What do the footnotes tell us that help us to understand this poem?

Describe the structure of the poem. What “moves” do you see the poet making (i.e. what does he speak about where and why).

How does the structure of “Punishment” reflect the thought of the poem?

What do we learn about the speaker? What does he say about himself?

What is the speaker’s tone? How does the poet accomplish this tone?

What literary devices do you see in this poem? Where, for example, does Olds use alliteration and what is the effect of that repeated sound?

Where does the focus change? What is the effect of that change in focus?

What does last sentence mean? How does Olds use the phrase “took it”

differently at the beginning of the poem than she does at the end?

Stanzas: groups of lines divided from other groups by white space on the page Quatrain: a four-line unit of verse, whether an entire poem, a stanza, or group

of four lines linked by a pattern of rhyme (as in an English or Shakespearean sonnet).

Couplet: two consecutive lines of verse linked by rhyme and meter; the meter of a heroic couplet is iambic pentameter.

Sonnet: a fixed verse form consisting of fourteen lines usually in iambic pentameter. An Italian sonnet consists of eight rhyme-linked lines (an octave) plus six rhyme-linked lines (a sestet), often with either an abbaabba cdecde or abbacddc defdef rhyme scheme. This type of sonnet is also called the Petrarchan sonnet in honor of the Italian poet Petrarch (1304– 74). An English or Shakespearean sonnet instead consists of three quatrains (four- line units) and a couplet and often rhymes abab cdcd efef gg.

Sestina: an elaborate verse structure written in blank verse that consists of six stanzas of six lines each followed by a three- line stanza. The final words of each line in the first stanza appear in variable order in the next five stanzas and are repeated in the middle and at the end of the three lines in the final stanza.

Villanelle: a verse form consisting of nineteen lines divided into six stanzas—five tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quatrain (four- line stanza). The first and third lines of the first tercet rhyme with each other, and this rhyme is repeated through each of the next four tercets and in the last two lines of the concluding quatrain. The villanelle is also known for its repetition of select lines. An example is Dylan Thomas’s "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

Elizabeth Bishop is generally not seen as a poet who was interested in producing autobiographical work or in exposing her private life in her poetry. Indeed, she is famous for the objective, even distant, quality of the speakers in her poetry. Nonetheless, critics sometimes read “Sestina” as an autobiographical work, reflecting the pain and sorrow that surrounded Bishop during much of her childhood. Bishop never knew her father, who died when she was an infant, and was separated from her mother at an early age because of her institutionalization for mental illness. In her mother’s absence, Bishop was raised by family members, including her maternal grandmother—who is perhaps the model for the grandmother in “Sestina.” Bishop originally titled this poem “Early Sorrow” but later changed it to the more impersonal “Sestina.”

Does this biographical information change your understanding of the poem in any way?

What six words are repeated as the end words of the sestina? What is the effect of the repetitiousness of this form?

What is the grandmother trying to hide from the child? Do we know the source of her sadness?

How would you describe the speaker of this poem? Is the speaker aligned with the child? With the grandmother? Or is the speaker a more distant third-person voice? Some amalgam of these?

William Shakespeare [“Shall compare thee to a summer’s day?”] Sonnet 18 There are 154 Shakespearean sonnets. The first 17 sonnets are called the procreation sonnets and are written to a young man, urging him to marry and have children, thereby passing down his beauty to the next generation. 18-126, are addressed to a young man expressing the poet's love for him. Sonnets 127-152 are written to the poet's mistress expressing his strong love for her. The final two sonnets, 153-154, are allegorical.Sonnet form 14 line lyric poem in iambic pentameter: a metrical pattern of poetry that consists of five iambic feet per line (an iamb or an iambic foot consists of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllabus)

Shall Í compáre thee tó a súmmer’s dáy? (shall I comPARE thee TO a SUMmer’s DAY?)English or Shakespearean Sonnet Form: (14 lines)Quatrain 1 A(4 lines) B

AB

Quatrain 2 CDCD

Quatrain 3 EFEF

Couplet G(2 lines) G

Let’s look at the Sonnet Cheat

Sheet together!