Partner Names and group #_____________________________________________________

Partner Poetry Analysis for the Renaissance **Due ____________

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1. Whoso List To Hunt

2. The Lover Showeth That He Is
Forsaken
3. On Monsieurs Departure
4. Sonnet 30
5. Sonnet 75
6. 1996
7. Sonnet 31
8. Sonnet 39
9. The Passionate Shepherd To His
Love
10.
The Nymphs Reply To The
Shepherd
11.
Sonnet 116
12.

Sonnet 130

13.

Sonnet 73

14.

Sonnet 29

15.
Fear No More the Heat O the
Sun

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Blow, Blow, Thou Winter

Wind
Eves Apology
Song By John Donne
A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning
Death Be Not Proud
On My First Son
Song: To Celia
To The Virgins, To Make Much Of
Time
The Constant Lover
Why So Pale And Wan, Fond
Lover?
To Lucasta, Going To The Wars
To Althea, From Prison
To His Coy Mistress
How Soon Hath Time
When I Consider How My Light is
Spent

*Project Grade: Poetry Analysis

Your first job is to analyze the poems. Directions and an example are attached. Use PowerPoint
to present your information. Make sure you address EVERY element for EACH poem:
Create a title slide with both your names and your group number.
Create one slide with background information about the author(s) in your own words and
include pictures.
Identify what Renaissance poem type each represents (Sonnetwhich type?,
metaphysical, Cavalier, Puritan, etc.)
Tell what the poem means to you in a short paragraph, including a literal interpretation
and theme.
Define difficult words (at least five).
Identify allusions.
Translate all awkward phrases into Modern English.
Identify the types of figurative language, translating each one and telling its importance to
the poem.
Analyze the meter.
Analyze the rhyme.

*Classwork Grade: Found Poems

Now, each of you individually needs to create a found poem based on one or both of the poems
you were assigned. Follow the rules below:
Instructions adapted from
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson33/found-poeminstructions.pdf
1

1. Carefully re-read the poem/poems you were assigned, and look for 20-30 words that stand
out as being especially powerful.

2. On a separate sheet of paper, make a list of the details, words and phrases.

3. Look back over your list and cut out everything that is dull, or unnecessary, or that just
doesnt seem right for a poem. Try to cut your original list in half.

4. As you look over the shortened list, think about the tone that the details and diction
convey. Based on the commonalities you find, choose a topic for your poem.

5. Create your own 15-20 line poem. You can change punctuation and make little changes to
the words to make them fit together (such as change the tenses, possessives, plurals, and
capitalizations).

7. Read back over your edited draft one more time and make any deletions or minor changes.

8. Check the words and choose a title.

9. Copy the words and phrases into your journal or type them in a word processor. Space or
arrange the words so that theyre poem-like. Pay attention to line breaks, layout, and other
elements that will emphasize important words or significant ideas in the poem.

Read aloud as you arrange the words! Test the possible line breaks by pausing
slightly. If it sounds good, its probably right.

Arrange the words so that they make a rhythm you like. You can space words out so
that they are all alone or allruntogether.

You can also put key words on lines by themselves.

You can shape the entire poem so that its wide or tall or shaped like an object that
represents the text (called a concrete poem).

Emphasize words by playing with boldface and italics, different sizes of letters, and so
forth.

10. At the bottom of the poem, cite your original source using MLA style.

Directions for Poetry Analysis (Save to use later in life!)

Perhaps the most challenging material you will have to read in college is poetry. While the message of
some poems may be fairly simple--"Enjoy your youth while it lasts," for instance--the way poets put words
together often makes this message elusive. Writers don't write this way just to annoy you; rather, their
sophisticated vocabulary and complex syntax help them to write with precision, to tease out the subtleties
of nature and the human mind, and to create certain effects. When you read a poem, you should begin by
trying to figure what the poet is saying on the surface: the content of the poem. When you can

summarize this content in a few sentences, examine the way the poet conveys this content; in other
words, analyze the poem's form. Finally, determine how the content and form work together to create the
poem's meaning. Think of a poem as an equation: form + content = meaning. The term for analyzing a
poem in this way is "explication." Here is a step-by-step method you might find useful when you explicate,
or interpret, a poem:
1. Find a quiet place, such as a study room at the library, where you will not be distracted
or interrupted. Put the following items on the table in front of you: your text book, your class
notebook opened to a blank page, a pencil or pen, a hardback dictionary, and a subject
encyclopedia such as Benet's Readers' Encyclopedia. Anything else on the table might distract you.
Remove it.

2. Take a deep breath and relax. Read the poem once slowly aloud without writing or marking
anything. Don't stop until you finish the poem, even if you don't know the meaning or pronunciation
of a word. When you have finished, reflect for a moment on any words, images, and characters that
caught your attention. Jot down these items in your notebook, along with one sentence in which you
try to summarize the poem.

3. Now read the poem again silently. When you come to a word you don't know, look it up in the
dictionary. In your notes, write the word, its pronunciation, the meaning or meanings of it in this
poem, and a clue to help you remember it. Often information in the word's etymology, or history,
will give you a clue to remembering it. Write a synonym for the word right above it in your text
book. When you come to a proper noun, such as the name of a person or event, look it up in the
literary reference work and record key details in your notebook, just as you did when you looked up
unfamiliar words. Concentrate on learning these words and allusions because many of them will
appear again and again in literature, and you want to be ready for them next time.

4. Rephrase sentences you don't understand. Almost every poem you will find in your text books
is made up of complete sentences with subjects and verbs and, in many cases, objects,
prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, and other syntactical elements. Even if you don't know
what a prepositional phrase or appositive is, you know how to read and understand them. In fact,
you do it all the time when you read ordinary sentences in newspapers, magazines, and text books.
The problem is that most poets don't write the way reporters and text book authors do. Even
though they write complete sentences, they change the order of words--placing, for example, the
object, the thing receiving the action, before the verb instead after it, where we ordinarily put it in
speech and prose. This change in word order is called an "inversion," and it is common in poetry,
especially poetry written before 1900. In the following passage, which comes from John Donne's
poem "The Sun Rising," the word "season" is an object of the verb, even though it comes before the
verb: "Love, all alike, no season knows." We would say: "Love, all alike, knows no season."
Rephrasing sentences so that they sound more like speech or at least prose will help you figure
what the poet is saying.

5. Identify the literal meaning of figurative language. The other practice that distinguishes
poets from writers of nonliterary prose is their heavy use of metaphors, personification, symbols,
hyperboles, apostrophes, and many other forms of figurative language. Figurative language does
not mean exactly what it says; rather, it suggests meanings. In the phrase quoted above, Donne
does not literally mean that love is unfamiliar with spring, summer, fall, and winter. As a thing, love
cannot know anything at all; only people can know something--that is, be conscious of it. Thus,
Donne is personifying love, giving it human qualities. The figurative language in poetry helps us to
understand new or complex concepts. Thinking of love as a person who treats all seasons in the

same way helps us to appreciate the universality of love. Once you have completed the steps
above, you may not understand every word or even every sentence, but you should have a fairly
good idea of the poet's overall message, or the content of the poem. Now you are ready to begin
interpreting and analyzing it.

6. Analyze the poet's use of language. You already have looked closely at the poet's use of
language as you were trying to understand the poem's content. Now you want to ask yourself what
this use of language--the inversions, symbols, and so on--contribute to the poem's meaning. Why,
for example, did the poet choose to compare his love to a "red, red rose" instead of tree or a bird?
One trick that will help you in this step is thinking about associations: we tend to associate roses
with beauty, tenderness, passion, and love, but we also know that a rose bush has thorns that can
be painful. Not all of these associations may be appropriate for a particular poem, but many of
them probably will. Make a note of these associations in your notebook and jot down some ideas
about what they contribute to the poem's meaning.

7. Scan the poem. Scanning poetry is different from skimming it. To scan a poem means to identify
the rhythm, which in English poetry comes from the alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Begin by looking at the polysyllabic words--the words of more than one syllable. Say each
word aloud and try to determine which syllable you stress. If you are unsure, look up the
word in the dictionary, where you will see an accent mark either before or after the stressed
syllable. In The American Heritage College Dictionary, for example, the accent appears
before the stressed syllable. If you are using another dictionary, look up "pronunciation" in
the dictionary's guide to reading entries. In your text book, place an accent mark (/) over
each stressed syllable and a horizontal line over the unstressed syllables (-).
Now look for all the one-syllable structure words--words that have little or no meaning,
but rather serve to connect other words and show their relationships. Structure words
include articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, or, but), prepositions (of, in, on, to, etc.), and
auxiliaries (have, may, do, will, etc.). Mark these words as unstressed.
Mark one-syllable nouns and verbs as stressed.
Read the poem aloud, using your marks as a guide to which syllables to stress. Look for one
of the following patterns: iambic (- /), trochaic (/ -), anapestic (- - /), and dactylic (/ - -). Most
English poetry that has a regular rhythm is iambic. If you don't see one of these patterns, try
to change a few of the marks on the one-syllable words. If you see a pattern now, write the
name of the rhythm in your notebook. You probably still will notice a few anomalies, places
where the rhythm changes from the regular pattern, but ignore these anomalies for now. If
you still don't see a pattern, count the number of stressed syllables in three consecutive
lines. If these lines do not have the same number of stressed syllables, the poem probably
does not have a regular rhythm; in other words, it probably is written in free verse.
Draw vertical lines around each instance of a pattern. Each one of these units is called a
"metrical foot" or simply a "foot." For example, if the line you scanned has the markings - /
- / - / - / - /, you would recognize the iambic pattern and mark the line this way: - / | - / | - / | - /
| - /. Count the number of units in each line. In most cases, this number will be the same for
every line of the poem. In the previous example, you would count five units, or five feet. Use
the following terms to identify the number of feet in the lines: dimeter (2 feet), trimeter (3
feet), tetrameter (4 feet), pentameter (5 feet), and hexameter (6 feet). You now have
identified the overall pattern of rhythm in the poem. In our example, the rhythm is iambic
pentameter.
Now look back at the anomalies, the places where the rhythm changes. A unit with two
stresses is called a spondee, and a unit with two unstressed syllables is called a pyrrhic foot.
Try to determine what role these anomalies play. For example, many times spondees call
attention to important words, images, or ideas. Jot down your ideas in your notebook.

8. Look for rhyme. Look at the final words in the first and second lines. Do they rhyme with each other
or any other final words? If so, the poem probably has a rhyme scheme, a pattern of rhyme. To label
the rhyme scheme, place the letter "a" at the end of the first line. If the final word in the next line
rhymes with this word, label it a also; otherwise, label it b. Continue this process, identifying
rhyming words with the same letter. Now look at the words that rhyme. Are they similar in meaning,
or are they contrasting words? In your notebook, note any places where the rhyme is significant and
suggest a way this rhyme contributes to the poem's meaning.

9. Finally, read the poem one more time aloud. Practice using pauses and stress to make the poem's
meaning come alive in your recitation. In your notebook, make any final comments on the way the
poem's content and form work together to create meaning.

Rubric for Poetry

Analysis

Way to go

Almost there

Needs work

Missing

PowerPoint (25
points)
Separate slide for
each point
Tastefully
designed
Grammar/mechani
cs are acceptable

25

21

18

Checklist (60 points)

Answers all parts
All parts are
thorough
All parts are
correct

60

51

42

Partner work (15

points)
Self-starters
Both had a part
Took it seriously
**measured by
teacher checks and
partner reports

15

13

11