Reading and responding to a poem - notes from the questions outlined on pages 49-51 in ResourceLines

October 23, 2013

12:42 PM

As a class, we will answer the following questions once you have had a chance to go over them on your own:

  1. Review the list of things to do when reading a poem - these are on pages 49-51 in Resource Lines.

QUESTIONS from RESOURCELINES:

Page 50

  1. Determine the poem's speaker. Is it the poet? An object, animal or an abstract noun? How do you know?

A: The poem's speaker is a person - s/he refers to her/himself as "I". This person transforms into a dinosaur by the end of the poem. We know that the speaker is human because s/he refer to the way her/his body changes from human to dinosaur. S/he says that "prehistoric points began emerging" from her/his neck. By the end of the poem, the speaker is fully transformed into a "stegosaurus".

  1. Identify the poem's context>the details that surround its situation (setting: time, place and social conditions which may be key to our understanding of the poem). Explain what context we need to understand and how it influences our understanding of the poem.

We need to understand that the author is drawing a connection between the present day and prehistoric times. We need to know that people and dinosaurs have never walked the earth together to understand that the speaker's transformation is likely an act of her/his imagination.

3rd time you read the poem

  1. Read the poem out loud and listen to the sounds of the words and how they add to the meaning of the poem.
  1. Look for repeated words. How does the writer use repetition to emphasize things or to enhance the rhythm of the poem?
  2. *(don't do this today) Research the historical time frame that the poet lived in and explore how this might have an impact on our understanding of the poem's meaning.
  3. Look up any allusions. Explain how they add to the meaning of the poem.
  1. Paraphrase lines or stanzas if necessary to understand the main ideas or events of a poem.
  2. *(don't do this one today) Use the think-write strategy for tracking images or making connections in a poem
  1. Discuss the poem in a reading response group to hear others' questions, interpretations, and ideas.

What is the poem about?*Be sure to explain what part(s) of the poem led you to this conclusion. When you are answering questions for a story or poem, you do not have to indicate your source for quotations unless you are quoting something other than the work that the questions are about.

Some of the answers that the class came up with were:

  • The poet has been bitten by a were-Stegosaurus (like a werewolf!) and that is why he is changing into a Stegosaurus. We are told that the change is gradual: "prehistoric point began emerging" from the poet's neck. Slowly he finds his spine losing "its S-curve". His mouth even changes: "gone / were the grinding molars". Finally, he "flicked [his] powerful green tail twice and wrapped it around [his] feet. The bus driver can see him from far away when he is dinosaur, and so drives away without going to the bus stop, which explains why "No buses came."
  • The poet is a child who is dressed up for Halloween and gets into his costume (a dinosaur) at the bus stop, before the school bus arrives. The costume starts with hood that covers his neck and head, and fastens at the front of his neck, which explains the way the points "began emerging" from his neck and then "flared up the back of [his] head." The rest of the costume is then added, covering his torso, so that his "spine lost its S-curve". With the costume on, he looks completely different, and this allows him to relax - he loosened up and even "yawned" but before that his jaw was so tight that he was "grinding [his] molars". The tension of anticipating school goes away, as he pretends he is a dinosaur, "observing / the smells and colours of the opening / sky, shifting / [his] weight on [his] forefeet."
  • The poet is an imaginative person who gets lost in his imagination when the bus is late. When the bus doesn't arrive at all, he stays in his daydream of being a stegosaurus. Note that there is no supporting evidence for these last two ideas. You will be expected to use supporting evidence when you submit your group and individual work for assessment.
  • The poem is written from the perspective of a kid who is changing schools, in mid October, and so feels like he will totally stand out in his new school, and not fit in, as if he were a dinosaur in the present - out of place and very obvious among all those humans.