Lesson Plans

Assignment to have been completed: Students should have read “The Ballad of Birmingham,” pp. 645-646, and “The Red Wheelbarrow,” p. 647 in Perrine’s Literature. They should also have written out answers the questions that follow the first poem in fully developed sentences and true to the rules of grammar, mechanics, and usage.

Objectives: To recognize how poetic language is different in form and function from conventional language

Activities:

• A. Have one of the students read “Ballad of Birmingham,” pp. 645-6469 aloud. Ask the students the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. How does the poem differ from what you would expect to find in a newspaper account of such an incident? In an encyclopedia entry? In a speech calling for the elimination of racial injustice?

    Unlike a newspaper account, the poem does not report such significant details as the identity of the perpetrators, the perpetrators’ motives, the authorities’ motives in suppressing freedom, the effect of the bombing on the city, and the precise fate of the child.

    The poem differs an encyclopedia article in that it deals with the event in Birmingham without analysis, commentary, or explanation.

    It differs from a speech in that it communicates its outrage and its message in two minutes whereas an orator might well take more than an hour.

  • 2. What do the details in the fifth stanza (17-20) contribute to the effect of the poem? Is “She” (17) the mother or the child?

    They increase sympathy and respect for this child who wants to take aon adult concerns.

    “She” refers to the child since line 21 identifies “the mother”as a contrast to the “She.”

  • 3. In form, this poem shares certain characteristics with the folk ballad (see Glossary of Terms, page 659). Why do you think this twentieth-century poet chose to write in a form that recalls the ballad tradition?

    It is a narrative poem.

    It includes a proportionately large amount of dialogue.

    It presents a contemporary event.

    It tells the story without analysis or explanation.

    It employs simple metrical and stanzaic forms.

  • 4. What purpose does the poem have beyond simply telling a story? How does the irony help achieve that purpose?

    Randall’s purpose seems to lie in communicating the viciousness and cowardice that lies behind racist suppression.

    The irony that the “sacred place” of safety to which the mother guides her child is the place that destroys her. It embodies the theme of the poem, for in the microcosm of mother and child the senseless brutality of the racial bigots ins displayed at its worst - the bombing of children at prayer symbolizes the viciousness and cowardice of the act and its motive.

• B. After going quickly over the questions above, apply the following questions to “The Ballad of Birmingham” for discussion.

  • 1. Language can be used to inform the reader, to expand the reader’s experience, to persuade the reader, or to fulfill several of these purposes simultaneously. Which of these purposes applies to this poem? Explain.
  • 2. Poetic language is more intense and layered than ordinary language. Find examples of poetic language in this poem, and explain how it achieves deeper meaning and greater intensity than conventional language does.
  • 3. Poetry enables s to process our own experiences and the experiences of others more deeply and more fully. Does this poem reach deeper levels of the human experience? If so, in what way? If not, why not?
  • 4. “Poetry has at least four dimensions”: intellectual, sensory, emotional, imaginative. How are these dimensions represented in this poem? Identify a specific verse or phrase which serves each dimension. What effect does each have on you?
  • 5. Poetry should be like a tree: “an organism whose every part serves a useful purpose and cooperates with every other part to preserve and express the life that is within it.” Apply this wisdom to this poem. Pick out a verse which doesn’t seem to cooperate with the whole. Closely examine your chosen verse, exploring how it might enhance your understanding o the poem. (Note: the most difficult verses are often the most fruitful. Try to make sense of difficult verses without simplifying them;)
  • 6. Why do you think the writer chose to convey this message using poetry? How would the meaning and effect have been different had the writer used a different genre?

• C. Have one of the students read “The Red Wheelbarrow,” p. 647 aloud. Ask the students the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. The speaker asserts that “so much depends upon” the objects he refers to, leading the reader to ask how much and why. This glimpse of a farm scene implies one kind of answer. What is the importance of a wheelbarrow, rain, and chickens to a farmer? To all of us?

    The wheelbarrow is one of the farmer’s tools, the rain a necessary resource, and the chickens one of his sources of production. They are sources of the farmer’s income. Because the farmer’s work provides physical sustenance, his equipment and livestock along with natural resources are vital to all people.

  • 2. What further importance can you infer from the references to color, shape, texture, and the juxtaposition of objects? Does the poem itself have a shape? What two ways of observing and valuing the world does the poem imply?

    While on the one hand the poem speaks of human dependence on farmers for food and of farmers on equipment, resources, and livestock for production, the references to such relatively inconsequential elements as color, shape, texture, and juxtaposition hint at humanity’s dependence on the beautiful to sustain its soul.

    The redness of the wheel barrow and the whiteness of the chickens have no bearing on the function of either. However, when viewed as contrasts, they become elements that create beauty - as do the contrast of the shiny glaze of rain to the downy softness of chicken’s feathers or the contrast of the living objects to the nonliving ones.

    The imaginative reader may see the stylized shape of a wheelbarrow or a pecking chicken in the stanza formation: one long line followed by one short one.

    The poem appeals to both a utilitarian and an aesthetic view of the world.

Assignment for next class meeting: Read “Reading the Poem.” pp. 655-664 in Perrine’s Literature. Complete the following parts of Reviewing Chapter Two: 1, the first part of 2, 3, and 4. Write answers in complete sentences.