* identify some of the key imagery or other kinds of poetic language used in the poem, which you believe are vital to understanding it.
*Here are some possible approaches:
Provide a detailed discussion of how the images function in the poem.
Do the images work together to form a coherent pattern?
What ideas or feelings are conveyed by the images or figurative language?
How do the images contribute to the overall meaning of the poem?
* Do not use outside sources.
See poem below:
A very large elm tree overshadowed Plaths home in Devon. In this poem, the elm speaks to a human listener.
DADDY
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot1
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.2
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.3
In the German tongue, in the Polish town4
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,5
I could hardly speak.
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