*Create a written response of a paragraph or two of at least 150-200 words

*You may use the following questions to develop a response to your poem, or you may discuss another more appropriate literary element (e.g., imagery, characterization, theme) as best fits your selection:
1.What are some of the key symbols or metaphors in the poem, and how are they used to convey meaning to the reader?
2.How do these elements enrich the poem and deepen your understanding of its themes?
3.What is your reaction to the poems content and language? Would you recommend this poem to friends?

*Tips

Remember to provide evidence for your claims in the form of quoted passages from the poem. Quotations, paraphrases, and summaries should be cited according to APA rules of style, including in-text and reference citations. Quoted material should not exceed 25% of the document. Check grammar and spelling before posting

SEE POEM BELOW:

tragedy of abortion, the bitterly hard choice under fearful pressure that ends with a rifled and bleeding womb and shreds of crimson life. I have been told that women understand abortion as violence, as a desperate violence inflicted by a woman not only upon an embryo but upon herself.61 Perhaps the assump-

61. Consider also the poem, The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks, in her Selected
Poems (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 45:

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

* offer your interpretation of a literary element (such as theme, imagery, symbolism, or characterization) in one of the assigned poems

*Tips for the Essay

*1. Open your introduction with an engaging opener, such as a question, quote from the poem, or interesting idea. Then, connect to the poem and mention the title and the author. End your introduction with a thesis statement that interprets one literary element of the poem (such as theme, imagery, symbolism, or characterization).
2.The body paragraphs should support your thesis. Present specific aspects of the poem that help to illustrate your points. Make sure to quote from the poem and analyze specific lines that support your argument. Typically, body paragraphs will contain at least two short quotations each as supporting evidence.
3.Include a strong concluding paragraph that summarizes your main points and explains the significance of the thesis. Finish this paragraph with a strong and satisfying ending.
*Use APA style for formatting the essay and for source citations. Begin with a title page and use proper font and spacing. End with a separate references page

SEE POEM BELOW:

A very large elm tree overshadowed Plaths home in Devon. In this poem, the elm speaks to a human listener.

DADDY
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot1
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.2
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.3

In the German tongue, in the Polish town4
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,5
I could hardly speak.

* identify some of the key imagery or other kinds of poetic language used in the poem, which you believe are vital to understanding it.

*Here are some possible approaches:
Provide a detailed discussion of how the images function in the poem.
Do the images work together to form a coherent pattern?
What ideas or feelings are conveyed by the images or figurative language?
How do the images contribute to the overall meaning of the poem?

* Do not use outside sources.
See poem below:

A very large elm tree overshadowed Plaths home in Devon. In this poem, the elm speaks to a human listener.

DADDY
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot1
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.2
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.3

In the German tongue, in the Polish town4
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,5
I could hardly speak.