Terminology and Attitude

How we talk about texts and, even more importantly, how we approach them--from what angle we view them, how we ""inform" our reading--this is our next unit of study.
Assignments in a nutshell:
1- Examine the poem, " My Grandmother's Love Letters" for what you think it is about--literally, figuratively, and every other way.  Write LOTS of notes all over the text as you think it through.
2- Be sure you REALLY understand three terms on the Literary Terms Glossary List: metaphysical conceit, meiosis, and apostrophe.
3- Memorize your poem for POL this weekend!

Mrs. E

My Grandmother's Love Letters

There are no stars tonightBut those of memory.Yet how much room for memory there isIn the loose girdle of soft rain. There is even room enoughFor the letters of my mother’s mother,Elizabeth,That have been pressed so longInto a corner of the roofThat they are brown and soft,And liable to melt as snow. Over the greatness of such spaceSteps must be gentle.It is all hung by an invisible white hair.It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air. And I ask myself: “Are your fingers long enough to playOld keys that are but echoes:Is the silence strong enoughTo carry back the music to its sourceAnd back to you againAs though to her?” Yet I would lead my grandmother by the handThrough much of what she would not understand;And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roofWith such a sound of gently pitying laughter.