient wallpaper,and its pattern of darker brownwas like wallpaper:shapes like full-blown rosesstained and lost through age.He was speckled with barnacles,fine rosettes of lime,and infestedwith tiny white sea-lice,and underneath two or threerags of green weed hung down.While his gills were breathing inthe terrible oxygenthe frightening gills,fresh and crisp with blood,that can cut so badlyI thought of the coarse white fleshpacked in like feathers,the big bones and the little bones,the dramatic reds and blacksof his shiny entrails,

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FREE VERSENotice the different lengths of the lines in this poem. How do the short lines affect the poems rhythm?

Language CoachConnotations The images and feelings connected to a word are its connotations. In line 18, infestedliterally means overrun or permeated. What connotations do you associate with infested? Would you want to eat an infested fish?

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and the pink swim-bladderlike a big peony.I looked into his eyeswhich were far larger than minebut shallower, and yellowed,the irises backed and packedwith tarnished tinfoilseen through the lensesof old scratched isinglass.They shifted a little, but notto return my stare.It was more like the tippingof an object toward the light. bI admired his sullen face,the mechanism of his jaw,and then I sawthat from his lower lipif you could call it a lipgrim, wet, and weaponlike,hung five old pieces of fish-line,or four and a wire leaderwith the swivel still attached,with all their five big hooksgrown firmly in his mouth.A green line, frayed at the endwhere he broke it, two heavier lines,and a fine black threadstill crimped from the strain and snapwhen it broke and he got away.Like medals with their ribbonsfrayed and wavering,a five-haired beard of wisdomtrailing from his aching jaw. cI stared and staredand victory filled upthe little rented boat,from the pool of bilgewhere oil had spread a rainbowaround the rusted engineto the bailer rusted orange,the sun-cracked thwarts,the oarlocks on their strings,the gunnelsuntil everythingwas rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!And I let the fish go.

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VISUALIZEReread lines 3444. What aspects of the fishs character can you see in this description of its eyes?

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IMAGERYWhat senses does this description of the fishs face appeal to? What associations form in your mind about the fish?

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The first thing I heard this morningwas a rapid flapping sound, soft, insistent

wings against glass as it turned outdownstairs when I saw the small birdrioting in the frame of a high window,trying to hurl itself throughthe enigma of glass into the spacious light. d

Then a noise in the throat of the catwho was hunkered on the rugtold me how the bird had gotten inside,carried in the cold nightthrough the flap of a basement door, and later released from the soft grip of teeth.

On a chair, I trapped its pulsationsin a shirt and got it to the door,so weightless it seemedto have vanished into the nest of cloth.

But outside, when I uncupped my hands,it burst into its element,dipping over the dormant gardenin a spasm of wingbeatsthen disappeared over a row of tall hemlocks.

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Christmas SparrowBILLY COLLINS

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IMAGERYWhat images describe the bird in lines 17? What senses do these images appeal to?

Language CoachSuffixes The word pulsation (line 14) is formed by adding the suffix -ion, meaning the action of to the base word pulsate, meaning to throb or beat. Restate the definition of pulsation in your own words. Can you think of other words formed from a base word and the suffix -ion?

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For the rest of the day,I could feel its wild thrummingagainst my palms as I wondered aboutthe hours it must have spentpent in the shadows of that room,hidden in the spiky branchesof our decorated tree, breathing thereamong the metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,its eyes open, like mine as I lie in bed tonight epicturing this rare, lucky sparrowtucked into a holly bush now,a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.

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VISUALIZEWhat details help you imagine how the bird looks and feels as it hides in the Christmas tree?

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In moving-slow he has no Peer.1

You ask him something in his Ear,He thinks about it for a Year;

And, then, before he says a WordThere, upside down (unlike a Bird),He will assume that you have Heard

A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug.But should you call his manner Smug,Hell sigh and give his Branch a Hug; f

Then off again to Sleep he goes,Still swaying gently by his Toes,And you just know he knows he knows. g

1. peer: equal.

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TheSlothoTheodore Roethke

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IMAGERYReread line 9. What does this image suggest about the sloth?

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ELEMENTS OF POETRYPoets often use punctuation to help illustrate their thoughts. In The Sloth, Roethke uses a dash at the end of one line and hyphens in the middle of words to help bring to life the subject of his poem. Reread lines 67. What effect does this punctuation have on the way you read and interpret the poem?

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After Reading

Comprehension 1. Recall How does the fish in Bishops poem react when it is caught?

2. Recall How did the bird in Collinss poem get trapped inside the house?

3. Summarize What is the sloths response when asked a question?

Literary Analysis4. Visualize Describe in detail the mental picture you form of each animal in the

poems.

5. Analyze Imagery Review the examples of imagery that you recorded in your chart. Identify some images that appeal to your sense of sight and others that appeal to your sense of touch. What is the most striking image in each poem? Why?

6. Analyze Free Verse How is the experience of reading Bishops and Collinss free verse poems different from that of reading Roethkes more traditional poem?

7. Interpret Themes How are the three animals in these poems like people? What does each poem suggest about the relationship between human beings and animals?

8. Compare and Contrast Texts Compare and contrast The Fish and Christmas Sparrow. In a chart like the one shown, consider the similarities and differences in subject, mood, and theme.

The Fish Christmas Sparrow Similarities Differences

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Mood

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Literary Criticism 9. Critical Interpretations According to Billy Collins, the best poems begin in

clarity and end in mystery. Would you say that this is true for each of the three poems in this lesson? Why or why not?

What ANIMAL reminds you of yourself?What can animals teach us about being human?

the fish / christmas sparrow / the sloth 801

READING 3 Understand the structure and elements of poetry. 7 Understand how an authors sensory language creates imagery in literary text and provide evidence from text to support understanding. RC-10(A) Reflect on understanding to monitor comprehension.

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