TP-CASTT the Poem of Your Choice

Select a poem to analyze using TP-CASTT.  You may select a poem from any of the following poets:
Emily Dickenson
Andrew Marvell
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
John Donne
Lord Byron
Good Luck!

Making Poetry FIT

http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/672/

This is a simplified approach to analyzing any poem that you might encounter in a typical AP English Lit exam.  You are going to FIT the pieces of the poem together to try and make sense of it quickly so you can complete the writing or questions that accompany it.

F is for FACTS  Read the lines.  Gather as much indisputable information about the poem as possible.  Who is the author?  What is the form?  Is there a rhyme scheme?  If so, what is it?  Who is the speaker?  What is the action?  What are the images of the poem?  Wen establishing facts, find as many as possible, even those that seem obvious. 

I is for INTERPRETATION  Read between the lines.  Once the facts have been established (e.g. it's an elegy in rhyming couplets, the speaker is a young girl whose father has just died, it takes place in a graveyard, it was written in 1714), you should begin to ask certain questions about the poem that will lead you from mere observation to more sophisticated reading moves such as inference.  Is the speaker serious or ironic?  What seems to be the overall tone?  How is this tone achieved?  Does the rhyme scheme contribute anything to mood?   In this way, interpretation build off of solid observation to produce more sure footed analysis than you might sometimes produce when attempting to read poems.

T is for THEME  Read beyond the text.  After you have used basic observations to make reasonable interpretations about a poem, they can pose the ultimate question that will render an insightful reading.  Why, after all would someone bother to write a poem on a specific topic or use an image to capture an emotion?  Why would readers value the ideas and artistry of the lines in a particular work?  Does it contain themes relevant today even though it was penned two centuries ago?  How can we know?

Read this poem using the FIT approach.  Answer the following questions:
How does form embody meaning in this poem?  Does the sonnet form reinforce Shelley's ideas?  Interpret the poem with insight.

Testing 1, 2, 3.

Write your reaction to the AP practice exam.  What was hard, what was easy?  How did you feel about taking it?  Was it what you expected?  If you had to make a plan for the actual exam, what things, what skills do you think you would improve upon.  Make an estimated guess as to what you scored on the exam.

Literary Devices Anyone?

The following poem, written by Edward Field, makes use of the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus.* Read the poem carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze how Field employs literary devices in adapting the Icarus myth to a contemporary setting.

Icarus

Only the feathers floating around the hat

Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred

Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore

The confusing aspects of the case,

5 And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.

So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply

“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus

Had swum away, coming at last to the city

Where he rented a house and tended the garden.

10 “That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called him,

Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit

Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings

Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once

Compelled the sun. And had he told them

15 They would have answered with a shocked, uncomprehending stare.

No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;

Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:

What was he doing aging in a suburb?

Can the genius of the hero fall

20 To the middling stature of the merely talented?

And nightly Icarus probes his wound

And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,

Constructs small wings and tries to fly

To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:

25 Fails every time and hates himself for trying.

He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,

And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;

But now rides commuter trains,

Serves on various committees,

30 And wishes he had drowned.