Characterization Poetry Activity

Analyzing Characterization:Poetry Jigsaw

Background: Students should work with one of the attached poems. Differentiate by reading level: “Ode” (low), “Heidi” (medium), “Ducks” (high). Allow like poem groups to discuss. Compare/contrast across all three texts as a whole class.

Compare/Share: Read each of the remaining poems. Which of the three is most effective at developing character? Poem: ______Explain how and/or why:______

Analyzing Characterization:Poetry Jigsaw

Background: Students should work with one of the attached poems. Differentiate by reading level: “Ode” (low), “Heidi” (medium), “Ducks” (high). Allow like poem groups to discuss. Compare/contrast across all three texts as a whole class.

Ducks

In her first home each book

had a light around it.

The voices of distant countries

floated in through open windows,

entering her soup and her mirror.

They slept with her in the same thick bed.

Someday she would go there.

Her voice, among all those voices.

In Iraq a book never had one owner – it had ten.

Lucky books, to be held often

and gently, by so many hands.

Later in American libraries she felt sad

For books no one ever checked out.

She lived in a country house beside a pond

and kept ducks, two male, one female.

She worried over the difficult relations

of triangles. One of the ducks

often seemed depressed.

But not the same one.

During the war between her two countries

she watched the ducks more than usual.

She stayed quiet with the ducks.

Some days they huddled among reeds

or floated together.

She could not call her family in Basra

which had grown farther away than ever

nor could they call her. For nearly a year

she would not know who was alive,

who was dead.

The ducks were building a nest.

From 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye

For Heidi with Blue Hair

When you dyed your hair blue
(or, at least ultramarine
for the clipped sides, with a crest
of jet-black spikes on top)
you were sent home from school
because, as the headmistress put it,
although dyed hair was not
specifically forbidden, yours
was, apart from anything else,
not done in the school colours.
Tears in the kitchen, telephone-calls
to school from your freedom-loving father:
'She's not a punk in her behaviour;
it's just a style.' (You wiped your eyes,
also not in a school colour.)
'She discussed it with me first -
we checked the rules.' 'And anyway, Dad,
it cost twenty-five dollars.
Tell them it won't wash out -
not even if I wanted to try.

It would have been unfair to mention
your mother's death, but that
shimmered behind the arguments.
The school had nothing else against you;
the teachers twittered and gave in.
Next day your black friend had hers done
in grey, white and flaxen yellow -
the school colours precisely:
an act of solidarity, a witty
tease. The battle was already won.

By Fleur Adcock

Analyzing Characterization:Poetry Jigsaw

Background: Students should work with one of the attached poems. Differentiate by reading level: “Ode” (low), “Heidi” (medium), “Ducks” (high). Allow like poem groups to discuss. Compare/contrast across all three texts as a whole class.

Ode ToMiPerrito

He’s brown as water

Over a stone,

Brown as leaves and branches,

Brown as pennies in a hand.

He’s brown as my mitt

On a bedpost,

And just as quick:

A baseball rolls

His way and his teeth

Chatter after it.

Miperritorolls

His tongue for the taste

Of a dropped chicharron,

For the jawbreaker

That fell from my pocket,

For a potato chip bag

Blowing across a lawn.

He’s brown as earth

But his days are yellow

As the sun at noon.

Today he rode

In my father’s car,

His paws on the dash

As he looked around

At the road giving way

To farms and countryside.

He barked at slow drivers

And Father barked back.

Where did they go?

Fishing. Ten miles

From town, and they crossed

A river, blue with the

Rush of water

Fish lurked beneath

The surface, the big

O of their mouths

Gulping bubbles.

Father threw his line

There, and waited,

His hands in his pockets.

Miperrito didn’t wait.

He jumped into the river,

And jumped back out-

The water was icy

Cold. Father fished

And mi perrito

Walked along the riverbank,

Sniffing for birds

And cool-throated mice.

His ears perked up.

When he jumped,

His paws landed on a cricket.

The cricket chirped

And jumped into

The gray ambush of grass.

He barked and returned

To my father, who

Returned to the car:

The fish would have

Nothing of hook and sinker.

They drove back

To town through the curve

Of hills When

My father turned

Sharply, mi perrito barked

Because it’s his job

To make noise

Of oncoming danger.

He had his paws

Up on the dash,

With a good view

Of the hills

Where cows sat down on the job

When one cow dared

To moo, mi perritobarked

And showed his flashing teeth.

Miperrito is a Chihuahua-

Smaller than a cat,

Bigger than a rubber mouse.

Like mouse and cat,

He goes running

When the real dogs

Come into the yard.

By Gary Soto

From Neighborhood Odes