Poetry Craft Lesson

Deepening

After Great Pain

Works:
“Poem 341” by Emily Dickinson

Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to facilitate engaging conversation about the text.

Procedure
1. Read through the poem: mark, draw, underline, annotate

2. Then, softly, the teacher gives the students a series of images from the poem to
thinkabout and to write about indirectly.

• what do you see?

• what do you feel?
• what are you reminded of
• what might it mean?

So, using the questions above, have students write for two - three minutes about
each of the following images.

“The hour of lead”

“nerves sit ceremonious like tombs”
“the feet, mechanical, go round”
“a wooden way”
“a quartz contentment, like a stone”
“the hour of lead “

3. Look back at the poem. How do the images (and your responses) relate-
connections- of differences as well as of similarity

4. Then write again about #3

5. Next- list your likes and dislikes and why

6. Finally, write a simple assertion about the poem

Assignment / Connection
Share one of your last two writings or notes