Lesson Plans

Assignment to have been completed: Students should have read “Chapter Four – Imagery,” pages 689-692 of Perrine’s Literature. They should also have written out answers to the exercises 1-4 on page 692 (NOT the six items under Reviewing the Chapter on the same page).

Objective Recognize imagery in poetry and interpret its contribution to meaning

Activities:

• A. Conduct exercise in sensory perception.
  • 1. Before class, place the collection of household items on the table and cover them with a sheet.
  • 2. Have the students go to the table and put on their blindfolds before you remove the sheet that covers the objects.
  • 3. Remove the covering and ask students to touch, smell, and listen to the objects. Remind them it is more important to come up with memories they associate with the smells, sounds, and textures than it is to identify the objects.
  • 4. Instruct the students to write down what the objects and associations they remember from the exercise. (Emphasize that this is not a contest.) Encourage them to consider their personal associations as reasons why some items seemed more readily identifiable.
  • 5. Remind the students that this exercise deliberately omitted the sense of sight because we are accustomed to depend on it as our primary sense. Ask if they have visual memories of any of the items.
• B. Do a close reading of Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” on pages 709-710.

  • 1. Ask students how their parents, guardians, or other caring relatives have shown their love for them in practical ways. (Think especially the sacrifices they may have made.) Ask if they believe they have always shown their appreciation. Has that appreciation ever changed over time?

  • 2. Review imagery.

    • a. What are the literal and figurative meanings of cold, hot, and warm?
    • b. Instruct students to list several examples of things hat are cold and things that are warm or hot – both literally and figuratively.
    • c. Have students select one or two items from their lists and write sentences in which they use the words both literally and figuratively.
    • d. Consider the connotative difference between warm and hot.
    • e. Write the following examples on the board in list: screaming pain, cool green, bitter cold, loud colors, gravelly voice, sweet melody, and freezing stare.
    • f. Ask students to come up with other similar examples.
    • g. Explain that these are all examples of synesthesia – an implied metaphor in wih an attribute associated with one of the physical senses is applied to a term associated with another sense.

  • 3. Read “Those Winter Sundays,” pp. 699-700, aloud. Then ask for four volunteers to read, in turn the first sentence (lines 1-5, stopping at blaze), the short sentence in line 5, lines 6-12, and the question that ends the poem.

    • a. Discuss the impact of these shifts in narration.
      • What is the purpose of the first sentence?
      • What is the effect of the short sentence in line 5?
      • How do lines 6-12 contrast with the first sentence in the poem?
      • What is the literary function of the closing question?
    • b. Have a volunteer re-read the poem once more.

  • 4. Distribute photocopies of the poem and different colored highlighters.

    • a. Instruct the students to use a different colored highlighter to indicate each of the following senses: touch, sight, and sound.
    • b. Have them to annotate the images by identifying the emotional effect of each.
    • c. Ask them to look for both literal and figurative examples of warmth and cold.
    • d. Have them underline examples of synesthesia.
    • e. Ask if any specific details not specifically linked to the senses do nevertheless evoke a vivid sensory impression.

  • 5. Discuss the impact of imagery.

    • a. What is the impact of “blueblack cold” (synesthesia)? Of “cracked hands,” “fires ablaze,” “cold splintering, breaking”?

      The coldness is made especially vivid in the sensory images that describe it — “blueblack” (2) in the pre-dawn darkness, and so solid and brittle that its retreat from the heat causes it to splinter and break.

      The physical warmth of the house cannot dispel the emotional chill: the speaker flatly asserts that “No one ever thanked him,” and the household continues to suffer from “chronic angers” (5, 9)

    • b. Ask students to interpret what the “chronic angers of that house” may have been. Does the speaker express conflicted feelings about his childhood home?

    • c. Ask what “love’s austere and lonely offices” are. (It is important to note the following definitions of offices:

      place for tickets or information: a booth or other place where tickets or information may be obtained

      set form of a Christian service: the prescribed order or form of a Christian church service, or of daily prayers

      task or assignment: a task, assignment, or chore (formal) (usually used in the plural)

  • 6. Provide a biographical connection regarding the poem and the poet: The African American poet Robert Hayden was raised by foster parents in a stormy family filled with the “chronic angers” depicted in the poem.

Assignment for next class meeting: Read “To Autumn,” pages 701-702 in Perrine’s Literature. Write out responses to questions 1-5 following the poem. Complete the set of AP multiple-choice questions over the poem.