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Robert Frost
Courtesy of American Memory Project
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Subject Areas |
Literature and Language Arts
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American |
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Poetry |
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Time Required |
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4-5 Class Periods |
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Skills |
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Writing process: prewriting/journal writing
Listening to poetry
Critical analysis
Close reading
Analyzing literary character
Collaborating in small groups
Speaking and presenting to a group
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Additional Data |
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Date Created: 5/31/02 |
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Poems that Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know. His
house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his
woods fill up with snow.
--Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening"
IntroductionRobert Frost's "Stopping
by Woods on a Snowy Evening" tells an invitingly simple story. But as we read
and reread the poem, we are drawn into questions and mysteries. Beginning with
the oddly tentative note struck in the poem's first line, we are guided by a speaker
who, it seems, conceals as much as he reveals. Who is the unnamed person whose
woods these are and why is the speaker concerned about that person's presence
or absence? Where has the speaker come from and where is he going? What draws
him so powerfully to the cold deserted woods he calls "lovely, dark, and deep"?
In the suggested activities below, students explore such questions and mysteries
in journal entries that build upon narrative hints in poems chosen from an online
selection of Frost's most frequently anthologized and taught works. By analyzing
what a speaker (or persona) in one of Frost's poems
includes or omits from his narrative account, students make inferences about that
speaker's motivations and character, find evidence for those inferences in the
words of the poem, and apply their inferences about the speaker in a dramatic
reading performed for other class members. Learning Objectives
- Read and discuss poems by Robert Frost
- Learn
the meaning of terms such as narrative and persona
- Draw
inferences about a poem's speaker based on evidence in the poem
- Write
narratives in a journal that explore inferences about a poem's speaker
- Collaborate
in small groups to draw inferences about speakers' character and motives and to
gather evidence supporting those inferences
- Present a poem to other students
in the class based upon inferences about a speaker's character and motives
Guiding
Question:What do the speakers of Frost's poems reveal about themselves
through the stories they tell?
Preparing to Teach this Lesson- Why
teach narrative poetry? It is usual in the literature curriculum for grades
6 through 8 to introduce students to basic concepts of narrative (such as speaker
or point-of-view) in the context of lessons on the short story or novel. One effect
of segregating poetry and short fiction in this way is to obscure narrative features
they share. Frost's narrative poems present an opportunity to teach some of the
central terms and concepts of fiction as well as poetry in an integrated fashion.
By reading, writing about, and discussing poems such "The Road Not Taken" and "Birches,"
students gain practice not only in identifying and interpreting such elements
of poetry as rhyme and figurative language, but also in analyzing concepts more
commonly taught in the context of lessons on the short story: perspective and
point of view, character and motivation, and conflict (both internal and external).
- What
do the stories they tell reveal about the character and motives of the poems'
speakers? In a poem such as "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," Frost's
readers must fill in the gaps in the narrative, inventing motives and explanations
for a speaker's action or inaction when no motives or explanations are given.
The stories told by Frost's speakers work almost as rumors do: they encourage
the imagination of readers by dropping veiled and not-so-veiled hints about unseen
events and persons, and they reveal to us, by what they leave in or omit from
their narratives, as much about the character and motives of the speaker as they do about
the objects and events he is describing.
- Provided with this lesson
is a worksheet, "The Narrative Poetry of Robert Frost,"
as a downloadable PDF file. The worksheet provides students with graphs for organizing
statements and inferences about a poem as well as supporting evidence for those
claims.
- The following are the online resources you will need
for the lessons in this unit. Most of the poems listed below are also widely available
in print anthologies. Online versions of these texts, including in some cases
audio or video clips, are available through the following EDSITEment resources:
POEMS
"Stopping
by Woods on a Snowy Evening," an annotated version from University
of Toronto Electronic Library (UTEL), a link on the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet
Public Library; also, at the Favorite
Poem Project (a link on the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy
of American Poets) you can view the text
only or watch a video
clip of the poem read by a student
"The
Road Not Taken," from Academy of
American Poets (with audio clip); there is also an annotated
version from UTEL
"The Runaway," from Bartleby.com,
a link on Internet Public Library
"The Wood Pile," from Bartleby.com;
there is also an annotated
version of this poem available from UTEL
"Out,
out--," an annotated version from UTEL;
also, text and video clips of "Out,
out--" from the Favorite
Poem Project
"Mending
Wall," from Academy of American Poets;
also, an annotated
version of "Mending Wall" from UTEL
"Birches,"
from Academy of American Poets; in
addition, there is an annotated
version of "Birches" from UTEL
CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND
(*Note: Some of these items,
particularly the critical excerpts from the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern
American Poetry, may be difficult or overwhelming for students. None of the
activities described below require students to have access to these materials;
they are presented here primarily as background for the teacher, or for students
in grades 9-12 who might use this lesson.)
A
biographical essay on Robert Frost at Academy
of American Poets
"A
Close Look at Robert Frost," online text of a lecture by John Hollander, from
the Academy of American Poets
Biography, texts, recordings and critical materials from The
Robert Frost Web Site, a link from Academy
of American Poets
An extensive
collection of critical commentary on many individual poems by Frost, from
the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern
American Poetry
Suggested ActivitiesLesson
1 Literary Terms Lesson 2 "Stopping
By Woods on a Snowy Evening" Lesson
3 Writing an Imaginary Narrative Lesson
4 Performing the Poetry of Robert Frost
Lesson 1 Literary Terms On the board, provide students with definitions
for the basic literary terms you will be using in this lesson. The central concept
taught here is the distinction between Frost-the-poet and the speaker,
or persona, that he creates to tell the narrative in the poem. (Related terms
you might be or might already have discussed in class are narrative, perspective,
point of view, persona, speaker, character, motives, and conflict.)
Persona is a term of Latin derivation, and originally denoted a
mask made of clay or bark that was worn by actors. It has come to refer to an
author's alter ego, the "person" who speaks in a poem or work of fiction. The
persona in a poem is like a character in fiction; and, just as in fiction, we
can draw inferences about the motives and personality of this character by hints
and clues in the poem. One online source for a definition of persona as
well other literary terms is the Glossary
of Literary Terms (a link on the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet
Public Library), which provides the following definition for persona:
The person created by the author to tell a story. Whether the story
is told by an omniscient narrator or by a character in it, the actual author of
the work often distances himself from what is said or told by adopting a persona--a
personality different from his real one. Thus, the attitudes, beliefs, and degree
of understanding expressed by the narrator may not be the same as those of the
actual author. Some authors, for example, use narrators who are not very bright
in order to create irony.
Lesson 2 "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" - Read "Stopping
By Woods on a Snowy Evening" aloud in class. Begin by asking students
about the emotional and psychological effects of the imagery in this poem. What
effect do the images of darkness, coldness, and stillness have on readers? Next,
ask the class to briefly paraphrase the narrative of the poem: what events are
actually described? What are the speaker's motives for taking the actions that
he does? Does the speaker move on by the end of the poem? Do we know? What effect
do the darkness and cold and snow seem to have on him? What is the role of his
"little horse" in the poem--what perspective does the speaker attribute to his
horse? Help students to distinguish between the narrative details directly described,
and those that we infer. What features of this poem encourage us to make such
inferences--what is the evidence, in other words, for our inferences?
- Hand
out copies of the worksheet on Robert Frost. In the left-hand
column of the first chart are a series of claims about the motives of the speaker
in "Stopping by Woods." Work through the first chart as a class, filling in
the appropriate boxes with quotations from the poem. The aim of the exercise is
to evaluate inferences and claims about the narrative and speaker in this poem.
As you discuss the different claims listed in the first chart, make sure that
you give students sufficient time to reread the poem themselves, and to mark any
phrases or lines that might help to answer this question. Discuss the question
with the class, and write your findings on the board below the guiding question.
On the board, you may wish to write a version of the guiding question
for this lesson (above): What does the speaker of "Stopping by Woods" reveal
about himself through the story he tells and through the narrative details he
includes, implies, or omits?
- Journal entry #1: Ask
students to write a short narrative in their journals that expands upon hints
and questions raised by the narrative told by the speaker in "Stopping By the
Woods." Some suggestions are
- imagine the circumstances that have
brought the speaker to this place in the wood
- speculate on what it is
that compels him to stop on so cold and dark a night
- speculate on the
nature of the promises the speaker has made
- or write about the speaker's
relationship to the person whose woods these are.
The only rule is that their
inferences must have some defensible basis in the actual words of the poem.
Lesson 3 Writing an Imaginary Narrative
- Divide the class into
small groups selected to balance the talents of the students within each group,
and provide each group with copies of one of the following poems (links and sources described in "Poems" section of Preparing to Teach the Lesson, above): "The Road Not Taken," "Birches," "The Runaway," "Out, Out--,"
"Mending Wall," or "The Runaway."
If they do not have a copy already (from
Lesson 2), provide students with the worksheet, "The Narrative Poetry of Robert
Frost." Each group then reads their assigned poem, and fills
in the blank chart on the worksheet for their chosen poem. Students can use this
chart to help them complete journal entry #2.
- Journal entry
#2: Ask students to write their own narrative extending or revealing hidden aspects of
the story told in their assigned poem. Their stories should be based upon the
facts and inferences they found in the group exercise; their stories should not
contradict those facts and inferences, but may stretch them a bit.
This part of the journal writing assignment is essentially the same exercise as
writing students did for "Stopping By Woods" in Lesson 1, above. To
give them a place from which to start, you may wish to provide students with a
question about the poem. Some suggestions are
- In "The Road Not
Taken," is the speaker young or old?
- In "The Runaway," who has left a
young horse to stray in snowstorm on a mountainside?
- In "Mending Wall,"
does the poem's speaker get along his neighbor?
- In "The Wood Pile," where
is the person who left a the mysterious pile of wood "to warm the frozen swamp"?
- In
"Birches," what do we learn about the speaker's childhood?
- In "Out, Out,"
does the speaker think that the accident could have been prevented?
- After
writing their narratives and analyzing correspondences with details in the poem,
students should gather again in small groups. Using the charts they created earlier,
as well as the stories students wrote in their journals, groups should discuss
the question: What does the speaker in your assigned poem reveal about himself
through the story he tells?
Lesson 4 Performing the Poetry of Robert Frost - If you have
not done so already for Lessons 2 or 3, divide the class into small groups selected
to balance the talents of the students within each group, and provide each group
with copies of one of the following poems (sources described in step 1, above):
"The Road Not Taken," "Birches," "The Runaway," "Out, Out--," "Mending Wall,"
or "The Runaway." If they do not have a copy already (from Lesson 2 or 3), provide
students with the worksheet.
- If you have
not done so already, ask groups to discuss the character, or persona, of the speaker
of their assigned poem; you can use the activities in lessons 2 and 3, as well
as the blank chart on the worksheet, as guides to these discussions. Next, ask
each group to brainstorm ways that the speaker's character can be reflected in
a dramatic reading of the poem. What lines will their speaker emphasize? Should the poem
be read read quickly or slowly? What kinds of emotions will be expressed in different
portions of the poem? Groups should be given enough time to practice their dramatic
readings of the poem before presenting to the class.
- After discussing
their assigned or chosen poem, each group will present a dramatic reading of the
poem to the class and to share with the class the groups' ideas on how the speaker
of the poem reveals aspects of himself through the narrative details he includes
or omits. Again, reiterate to students that each member of the group should take
part in the reading or presentation in some way. A group can perform a poem simply
by dividing the reading among group members. Besides reciting the poem, group
members can also contribute by sharing with the class some of the ways that their
group applied the guiding question to their poem: What does the speaker of
Frost's poem reveal about himself through the story he tells?
Other Information
Standards Alignment
- NCTE/IRA-1
Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works. more
- NCTE/IRA-2
Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience. more
- NCTE/IRA-3
Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. more
- NCTE/IRA-4
Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes. more
- NCTE/IRA-5
Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes. more
- NCTE/IRA-6
Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts. more
- NCTE/IRA-7
Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience. more
- NCTE/IRA-8
Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge. more
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