Responding to poetry

When responding to poetry in our response journals, you have a lot of leeway and options. A lot more than you've used thus far. I apologize for not making them more explicit up until now; no one loathes doing something wrong more than an AP student, so figuring you'd explore when I said explore was, well, just silly of me. So here are some possibilities. Hopefully, they will inspire you to expand the level and type of your engagement.

Some Poetry Response Options
Personal
Form
Political
Structure
Rhythm/meter
Thematic
Cultural
Comparison
Diction
Patterns
Figurative language
Allusions to...
Connections to...

The options are limited primarily by your experience and what you have to bring to the poems. The two most important things to getting something out of this process are

1. Read all the poems every week.
2. Make your responses authentic. Find a way to not make your responses simply a fulfillment of a requirement. Poetry, like music, is one of humanity's means of making real connections with the world and those around us, of understanding ourselves, our world, and our place in it.

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