1. Poetry Journal
During the poetry unit, each class period will begin with time to read and reflect on poetry. At the start of class, you will be expected to read the assigned poem and write a short journal entry--at least half of a page. The purpose of the journal is to record your personal reaction to the poems we read. Occasionally, an “essential question” will accompany the poem. This question should also be addressed in your journal entry. Here are some tips on how to get started on this project:
Read the poem straight through
Paraphrase (each line/stanza/general idea)
Look for sound devices and figurative language
Reflect on the poem’s meaning
Connect the poem to your own experiences
Evaluate the poem

2. JOURNAL #1 I am silver and exact, I have no preconceptions.
I am silver and exact, I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful—
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time, I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles and the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me and old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Essential Question: Who is “I” in this poem?

3. JOURNAL #2
First Ice
Andrei Voznesensky
A girl freezes in a telephone booth.
In her draughty overcoat she hides
A face all smeared
in lipstick and tears.
She breathes on her thin palms.
Her fingers are icicles. She wears ear-rings.
She’ll have to walk home alone,
Along the ice-bound street.
First ice. The very first time.
The first ice of telephone phrases.
Frozen tears glisten on her cheeks—
The first ice of human hurt
Essential question: Who is this girl?

4. JOURNAL #3
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Nothing gold can stay. Nature's first green is gold
Essential Questions: What examples of figurative language
can be found in this poem? How does figurative language
impact the meaning of the poem? Which sound devices
are used? How do they impact meaning?

5. JOURNAL #4 Fifteen By William Stafford
South of the bridge on Seventeenth
I found back of the willows one summer
a motorcycle with engine running
as it lay on its side, ticking over
slowly in the high grass. I was fifteen.
I admired all that pulsing gleam, the
shiny flanks, the demure headlights
fringed where it lay; I led it gently
to the road and stood with that companion,
ready and friendly. I was fifteen.
We could find the end of a road, meet
the sky out on Seventeenth. I thought about
hills, and patting the handle got back a
confident opinion. On the bridge we
indulged a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.
Thinking, back farther in the grass I found
the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped
over the rail. He had blood on his hand, was pale—
I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand
over it, called me good man, roared away.
Essential Question: Why is the speaker’s age so important to the meaning of the poem?
JOURNAL #4