Last Name 1
Task 2: Looking at Poetry from Three Sides
You will analyze one of your poet’s pieces that best represents his or her contribution to change (personal, societal, cultural). This analysis will become a part of your scrapbook.
Page 1: Poem: the title and poet’s name should be at the top of the page. Include your handwritten markings of your thoughts and ideas about the poem as you read and analyze it.
Page 2:
Introduction Paragraph: Understanding
Background: Introduce the poem by giving the title and poet’s name with a short summary of what the poem is about. Give any interesting or relevant information about the poem or poet that relates to the theme of the poem or transformation. (2-3 Sentences)Thesis: State how your poet’s poem is transformational and what poetic devices they use to accomplish that transformation. (1 Sentence)
Body Paragraph 1: Analyze 1st Poetic Device
Point One Topic Sentence: Tell what poetic device the poet uses and how it in transformational.(1 Sentence)
Example One: Quote a line that uses the poetic device. (1-2 Lines)
Explain: Explain how this poetic device helps the poem be transformational. (1-2 Sentences)
Example Two: Quote another line that uses the poetic device. (1-2 Lines)
Explain: Explain how this poetic device helps the poem be transformational. (1-2 Sentences)
Conclusion Sentence: Tell the reader what they should now know about how this poetic device helps transform people, society, or culture. (1 Sentence)
Body Paragraph 2: Analyze 2nd Poetic Device
Point Two Topic Sentence: Tell what poetic device the poet uses and how it in transformational.(1 Sentence)
Example One: Quote a line that uses the poetic device. (1-2 Lines)
Explain: Explain how this poetic device helps the poem be transformational. (1-2 Sentences)
Example Two: Quote another line that uses the poetic device. (1-2 Lines)
Explain: Explain how this poetic device helps the poem be transformational. (1-2 Sentences)
Conclusion Sentence: Tell the reader what they should now know about how this poetic device helps transform people, society, or culture. (1 Sentence)
Conclusion Paragraph: Evaluation
Restated Thesis: Restate how your poet’s poem is transformational and what poetic devices they use to accomplish that transformation. (1 Sentence)Summary: Summarize how it all comes together to be a good transformational poem. Restate parts of your explanations from body paragraphs 2 and 3 that explain how it is transformational. (2-3 Sentences)
So What?:What understanding should the reader now have about your poem and poet? (2-3 Sentences)
Example Paper
Valentine for Ernest Mann
by Naomi Shihab Nye
You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.
Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping.They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.
Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he reinvented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of the skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.
Maybe if we reinvent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.
In the poem “Valentine for Ernest Mann” by Naomi Shihab Nye, we learn about a request that Ernest Mann made for a poem to be written on demand. Naomi finds this request silly, but she transforms the demand into inspiration. Naomi writes a poem about where poems come from and their elusive nature. In the poem she talks about how poems are found in the most ordinary places and must be transformed into meaningful expressions of the human experience. Naomi Shihab Nye wrote the poem “Valentine for Ernest Mann” to express the concept of finding poems in unexpected places, hoping to transform Ernest Mann’s idea that poems can be create on demand, through her use of metaphor and analogy to create an emotional energy that would motivate personal change on his perception of how poets create poems.
By using metaphor in “Valentine for Ernest Mann”, Naomi is able to transform the idea that writing a poem is something that poets do on demand. She uses metaphors to link the creative process to common human experiences to help people understand the elusive nature of finding and creating poems. “poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping.” The use of metaphor transforms the idea of creating a poem on demand by comparing it to something hidden in an ordinary place, like the bottom of a shoe, waiting to be found. “They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up.” The use of metaphor again transforms the idea of creating poems on demand and reinforces the idea that poems must be found in moments of human experience that can be fleeting and hard to capture. Through Naomi’s use of metaphor the reader is able to discover that great poems are not created on demand, but are hidden in common human experiences that one must find and bring to light.
By using analogy in “Valentine for Ernest Mann”, Naomi is able to transform an odd story about a man giving his wife a terrible valentine present into a comparison of how poems can be found in places others might find unpleasant or ugly. “Once I knew a man who gave his wife two skunks for a valentine. He couldn't understand why she was crying.” The use of analogy connects with how most people would feel about getting two skunks for a present and then transforms this gut reaction to demonstrate how beauty can be found in places others find unpleasant. “’I thought they had such beautiful eyes.’…Nothing was ugly just because the world said so. He really liked those skunks.” The use of analogy in this story transforms the skunks from stinky and ugly creatures into animals that have beauty and are worthy of being loved. It shows how one’s mind must be open to seeing beauty in things that others have overlooked. Through Naomi’s use of analogy the reader is able to appreciate that we must seek poems hiding in unpleasant and ugly places that others ignore.
Naomi Shihab Nye crafted the poem “Valentine for Ernest Mann” to communicate the concept of discovering poems in ordinary yet hidden places in the human experience, wanting to transform people through the use of metaphor and analogy to provoke an inner awakening that would activate personal change. The poem as a whole acts as a means for change by making comparisons to common human experiences that others can understand and appreciate. The use of metaphor changes the perception of making poems into finding them. The use of analogy further reinforces the concept of finding poems in places rejected by society because they have unpleasant parts. She shows that we must seek beauty and creativity in the most common and unusual places of our experience. One cannot create a poem because they are asked to, but because they have found something worth sharing that others have overlooked. With the poem “Valentine for Ernest Mann” Naomi Shihab Nye was able to transform peoples’ understanding of how the creative process works in writing poems. She set out to transform one Ernest Mann’s opinion about writing poetry and was able to enlighten many peoples creative inspiration.