Fifth Grade Autobiography
BY RITA DOVE
I was four in this photograph fishing
with my grandparents at a lake in Michigan.
My brother squats in poison ivy.
His Davy Crockett cap
sits squared on his head so the raccoon tail
flounces down the back of his sailor suit.
My grandfather sits to the far right
in a folding chair,
and I know his left hand is on
the tobacco in his pants pocket
because I used to wrap it for him
every Christmas. Grandmother's hips
bulge from the brush, she's leaning
into the ice chest, sun through the trees
printing her dress with soft
luminous paws.
I am staring jealously at my brother;
the day before he rode his first horse, alone.
I was strapped in a basket
behind my grandfather.
He smelled of lemons. He's died—
but I remember his hands.
Mnemonic
By Li Young Lee
I was tired.
So I lay down. My lids grew heavy.
So I slept. Slender memory, stay with me.
I was cold once.
So my father took off his blue sweater.
He wrapped me in it, and I never gave it back.
It is the sweater he wore to America,
this one, which I’ve grown into,
whose sleeves are too long.
Flamboyant blue in daylight,
poor blue by daylight,
it is black in the folds.
A serious man who devised complex systems of numbers
and rhymes to aid him in remembering,
a man who forgot nothing,
my father would be ashamed of me.
Not because I’m forgetful,
but because there is no order to my memory,
a heap of details,
uncatalogued, illogical.
For instance: God was lonely. So he made me.
My father loved me. So he spanked me.
It hurt him to do so.
He did it daily.
The earth is flat. Those who fall off don’t return.
The earth is round. All things reveal themselves to men only gradually.
It won’t last. Memory is sweet.
Even when it’s painful, memory is sweet.
Once I was cold. So my father took off his blue sweater.
Guiding Questions—Answer on loose leaf.
- In each poem, how does the speaker interact with his/her community?
- What theme do you learn about memory or remembering? Support your theme with quotes from each poem.
- Choose a symbol for each poem. What do they represent to the speaker?
- Sound devices add an audible effect to a text. For instance, if a line reads “As she looked up into the sky, a portly drop plopped squarely between patient eyes; it would begin to pour soon,” the repetition of the “P” sound at the beginning of words would be alliteration; the effect would likely remind the read of the sound drops of rain make as they first begin to hit the ground, causing an effect that could be considered soothing or annoying depending on the context of the rest of the poem.
Define alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia.
Then, tell where you see an example of at least one of the sound devices in each of the poems. Describe the effect created by the sound device.
- Figurative Language allows a reader to imagine how something or someone is. They include such terms as metaphor, simile personification, anthropomorphism, hyperbole, imagery, and idioms.
Define the above-mentioned terms.
Then, apply at least two terms to each poem. Tell what each term adds to the poem.