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USE THE QUESTION BELOW AS A GUIDE WHEN RESPONDING TO THE POEMS( READ AND RESPOND TO ALL THE POEMS SEPARATELY) just use few of the question below not all.
Suggestions for Reading and Responding to Poetry
One of the main things I learned about reading poetry when I was a freshman in college was to look up words that seemed unfamiliar or important—even words that I thought I knew. Poets often use words that have double meanings or that add intensity to a thought. Poetry is about “words,” as much as rhyme and meter. Blake’s use of the word “appall” comes to mind. It means to dismay or horrify, and could also mean (if made into two words–a pall) the cloth spread over a coffin or tomb.
Here are the questions for a personal response to the poetry:
What did you like about the poem?
What didn’t you like?
Do you relate to the poem personally? In what way?
What are your favorite lines?
What did you learn from the poem? (This could be something factual or historical, or it could be something you learned about life in general.)
Would you read this poem to a friend? Why?
How does the poem reflect the poet’s philosophical beliefs?
How does the poem relate to the poet’s life?
What words did you look up as you were reading the poem? Be sure to include definitions.
*Questions 1-10 come directly from Writing Essays about Literature (6th edition) by Kelley Griffith (Harcourt 2002). You do not need to answer all of the questions.
1. Who is speaking?
2. What characterizes the speaker? (What kind of person is the speaker?)
3. To whom is he or she speaking?
4. What is the speaker’s tone?
5. What is his or her emotional state?
6. Why is he or she speaking?
7. What situation is being described?
8. What are the conflicts or tensions in this situation
9. How is setting–social situation, physical place, and time–important to the speaker?
10. What ideas is the speaker communicating?
11. What figures of speech does the poet use?
12. How does the poet use rhyme and rhythm?
13. What allusions does the poet use? How do these affect your understanding of the poem?
This is a wonderful discussion about how to read a poem by Edward Hirsch, Houston poet, from the Academy of American Poets website
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/how-read-poem-0
Here

are the questions he includes.
Talking Back to a Poem
It would be convenient if there were a short list of universal questions, ones that could be used anytime with any poem. In the absence of such a list, here are a few general questions that you might ask when approaching a poem for the first time:
Who is the speaker?
What circumstances gave rise to the poem?
What situation is presented?
Who or what is the audience?
What is the tone?
What form, if any, does the poem take?
How is form related to content?
Is sound an important, active element of the poem?
Does the poem spring from an identifiable historical moment?
Does the poem speak from a specific culture?
Does the poem have its own vernacular?
Does the poem use imagery to achieve a particular effect?
What kind of figurative language, if any, does the poem use?
If the poem is a question, what is the answer?
If the poem is an answer, what is the question?
What does the title suggest?
Does the poem use unusual words or use words in an unusual way?
FROM CANE
Georgia Dusk
The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkness for night’s barbecue,
A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the south
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft setting pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.
Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghost of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.
Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High –priests, an ostrich , and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.
Their voices rise…. the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain….
Their voices rise.. the chorus of the cane
Is caroling a vesper to the stars…….
O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.
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