“Benediction” and “Robin Redbreast” by Stanley Kunitz

Lesson Plan for “Benediction” and “Robin Redbreast” by Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)

Contents:

A) Links to the Poems

B) Lesson Objectives

C) Lesson Plan

D) Poem Analysis

A) Links to the Poems:

Benediction

Robin Redbreast

B) Lesson Objectives:

1) Students will analyze a poet’s word choice.

2) Students will analyze a poet’s use of figurative language.

3) Students will analyze characterization in a poem.

4) Students will write an addition to a poem based on another poem.

C) Lesson Plan:

0) Lesson preparation

Create a handout with the two poems
Create a handout with the vocabulary words and discussion questions in Activity #2 below (Vocabulary Review)
Note: The vocabulary section is especially good for students learning the English language. It can be skipped for native speakers or advanced students.
Create a handout with the first chart in Activity #6 below (Robin Redbreast Activity 2: Discussion Questions)

1) Warm Up

Students respond to the prompts and share responses.
Prompts: 1) What is something you would want to stop from entering your home? What is something you would want to allow to come into your home? 2) What animals do people help? How do they help them? Why? Have you helped animals?

2) Vocabulary Review

Pairs of students review the vocabulary by taking turns asking each other the Vocabulary Discussion Questions. Share answers as a class.

Vocabulary List:

banish, verb, to drive away; expel
admonish, verb, to express disapproval of or criticize firmly but not harshly
permit, verb, to allow the doing of
intrude, verb, to put or force in inappropriately, especially without invitation or permission
protect, verb, to keep from being damaged or subjected to difficulty or unpleasantness
dingy, adj, lacking light or brightness; dirty; discolored
desperate, adj, 1) hopeless; 2) to do something as a final attempt in an extremely urgent situation
unappeasable, adj, angry and unable to be calmed

Vocabulary Discussion Questions:

What is one thing you would want to banish from your life?
What do parents admonish their children about?
What should parents not permit their children to do?
When is it OK to intrude on people having a conversation?
Which of your personal possessions do you protect the most?
Can dingy things be stylish?
What is an example of a desperate situation?
How should you deal with someone who seems unappeasable?

3) “Benediction” Activity 1: Gist Reading

Students listen to the teacher read the poem and answer the reading questions. Reading questions: 1) What is one thing the speaker wants kept from the house? 2) What is one thing the speaker wants allowed into the house or given to the person?
Possible Answers: 1) fly, roach, mouse, hypocrite, liar, fear, doubt, evil, things that shrivel hearts, things that intrude upon blood, drip of night, surprise, delirium, wind; 2) tears, secrecy, islands, love

4) “Benediction” Activity 2: Discussion Questions

Students read the poem again and discuss the questions with a partner.
Discussion questions:

Why does the poet use the word “admonish” instead of “banish” in the lines “Admonish from your door / The hypocrite and liar?”
What could the poet be referring to when he writes about the “drip of night” in the lines “Against the drip of night / God keep all windows tight?”
What could the word “plume” mean in the lines “Admit no trailing wind / Into your shuttered mind / To plume the lake of sleep / With dreams?” What does the poet mean here?

Class discussion of possible answers.
Possible answers:

“Banish” means to forcefully drive something away, and “admonish” means to criticize, but not forcefully. Perhaps the poet means that we shouldn’t treat people like pests. Even if their behavior is dangerous or disgusting, they can be reasoned with, unlike flies, roaches, and mice.
Maybe the poet means that just as the darkness of night comes on gradually, drip by drip, so does the darkness enter us when we are tired and lone. This darkness could mean slowly growing doubt, or fear, or loneliness.
One definition of “plume” is a polluted area. This definition of plume usually doesn’t have a related verb—though plume can be used as a verb to mean something else—but perhaps the poet is using it here to mean “to pollute.” A more common definition of the verb “plume” means to decorate with a feather, which in the context of this poem could mean to disturb rest with unnecessary or detrimental additions.

5) “Robin Redbreast” Activity 1: Meaning of the Poem

Students listen to the teacher read the poem and answer the reading question.
Reading question: 1) How does the speaker try to help the bird? Why? What is the result?
Possible Answers: 1) The speaker “scoops” him up and tries to “toss him back into” the sky. 2) The bird is scared to leave his hand. It has been gravely injured and is being tormented by other birds.

6) Robin Redbreast” Activity 2: Discussion Questions

Students read the poem again and discuss the question with a partner (they can complete the chart together).
Discussion question: 1) In what ways are the speaker and the bird similar?

Description of the bird or setting	Similarity to the speaker
friendless and stiff and cold (line 4)
in league with that ounce of heart pounding in my palm (16-17)
without sense enough to stop running in desperate circles (20-21)
[Find another description of the bird or setting. Write it in this cell with the line number]

Class discussion of possible answers.

Possible answers:

Description of the bird or setting	Similarity to the speaker
friendless and stiff and cold (line 4)	The speaker lives in a quiet house that is for sale. The speaker is lonely and seems unable to write.
in league with that ounce of heart pounding in my palm (16-17)	The speaker has a little hope that things will get better. The speaker believes in goodness, which is one reason for offering help to the robin redbreast.
without sense enough to stop running in desperate circles (20-21)	The speaker is probably running in circles trying to figure out what to write on the empty page.
[Find another description of the bird or setting. Write it in this cell with the line number] Possible answers: 1) “needing my lucky help to toss him back in his element” (22-23) 2) “where the hunter’s brand had tunneled out his wits” (30-31) 3) “I caught the cold flash of the blue unappeasable sky” (32-33)	1) The bird actually helps the speaker by providing something to write about. 2) & 3) Something has happened to the speaker, something that creates fear and loneliness.

7) Conclusion

Students re-read “Benediction” and add a few lines that indirectly or directly reference “Robin Redbreast.” In other words, what hopes do we have for the speaker in “Robin Redbreast?” What about for the bird. For both?

D) Poem Analysis

Stanley Kunitz’s poems “Benediction” and “Robin Redbreast” are about help. “Benediction” is about the poet or speaker expressing good wishes to someone, which is one of the definitions of “benediction,” and “Robin Redbreast” is about helping a bird that has been knocked down return to its element, the sky.

In “Benediction,” the poet calls on God to bless and help someone, perhaps someone Kunitz knows and loves, perhaps the reader. In the first lines of the poem, Kunitz writes, “God banish from your house / The fly, the roach, the mouse / That riots in the walls / Until the plaster falls.” In the rest of the poem, Kunitz uses many words related to “banish,” such as admonish, [don’t] permit, [don’t let] intrude, protect, [don’t] admit, and give. These words are about helping someone by protecting them or giving them something they can use for protection. Kunitz also uses many words associated with home in the poem. In addition to the words “house,” “walls,” and “plaster” in the opening lines quoted above, he uses stair, frond [leaf], windows, and mirrors. Kunitz focuses on wishing someone protection in their home, as opposed to protection on a dangerous journey through events or the outside world, because so much of our lives are lived at home, and the help we might require fleeing some human-caused or natural disaster is specific and limited, while the help we need to protect our home base must be constant. Home also stands for our personal piece of the larger world, for what is ours, and even for us.

Kunitz is wishing someone safety in their home for most of the poem. Toward the end of the poem, Kunitz is wishing someone safety in their internal life, in their mind and dreams. Above all he is wishing someone peace and space. He wishes God to not only grant tears and release from grief, but also the private space to grieve. In the last stanza Kunitz extends this theme of home and peace to include God granting someone a separate place for them to banish their negative qualities to; instead of God doing the banishing, the individual should. God only helps by granting the space, an island, where a negative quality, pride, could be banished to. The last line flips things around. Instead of the focus being on someone being safe inside, inside either a home or their thoughts and feelings, the focus switches to something being safe in that someone, namely that love should nest in their side, that love should find a home in them, it should be safe, and it should be given and should provide protection and warmth.

Kunitz’s poem “Robin Redbreast” is not about warmth necessarily. The poem is about a bird that the speaker in the poem tries to help. The poem can be broken into four main sections. Lines 1 to 6 describe the bird, lines 7 to 13 are about the speaker, lines 14 to 23 are about the speaker noticing the bird, and lines 24 to 33 are about the speaker trying to help the bird and the results.

The first section of the poem describes the bird with adjectives that show the reader its poor condition: dingiest, friendless, stiff, cold. The second section is about the speaker in the poem noticing that this poor bird is being tormented by other birds. But we also see in this section that the speaker is not doing so well. The speaker lives “with an empty page” in a silent house “marked For Sale.” It seems as if the speaker is a lonely writer who is unable to write and has no one to talk with to help with loneliness or work. But then this writer hears birds. They are not singing a lovely song. They are “squawking” to torment another bird. In the third section we also learn that the squawking jays knock down the robin redbreast.

In the third section of the poem, the speaker leaves the cold comfort of his house to help the robin redbreast. The speaker holds the bird and feels a kinship with it, with the “ounce of heart” that pounds in the speaker’s hand. Kunitz uses more adjectives to describe the robin redbreast, such as dumb, poor, foolish, and desperate. Something is wrong with the bird. It gapes with its beak and doesn’t have “sense enough” to stop running in circles. The speaker decides to help the robin redbreast my tossing him “back into his element,” which is the sky.

It is then that the speaker feels the robin redbreast’s fear of returning to the sky. After holding the bird up to the sky to release him, the speaker notices the “hole in his head.” The bird has an old wound that was caused by a hunter’s bullet that went through its head and “tunneled out his wits.” The bird cannot function well, but it knows well enough how dangerous its environment is. It remembers or at least knows it is ill-equipped. The bird’s wound literally frames the sky that the bird is scared to return to. The speaker looks through this hole and sees the “cold flash of the blue / unappeasable sky.”

At its end this poem about a bird that got shot in the head hits us in our breasts as we grasp for help and meaning in a world where even the most delicate are subjected to horrific violence. The sky is unappeasable. There is no help. There is no benediction or God. Not only does the sky, or heaven, not offer help, it is hostile, and there is nothing we can do to make it less so. Still, the speaker tries to offer what help he can. Maybe the speaker will keep and care for the robin redbreast. The speaker will return to the house after failing to return the robin redbreast to the sky, and there the speaker will add something to the empty page.