1a. In "Forgotten Language," what language did the speaker used to know?
2a. What do all of Hector's treasures have in common?
3a. What does Hector call to the people? What do they say in response?
4a. In what ways did the speaker of "Forgotten Language" once communicate with the different elements in nature?
5a. Why does Hector love his things more than obviously valuable things?
1b. How might the speaker have forgotten the language?
2b. Why might these things be valuable to Hector?
3b. Why does Hector do this? Why do the people respond this way?
4b. What might "forgotten language" signify?
5b. How might Hector have reacted to the peoples' response? What might he say to the people? How might he one day change his thinking?
Repetition. What does the repetition in "Forgotten Language" indicate about the speaker's focus? What is the speaker dwelling on? Explain whether repetition makes the poem more meaningful? How does repetition enhance the rhythm of "Hector the Collector"?
Rhyme. How do internal rhymes help tighten the poem "Hector the Collector"? In what ways do end rhymes help weave the poem?
1. Choose one of the poems in this unit and make a comic strip on your own paper to illustrate it. Submit the poem and your comic strip to your school newspaper or to a different publication.
2. Suppose you are writing an editorial about airplane noise in your neighborhood. In your editorial, create an onomatopoeia for the sound a low-flying airplane makes.
3. Imagine that you are Hector the Collector as an adult and that you are opening a business to buy and sell antiques and collectors' items. Write a jingle advertising your store.
Techniques of Sound. Write a poem on a subject you find appealing and use at least three of the sound techniques highlighted in this unit. Try to incorporate aspects of rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, and repetition. You may want to begin your poem by free writing. Write down words and phrases that you like and that create interesting sound combinations. Then work the phrases together into a poem.
Blends. Blends are new words created by joining together two existing words. Look at the following list of words and try to figure out what two words were combined to make each blend. Then, create five new blends of your own. Write them in contextual sentences on the board in your classroom to see if your classmates can guess what two words each blend was derived from.
1. glimmer
2. smash
3. squiggle
4. motel
5. mingy
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Evaluating an Internet Site. Using a computer with an Internet connection, look up the Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion homepage at http://www.poetrysociety.org/motion/homepage.html. Explore the site and its links and find answers to the following questions:
What is Poetry in Motion? Who started the program?
Where does this program function?
What is the Poetry Society of America? What do members of the society do?
How well does this page and related pages convey information? How well do these pages attract a person's attention?
On a scale of 1–10, with 1 being the lowest rating and 10 being the highest, rate this Internet site. Give solid reasons for your evaluation.?
