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Literature tests

NAME: Daniel Grenbom

Test No 1: Introduction to Poetry/Billy Collins Answer TWO the following questions: 1. What literary elements does Billy Collins use in his poem? 2. How did reading about Billy Collins help you understand the poem Introduction to Poetry? 3. Which thinking skills can be used when analyzing the poem? Explain how using them helps you understand the poem. ANSWERS 1. The literary elements used by Collins are imagery, similes, metaphors, personification, tone, rhythm and rhyme. The poem presents a number of images. For example, he suggests the reader regard the poem as a color slide and holds it against the light. Comparing it to a color slide using the word "like" makes it into a simile. When he compares the poem to a maze, he uses a metaphor. By giving the poem human qualities, he uses personification. At the beginning, the tone is pleasant for all the activities described are either about having fun or an adventure. However, in the last lines of the poem the tone changes since he talks about torture and abuse of the poem by the readers. The similes and metaphors indicate that the reader should use his senses (auditory, visual, tactile, orientation) to enjoy reading the poem, while the use of personification indicates that the poem is regarded as a person holding a secret who is unwilling to tell it to the reader and therefore, the reader needs to beat it out of the poem. 2. Collins started the program Poetry 180 because he believed that poems are meant to be read out loud and become a feature of daily life and not something that is just taught. Being a poet and teacher he knows that students come across poetry only in the classroom, where they deal with it in the form of analysis rather than for the purpose of enjoyment. This explains the poem, which talks about the two ways of dealing with poetry, the one he recommends and the one commonly practiced. 3. The thinking skills that can be used when reading this poem are inferring and distinguishing different perspectives. They are very helpful in understanding the poem since most of the information is not given literally in the poem. Through inference we can understand what each of the images aims at and by using the thinking skill distinguishing different perspectives we can see that there are two points of view his and theirs. We can infer who the "they" are by reading of the methods "they" use to divulge the "secret" the poem holds, whereas the "I" aims at having fun and enjoying the text of the poem.

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