Lesson on Political Poetry

English 102
Prof. Michael Carosone
Packet of Materials

Lesson Plan Outline and Instructions

Todays Objective: How can we analyze a poem with a political message?

Todays Agenda/Organization of the lesson:

1. Introduction and lecture
2. Group work
3. Group presentations
4. Conclusion and summary: Classroom discussion

Themes of the Lesson: Poetry as Political/Political Poetry/Poetry as

Activism/Poets as Activists/All Literature Is Political/All Art is Political

I. Part One: Introduction and Lecture:

1. Some interesting facts:
In her interview with Poets and Writers Magazine, Toni Morrison said: All good
art is political. There is none that isnt.

Rita Dove was considered the first activist Poet Laureate of the U.S., 1993-1995

In his poem Asphodel, that Greeny Flower, William Carlos Williams wrote:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

2. Songs are poems, too:

Examples of political songs (political lyrics; political statements; political images):
Get Stupid, written by Madonna
Hey You, written by Madonna
Peace Is Just a Word, written by Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart of the
Eurythmics

Q&A Session: What is the political message of each song?

II. Part Two: Group Work:

1. In groups, we will analyze a political poem from the textbook, Literature: An
Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing.
2. We will answer the following two questions:
What is the political message of the poem?
How do the poetic elements and techniques create the political meaning of the poem?

3. In order to answer the questions, we will analyze the poetic elements and techniques of
the poem, identifying the aspects of the poem that have political meanings and messages.

4. Complete the worksheet, and refer to it as a guide for analyzing the poem.

III. Part Three: Group Presentations:

1. A speaker from each group will present the groups analysis and discovery.

IV. Part Four: Conclusion and Summary: Classroom Discussion:

1. As an entire class, we will discuss each groups analysis and discovery, the poems, and
what we learned about each poem from performing a close reading and analysis.
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Summary of the Lesson (Pedagogical Philosophy):

The purpose/goal of this lesson is to practice and enhance our analytical writing, reading,
and thinking skills, as we place emphasis on our understanding of a poem with a political
message.

This lesson asks and answers the following questions:

1. How can we analyze the poetic elements and techniques of a poem?
2. How can we discover and analyze a poems political message?
3. How can we enhance our analytical skills?
4. How can the practice with our analytical skills, during this lesson, help us with our
essays, final examination, research paper, and future academic work?

This lesson is part of the sequence of the instruction of this course in that it ends the third
part of the analysis of poetry. The previous two weeks were also devoted to analyzing the
genre of poetry.

This lesson focuses on the Description of the Course, as stated in the syllabus:
Description of the Course: The purpose of the course is to practice and to enhance our
academic and analytical writing, reading, and thinking skills, as we place emphasis on
our understanding and development of the writing process, the reading process, and the
research process and research paper. We will utilize the writing process, which means
that we will outline, draft, write, proofread, edit, revise, and rewrite our essays/work.
And we will utilize the reading process as we analyze various works of literature. The
theme of the course is Writing through Literature, which means that we will learn how
to utilize our critical writing, reading, and thinking skills, in order to analyze literature of
the three following literary genres: fiction (short story), poetry, and drama (play). Our
research papers will examine the theme of the course in that we will conduct research on
specific works of literature, incorporating literary criticism to our analyses.