This document provides objectives and instructions for analyzing how tone, word choice, word order, and images are used in poems to define their meanings and themes. Students are asked to choose one of four poems, describe the overall tone and cite words or phrases that create that tone. They should also describe an image from the poem, and how it affects them as well as how the poet presents it. The goal is to identify literary devices used in poems and how they shape understanding of the work.

1. Objectives
Identify the use of tone, word choice, word order, and images in
a poem
Describe how these concepts help to define the meanings and
themes that are generated by the poem
Instructions
1. Choose one of the following four poems:
o Sharon Olds “Last Night”
o John Keats “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
o Gwendolyn Brooks “We Real Cool”
o Louis Simpson “In the Suburbs”
2. Describe the overall tone, the feeling you get, from the
poem. Then choose a couple of words or phrases in the poem
that you feel help to create that feeling, that tone, and describe
why, or how, they are able to create that tone.
3. describe an image from one of the above poems. Tell us the
effect that the image had on you, as well as how the poet
presents the image.