o words been conpared
b) What have
with in the poem
Answers
Answer:
When I used to ask students what a poem is, I would get answers like “a painting in words,” or “a medium for self-expression,” or “a song that rhymes and displays beauty.” None of these answers ever really satisfied me, or them, and so for a while I stopped asking the question.
Then one time, I requested that my students bring in to class something that had a personal meaning to them. With their objects on their desks, I gave them three prompts: first, to write a paragraph about why they brought in the item; second, to write a paragraph describing the item empirically, as a scientist might; and third, to write a paragraph in the first-person from the point-of-view of the item. The first two were warm-ups. Above the third paragraph I told them to write “Poem.”
Here is what one student wrote:
Poem
I might look weird or terrifying, but really I’m a device that helps people breathe. Under normal circumstances nobody needs me. I mean, I’m only used for emergencies and even then only for a limited time. If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to use me. Then again, I can see some future time when everybody will have to carry me around.
The item he had brought to class? A gas mask. The point of this exercise wasn’t only to illustrate the malleability of language or the playfulness of writing, but to present the idea that a poem is a strange thing which operates as nothing else in the world does.
I suppose most of us have known poems are strange ever since we were infants being put to bed with lullabies like “Rock-a-bye baby,” or were children being taught prayers that begin “Our Father who art in Heaven….” The questions soon arose: What idiot put that cradle in a tree? And what’s art got to do with my Daddy-God? But this kind of strangeness we got used to. And later, at some point in school, we asked or were made to ask again: What is a poem?