Ms. Guarino's Haikus

Spring Colors

Bright, purple tulips
Cardinals at my birdfeeder
Warm, shining sunlight



spring at school

students all outside
embrace the warm air of spring
can't think about school



Jolly Ranchers

Eunice comes to eat.
She likes the purple candy.
It is delicious.

Haiku

Poem Set #1

My Father and the Fig Tree
by Naomi Shihab Nye

 For other fruits, my father was indifferent.
He'd point at the cherry trees and say,
 "See those? I wish they were figs."
In the evening he sat by my bed
weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.
They always involved a figtree.
 Even when it didn't fit, he'd stick it in.
Once Joha was walking down the road
and he saw a fig tree.
 Or, he tied his camel to a fig tree and went to sleep.
Or, later when they caught and arrested him,
his pockets were full of figs.

At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged.
"That's not what I'm talking about! he said,
"I'm talking about a fig straight from the earth –
gift of Allah! -- on a branch so heavy
it touches the ground.
I'm talking about picking the largest, fattest,
sweetest fig
in the world and putting it in my mouth."
(Here he'd stop and close his eyes.)

Years passed, we lived in many houses,
none had figtrees.
 We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets.
"Plant one!" my mother said.
 But my father never did.
 He tended garden half-heartedly, forgot to water,
let the okra get too big.
"What a dreamer he is. Look how many things
he starts and doesn't finish."

The last time he moved, I got a phone call,
My father, in Arabic, chanting a song
I'd never heard. "What's that?"
He took me out back to the new yard.
There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,
a tree with the largest, fattest,
sweetest fig in the world.
"It's a figtree song!" he said,
 plucking his fruits like ripe tokens,
 emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.

 from 19 VARIETIES OF GAZELLE

* Joha - A trickster figure in Palestinian folktales

Arabic Coffee
by Naomi Shihab Nye

It was never too strong for us:
make it blacker, Papa,
thick in the bottom,
tell again how the years will gather
in small white cups,
how luck lives in a spot of grounds.

Leaning over the stove, he let it
boil to the top, and down again.
Two times. No sugar in his pot.
And the place where men and women
break off from one another
was not present in that room.
The hundred disappointments,
fire swallowing olive-wood beads
at the warehouse, and the dreams
tucked like pocket handkerchiefs
into each day, took their places
on the table, near the half-empty
dish of corn. And none was
more important than the others,
and all were guests. When
he carried the tray into the room,
high and balanced in his hands,
it was an offering to all of them,
stay, be seated, follow the talk
wherever it goes. The coffee was
the center of the flower.
Like clothes on a line saying
you will live long enough to wear me,
a motion of faith. There is this,
and there is more.

The Words Under the Words
by Naomi Shihab Nye

for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem

My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,   

the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.   

When I was sick they followed me,

I woke from the long fever to find them   

covering my head like cool prayers.

My grandmother’s days are made of bread,   

a round pat-pat and the slow baking.

She waits by the oven watching a strange car   

circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,   

lost to America. More often, tourists,   

who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.   

She knows how often mail arrives,

how rarely there is a letter.

When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,   

listening to it read again and again

in the dim evening light.

My grandmother’s voice says nothing can surprise her.

Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.   

She knows the spaces we travel through,   

the messages we cannot send—our voices are short   

and would get lost on the journey.

Farewell to the husband’s coat,

the ones she has loved and nourished,

who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.   

They will plant themselves. We will all die.

My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.   

When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,   

when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,   

He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—

otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,   

difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.”

Naomi Shihab Nye, “The Words Under the Words” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995).

Figurative Language Used in Poetry

Poets use figurative language to make their writing show the reader things in a different or interesting way. It heightens the senses and helps to get the poets thoughts across.

Here are seven types of figurative language used in poetry. 

• Simile: In a simile, the words “as” or “like” are used to compare two things.  
• Metaphor: Upon first hearing a metaphor, it sounds false or ridiculous. When you think about it, it makes sense because the two things being compared have a trait or two in common. It is used to make a point or give an opinion.
• Alliteration: This is a technique that repeats the first sound in several words. The words may be separated by a word or several words.  Tongue twisters use this technique.
• Personification: With personification, you give human characteristics to animals, ideas, or objects. This can add pleasure to the reading of a poem and make the reader take a different perspective on things. This literary device is used a lot in poetry.
• Onomatopoeia: This consists of using words that mimic sounds. The words can also sound like their meaning. This can add a fun element to poetry and can really help the reader experience what the poet experienced.
• Hyperbole: This is basically an extreme exaggeration. It makes a point and can sometimes be very funny.
• Imagery: This device appeals to the reader’s senses. It can describe objects, desires, or thoughts.  

Here are examples of the seven literary terms above.  

• Simile: As blind as a bat, as nutty as a fruitcake, as dry as a bone, they fought like cats and dogs, as easy as shooting fish in a barrel 
• Metaphor: You are my sunshine, she has a heart of stone, he kicked the bucket, time is money, life is a roller coaster
• Alliteration: “That's what made these three free fleas sneeze” (Dr. Seuss), Show Shawn Sharon's shabby shoes, Boil the butter and bring it by the bank, Kim comes to cut colorful kites
• Personification: The flowers begged for water, the sun played hide and seek with the clouds, lightning danced across the sky, the rain kissed my cheeks as it fell   
• Onomatopoeia: Bong, crunch, gobble, hum, meow, oink, ping, quack, smash, slurp, tick, tock, whoosh, zap
• Hyperbole: He is older than the hills, my backpack weighs a ton, it is raining cats and dogs, I have a million things to do today, her smile was a mile wide
• Imagery: The eerie silence was shattered by her scream, the word spread like leaves in a storm, the ants began their daily marching drill

Beginning the Poetry Unit

Introduction to Poetry

Related Poem Content Details

BY BILLY COLLINS

I ask them to take a poem 

and hold it up to the light 

like a color slide 

or press an ear against its hive. 

I say drop a mouse into a poem 

and watch him probe his way out, 

or walk inside the poem’s room 

and feel the walls for a light switch. 

I want them to waterski 

across the surface of a poem 

waving at the author’s name on the shore. 

But all they want to do 

is tie the poem to a chair with rope 

and torture a confession out of it. 

They begin beating it with a hose 

to find out what it really means. 

Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris. Copyright � 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press.

Source: The Apple that Astonished Paris (1996)

Feedback for First Drafts of Creative Projects

Email the presenters and cc Ms. Guarino with the following information:

1. What did you like best about the project so far?

2. Note anything that was confusing to you or needed to be explained more clearly.

3. How do you think the project can be improved? Be specific.

4. Rank the work on a scale of 0-5, 5 being the highest.

5. Explain the reasons behind your ranking in #4.

Creative Project for Pobby and Dingan

To conclude our reading of Pobby and Dingan, I would like you to complete a creative project instead of a formal essay. I am going to give you a lot of freedom in what kind of project you choose. Choose to do something that will be interesting to you, that will capitalize on your strengths, and that will allow you to learn something. The amount of work you put into the project should be the equivalent of the amount of work you would do to complete a 5-page literary analysis essay. You can work alone or with a group, but if you work in a group, your project should reflect the amount of time all of you put into it together.

Here is a website that gives lots of examples of creative projects. Use this list to devise one of your own that either is the same/similar to one here or combines more than one idea:

https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/TeacherEd/FacultyStaff/betts/Handouts/PDFs/101CreatLitProj.pdf

You will need to submit a proposal (one per each person in the group) that says exactly what you plan to do, how you will do it, why, and what you hope to learn from it. Also discuss the estimated amount of time you think it will take and how you will break down the time into a project noting the days and times you will complete each part of the project. If you are working in a group, please specify exactly who will do what and when.

The proposal is a formal writing assignment, so make sure it is clear, detailed, and grammatically correct. Get started on the proposal soon -- don't wait until the last minute!