Dive In

1. This poem shows us to a table where a very unusual meal is being eaten. But this is no ordinary meal; it’s more mystical than actual. What’s going on here, really? What is that meal standing in for? What is the voice of the poem actually inviting its audience of “sweet barbarians” to do?
2. If you look closely, you’ll see that there’s lots of repetition in this poem, and that a lot of clauses start the same way, with the same words. This is called anaphora. What phrases get repeated, and what is the effect of that repetition? Does it calm down the poem, or does it...

1. The word “wild” is used in the first line of this poem, and in some ways, this poem can be read as a poem about wildness. People have different reactions to wildness. What feelings does the description of the storm evoke in you?
2. There are no human beings in the poem, not even a specific speaker who is seeing and describing the storm. What effect does this neutral, omniscient speaker have on how the storm is described? How might the description been different had the poet chosen a child as the speaker, for example?
3. This poem is in the form of a Petrarchan...

1. What perspective does the poet use to write this sketch of a father and son? For example, is it in the first person, second person, or third person? What does this choice suggest about the relationship between the two characters in the poem?
2. How does the poet achieve a sense of intimacy and understanding across distance and time? How does imagery and sensory detail help us understand the character of the father?
3. What does the father do for a living? What are the tensions between the father’s physical body, his work, and the landscape? What else do we learn...

1. The poem is addressed to the speaker’s husband. What does she ask of him? 
2. Most of Bradstreet’s poems reflect a deep faith tied to Christian notions of Providence, the belief that God has a plan for us which we can’t change. Where does that faith appear in this particular poem? How might someone with faith in Providence look at the world's dangers today: climate change, or racial injustice, economic hardship, or war?
3. Despite the dark subject matter, Bradstreet’s poem follows a regular,...

1. For a poem that’s about not being able to find a word, Partridge certainly uses a rich vocabulary! Collect all the ways she describes the sensation of being unable to find a word. Think about which senses each comparison evokes – some are more visual, others more tactile, etc. Which description most fully evokes how you feel when you can’t find the word you’re looking for?
2. Note how the form varies from short, one-word lines to more sprawling, prosey language. How might that reflect the speaker’s own stop-and-start efforts to locate her word? Can you think of another...

1. What kind of “magic” is happening in this poem?
2. This poem has many vivid similes (a comparison using "like" or "as") and metaphors (a comparison that doesn't use "like" or "as"). Is there one that stands out to you? Why that one?
3. The poet chose to use the second person in this poem. What effect does that have on your reading of the poem? How would your experience of the poem change if it were written in the third person?
4. Who is the speaker in this poem? What do we know about them? Do you think they're...

1. This poem is from Atwood’s book The Journals of Susanna Moodie, which loosely follows the life of the 19th century author of Roughing it in the Bush. But the voice of the poem is also very modern in its diction and imagery. Who is the speaker? Moodie? Some version of Atwood? Or is the speaker a stand-in for any mother who has lost a son? What are we to think of her?
2. This poem uses the image of a river in a lot of different ways. In the first stanza, it’s “the dangerous river of his own birth,” and then later it’s the literal river in which the son has...

1. This is a funny poem, but some of the jokes won’t land if you don’t catch the references. For example, what does “emeritus” mean? And how does that word work alongside titles like  “Ingenue” or “Good Samaritan”? If any of the terms are unfamiliar, look them up!
2. What’s the tone of this poem? Where are there hints that there are some dark shadows behind the laughs? Do you read it as snide or sad? Or both?
3. This poem uses a lot of multi-syllabic words — how does this affect the rhythm and feel of the poem?
4. “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” is a famous poem...

1. What is the mood of the speaker?
2. What does the word echolalia mean? How might this relate to the poem?
3. Repetition with variation is an important technique in music and poetry, but it is also a powerful tool in advertising. The speaker of the poem is very persuasive — are you persuaded?
4. This poem is taken from Ian Williams’ book Personals, which plays with the form of personal ads. Do you think the voice of this poem is speaking from a position of vulnerability or strength?
...

1. The action of the poem is mysterious, but the atmosphere of expectation and mythic possibility is strong. What is the speaker saying about the tension between the natural world and the human world of consumerism and waste?
2. In the first stanza, the speaker invokes something to be born and a sense of motion is initiated, moving up from the ocean floor. How does this set the tone for the poem?
3. The final stanza describes an equinox ritual where people write things they want to release onto paper and burn the paper in a fire. Does this feel like a contemporary...

1. Who is speaking in this poem? Where is the speaker located?
2. What is the mood of the speaker?
3. Do you think the speaker is having a conversation with another person or is he or she speaking essentially to him- or herself? What in the poem supports your interpretation?
4. What do you learn about the speaker as you move through the poem?
5. What do you think the inclusion, towards the end of the poem, of the notation “[inaudible]” suggests? Could this be a transcript of a recording, rather than something happening in real time? If this is a...

1. The near absence of punctuation and capitalization is notable in this poem. What effect does this visual absence have on how you relate to the words? How you read them?
2. Consider the speaker’s tone. Where does the speaker use irony to examine “mundane acts” and what Wong refers to in this micro-interview as “the materials in our daily lives?”
3. What kind of “poison” is the speaker referring to? Where does the speaker see poison?
4. The concluding image of shiny teeth on a “cold crisp...

1. In Roman mythology, the god Janus was often depicted as having two faces that point in opposite directions, one looking forward, the other backward. Janus was associated with doorways, passages, and transitions. What is the doorway that the speaker references in the opening line?
2. The speaker states that we must “change” the “past.” We are not time-travellers (yet!) and cannot go back in time to change things that have already occurred, so how might a poem create a different “map” of the past, a way to change our perception of past events?
3. In the second...

1. How does the speaker feel about the city?
2. How are similes — “innocent as thresholds / and smashed night birds, lovesick, / as empty elevators” — used throughout to set the atmosphere of the poem?
3. How does the poem portray the non-human life in the city — animals, even inanimate objects?
4. The speaker wonders “would I have had a different life” if she hadn’t identified so closely with “broken things.” What do you think?
5. If you were reciting this poem, what tone would you use? What does it mean...

1. If you are a bit confused about whether it’s the mother or the daughter or both who “ran naked out the door,” don’t be embarrassed! Rogers has blurred those lines deliberately. But we obviously have a very different reaction to the two different scenarios: a little girl who escapes her mother’s grasp after a bath and runs naked down the street would probably seem cute and funny; an adult mother with dementia who does the same thing might make us feel sad and uncomfortable. How does this suspended confusion or tension contribute to the way we encounter the poem?
2. In what...

1. What is happening in this poem? Who or what is saying "Hello"?
2. The poet has created striking snapshots throughout the poem with his choices of imagery and language. Which one is most striking to you? Why?
3. What does the poem's title, "Hail," make you think of?
4. How would you describe the mood of the poem? Does that mood shift anywhere?
5. If you were reciting this poem, how would you handle its short lines, commas, and periods? Where and how long would you pause?
6. Consider a complex issue, like climate change, fast fashion, or...

1. What special powers does this poem attribute to the onion?
2. Imagine how an onion looks, feels, smells, tastes, and sounds. Which of your senses does the poem awaken? Which does it leave out?
3. In what ways might fog sustain the earth?
4. This piece is part of a bilingual (Galician and English) series called “Homages to Water” that includes “Homage to the Mineral of Cabbage” and “Homage to the Force of the Potato,” which are all ingredients in borscht, the national soup of Ukraine. How does the picture of people sharing their country’s soup with the...

1. Who is the speaker in this poem? What do we know about them?
2. What does the refrain make you think of: “paint the picture in your hand / nd roll on home.”?
3. What rhyming pattern has the poet created? How does that shape your reading of the poem?
4. How would you describe the mood of this poem?
5. If you were reciting this poem, how would you handle its rhythm and rhyme? (It would be very easy to fall into a sing-song delivery.)
6. Write a poem that includes a refrain. As a variation, use the refrain or two other lines from “howlin at...

1. In our Q&A with Leanne Simpson, she explains that she wrote this poem because, “I was watching the closing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and I felt angry, not reconciled”  How do you feel the poem transforms that anger?
2. How is the image of graffiti used in this poem?
3. How does the poem suggest resilience and survival in the face of attempted erasure?
4. How does the poet use repetition to suggest a continual re-emergence of the self?
5. Do you feel that the mood of the poem is the...

1. Most of this poem is about what the speaker hasn’t done. What connects these activities? Can you link them to what he mentions that he does do at the end of the poem? Do any of them intrigue you?
2. Why would the speaker present himself in this way? Does he strike you as self-satisfied or frustrated? Ambitious or obnoxious? Young or old? Does he want us to agree with his decisions or challenge them?
3. You might know that Cohen was well-known as a musician as well as a poet. How does the structure of this poem resemble a song? Are there verses?...

1. What do you think the opening lines “If this brain’s over-tempered / consider that the fire was want / and the hammers were fists.” suggest about the experiences lived by the speaker?
2. When the speaker says “I’ve tasted my blood too much / to abide what I was born to,” what do you think the speaker can’t abide?
3. Why do you think the speaker's mother is mentioned? How does that stanza relate to the rest of the poem?
4. Where is repetition used? What effect does that have on the mood of the poem?
5. ...

1. Have you ever had trouble sleeping? What sensations or feelings come to mind when thinking about that experience? Probably none of those sensations are in this poem. What’s in there instead? What tone or mood does the poem evoke in your mind? Can you connect that feeling to insomnia?
2. Each stanza begins with the refrain “If I could sleep…” What effect does the repetition have on the way you experience the poem? From the title, we know that there’s an implied “but I can’t sleep” that follows. What sort of details might emerge in a poem that begins, “If I could stay awake...

1. In video footage of Alice Notley reading this poem at The Poetry Project at St Marks Church in the Bowery in New York City in the early 80s (an outtake from Canadian director Ron Mann’s fantastic documentary Poetry in Motion; a clip below is available on Youtube), the poet explains before reading the poem, “The Jack is Jack Kerouac and the Alice is Alice Notley.” How does knowing that this poem is about the writer Jack Kerouac, credited with coining the term “Beat generation,” change the meaning of the poem for you as a reader?
2. How does the poet challenge...

1. Which of the vivid images in the first stanza of “Laurentian Shield” is most striking to you?
2. In the final line of the poem, the speaker says that the “rock” of this land will turn into “children.” What is your understanding of this destiny? Do you think the speaker is hopeful, skeptical, or scared about that outcome? What makes you think so?
3. The poem uses a number of abstract terms such as “wonder,” “productivity,” “exploitation,” and “emptiness.” What do you think the poem is saying about the value of “progress”? Which elements of industrialization and...

1. This poem recalls a memory, but it is unclear who the “you” is in that memory. Based on your reading of the poem, what do you think the relationship is between the speaker and the person they are talking about?
2. The image of Grand Pré as a body of water is used throughout the poem. Create a list of the words (adjectives, verbs, nouns) used to describe Grand Pré. What impression do you have of Grand Pré based on this list?
3. The image of the setting sun is regularly referred to within the poem. How does this image affect the tone and mood of the poem?
...

1. How does the structure of a mixed tape work to tell this poem’s story?
2. How does “side a” differ in tone from “side b”?
3. What images does the poet use to capture the cold atmosphere following the brother’s disappearance?
4. How are the relationships among the family members described?
5. If you were going to recite this poem, how would you voice its short lines? Where and for how long would you pause?
6. Write a poem using song titles to tell a story.

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