"Introduction to Poetry" and "Winter Syntax" by Billy Collins
Lesson Plan for “Introduction to Poetry” and “Winter Syntax” by Billy Collins (b. 1941)
Contents:
A) Links to the Poems
B) Standards
C) Lesson Objectives
D) Lesson Plan
E) Poem Analysis
A) Links to the Poems:
B) Standards:
Determine a central idea of a text and analyze how it is shaped by specific details.
Analyze how words and phrases shape meaning and tone in texts.
C) Lesson Objectives:
Relate seemingly unrelated actions to the act of reading poetry to interpret the poet's meaning.
Analyze images and extended metaphor to explore the meaning of a poem.
Write using figurative language to creatively express meaning.
D) Lesson Plan:
0) Lesson preparation
Create a handout with the two poems.
Create individual handouts with the charts below.
1) Warm Up
Students respond to the prompt and share responses.
Prompt: 1) Why do some people like poetry? Why do some people not like poetry? Write about your favorite poet, songwriter, or writer.
2) “Introduction to Poetry” Activity 1: Gist Reading
Students listen to the teacher read the poem and answer the reading questions.
Reading questions: 1) Who or what is the poem about? 2) What is at stake?
3) Is the ending happy or sad?
Answers: 1) A teaching speaking about methods he or she uses to teach poetry and how the students disregard these methods for their own. 2) Understanding or appreciating a poem. 3) Possible answers: 3a) It is sad because the students don’t listen to their teacher and might not understand or appreciate poetry as a result. 3b) It is happy because the students choose to use their own method to interpret poetry.
3) “Introduction to Poetry” Activity 2: Detail Reading
Students read the poem again and respond to the reading prompt.
Reading prompt: 1) Circle at least 3 actions the teacher wants the students to try when reading and interpreting a poem.
Elicit answers and reveal answers by distributing a handout with the chart below.
Groups discuss the following questions: 1) Why is the teacher asking the students to do these things? 2) How do these actions relate to reading poetry? Students use column two in the chart to record and share their answers. The meanings can be found in the analysis section below. Whole class sharing of answers.
4) “Winter Syntax” Activity 1: Gist Reading
Introduce the poem by telling the students the class will use one of the methods mentioned by the poet in “Introduction to Poetry,” namely using images to interpret a poem.
Students listen to the teacher read the poem and answer the reading questions.
Reading questions: 1) Who or what is the poem about? 2) What is at stake?
3) Is the ending happy or sad?
Answers: 1) It’s about how writing is like a difficult walk through the snow. 2) Being able to express yourself and how this is related to survival. 3) It’s happy because the traveler/writer/speaker was able to express a complete idea.
5) “Winter Syntax” Activity 2: Detail Reading
Students read the poem again and answer the reading questions.
Reading questions: 1) Circle at least 3 images in the poem. What do you see and feel
Elicit answers and reveal answers by distributing a handout with the chart below.
Groups discuss the following questions: What does the image express? How is it supposed to make us feel? Students use column two in the chart to record and share their answers.
Answers will vary, but could include the following: Stanza 1: the image shows how difficult it is to move forward in a storm or piece of writing because there is resistance. Stanza 2: the first image is sweet, delicate, and romantic; the second is violent, desperate, and mysterious. Stanza 3: the image of a cloud crossing the moon could be both calming and ominous; the image of the bike outside the drugstore is nostalgic; the dog is calming and restful. Stanza 4: nothing says winter more than a winter sky viewed through bare tree branches; to truly reveal ourselves we must show ourselves without clothing (which can also be our external trappings of culture, profession, position, etc.). Stanza 5: It’s difficult to read tracks or white ink on white paper. Stanza 6: Warmth of the fire and the smile. We have arrived and can rest in our success.
6) Conclusion
Whole class discussion about other images that can express the difficulty of writing or other tasks.
Whole class discussion about the other instructions given in the first poem and how they could be used to interpret the second.
Examples of other instructions that could be used: 1) “Drop a mouse into a poem” to experiment by reading first lines, reading the first and last stanza to predict, rearranging the sections. 2) “Feel the walls for a light switch” to find a key that unlocks possible meanings by debating the most important word, phrase, or line in the poem. 3) Read about the poet to wave “at the author’s name on the shore” to see if his biography helps us experience the poem.
E) Poem Analysis:
Billy Collins’s poem “Introduction to Poetry” is a listing of instructions a teacher gives to students in how to read a poem. Each of the instructions in the first 5 stanzas has the potential to lead to different meanings. The last 2 stanzas reveal that students are not interested in the teacher’s instructions or in trying out the different methods, as they are interested instead in figuring out the singular meaning that they feel the poem must have.
In the first stanza, the speaker in the poem asks students to “take a poem and hold it up to the light / like a color slide.” The speaker, or should we say the teacher, is asking the students to look closely at the poem, especially at its visual elements, its descriptions and imagery. This instruction, or method, or tool is but one way to analyze a poem.
The students are asked to “press an ear against its hives” in the second stanza. The instruction in the first stanza is to focus on visual cues, and the instructions in this stanza ask the students to tune in to the auditory elements of the poem, to its sounds and effects, such as alliteration and assonance. The teacher in the poem doesn’t say if each method should be used by itself or with other methods, but it’s not hard to see how the methods can be used together to support a reader’s understanding of a poem or deepen the experience of a poem by revealing its layers and possible meanings.
The instructions in the third stanza are for readers to “drop a mouse into a poem / and watch him probe his way out.” This instruction is about experimenting with one’s initial ideas and predictions regarding the poem to see if the kernel of insight gathered from a part of the poem can illuminate its other parts; in other words, we should test a hypothesis. The fourth stanza is about entering “the poem’s room” to form this hypothesis by attempting to “feel the walls for a light switch,” to search for a word, phrase, or line that acts as a light to show us the poem or a key that unlocks its meanings.
The fifth stanza seems to have two instructions. The first is to “waterski / across the surface of a poem.” Many English teachers recommend this method in which students first read something straight through, without stopping to analyze, to get an introduction to the poem and to have a first reaction. Only after this “gist” or surface reading should readers go back to analyze the meaning and construction of a text. The second instruction says students should try “waving at the author’s name on the shore” while waterskiing across the poem. This instruction also relates to a surface reading, as students are merely “waving” at a “name” instead of digging deep into the details. That being said, understanding something about the writer can help to reveal more about the text.
The final two stanzas show that the teacher’s students disregard the instructions and prefer to treat a poem as a problem to be solved. But instead of writing that the students use rulers, and calculators, and protractors to figure out the one right meaning of the poem, the speaker uses violent images to show how incorrect this approach is. The students “begin beating” the poem to “torture a confession out of it.” The difference is between believing a poem has one meaning that is revealed after a struggle does away with resistance, and believing that a poem can have multiple meanings that are revealed through experiencing it in different ways. Or perhaps there’s no meaning at all and the poem is just an experience the poet wanted to share, an experience rooted in sights, sounds, thinking, language, and history.