NAME:

DATE:

Sophomore Drama and Poetry Presents: THE ODE

(For practice in annotation, analysis and ode style) ODE: long lyric poem, serious and dignified in subject, tone, and style, often written to celebrate an event, person, being or power, or to provide a vehicle for private meditation. Almost all odes are poems of address, in which the poet uses apostrophe-a poetic figure of speech in which inanimate object or absent person is directly addressed. Ode to My Socks Pablo Neruda Mara Mori brought me a pair of socks which she knitted herself with her sheepherder's hands, two socks as soft as rabbits. I slipped my feet into them as if they were two cases knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin, Violent socks, my feet were two fish made of wool, two long sharks sea blue, shot through by one golden thread, two immense blackbirds, two cannons, my feet were honored in this way by these heavenly socks. They were so handsome for the first time my feet seemed to me unacceptable like two decrepit firemen, firemen unworthy of that woven fire, of those glowing socks. Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation to save them somewhere as schoolboys keep fireflies, as learned men collect sacred texts, I resisted the mad impulse to put them in a golden cage and each day give them birdseed and pieces of pink melon. Like explorers in the jungle who hand over the very rare green deer to the spit and eat it with remorse, I stretched out my feet and pulled on the magnificent socks and then my shoes. The moral of my ode is this: beauty is twice beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter.

Scavenger Hunt (10 pts): Highlight the following pieces and answer the questions below. 1. Highlight 2 similes in GREEN. List the similes and explain what effect these similes have on the audiences perception of the socks. 2. Highlight 2 metaphors in YELLOW. List the metaphors and explain what effect these metaphors have on the audiences perception of the socks. 3. Circle 3 adjectives to describe the SOCKS. How do these adjectives affect the audiences perception of the socks? 4. Underline 3 adjectives to describe the speakers feet. How do the speakers feet contrast with the socks? How are they different? How does the language used (adjectives) emphasize this contrast? 5. What is the overall theme of the ode? State the theme. Underline a stanza that shows this theme. Next Choose a random object/person/season/event and write an ode to it. Speak directly to your chosen object and reveal the hidden glory and beauty of it. Your chosen object/event/person/season should be original, not easily copied. Make it strange! Unusual! Choose a focus like divorce, zombies, Facebook, sunburns, ice storms, shoe sales or Jimi Hendrix! Remember, speak directly to your subject (the

apostrophe). This should be 14 lines or more in length (10 pts). NAME: DATE:

Sophomore Drama and Poetry Presents: THE ODE

(For practice in annotation, analysis and ode style) ODE: long lyric poem, serious and dignified in subject, tone, and style, often written to celebrate an event, person, being or power, or to provide a vehicle for private meditation. Almost all odes are poems of address, in which the poet uses apostrophe-a poetic figure of speech in which inanimate object or absent person is directly addressed.

Scavenger Hunt (20 pts): Answer the questions below. 1. Underline two examples of personification (giving inhuman objects human qualities/characteristics). Explain the effects that these examples of personification have on the reader. 2. Why is autumn conspiring with the sun (line 3)? Give at least three examples of what they are conspiring to do. 3. IMAGERY: List three sights and three sounds associated with autumn. Cite their line numbers. 4. What seems to be the speakers mood throughout the poem? Cite two lines that exemplify this mood. 5. What is the major theme of the poem? What does Keats suggest about natures cycles, time and Autumn?
To Autumn by John Keats 1. SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatcheves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottagetrees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. store? 2. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy bourn; soft hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. 3. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

day,