• How do Robert Hayden and Theodore Roethke incorporate poetic devices to convey meaning in "Those Winter Sundays" and "My Papa's Waltz"?
• How does the form of each poem relate to its content?

• Discuss poetic meter and rhythm and its relationship to theme.
• Compare and contrast poems theme via active class discussion.
• Provide a well-supported, written analysis of the relationship between a poem's form and its content.

• Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and other useful websites. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
• Students can access the poem and some of the activity materials via the EDSITEment LaunchPad.
• Consider teaching students the EDSITEment lesson "Preparing for Poetry: A Reader's First Steps" to prepare students for poetry-reading homework. For students who are less familiar with poetry, you may suggest the "How to Read a Poem" suggestions, available from the EDSITEment-reviewed Victorian Web. Students might also benefit from the Poetry Glossary via the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets website.
• Read the brief biography of Robert Hayden from the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern American Poetry website and the biography of Theodore Roethke from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poets website.
• Read the online version of Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays"and the online version of Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" as a video clip (scroll down to locate the clip) from the EDSITEment-reviewed Library of Congress's Favorite Poem project. You can also listen to the audio clip of Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz."
• Browse the reader letters about "Those Winter Sundays" from the Favorite Poem project, and watch the reader video about "My Papa's Waltz."
• Read the earlier version of "Those Winter Sundays," available from the PBS series on poetry "Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers," a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern American Poetry website. The PBS lesson that cites this earlier version is by Peter E. Murphy, a poet and teacher who did this research on Hayden's drafts while participating in an NEH Summer Institute.

• Activity 1. First Steps: Reading and Comprehension
• Activity 2. Analyzing Poetic Devices: Consonance, Assonance, and Repetition
• Activity 3. Analyzing Poetic Devices: Meter and Rhyme

Activity 1. First Steps: Reading and Comprehension

For many students, perhaps the most important first step in closely analyzing a poem is to hear and/or read the poem aloud. You might ask for one student volunteer to read "Those Winter Sundays," and then invite the class to listen to the audio clip of Roethke reading his poem "My Papa's Waltz."

You may want to focus students' attention on "Those Winter Sundays," perhaps reading the poem again before asking students the following introductory questions:

• What is this poem about?
• How would you describe the speaker's father and the relationship between the poem's speaker and his father?
• How do you define the words "offices" and "austere"? (Definitions available via the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library). Do these words seem appropriate to the poem? Why or why not

Now turn to "My Papa's Waltz," which you may wish to read again before asking students some similar introductory questions:

• What is this poem about?
• How would you describe the relationship between this poem's speaker and his father?
• How would you compare this father/son relationship with the relationship portrayed in the Hayden poem?

Activity 2. Analyzing Poetic Devices: Consonance, Assonance, and Repetition

Ask students to point out specific details from "Those Winter Sundays" that led them to their assessment of the poem's meaning and, specifically, their description of the father/son relationship. Concentrating on the first stanza, ask students which words stand out when they hear the poem. Words that they will probably mention include

blueblack cold,
cracked hands that ached
banked fires blaze

Ask students what they notice about these words. Some students will notice the recurring hard "c" sounds using the poetic device of alliteration. You may want to point out that alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in a sequence of words and that repetition of consonant sounds other places in a sequence of words is also called consonance. Ask students to identify other recurring hard "c" or "k" sounds:

clothes …black
cold
cracked
ached
weekday
banked
thanked

Have a volunteer to read this list of words, before asking the following questions:

• How do these hard "c" and "k" sounds (consonance) contribute to the mood of this opening stanza?
• What effect does this example of consonance have on the speaker's characterization of his father? Why or how?
• Ask students why they think, "No one ever thanked him."
• When you hear this stanza, what do these sounds inherently sound like (despite the words' meanings)?

Some students will notice that these hard sounds mimic the sound of the fire that the father has started to warm the house before he wakes his son. The hard sounds also indirectly contribute to an impression of the father as, perhaps, somewhat harsh despite the lack of any direct mention in this stanza of a harsh father.

As an alternative activity, if students have access to a computer word processing program, ask them to copy and paste the poem into the document and use the highlighter and/or text coloring tools to highlight the alliteration and consonance in the poem. If students do not have access to enough computers during class, consider passing out copies of the poem and having them annotate the poem using highlighters or pens.

Now read the first three lines from the earlier version of "Those Winter Sundays," researched by Peter E. Murphy and available from the PBS series on poetry "Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers," a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern American Poetry website (you may need to scroll down the page to find the earlier version, or press Control-F and enter "Those Winter Sundays" as the search term). (Note: you might consider making full copies of the early version available to your students in order to avoid scrolling through the lengthy website).

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the stiffening cold,
and then with hands cracked and aching.

Compare these lines to the final version:

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached

Ask students the following questions:

• How is this earlier version different?
• What effect does the change from "stiffening cold" to "blueblack cold" have on the poem and its mood and meaning?
• What effect does Hayden's change from "aching" to "ached" have on the poem? What about his dropping the "and" that originally began line 3?

Now turn to the second stanza, and ask students to identify examples of consonance and assonance (repetition of vowel sounds). Discuss their examples in relation to the poem's content in the second stanza, and be sure to compare the final version to the earlier version. Ask students to discuss what Hayden might mean when he writes, "fearing the chronic angers of the house."

Ask students if this poem is written in a particular form. Some will notice that the poem is has some similarities to a sonnet, with a total of 14 lines (the earlier version has 15 lines), and concluding with the "turn" that usually appears in the traditional last two lines of a sonnet. Note, however, that the poem lacks the rhyme scheme and rhythm of a sonnet. Review the earlier version, and ask students to consider the effect the formal changes had on the poem:

• What are the biggest differences between the earlier version and the final version?
• Note the change of "What did I know/of love's austere and lonely offices?" to "What did I know, what did I know/of love's austere and lonely offices?" What effect does the repetition have on conveying the speaker's feelings toward his father?
• What effect does the final version's "turn" (the last two lines) have on the poem's meaning at large? Does the earlier version have the same effect? Why or why not?

Students might note that the repetition conveys a greater sense of regret that the speaker never thanked his father or appreciated, until presumably later, his father's manifestations of love. The sense of longing is clear after the father's perhaps distant yet constant show of affection (building the fire, polishing the shoes).

Activity 3. Analyzing Poetic Devices: Meter and Rhyme

Revisit "My Papa's Waltz." Ask students the following questions:

• How is this form different from that of "Those Winter Sundays"?
• How would you describe the meter of each line? What does this meter sound like?
• Have students count out the beat on their fingers, marking the beat on their desks, and then ask whether any lines have more than six syllables (beats).
• What effect do these seven-syllable lines have on the poem?

Some students should pick up on the rhyme scheme, the shorter lines, the consistent stanzas, and fairly consistent meter within each line. The beat that students might hear is an iambic trimester, which mimics the triple time (three beats) of a waltz. If students have difficulty with this idea, remind them to reconsider the title of the poem. Some students, when measuring out beats, may notice that lines 2, 4, 10, 12, and 14 have an extra syllable. The extra syllable emphasizes the father's missteps and the fact that "Such waltzing was not easy." Point out the content of the seven-syllable lines and relation to the lines' form.

Ask students to map the rhyme scheme, which follows the pattern of abab, cdcd, efef, ghgh. Ask students the following questions:

• What effect does the rhyming have on the poem?
• How does the rhyming influence the mood of the poem?
• What is the relationship between the rhyme (sing-song like) and the content (characterization of the father)? What do you think of the contrast?

If the class hasn't already watched the reader video about "My Papa's Waltz," available at the Favorite Poem Project, show it to them if possible. If you do not have video capability, ask students to consider the theme of "My Papa's Waltz." William Van Fields, the man who discussed this poem in the video, argues that the poem presents a father who is kind and fun, and he contrasts this with the reaction of his schoolteacher and classmates, who thought the poem was about an abusive relationship. Ask students to argue one side or the other, and require that they use evidence from the poem's text (content and form) to back up their claims.

• Have students choose either "Those Winter Sundays" or "My Papa's Waltz." Ask them to write a two-page analysis of the relationship between the form of the poem, in its published version, and its content/meaning. In their essay, students should reflect on how their small group's prose version of the poem sheds light on the effect(s) of the true poems' use of form.
• Ask students to use some of the poetic devices they learned about to write a poem about one of their parents. Students should turn in a short essay to accompany the poem explaining their choices.

Divide the class into 4-5 small groups. Have each group work together to turn each poem into a prose poem. Encourage students to replace words with synonyms and to use direct subject/verb prose sentences. They should eliminate stanzas, writing each poem as one block paragraph. Have each group read their revised prose poems aloud. For the literary background and significance, see the Academy of American Poet's definition of a prose poem.

Wrap up the class by discussing students' responses to the following general question:

• Are the prose poems as powerful as their original counterparts? Why or why not?
• What is the relationship between a poem's form and its content?

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Library of Congress American Memory Project
  
  • "Favorite Poem Project"
    
    • Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" (video clip)
• Academy of American Poets
  
  • Poetry Glossary
  • Biography of Theodore Roethke
  • Audio clip of Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"
  • Sonnet
  • Prose poem
• Modern American Poetry
  
  • Biography of Robert Hayden
  • Earlier version of "Those Winter Sundays" researched by Peter E. Murphy and available from the PBS series on poetry, Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers.