I. Introducción
5. Conservación y protección de los recursos forestales
5.1 Programa de Pago por Servicios Ambientales
Poetry is an enduring form of literature because it touches people’s hearts and minds as it deals with universal themes, such as love, death, and nature. However, many people also suffer from metrophobia, a fear of poetry. What often scares 5 people about poetry is its ambiguous nature. A poem doesn’t
always have one clear meaning. It can have several possible meanings, which can be intimidating, but it can also be the joy of poetry because it can be discussed, delighted in, and
reflected on in numerous ways.
1 o The foremost Scottish poet Robert “Bobby” Bums
(1759-1796) shows how the theme of love can be imaginatively dealt with in verse in his poem “A Red, Red Rose.” He wrote:
O My Luve’s like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June;
15 O My Luve’s like the melodie That’s sweetly played in tune.
Comparisons using like or as are called similes. They are an effective way to get a reader to make a con
nection between two distinct things. In this case, Bums compares love to a rose and to music. Bums could have used a metaphor such as, “My luve is a rose.” The direct comparison of an object with something 20 that is usually not associated with it also helps the reader see the object in a new way. Also important in
“A Red, Red Rose” is the imagery. It is how readers come to feel a poem. Bums tries to get the reader to use his or her senses to feel the speaker’s love. He wants the reader to see and smell the rose and hear the tune to understand the power of love.
Another important m otif in poetry is death. A writer who tackled this subject was Emily
25 Dickinson (1830-1886). Dickinson was a recluse who rarely saw anyone for most of her life. All but seven of her almost fifteen hundred poems were published posthum ously. In her poem “Because I Could Not Stop for D eath” she uses personification by giving death a carriage in which to pick up the speaker: “He [Death] kindly stopped for me— /The carriage held but ju st Ourselves.” Giving an inanimate object human characteristics can help a reader identify with the subject of the poem.
30 To overcome one’s metrophobia, it is important to appreciate that it is often through inference that readers come to understand a poem. Poets don’t always come right out and tell the reader what they mean. For instance, in her poem “A Song in the Front Yard,” American poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) seems to be talking about her yard:
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
35 I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick o f a rose.
The reader now has to be willing to do some reasoning to figure out possible meanings. The front yard certainly seems to mean more than just a yard, but what does it mean? The rose and all its
122
40 connotations faces the reader again, and he or she needs to decide what it stands for this time. Though carefully looking at a poem can be challenging because of the language or format used, it is this effort to understand that makes poetry so enriching for readers.
Predicting
For each set, write the definition on the line next to the word to which it belongs, if you are unsure, return to the reading on page 122, and underline any context clues you find. After you’ve made your predictions, check your answers against the W ord List on page 127. Place a checkmark in the box next to each word whose definition you missed. These are the words you’ll want to study closely.
Set One
first in importance a fear of poetry open to several possible meanings comparisons introduced by like or as a comparison between things that are not literally alike
□ 1. metrophobia (line 4)
□ 2. ambiguous (line 5 )
□ 3. foremost (line 10)
□ 4. similes (line 17)
□ 5. metaphor (line 19)
Set Two
the dominant theme in a work of art the act of drawing a conclusion
mental pictures occurring after death the act of giving human qualities to inanimate objects
□ 6. imagery (line 21)
□ 7. m otif (line 24)
□ 8. posthumously (line 26)
□ 9. personification (line 27)
□ 10. inference (line 30)
Self-Tests
1 For each set, match the vocabulary word to the words that could be associated with it.
SET ONE
_____ 1. posthumously _____ 2. imagery _____ 3. metrophobia _____ 4. metaphor _____ 5. ambiguous
a. comparison, direct b. fear, poems
c. senses, descriptions d. multiple, unclear e. death, authors
C H A P T E R 2 0 L i t e r a t u r e 1 2 3
SET TWO
6. inference f. human, perfect 7. foremost g. compares, like or as 8. personification h. reasoning, evidence
9. motif i. top, leading
10. simile j. main, recurring
2
Match each word to the appropriate example.VOCABUL AR Y L I ST
foremost simile imagery ambiguous metrophobia
inference motifs metaphor posthumously personification
1. His smile is a bolt of lightning.________________
2. Her first novel was printed fifty years after her d eath .________________
3. “F m afraid to read W hitm an’s poem Leaves o f G rass."________________
4. The tree’s branches spread over me like a fortress.________________
5. The walls shook with laughter, the ceiling had a wide grin, and the floors just smiled; the house knew my cleaning wouldn’t last a d a y .________________
6. I bit into the large, cream cheese-frosted, freshly baked cinnamon roll; listened to the screams from the midway rides; and felt the warm sun on my back— it was good to be at the county fair.
7. Yesterday was the change to daylight saving time, and John, who is usually prompt, is forty minutes late. He probably forgot to change his clo ck .________________
8. Nature’s beauty, lost love, and patriotism are a few common o n e s.________________
9. The unexpected phone message: “Pick me up at the airport at 8 tomorrow.” ________________
10. William Shakespeare as a playwright and poet, and Beethoven in m u sic._________________
3
Finish the sentences using the vocabulary words. Use each word once.V OCABUL AR Y L I ST
metrophobia ambiguous imagery simile foremost
personification metaphor motif inference posthumously
1. Kafka didn’t want his writing p ublished________________ , so he asked his friend to destroy all of his remaining work.
2. Time is an im portant________________ in many o f Edgar Allan Poe’s works.
3. The main character’s answer about where he had been last night w a s ________________ . Without a clear explanation of his activities, he became a prime suspect in the inspector’s investigation of the murder.
1 2 4 C H A P T E R 2 0 L i t e r a t u r e
© 2010PearsonEducation, Inc.
4. In “A Birthday,” Christina Rossetti writes, “My heart is like an apple tree/Whose boughs are bent with thick set fruit.” T h e ________________ shows how fulfilled the speaker is because she has found love.
5. My friend compared himself to a battleship. That ________________ fits him because he loves conflict.
6. Robert Frost is one of th e ________________
American poets.
7. William Carlos Williams u s e s ________________
to help the reader see the wheelbarrow. He describes it as being red and “glazed with rain/
water/beside the white/chickens.”
8. The Wonderful Wizard o f Oz u s e s ________________ when the tree yells at Dorothy for picking one of its apples.
9. W hen the woman in the story said her husband wouldn’t be coming to dinner, the reader had to make a (n )________________ because no direct reason for his disappearance was given.
10. Because some poets use many historical and literary references, their poems can be hard to understand, which has led t o ________________ for many people.