Introducing Metaphors Through Poetry Introduction

Metaphors are used often in literature, appearing in every genre from poetry to prose and from es to epics. Utilized by poets and novelists to bring their literary imagery to life, metaphors are an important component of reading closely and appreciating literature. This lesson plan can be taugh conjunction with the EDSITEment lesson plan: Recognizing Similes: Fast as a Whip, which will help students recognize both metaphors and similes, and to distinguish the often confused elements fr each other. In this lesson students will read excerpts from the work of Langston Hughes, Margaret Atwood, and Naomi Shihab Nye in order to gain a deeper understanding of metaphors.

Many students begin to learn about metaphors well before entering high school. This lesson assum that students will have a basic understanding of what metaphors are; however it is designed to he students begin to engage with metaphors on a deeper and more abstract level. The lesson will be with a poem containing metaphors accessible at all levels, and with each poem the lesson will pro in difficulty, so that teachers will find material to suit their classes at all skill levels. Guiding Questions What are metaphors and how are they used in literature? What makes a metaphor effective? Learning Objectives In this lesson, students will:

Define and identify examples of metaphors. Read and analyze the metaphors used in poetry by Langston Hughes, Margaret Atwood, Naomi Shihab Nye, and others. Create their own metaphors and apply this tool to their own writing projects.

Preparing to Teach this Lesson Remind students that metaphors utilize the image of one subject as if it were analogous to another, seemingly unrelated, subject. Note that figures of speech, such as saying someone is "green" to mean that they are new at something, are often metaphors. A key component of this element is that a metaphor conflates rather than compares the two objects. Point out that for example, a new recruit is green, rather than being like a green shoot or branch. More about metaphors, including an in-depth definition of the term, is accessible through the EDSITEment reviewed web resource Internet Public Library. Review and bookmark the web page More about metaphors as well as the poems that will be discussed in this lesson. All of the poems discussed in this lesson are available on the EDSITEment reviewed web site Academy of American Poets.

Langston Hughes, Dreams Margaret Atwood, You Begin Naomi Shihab Nye, Blood

Dreams by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow. You Begin You begin this way: this is your hand, this is your eye, that is a fish, blue and flat on the paper, almost the shape of an eye. This is your mouth, this is an O or a moon, whichever you like. This is yellow. Outside the window is the rain, green because it is summer, and beyond that the trees and then the world, which is round and has only the colors of these nine crayons. This is the world, which is fuller and more difficult to learn than I have said. You are right to smudge it that way with the red and then the orange: the world burns. Once you have learned these words you will learn that there are more words than you can ever learn. The word hand floats above your hand like a small cloud over a lake.

The word hand anchors your hand to this table, your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words. This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world, which is round but not flat and has more colors than we can see. It begins, it has an end, this is what you will come back to, this is your hand. Blood by Naomi Shihab Nye

"A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands," my father would say. And he'd prove it, cupping the buzzer instantly while the host with the swatter stared. In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. I changed these to fit the occasion. Years before, a girl knocked, wanted to see the Arab. I said we didn't have one. After that, my father told me who he was, "Shihab""shooting star" a good name, borrowed from the sky. Once I said, "When we die, we give it back?" He said that's what a true Arab would say. Today the headlines clot in my blood. A little Palestinian dangles a toy truck on the front page. Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root is too big for us. What flag can we wave? I wave the flag of stone and seed, table mat stitched in blue. I call my father, we talk around the news. It is too much for him, neither of his two languages can reach it. I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, to plead with the air:

Who calls anyone civilized? Where can the crying heart graze? What does a true Arab do now?

Suggested Activities 1. What's in a Metaphor? 2. Writing Your Own Metaphors 1. What's in a Metaphor? This activity will introduce students to the definition of metaphor and simile while directing students to concrete examples of both tools.

What is a metaphor? Direct students to the definition of a metaphor either by providing one for the class, or by directing students to read the definition available through the EDSITEment reviewed web resource Internet Public Library. Have students read Langston Hughes' poem Dreams, available on the EDSITEment reviewed web resource Academy of American Poets. Ask students to identify a metaphor in the poem. The poem contains structurally simple metaphors which follow the formula a is b. These can be found in both stanzas. The first contains this line: Life is a broken-winged bird While the second stanza contains the following line: Life is a barren field You may want to begin this exercise by leading students through the metaphors contained in this short poem. Ask them to think about the following questions:
o o o o

What is this metaphor referring to within the context of the poem? How do these metaphors work in relation to the poem's title, "Dreams?" How is this description different from saying simply that when dreams are unfulfilled life is difficult? How is it different from saying that a life without dreams is like a broken-winged bird? Would using a simile rather than a metaphor negate or weaken Hughes' poem? Can you describe how or why this metaphor works? What makes this an effective metaphor and why?

o o

Have students read Margaret Atwood's 1978 poem You Begin, available on the EDSITEment reviewed web resource Academy of American Poets. Ask students to identify a metaphor in the poem. The poem contains structurally simple metaphors which follow the formula a is b, such as in the lines: Your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words. You may wish to discuss with students the structure of the entire poem before focusing on the lines highlighted above. This poem effectively models the development of language and how metaphor enables us to deal with increasingly abstract concepts. In the opening stanza of Atwood's poem each of her lines introduces the child and the audience to the concrete world: this is your hand, this is your eye. Next, she moves to more abstract notions: Outside the window is the rain, green because it is summer. Thus the concrete objects- the rain, the green (trees, grass)- signify the abstract concept summer. Ask students to concentrate on the following stanza: Once you have learned these words you will learn that there are more words than you can ever learn. The word hand floats above your hand like a small cloud over a lake. The word hand anchors your hand to this table, your hand is a warm stone I hold between two words.
o o o

Does this stanza parallel the development of language, from the concrete to the abstract? How? What does the cloud in the simile represent? What does the warm stone signify? Is it only the child's hand?

Ask students to complete the PDF worksheet, or the online interactive version, which includes the following questions:
o o o o o

What is this metaphor referring to within the context of the poem? How is this description different from saying simply that the hand is warm? Or that it is like a warm stone? Can you describe how or why this metaphor works? What makes this an effective metaphor and why?

Many metaphors do not follow the structure of a is b. Students should be alert to instances where one subject is being represented or replaced by another. Have students read Naomi Shihab Nye's 1986 poem Blood. Ask students to identify an example of metaphor in this poem. While it does not follow the same structural formula as the metaphor noted in Atwood's poem, students might identify the following line as a metaphor: Today the headlines clot in my blood. Ask students to complete the PDF worksheet, or the online interactive version, which includes the following questions about the metaphor example from Nye's poem.
o o o o o

What is this metaphor referring to within the context of the poem? How is this description different from saying simply that the headlines shock me? Or that her blood runs like molasses? Can you describe how or why this metaphor works? What makes this an effective metaphor and why? Students should begin thinking about the metaphors in Atwood's and Nye's poems by first finding the subject that is being represented and replaced, such as the child's hand in Atwood's piece. Nye's poem also sets in place the substitution of one subject for another, seemingly dissimilar, subject. In this case it is the substitution of newspaper headlines about her father's homeland for an agent with the power to clot or stop her blood from flowing. As they begin to think about how these metaphors are effective and how they work, students should try to concentrate on the ideas and qualities these representations evoke.

For continued practice with identifying and examining metaphors have students read Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night and Luis J. Rodriguez's The Concrete River. Ask your students to identify as many metaphors as they can in each poem. Working in pairs, assign each pair some of the metaphors they have found in these works. Have students explain how the metaphors work, and what makes them effective. These poems are both available on the EDSITEment reviewed web resource Academy of American Poets.

2. Writing Your Own Metaphors

Have students complete this PDF worksheet by creating metaphors for each of the topics listed. The topics may be used as the subject being represented by the metaphor, or as the representation of another subject.

Ask students to present their metaphors to the class. Have the class discuss the effectiveness of the metaphors, explaining why and how they felt each metaphor was or was not successful. For larger classes it may be most effective to divide the class into smaller groups with each group conducting a peer-review session.

Assessment Ask students to complete the PDF worksheets provided in Activities One and Two, including both their analysis of the metaphors in Atwood's and Nye's poetry, as well as their own metaphors. Extending the Lesson Maya Angelou's well known poem Still I Rise speaks to the persistence of the writer despite adversity. She employs similes and metaphors throughout the poem, and in the final stanza she includes these lines: Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. How does Angelou's declaration of herself as 'the dream and the hope of the slave' both echo and contrast with Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech? Maya Angelou's poem is available from the American Academy of Poets, while the text of Dr. King's speech is available from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute web site at Stanford University.. Sample poems If If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on"; If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son! si tenggang's homecoming i the physical journey that i traverse is the journey of the soul, transport of the self from a fatherland to a country collected by sight and mind. the knowledge the sweats from it is estranger's experience, from one who had learnt to see, reflect and choose between the challenging actualities. ii its true i have growled at my mother and grandmother, but only after having told them my predicament that they have never brought to consideration the wife that i began to love in my loneliness, in the country that alienated me, they enveloped in their pre-judgement. i have not entirely returned, i know, having been changed by time and place. coarsed by problems estranged by absence. iii but look. i have brought myself home,

seasoned by faith. broadened by land and language, i am no longer afraid of the oceans of the difeerences between people, no longer easily snared no words of ideas the journey was a loyal teacher, who was never tardy in explaning cultures and variousness. look i am just like you. still malay, sensitive to what i believe is good, and more ready to understand than my brothers. the contents of these boats are yours too, because i have returned. iv travel makes me a seeker who does not take what is given without sincerity or that which demands payment from beliefs. the years at sea and in coastal state have thought me to choose, to accept only those tested by comparison, or that which matches the roads of my ancestors, which returns me to my village and its comppleteness. v i've leanrt the ways of the rude, to hold actuality in a new logic, debate with hard and loud facts. but i too have humanity, respecting man and life. vi i am not a new man, not very different

from you; the people and cities of coastal ports thought me not to brood over a foreign world, suffer difficulties or fear possibilities. i am you, freed from the village, its soils and ways, independent, because i have found myself. analysis it is a reflection of si tenggang who has gone overseas and return to his homeland. His perspective of life has widened but basically he is still the same person. |His on people do not accept him and in this poem si tenggang tries to convince them he still respect his poeple and their culture. Poetic devices Contrast 'the physical journey that i traverse is the journey of the soul' personification 'the journey was a loyal teacher who was never tardy' 'the country that alienated me' assonance 'journey of the soul' 'to a country collected' '....growled.......mother and granmother' 'estranged by absence' Alliteration 'Freed from' 'Country collected' 'Love.....loneliness' 'land and langguages'

Symbol 'oceans' represents the unknown , something big and mysterious 'fatherland' represents his native land , his home 'journey of the soul' represents internal or spiritual reflection during his travel 'i am you' the 'you' represents all malay poeple metaphor 'seasoned by confidence' 'the contents of this these boats are yours too' THEMES

'travels' to foreign lands home is where one belongs alienation independence search for knowledge loneliness rejection and acceptence respect and humality importance of roots loyalty to ones community and country courage and integrity

MORAL VALUES

we should not be afraid to travel and widen our horizons learning is an on going process one must live in harmony with one's family and society no matter how far we go home is where we belong one must be humble and respectful no matter how learned someone is

ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE

islam encourages us to seek knoeledge do not judge people without understanding them do not be afraid to try new things

Analisis 4 monsoon history Introduction:

The poem takes the reader through the monsoon period. Life in Malacca is described, and the time is about forty years ago when the Baba-Nyonya family traditions were closely observed. The traditional family atmosphere is full of warmth and security. The poem ends with a sense of peace and tranquility, and a suggestion of happy ending.

First Stanza - The air is filled of moisture. It is about to rain. - The wetness of the air supports all forms of life, including destructive pests.

Second Stanza - It is divided into two parts-the shift from the garden to the place inside the home i.e. from outside to inside.

Part One - It is about to rain. - The cloud are rolling in and darkness is setting in-rain is coming.

Part Two - It is now an indoor scene - Inside the house - The home is safe, secure environment - sitting at home and drinking Milo - Clear reference to the Baba-Nyonya customs and tradition - wearing sarong, counting silver paper for the dead, portraits of grandfather in the parlour.

Third Stanza - The western and eastern influences are shown to be in harmony - Reading poetry by Tennyson shoes western education (in contrast with the eastern tradition and upbringing - stanza 2) - The presence of insects is in harmony with the environment - Wearing pajamas and getting ready for bed Washing their feet before going to bed traditional influence - The time is six p.m. and it is raining outside - The mother removes her traditional Nyonya clothing and uncoils her traditional knot of hair. - The father is still outside at the beach, waiting for his fishermen to return from the sea

Fourth Stanza - The monsoon is over everything is calm

- There is peace and tranquility once again

Symbolic Meaning: Life can be peaceful and secure if we have good family relationship, follow traditional and customs even if there are problems and hardships.

Tone/Mood: 1) Reflective (nostalgic about her past, i.e. her traditional and customs) 2) Regret (referring to the time time forty years ago, and also the diminishing childhood, traditional and customs) Theme/Message: Where you are in the world, you just cannot forget your roots, Childhood memories and your tradition. The road is not taken- Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim Because it was grassy and wanted wear, Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I marked the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. analisis ABOUT THIS POEM: meaning: The literal meaning of this poem by Robert Frost is pretty obvious. A traveler comes to a fork in the road and needs to decide which way to go to continue his journey. After much mental debate, the traveler picks the road "less traveled by." The figurative meaning is not too hidden either. The poem describes the tuogh choices people stand for when traveling the road of life. The words "sorry" and "sigh" make the tone of poem somewhat gloomy. The traveler regrets leaves the possibilities of the road not chosen behind. He realizes he probably won't pass this way again. devices: There are plenty literary devices in this poem to be discovered. One of these is antithesis. When the traveler comes to the fork in the road, he wishes he could travel both. Within the current theories of our physical world, this is a non possibility (unless he has a split personality). The traveler realizes this and immediately rejects the idea. Yet another little contradiction are two remarks in the second stanza about the road less traveled. First it's described as grassy and wanting wear, after which he turns to say the roads are actually worn about the same (perhaps the road less traveled makes travelers turn back?). personification: All sensible people know that roads don't think, and therefore don't want. They can't. But the description of the road wanting wear is an example of personification in this poem. A road actually wanting some as a person would. However: some believe this to be incorrect and believe "wanting wear" is not a personification, but rather older English meaning "lacking". So it would be "Because it was grassy and lacked wear;".

There's Been a Death in the Opposite House There's been a death in the opposite house As lately as today.

I know it by the numb look Such houses have alway. The neighbours rustle in and out, The doctor drives away. A window opens like a pod, Abrupt, mechanically; Somebody flings a mattress out, The children hurry by; They wonder if It died on that, I used to when a boy. The minister goes stiffly in As if the house were his, And he owned all the mourners now, And little boys besides; And then the milliner, and the man Of the appalling trade, To take the measure of the house. There'll be that dark parade Of tassels and of coaches soon; It's easy as a sign, The intuition of the news In just a country town.