poetry+assignment++for+unit+one

In class today and for homework tonight, I'd like for you to carefully read the two poems that I handed out in class today:

[|Link to Poem] "kitchenette building" by Gwendolyn Brooks "Poem Beginning with a Line by Fitzgerald/Hemingway" by Alicia Ostriker

"kitchenette building" by Gwendolyn Brooks

After reading "kitchenette building" answer the following questions:

1. Consider the title of the poem. What is a kitchenette, and how does it function as a reminder of the daily reality of the speaker's life? 2. Brooks contrasts the word "dream" with the phrases "rent," "feeding a wife," and "satisfying a man" in the first stanza. What point do you think she is trying to make? 3. In the second stanza, Brooks again uses contrasting images: the "white and violet" of dreams and "fried potatoes," "onion fumes," and "yesterday's garbage." How does this further the point that she makes in the first stanza? 4. The final two stanzas make what point about dreams and ideals? What, to the speaker, is more immediate and more important at the moment? How does she communicate this?

"Poem Beginning with a Line by Fitzgerald/Hemingway" by Alicia Ostriker

After reading Ostriker's poem, do your best to answer the following questions:

1. What do you think Ostriker might mean when she says, "I understand the large/Language of rhetoricians, but not the large/ Hearts of the heroes"? Feel free to look up any words that you don't know.

2. Ostriker goes through several examples of real-life heroes, such as Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler, and Andre Trocme. What does Ostriker find so compelling about their stories? Please Google at least one of these historical figures to learn more.

3. On page three of the poem, Ostriker turns her attention back to herself. "I am reading up on this," she repeats, showing that she has studied the lives of her heroes. What has she learned from the stories of these great people? What still puzzles or eludes her?

4. What does Ostriker mean in the final stanza: "none of us/ Can know before the very day arrives"? What, according to Ostriker, can we not know?