Li-Young Lee --biography "I Ask My Mother to Sing"             --Leading Questions --Relevant Web Sites

Photograph Paul Elledge from the city in which i love you

Understanding & Analysis
1. This poem presents some family members together, sharing their sense of loss and dislocation from their past.

After looking at the suggested websites below about the poet's family history, discuss how knowledge of Lee's family background makes this poem even more meaningful.  ( Lee's parents left China because of the political turmoil there and then began a life on the run that eventually ended with the family living in the United States.)
2. In what ways are the speaker of this poem and his family like the picnickers?
3. Are there any similarities between the speaker's family and the rain-filled waterlilies?
4. More about literary techniques.

1. Most families have rituals or stories that they perform together to help them know and remember their past experiences, including experiences that happened even before some of the family members were born. What stories, songs, rituals does your family do to memorialize your past? What is the family in the poem doing to help them remember their past? Why are the mother and grandmother crying?
2. Can you guess which song the women in the poem sing?  Does it matter if we know it or not?
3. In both this poem and "Musical Key" by Cowboy Junkies we have (grand)parents "singing," whose significance is understood by their son or daughter(the I-narrator).  Try to analyze the significance of each "singing."
4. Why do we put popular songs with poetry?  What has poetry to do with "singing"?

Relevant Web Sites
• Another biographical sketch: the idea of displacement--" Lee said: 'I'm highly aware that I'm a guest in the language.  I'm wondering if that's not the truth for all of us, that somehow we're all guests in language,  that once we start speaking any language somehow we bow to that language at the same time we bend that language to us."
• Text of another poem by Lee--"Persimmons"; Analysis of "Persimmons"

Robert Hayden "Those Winter Sundays"          --Leading Questions  Relevant Web Sites

Robert Hayden rom Introduction to Poetry (Kennedy) p. 349

1.   Describe the speaker of this poem.  Is he a boy or a man?  Characterize his relationship with his father.
2. What are "the chronic angers of that house" (line 9)?
3. Explain what you understand by the last two lines. Why does the speaker repeat "What did I know, what did I know"? What has he learned about love from his father?
4. Read the poem outloud. What do you notice about the sounds in the poem? How do those sounds relate to the meaning of the poem?


Relevant Web Sites

• An analysis of "Those Winter Sundays"--an on-line paper written by a student for an Introduction to Poetry Course.¨

Theodore Roethke "My Papa's Waltz" (text and brief introd.)           --Leading Questions  Relevant Web Sites

Theodore Roethke from On the Poet and his Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke

1. Readers of this poem often give one of two very different interpretations of the poem. Explain how you would interpret the poem, focussing especially on the poem's tone.  Please pay attention to the expressions such as "hung on like death," "cling to" as well as descriptions of the father's hand.
2. Describe the boy's father. How would you characterize the relationship between the boy and his father?
3. How does the speaker's mother respond to the father and son dancing together? Why do you think the poet uses the word ¡§countenance¡¨ instead of the simpler word ¡§face¡¨? Is this a hint that suggests something about the boy's relationship with his mother?
• rime and rhythm: (from the textbook p. 604)
4. Would you say that the rhythm suggests lightness?  Does the rhythm parallel or ironically contrast with the episode described?
5. What would you say is the function of the stresses in ll. 13-14?
6. More about literary techniques.

1. "I Ask My Mother to Sing," "Those Winter Sundays" and "My Papa's Waltz" are all about the poet's (grand)parents.  Which do you relate to the most?  How is the poet's family or ethnic background related to his poem?
2. Do you find the images of the fathers in these poems different from the mothers'?

Relevant web sites:
• A biographical sketch
• Discussion of the "feminine voice"  in the poem: "In the graphic descriptions of physical violence, the victim's position can be filled by a boy, a girl, or even a battered housewife."  Do you agree?

Walt Whitman "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing"           --Leading Questions  Relevant Web Sites

Whitman (1819-1892) at  the age of 34 from Comprehensive Study Guide p. 9 .

1. What is the main idea that Whitman expresses in this poem?
2. Why has the speaker in line 6 "broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss"? How does this relate to the main idea?

•  Walt Whitman site (Minnesota)--biography, selected poems, relevant sites
• Poetry of Walt Whitman--(Long Island Global Ink)

          This commerical site provides limited background information about the poet as it promotes Long Island. It
          features a colorized image of the poet sporting a "Global Ink" lapel button. The site offers selected poems by Whitman,
          directions to Whitman's birthplace, now located across the street from the Walt Whitman Mall as well as a brief
          bibliography of books about the poet.
• A biographical sketch
• An online edition of the manuscript for Live-oak"
• Walt Whitman Homepage --pictures of the pages of four Walt Whitman notebooks as sources for

          research papers; for teachers and researchers, from Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

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Adrienne Rich "Aunt Jeniffer's Tigers"          --Leading Questions  Relevant Web Sites

Adrienne Rich from Introduction to Poetry (Kennedy) p. 402

"Aunt Jeniffer's Tigers" (1951)
*Understanding & Analysis *Application & Wild Association
1. The poem gives clues about Aunt Jennifer's relationship with her husband. Describe their relationship.
2. The poem also presents the image of Aunt Jennifer as an artist, sewing picture-tapestries. What does she sew on the ¡§screen¡¨?
3. What are the characteristics of the tigers in the poem? How are they like or unlike her husband? How are they like or unlike Aunt Jennifer?
4. More about literary techniques.

1. What does this poem suggest about the role of women in marriage and in society?  Does sexual inequality still happen to you or to people around you?
2. Please look at p. 621 of your textbook   Do you mark the poem as you read?

• A biographical sketch, with selected bibliography, reading of "Miracle Ice Cream" in real audio


For Further Studies

• Adrienne Rich [wnet.org] - brief biography and four poems.
• Hot Ink - Adrienne Rich Refuses to Accept National Medal. Hot Ink is the Pacific Northwest's premiere online magazine of thought and writing. Daily essays about current books, magazines, press, pop culture, and literary topics.