Poetry Reading Journal: "My Papa's Waltz"
INSTRUCTIONS
In your Poetry Reading Journal document, answer the following questions, giving examples/quotations from the poem to support or explain your answers. Remember that when you quote from a poem, you give the line numbers in parenthesis. If quoting two or three lines, use a slash to indicate a line break. Example: "And you laugh back nor can you ever see/The thousand little deaths my heart has died"(7-8). When quoting four lines or more, use a block quotation, in which you format the lines as they appear in the poem and put the line numbers in parenthesis at the end. For example:
They whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was nor easy. (1-4)
Create a heading with the title of the poem. Then answer the questions below.
QUESTIONS
- Take a look at the three words in the title. Notice the three words in the title. What do they lead you to expect? What questions do they raise? Jot down your thoughts on a piece of paper. Then as you read the poem take note of the keywords and try to be conscious of the emotional effects and impressions they create.
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Exactly how does the situation in "My Papa's Waltz" and the poem itself fulfill or defy the expectations created in the title?
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How does the poem answer your questions? How does it characterize the waltz and the speaker's feelings about it? Which words are most suggestive in these terms?
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What clues are there in the word choice that an adult is remembering a childhood experience? How scared was the boy at the time? How does the grown adult now evaluate the emotions he felt when he was a boy?
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Select five different words in the poem and explore their connotative meanings. Then explain how these words convey the overall meaning of the poem. For example, if you chose one of the words in the title, "papa" you would explore the emotional resonance of this word, perhaps comparing it to other words the poet might have chosen such as "father" or "dad." What is the specific connotation or emotional association in the word "papa"? How does this word and its connotative meaning help convey the poem's overall meaning? These are the kinds of questions you would ask yourself when exploring the connotative meaning of a particular word.