Poetry Analysis & Oral Interpretation Name:______

Poetry Analysis & Oral Interpretation Name:______

1. Oral Interpretation

Prepare and present an oral interpretation of one of the following poems:

• “Fear of the Landscape” by Ian Young
• “Heat” by Archibald Lampman
• “The Camp of Souls” by Isabella Valancy Crawford
• “Hailstorm” by Peter Christensen
• “Angels of Snow” by Lorna Crozier
• “Temagami” by Archibald Lampan
• “Solitude” by Archibald Lampman
• “Bushed”by Earle Birney
• “Snow Tunnels” by Glen Sorestad
• “Coteau" by Barbara Sapergia

Instructions

1. Write an introduction that includes the name of the poem and poet, and a brief overview of the poem. (Refer to Example #1)

1. Prepare a paraphrase of the poem beginning with - “In this poem, the poet (describes, explains, reports, etc.) that… (Refer to Example #2)

1. Develop the interpretation – Two/Three Elements -Structure, figurative language, theme, literary devices (i.e., imagery, symbolism, and allusions) and diction (word choice).

• What are the poet’s feelings about the topic of this poem?

Whenever possible, always provide proof to back up your interpretation.

Example

“The poet uses the word…to emphasize the sorrow felt by the speaker.” (Refer to Example #3)

1. Conclude by giving your own personal response/reaction to this poem. (Refer to Example #4)

Example #1

The poem “……….” by ………….. is about a winter’s night in Saskatchewan. In this poem, the poet describes the sky, and the land he can see while standing in his yard on a winter night. The poet feels very connected to his land and wishes that this moment could last forever.

Example #2

A paraphrase is a re-stating of the poem in one’s own words. It must include all the main ideas of the poem in a simplified form. A paraphrase is not necessarily shorter than the original, but it does maintain the same point of view.

Example

“Solitude” by Archibald Lampman

How still it is here in the woods. The trees

Stand motionless, as if they did not dare

To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air

Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze.

In the woods, absolutely nothing is moving. The trees appear to be afraid to move in case they break the peaceful mood. The whole scene looks like a painting.

Example #3

In this poem, the poet’s feelings about the land are emphasized. The poet feels tremendous “…….”

The poet’s father’s death is emphasized in this poem. This is evident by the use of the words “…….”

Example #4

I really liked this poem. It reminded me of a time when my sister and I made snow angels after a fresh snow many years ago. I can still remember the feel of the cold “frothy” snow against my hands and face. I can identify with the poet’s comment that this moment became “frozen” in time for her, as the exact same thing happened to me. When I look back on my childhood, this moment was certainly one of the high lights of my childhood. It is interesting to learn that this occurrence is a common one for young people in Canada. I hope that my children also have this experience some day.

Name: ______

Date: ______

Speaking Evaluation

Voice

• Volume (quiet/loud)210
• Rate (slow/fast)210

Diction

• Pronunciation (proper)210
• Enunciation (clear)210

Body Language

• Eye Contact210
• Gestures210
• Posture210

Speaking /12

Content Evaluation

Introduction3210

Interpretation

• Paraphrase3210

• Structure, Figurative Language,

Theme, Literary Devices and/or Diction43210

• Supporting Details (evidence) 43210

Personal Response/Reaction43210

Content:/18

Total:/30

Fear of the Landscape

by Ian Young

On a hot morning

walking through rough thicket,

bushes and rocks

close to the bluffs

I was uneasy and clung to things.

The sound of a cricket

or the calls of birds were shrill

lesions in the quiet air

around me, sweltering and still.

The leaves hung from the trees

dangling on thin stems.

I am walking quickly and the land

stops. The ground

drops to a beach of stones

where a silent boat leans at the shore

into a sandy mound,

its stiff poled oars

outstretched.

The lake gulls circling it

cry out in the heat.

The sound of dry breath clings to me.

I hear the sun's core burn.

Have I been too long in cities

that I have such fear

of the landscape?

Heat

by Archibald Lampman

From plains that reel to southward, dim,
The road runs by me white and bare;
Up the steep hill it seems to swim
Beyond, and melt into the glare.
Upward half-way, or it may be
Nearer the summit, slowly steals
A hay-cart, moving dustily
With idly clacking wheels.
By his cart's side the wagoner
Is slouching slowly at his ease,
Half-hidden in the windless blur
Of white dust puffiing to his knees.
This wagon on the height above,
From sky to sky on either hand,
Is the sole thing that seems to move
In all the heat-held land.
Beyond me in the fields the sun
Soaks in the grass and hath his will;
I count the marguerites one by one;
Even the buttercups are still.
On the brook yonder not a breath
Disturbs the spider or the midge.
The water-bugs draw close beneath
The cool gloom of the bridge.
Where the far elm-tree shadows flood
Dark patches in the burning grass,
The cows, each with her peaceful cud,
Lie waiting for the heat to pass.
From somewhere on the slope near by
Into the pale depth of the noon
A wandering thrush slides leisurely
His thin revolving tune.
In intervals of dreams I hear
The cricket from the droughty ground;
The grasshoppers spin into mine ear
A small innumerable sound.
I lift mine eyes sometimes to gaze:
The burning sky-line blinds my sight:
The woods far off are blue with haze:
The hills are drenched in light.
And yet to me not this or that
Is always sharp or always sweet;
In the sloped shadow of my hat
I lean at rest, and drain the heat;
Nay more, I think some blessèd power
Hath brought me wandering idly here:
In the full furnace of this hour
My thoughts grow keen and clear.

“The Camp of Souls” by Isabella Valancy Crawford

My white canoe, like the silvery air
O'er the River of Death that darkly rolls
When the moons of the world are round and fair,
I paddle back from the "Camp of Souls."
When the wishton-wish in the low swamp grieves
Come the dark plumes of red "Singing Leaves."
Two hundred times have the moons of spring
Rolled over the bright bay's azure breath
Since they decked me with plumes of an eagle's wing,
And painted my face with the "paint of death,"
And from their pipes o'er my corpse there broke
The solemn rings of the blue "last smoke."
Two hundred times have the wintry moons
Wrapped the dead earth in a blanket white;
Two hundred times have the wild sky loons
Shrieked in the flush of the golden light
Of the first sweet dawn, when the summer weaves
Her dusky wigwam of perfect leaves.
Two hundred moons of the falling leaf
Since they laid my bow in my dead right hand
And chanted above me the "song of grief"
As I took my way to the spirit land;
Yet when the swallow the blue air cleaves
Come the dark plumes of red "Singing Leaves."
White are the wigwams in that far camp,
And the star-eyed deer on the plains are found;
No bitter marshes or tangled swamp
In the Manitou's happy hunting-ground!
And the moon of summer forever rolls
Above the red men in their "Camp of Souls."
Blue are its lakes as the wild dove's breast,
And their murmurs soft as her gentle note;
As the calm, large stars in the deep sky rest,
The yellow lilies upon them float;
And canoes, like flakes of the silvery snow,
Thro' the tall, rustling rice-beds come and go.

Green are its forests; no warrior wind
Rushes on war trail the dusk grove through,
With leaf-scalps of tall trees mourning behind;
But South Wind, heart friend of Great Manitou,
When ferns and leaves with cool dews are wet,
Bows flowery breaths from his red calumet.
Never upon them the white frosts lie,
Nor glow their green boughs with the "paint of death";
Manitou smiles in the crystal sky,
Close breathing above them His life-strong breath;
And He speaks no more in fierce thunder sound,
So near is His happy hunting-ground.
Yet often I love, in my white canoe,
To come to the forests and camps of earth:
'Twas there death's black arrow pierced me through;
'Twas there my red-browed mother gave me birth;
There I, in the light of a young man's dawn,
Won the lily heart of dusk "Springing Fawn."
And love is a cord woven out of life,
And dyed in the red of the living heart;
And time is the hunter's rusty knife,
That cannot cut the red strands apart:
And I sail from the spirit shore to scan
Where the weaving of that strong cord began.
But I may not come with a giftless hand,
So richly I pile, in my white canoe,
Flowers that bloom in the spirit land,
Immortal smiles of Great Manitou.
When I paddle back to the shores of earth
I scatter them over the white man's hearth.
For love is the breath of the soul set free;
So I cross the river that darkly rolls,
That my spirit may whisper soft to thee
Of thine who wait in the "Camp of Souls."
When the bright day laughs, or the wan night grieves,
Come the dusky plumes of red "Singing Leaves."

“Hailstorm”

by Peter Christensen

I remember the hailstorm

of 1952

as if I were a man then

My memory thickens

with each story

my father tells

of those hard years

I see him standing

in a ripened barley field

adrift in this garden

of winds and clouds

and grain

all ready for harvest

The sky goes grey and black

The barley heads begin

to sway their beards

caught in a desperate wind

Then there is a silence in the land

It smells of false truce

and my father’s figure

transforms from farmer

to scarecrow

White stones

come running towards him

hail prancing

like horses’ hooves

beating the yellow-kernelled stalks

flatly to the ground

I watch his heart

follow the hailstones

to the rich black earth

where side by side

lies the naked seed

and the melting winter

“Angels of Snow”

by Lorna Crozier

Wherever it falls, it is different.
Sometimes too white, too loud.
Sometimes an angel’s wing
Reflected in an open eye,
A phone call at three a.m.—
No one at the end of the line.
Snow can be hard as a slap.
Take the coldest wind you know
And make it deeper.
A taxidermist, it stiffens
The slow and unwitting. A scale,
It measures, calculates
As surreptitiously as light.
Snow has the taste of whatever
Fell before: autumn leaves, feathers,
Pollen from the bright leg of a bee.
It is a lesson in restfulness.
The quiet space left for you
At the end of the day, a memory
You never quite remember,
A cat licking your ear
In the middle of the night.
Snow can be bitter.
It smells like birth should smell.
It tells you, “Start over,”
And when you touch it,
It disappears.

Temagami

by Archibald Lampman

Far in the grim Northwest beyond the lines
That turn the rivers eastward to the sea,
Set with a thousand islands, crowned with pines,
Lies the deep water, wild Temagami:
Wild for the hunter's roving, and the use
Of trappers in its dark and trackless vales,
Wild with the trampling of the giant moose,
And the weird magic of old Indian tales.
All day with steady paddles toward the west
Our heavy-laden long canoe we pressed:
All day we saw the thunder-travelled sky
Purpled with storm in many a trailing tress,
And saw at eve the broken sunset die
In crimson on the silent wilderness.

Solitude

by Archibald Lampman

How still it is here in the woods. The trees

Stand motionless, as if they do not dare

To stir, lest it should break the spell. The air

Hangs quiet as spaces in a marble frieze.

Even this little brook, that runs at ease,

Whispering and gurgling in its knotted bed,

Seems but to deepen with its curling thread

Of sound the shadowy sun-pierced silences.

Sometimes a hawk screams or a woodpecker

Startles the stillness from its fixèd mood

With his loud careless tap. Sometimes I hear

The dreamy white-throat from some far-off tree

Pipe slowly on the listening solitude

His five pure notes succeeding pensively.

The animals in that country

The animals in that country

In that country the animals

have the faces of people:

the ceremonial

cats possessing the streets

the fox run

politely to earth, the huntsmen

standing around him, fixed

in their tapestry of manners

the bull, embroidered

with blood and given

an elegant death, trumpets, his name

stamped on him, heraldic brand

because

(when he rolled

on the sand, sword in his heart, the teeth

in his blue mouth were human)

he is really a man

even the wolves, holding resonant

conversations in their

forests thickened with legend.

In this country the animals

have the faces of

animals.

Their eyes

flash once in car headlights

and are gone.

Their deaths are not elegant.

They have the faces of

no-one.

In that country the animals

have the faces of people:

the ceremonial

cats possessing the streets

the fox run

politely to earth, the huntsmen

standing around him, fixed

in their tapestry of manners

the bull, embroidered

with blood and given

an elegant death, trumpets, his name

stamped on him, heraldic brand

because

(when he rolled

on the sand, sword in his heart, the teeth

in his blue mouth were human)

he is really a man

even the wolves, holding resonant

conversations in their

forests thickened with legend.

In this country the animals

have the faces of

animals.

Their eyes

flash once in car headlights

and are gone.

Their deaths are not elegant.

They have the faces of

no-one.

Bushed
by Earle Birney

He invented a rainbow but lightning struck it
shattered it into the lake-lap of a mountain
so big his mind slowed when he looked at it

Yet he built a shack on the shore
learned to roast porcupine belly and
wore the quills on his hatband

At first he was out with the dawn
whether it yellowed bright as wood-columbine
or was only a fuzzed moth in a flannel of storm
But he found the mountain was clearly alive
sent messages whizzing down every hot morning
boomed proclamations at noon and spread out
a white guard of goat
before falling asleep on its feet at sundown

When he tried his eyes on the lake ospreys
would fall like valkyries
choosing the cut-throat
He took then to waiting
till the night smoke rose from the boil of the sunset

But the moon carved unknown totems
out of the lakeshore
owls in the beardusky woods derided him
moosehorned cedars circled his swamps and tossed
their antlers up to the stars
then he knew though the mountain slept the winds
were shaping its peak to an arrowhead
poised

And now he could only
bar himself in and wait
for the great flint to come singing into his heart

“Snow Tunnels”

by Glen Sorestad

We burrowed hard-packed snow
like frenetic Richardson ground squirrels
awakened mid-hibernation to find
a strange world of white,
crystals of ice the only medium,
and now transformed into tunnellers
crazed with snow blindness.

If there was an unsullied
snow bank we claimed it for our own
and into it we dug to create
below a surface glazed hard
and within the insulating warmth
a warren of passages, snow caves
we traversed on hands and knees,
overgrown wool-clad field mice.

In this long looking back, what still
lingers on the fringes of recall is
how joyous we were—freed from
looming drudgery to claim snow
as our own world, too small for adults,
a Lilliputian winter world where
all that existed was what we
brought to it. It was whatever
we deemed it to be.

Like today’s parking lot Bobcats
we moved snow, but below the skin
of the world, claustrophobia unknown,
in search of perfect snow, the perfect
grainy drift that would allow a room
we all could gather in, out of sight,
and never be summoned by the bell.

Coteau"

by Barbara Sapergia

from Tombstone Hill

Old Wives Lake shimmers under punding sun