Write an analytic response to a favorite piece of literature. Analyze a poem, a play, or a story. Make sure to utilize the resources available in your lesson to prepare for your assignment.
Please do it about one of these poems:
The Fish By: Elizabeth Bishop
I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
5 He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
10 his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
15 stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
2 0 and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
-the frightening gills,
2 5 fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly-
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
3 0 the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
3 5 which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
4 0 of old scratched isinglass.1
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
-It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
4 5 I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
-if you could call it a lip-
5 0 grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
5 5 grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
6 0 when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
6 5 I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
7 0 around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts2
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels3 -until everything
7 5 was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
Danny Deever By: Rudyard Kipling
Poem, Kipling writes in dialect, a distinct form of a language, spoken by people living in a particular region or belonging to a particular group. The characters' dialect re?ects their working-class British origins.
"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.1
"To turn you out, to turn you out," the Color-Sergeant2 said.
"What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-
Parade.
"I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch," the Color-Sergeant said.
5 For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead
March play,
The regiment's in 'ollow square3 -they're hangin' him
today;
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
"What makes the rear-rank breathe so 'ard?" said Files-on-
Parade.
10 "It's bitter cold, it's bitter cold," the Color-Sergeant said.
"What makes that front-rank man fall down?" says Files-on-
Parade.
"A touch o' sun, a touch o' sun," the Color-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Danny Deever, they are marchin' of 'im
round,
They 'ave 'alted Danny Deever by 'is coffin on the ground;
15 An' 'e'll swing in 'arf a minute for a sneakin' shootin'
hound-
O they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'!
"'Is cot was right-'and cot to mine," said Files-on-Parade.
"'E's sleepin' out an' far tonight," the Color-Sergeant said.
"I've drunk 'is beer a score o' times," said Files-on-Parade.
2 0 "'E's drinkin' bitter beer alone," the Color-Sergeant said.
They are hangin' Danny Deever, you must mark 'im to
'is place,
For 'e shot a comrade sleepin'-you must look 'im in the face;
Nine 'undred of 'is county an' the regiment's disgrace,
While they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.