"Perhaps the Worls Ends Here" by Joy Harjo



Lesson Plan for the Poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo (b. 1951) 


Contents:

A) Link to the Poem

B) Standards

C) Lesson Objectives

D) Lesson Plan

E) Poem Analysis

 

A) Link to the Poem: Perhaps the World Ends Here

 

B) Standards

  • Determine a theme of a text and analyze how it is shaped by specific details.
  • Demonstrate command of standard English, including grammar (active vs. passive voice)
  • Write using telling details regarding experiences, events, settings, or characters.
C) Lesson Objectives

  • Analyze how a poet uses lists and the passive voice to express the theme of a poem
  • Write about a room or place in the home using details to express its importance.
  • Share writing and respond to the writing of others.

 D) Lesson Plan

1) Warm Up

  • Students respond to the prompt and share responses.
  • Prompt: What is the most important room or place in your home? Why is it important? What do you do there?

 2) Gist Reading

  • Students listen to the teacher read the poem and answer the reading questions.
  • Reading questions: 1) What place or object is the poem about? 2) What actions do people do there?
  • Students share responses with a partner and then with the class. Teacher records answers on the board.
  • Teacher discusses what a “list poem” is and how the theme of a poem is often revealed through a multitude of details, such as how in this poem the list of actions done at the kitchen table reveals its centrality in our lives.
  • Some answers: We eat. We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it. Children are given instructions. We make men and women at it. We gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers. Wars have begun and ended at this table. We have given birth on this table. We prepare our parents for burial here. We sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

3) Detail Reading

  • Students take turns reading sections of the poem and identifying examples of the passive voice.
  • If students have not mastered active vs. passive voice, the teacher can prepare a mini lesson or compare active vs. passive sentences and analyze the focus of each. In short, the object in an active sentence becomes the subject in a passive, thereby switching the focus of the sentence to the object. For example, in passive sentence #1 below, the focus is on the “gifts of the earth” instead of the people who bring those gifts to the table.
  • Teacher leads a discussion of why the poet uses the passive voice in the following sentences 1) The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. 2) It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human.

 4) Group Discussion

  • In groups of 3-4, students discuss their interpretations of the following lines from the poem, and then share with the class: 1) The world begins at a kitchen table. 2) Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. 3) Wars have begun and ended at this table. 4) Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
  • See the Poem Analysis below for interpretations.

5) Writing Prompt

  • Students write a response to the writing prompt then share their responses.
  • Writing prompt: 1) Could we say that the world begins at another place in the home? Which place? 2) Could we say that the world might end at another place in the home? Which place? Write details that explain why you chose these places (remember the power of lists in “list poems”).

 6) Conclusion

  • Students write a response to the question regarding their classmates’ responses to the writing prompt in part 5.
  • Question: Whose response did you like the most? Why?

 

E) Poem Analysis

     Joy Harjo’s poem “Perhaps the World Ends Here” can be seen as a list of things we do at the kitchen table. We eat and gossip, cut our teeth and scrape our knees, and give birth and prepare for burials at the kitchen table. Her poem is about the centrality of the kitchen table in our lives. The table is an extension of the hearth, but it is more than just the prime setting of the everyday. It is also the setting of events that transcend the everyday. This transcendent kitchen table is tied to creation myths and eschatology. The poem has the world beginning at the kitchen table, our dreams drinking coffee and hugging our children, wars beginning, and the world ending at the kitchen table. Harjo’s poem includes the everyday and the specter of the end of days. Universal, essential, and recurring human experiences are placed alongside nothingness.

     The table is a bridge that connects us to the nourishment we get from food and each other. The table is a bridge that connects one meal to every meal. The table is a bridge that connects our awakening of consciousness to its end. The table is a bridge we move wisdom across to the next generation. The table is a bridge our dreams and nightmares plan to hold. She writes:"Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table." She is saying that our dreams are with us through our waking hours. They are there for our everyday rituals, like drinking our morning coffee, and they are there to guide our most important actions, the raising of our children. They laugh with us as the rock rolls back down the hill again, and they laugh with us as we walk back down to try again. The table is where we show love to both our loved ones and ourselves. Here our dreams are our visions of the future. The future, like the world, is born at the kitchen table, for, as Harjo writes, “No matter what, we must eat to live.”

     Harjo seems certain that the world begins for us at a kitchen table, where our understanding of life is born through the need to eat and the desire to enjoy our food with those we love. She is less certain about the world ending at the kitchen table. She writes, “Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table” (my emphasis). Harjo’s vision of the end is of a last meal, and while she says that we might take a “last sweet bite,” it would surely have a bittersweet flavor. It would be a meal with “laughing and crying,” a celebration of life, but a final celebration.

     The focus of this last celebration of life would not be on ourselves. Most of the poem is in the active voice. The subject “we” is repeated as the poem lists the everyday actions we do at the kitchen table, along with milestones from cradle to grave. This repetition of “we” and the active voice makes the appearance of the passive voice more powerful, for it is in these few appearances that we see that the “we” that is us is not the focus.

     Instead of writing, “We bring, prepare, and set the gifts of earth on the table,” she writes, “The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table.” Food is but a gift, and the party will one day end. “We” are only important insofar as we are part of the continuation of the giving and receiving of these gifts and are part of ensuring that the earth, the world, will continue.

     Harjo writes about how we can ensure this continuation when she again uses the passive voice to stress what is important. Instead of writing “It is here that we instruct children on what it means to be human, she writes, “It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human.” The stress is on children. The stress is on their learning, not who teaches them, but that it is done with their learning as the focus. Here again the “we” and everyday actions are connected to every past, present, and future table. The table is a bridge to our humanity, and it is in this realization that causes Harjo to see the possibility of the world ending at the table, which, after all, is where we do much of our living.