Formulating Ideas/Questions about Art

Use Bloom's taxonomy to generate questions about these paintings. Choose a painting that, for whatever reason, makes you curious about it. Have a look back at Bloom's taxonomy and for each level of thinking, write out a question (one question for "knowledge," one for "comprehension," etc.) When you have six good questions, study the picture and write out your best answers. The length of your answers is not as important as whether the questions have elicited answers that really help you understand the painting.




Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) "The Potato Eaters"



Salvadore Dali (1904-1989) "The Persistence of Memory"



William Blake (1757-1827) "Urizen"



Edward Hopper (1882-1967) "Nighthawks"



Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) "Guernica"



Edvard Munch (1863-1944) "The Scream"



Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) "The Man with the Blue Guitar"



David Hockney (born 1937) "Lawn Being Sprinkled"


Hieronymous Bosch (c. 1450-1516) "Garden of Earthly Delights"

Two Poems about Fathers

Those Winter Sundays

Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?


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My Papa's Waltz
Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

Formulating Ideas/Questions about Poetry

First of all, poetry is not a riddle or puzzle to figure out. It is an expression of the writer's ideas and feelings put in a form that transfers its meaning. The content, or subject, of the poem is tied inextricably with the form of the poem--how the poet express his subject. Any analysis of the poem's meaning requires examining the form the poem takes. Here's a strategy you can use to "unfold" a poem to see how it works. It's a somewhat laborious process, but you'll take more meaning from a poem--and have more intelligent things to say about it--if you study the way the way it's put together.

UNFOLDING A POEM: A STRATEGY

Poems worthy of study contain both romantic and classical qualities: sensory, emotional and spiritual "truths", and underlying form, compositional organization and structural logic. Poetry is art made from words; it has the power to evoke and relate emotional and ideational content. It represents the most challenging and rewarding experience language can offer.

This lesson is designed to give you a technique for unfolding a poem, probe its ideas and design, and help you understand and appreciate the power and beauty of poetry.


After reading a poem a few times open-mindedly, with a minimum of pre-conceptions, proceed through the following sequence:

I. THE VOICE IN THE POEM

1. Identify the speaker in the poem.

2. How distant from the subject is the speaker (narrator is part of the poem; camera-view; omniscient?)

3. Are overt judgments made by the speaker? Where? To what extent? In what way?

4. Characterize the tone in the poem. Identify the words/qualities in the poem which contribute to the tone.


II. THE CONTENT OF THE POEM

1. Describe--literally-what is going on in the poem. What is happening? What is being described? What is presented to the reader?

2. Identify any juxtaposition of ideas, feelings, events, objects, images, etc. Note especially any contrasts, tensions, correspondences, or discrepancies between these ideas, images, etc.

3. Relate the title to the poem's content.


III. THE DICTION IN THE POEM

1. Describe the use of abstract/concrete diction in the poem. Is there a pattern apparent? Describe it.

2. Which phrases are meant literally, and which figuratively? Identify any figurative language.

3. Identify the level of usage throughout the poem (vulgate through formal English). Try to relate level of usage to both the speaker and what is happening in the poem.

4. Look up the definitions and references of any unfamiliar word or allusion.

5. Choose a few words you feel are central to the poem. Make a list of the connotations, then find similar words in the poem with the same connotations. Try to relate these connotations to the tone of the poem.


IV. THE IMAGES IN THE POEM

1. List the images in the poem. What emotional or intellectual responses and associations do they convey?

2. Is there a pattern in the poem's imagery? A continuity of associations or feelings? Describe it.

3. Relate the images to the content of the poem. Relate the imagery to the tone and persona in the poem.


V. THE STRUCTURE OF THE POEM

1. Describe the form of the poem (stanzas, line lengths, rhyme scheme, etc.).

2. Describe the order of sequence of ideas, images, events, etc.

3. Look for symmetry. Speculate on the poet's intention.

4. Relate the content of the poem to its structure.



Now you're ready to take a chance at interpreting the poem. Review your notes from I through V, then read the whole poem aloud a few more times. Connect your ideas in a logical, sequential order. Interpret the meaning of the poem by explaining the poem's component parts and how they work together to create the total effect.

Try this strategy on the following poem:


Hawk Roosting


I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.

The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

Ted Hughes