read over the following poem and answer these following questions below. Do not write the questions on the final paper only the answers.Please no double space is required.
This is the poem:
Vision by Joy Harjo
The rainbow touched down
“somewhere in the Rio Grande”
We said. And saw the light of it
From your mother’s house in Isleta.
How it curved down between earth
And the deepest sky to give us horses
Of color
Horses that were within us all of the this time
But we didn’t see them because
We wait for the easiest vision
To save us.
In Isleta the rainbow was crack
In the universe. We saw the barest
Of all life that is possible.
Bright horses rolled over
And over the dusking sky.
I heard the thunder of their beating
Hearts. Their lungs hit air
And sang. All the colors of horses
Formed the rainbow,
And formed us
Watching them.
These are the questions:
First Response
1.What was your response to the poem on first reading?
2.Did some parts of the poem especially please or displease you, or puzzle you?
3. After some study—perhaps checking the meanings of some of the words in a dictionary and reading the poem several times—did you modify your initial response to the parts and to the whole?
Speaker and Tone
1.Who is the speaker? (consider age, sex, personality, frame of mind, and tone of voice.) Is the speaker defined fairly precisely (for instance, an older woman speaking to a child), or is the speaker simply a voice meditating? (Jot down your first impressions, then reread the poem and make further jottings, if necessary.)
2.Do you think the speaker is fully aware of what he or she is saying, or does the speaker unconsciously reveal his or her personality and values? What is your attitude toward this speaker?
3. Is the speaker narrating or reflecting on an earlier experience or attitude? If so, does he or she convey a sense of a new awareness, such as regret for innocence lost?
Audience
1.To whom is the speaker speaking?
2.What is the situation (including time and place)? In some poems a listener is strongly implied, but in others, especially those in which the speaker is meditating, there may be no audience other than the reader, who “overhears” the speaker.
Structure and Form
1.Does the poem proceed in a straightforward way, or at some point or points does the speaker reverse course, altering his or her tone or perception? If there is a shift, what do you make of it?
2.Is the poem organized into sections? If so, what are these sections—stanzas, for instance—and how does each section (characterized, perhaps, by a certain tone of voice, or a group of rhymes) grow out of what precedes it?
3. What is the effect on you of the form—say, quatrains (stanzas of four lines) or blank verse (rhymed lines of ten syllables of iambic pentameter)? If the sense overflows the form, running without pause from (for example) one quatrain into the next, what effect is created?
Center of Interest and Theme
1.What is the poem about? Is the interest chiefly in a distinctive character, or is it in meditation? That is, is the poem chiefly psychological or chiefly philosophical?
2. Is the theme stated explicitly (directly) or implicitly? How might you state the theme in a sentence? What is lost by reducing the poem to a statement of a theme?
Diction
1.How would you characterize the language? Colloquial, elevated, or what?
2.Do certain words have rich and relevant associations that relate to other words and help to define the speaker or the theme or both?
3.What is the role of figurative language, if any? Does it help to define the speaker or the theme?
4. What do you think is to be taken figuratively or symbolically, and what literally?
Sound Effects
1. What is the role of sound effects, including repetitions of sound (for instance, alliteration) and of entire words, and shifts in versification?
2. If there are off rhymes (for instance, dizzy and easy, or home and come), what effect do they have on you? Do they, for instance, add a note of tentativeness or uncertainty?
3. If there are unexpected stresses or pauses, what do they communicate about the speaker’s experience? How do they affect you?
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Writer’s choice
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The essay should be from the book name “Lies My Teacher told me” ISB# 978-0-7432-9628-1 on Chapter one only,
This is Topic:
In chapter 1 Loewen discusses the common occurencce of heroification in U.S history textbooks. What is heroification and why is it dangerous? Provide detailed examples of people who have been “treated”
heroically by textbooks and the lasting effects of such depicitions.(You may include Woodrow Wilson or Helen Keller, as Loewen does.
