1. WHAT ARE THEY? Persona Poems and Personification

2. First, what is personification? Let’s read this poem….

3. Hey Diddle, Diddle Hey Diddle, Diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.

4. There are some examples of personification in this poem. Hey Diddle, Diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon; The little dog laughed To see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.

5. Personification: giving human characteristics to things that are not human

6. For instance, in “Hey, Diddle, Diddle”… The little dog laughed  Can dogs, or any animal, laugh in real life? The dish ran away with the spoon  Can dishes and spoon run? Can anything that is not living? These are examples of personification- giving human characteristics to something that is NOT human!

7. Now let’s look at this poem…

8. (Use your inferencing skills to figure out what this poem is talking about…) In the summer, I wait. Alone and cold, I hang unused Dreaming of August When students return. Oh, how I can’t wait To be covered in chalk And wiped clean every day!

9. Why could this be called a persona poem?

10. Because it is talking from the point of view of something that is not human! This poem is written in 1 st person and the narrator is an object that cannot talk in real life- a chalkboard! The author of this poem pretended to be the chalkboard so that they could think about what a chalkboard might “feel” or “think” In the poem, the chalkboard “can’t wait” and “dreams”- personification

11. Chalkboard In the summer, I wait. Alone and cold, I hang unused Dreaming of August When students return. Oh, how I can’t wait To be covered in chalk And wiped clean every day!

12. Free Verse Poems Free verse poems are poems that do not have a regular rhyme scheme or meter. It also does not have any special rules, like a haiku (a haiku has to be 17 syllables long). The chalkboard poem is a free verse poem.

13. We will be writing a “Life of a…” poem In this poem, we are going to pretend that we, the poets, are an object in the classroom. We are going to write about what we cannot wait for, what we cannot wait to do, what we want most of all, and what we want to touch. Now we’ll choose an object and brainstorm some ideas for our object.