“Two” and “Daddy Longlegs” by Ted Kooser
Lesson Plan for “Two” and “Daddy
Longlegs” by Ted Kooser (b. 1939)
Contents:
A) Link 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.
- Write using figurative language or symbolism.
C) Lesson Objectives
- Infer the reasons a poet chose to write about an experience and the meaning being expressed.
- Analyze descriptions in poems to interpret their symbolism.
- Describe how animals can be used to symbolize human traits or ideas.
0) Lesson preparation
- Create the document outlined in step 5 below.
1) Warm Up
- Students respond to the prompt and share responses.
- Prompt: If you could be any animal, which animal would you be? Why?
2) “Two” Activity 1: Gist Reading
- Students listen to the teacher read the poem and answer the reading questions.
- Reading questions: 1) How does the speaker in the poem describe how the men on the stairs look? Why does he describe them this way? 2) What interaction does the speaker have with the two men on the stairs?
- See the analysis below for possible answers.
- Whole-class discussion to share answers.
3) “Two” Activity 2: Reading for meaning
- Students re-read the poem by themselves and answer the questions.
- Reading questions: 1) Why does the speaker write about the two men? Why is he interested in them? 2) What is the possible meaning of the poem? Do the two men make the reader think something about his own life? What do they make him think about?
- See the analysis below for possible answers.
- Whole-class discussion to share answers.
4) “Daddy Longlegs” Activity 1: Reading Activity
- Students read the poem and answer the reading questions.
- Reading questions: 1) How does the speaker in the poem describe the spider? 2) Why do you think he uses these words or phrases to describe the spider?
- The following are some words and phrases used to describe the spider. See the analysis below for possible reasons why he uses these words: a life rides, sealed in a small brown pill; skims along; wrapped up in a simple obsession; Eight legs reach; some thought is caught; dead center in its own small world; far from the touch of things.
- Whole-class discussion to share answers.
5) “Daddy Longlegs” Activity 2: Animals and Us
- Reinforce the interpretation of the poem that the speaker sees in the spider something about its structure or behavior that mirrors something he wants for his own life, namely to be centered in his life, far from anything inconsequential.
- Prompt students to think about other animals and how their structure, behaviors, or lives might inspire us to see something about what we want out of life or about life itself. Use the document detailed below if needed:
- Create a document with 3 columns: Animals, Behavior or Structure, and Meaning for Humans. List some or all of the following animals in column 1: ape, bat, bear, bee, cat, centipede, cow, deer, dog, dolphin, eagle, elephant, fish, giraffe, goose, horse, lion, lobster, monkey, octopus, parrot, pig, snake, porcupine, rhino, scorpion, spider, vulture, wolf, zebra.
- Demonstrate a few with the class and then ask them to work with partners to complete at least 3 rows.
- Examples include:
- Spider (daddy longlegs), skims across the floor, the body is far away from concrete things that interfere with abstract thought.
- Bee, collects nectar and spreads pollen, blindly benefits flowers while taking from them.
- Scorpion, stinger on its tail, it seems a vehicle for a weapon.
- Prompt students to consider how the notes they made could be used to write a poem like "Daddy Longlegs."
- Extension activity: have students use the notes to write such a poem.
- Students answer the following questions.
- Questions: What do the poems have in common? Consider the speaker, the action, the meanings, and anything else. Which poem did you like more? Why?
- Students share their answers with the class.
- See the analysis below for possible answers.
E) Poem Analysis
Ted Kooser’s poems “Two” and “Daddy Longlegs” are about walking. The action in each poem takes just a few seconds, but these actions lead the speakers in the poems to think about the entire span of their lives. “Two” is concerned with aging. “Daddy Longlegs” is about rising above such concerns. Each poem is about everyday actions—walking up a parking lot staircase or down the stairs to one’s basement to see what’s there—and each is about the deeper meaning in these events.
The speaker in Kooser’s poem “Two” merely describes the appearances and behavior of two men he meets on a parking lot staircase. He doesn’t comment directly on any meaning behind the men’s appearances or actions, and he doesn’t have to—choosing to write about them, and choosing what to focus on, leads the reader to the meaning.
The men are described as “fine-looking” and dressed “much alike.” They are two older men, a father and son. The father is in his eighties, the son in his sixties. They are descending the staircase, and this descent also marks their movement further away from the crest of their lives. They make the descent together. They are “unsteady,” but they have each other to hold on to, and of course the handrails, which they are smart enough to use.
It is their similarity in appearance and behavior which identifies them to the speaker in the poem as family. The father taught the son how to ascend in life, how to dress for success, how to support himself, and how to seek support from and to support family. Regardless of all the father taught the son, their lives will, like everyone’s, eventually reach the end, the bottom of the staircase so to speak. Just as they were together on their ascent, they are together on their descent. And this is where the speaker of the poem moves from being an observer to interacting with the men.
Most of the poem is a description of the two men. The speaker inserts himself into the poem at different points: when he says he met the men on the stairs, then realized they were father and son, and eventually neared them. This last action is the high point of the poem, for as the speaker nears the two men, they allow him to pass by opening “the simple gate of their interwoven fingers.” This opening of the gate has a surface meaning, he can continue on his walk up the staircase, and it has a deeper meaning, he enters through the gate into the knowledge that though he is ascending now he will eventually be like the son in his sixties and then the father in his eighties, on his way down, and not alone if he’s lucky. In a sense the poem is about three men, or one man at different stages, or every person when they catch a glimpse or mortality and their participation in the chain of time that is eternity.
Kooser’s poem “Daddy Longlegs” is not about a dad and his son walking down a staircase. It is about a spider walking across a basement floor. The speaker of the poem doesn’t describe his own walk down the stairs to the basement, and he doesn’t give a reason for his being in the basement. He just jumps right into a description of the spider by starting the poem with the word “Here.” The speaker is saying here is a spider, but he is also saying here is where he would like to be. He is not saying that he wants to be a spider, but rather the figure, the shape, the combination of the parts of a daddy longlegs, and its behavior, mirrors what he wants in his life.
This notion of depth—as opposed to being on the surface or edge—is repeated throughout the poem. The setting is a basement, and the poet describes the spider as being “sealed,” “wrapped up,” and “caught dead center.” The speaker says he wants to walk “alone across the floor of my life with an easy grace, and with love enough to live on at the center of myself.” The spider walking across the floor is an external representation of the speaker’s desire, his dream. The speaker wants to be sealed in the depths of himself, riding high above and transcending the base “floor” of his life. When the speaker says he wants to be “far from the touch of things,” he doesn’t want his essential, protected self affected by something as inconsequential as momentary and fleeting sense impressions.
The speaker in each poem is a witness to walking, to movement of some kind. In “Two,” this movement is really about a movement through his life, through time. In “Daddy Longlegs” this movement is away from time, to a place of purity free from anything that would bring him out of the timeless center of himself.