3-7/3-8 2007 Meaning in poetry

Lesson:
Today we turned in our This I Believe assignments and the train poems.
We practiced analyzing two poems in class. If you are not comfortable with analyzing poetry, you should come in during projects or another time to work with me on analyzing your first one. It can be a little tricky.

We practiced first with this poem by William Carlos Williams:

The Red Wheelbarrow

So much depends
Upon

The red wheel
Barrow

Glazed with rain
Water

Beside the white
Chickens

The basics to analyzing this are:
1. Read the poem once, then re-read it marking it up by highlighting, labeling, making marginal notes on: sound, form, meaning. Color-coding and making a key may be helpful.

2. Finally, make a conclusion about what the poem’s message seems to be. (Relax: there is not one “correct” meaning as long as you can give support from the poem that would be convincing and intriguing to reasonable people.)

3. Analyze this poem using the methods we talked about in class. Begin with your conclusion about the main message. Support this argument with examples you found.

Can you try analyzing "The Red Wheelbarrow". HINT! Don't go too deep. It is not a poem about South Afirca.

If you think you got that one try this one from a South Afircan writer, who wrote this during Apartheid. HINT! It is about SOuth Africa!:

Motho Ke Motho Ka Batho Babang
(A Person Is a Person Because of Other People)

By holding my mirror out of the window I see
Clear to the end of the passage.
There’s a person down there,
A prisoner polishing a doorhandle.
In the mirror, I see him see
My face in the mirror,
I see the fingertips of his free hand
Bunch together, as if to make
An object the size of a badge
Which travels up to his forehead
The place of an imaginary cap.
(This means: A warder)
Two fingers extend in a vee
And wiggle like two antennae.
(He’s being watched.)
A finger of his free hand makes a watch-hand’s arc
On the wrist of his polishing arm without
Disrupting the slow-slow rhythm of his work
(Later, Maybe, later we can speak)
Hey, Wat maak jy daar?
-a voice around the corner.
No, just polishing baas.
He turns back to me, now watch
His free hand, the talkative one,
Slips quietly behind
--Strength brother, it says,
In my mirror,
A black fist

If you were absent, try analyzing both of these poems at home. Bring in your analysis to see if you are on the right track.

HMWK:
Our homework was to analyze the poem "Soweto Road". It can be found, with instructions, on the assignments page.