Poetry

I just felt I should have more than one post (who knows if I'll have time next week?)

I'm thankful for speakers who come into my classroom this Christmas:
Mary Susan, Peace Corps Volunteer from El Salvador, visits Wednesday (she's already written letters to all my students!)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Daughter in the latest Die Hard movie and born in Rocky Mt., speaks Friday!

National Boards is making me smarter. I'm going to analyze a poem to death for the students and teach them AP stuff so they can analyze their own. This will also prepare me for the exam I have to take sometime in April. I think this poem has a lot to say:

"The Death of a Toad" Richard Wilbur
A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge and sanctuaried him
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen heartshaped leaves in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.

The rare original heartsblood goes,
Spends on the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
As still as if he would return to stone,
And soundlessly attending, dies
Toward some deep monotone,

Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.
Day dwindles, drowning, and at length is gone
In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
To watch, across the castrate lawn,
The haggard daylight steer.