Questions for "Success is counted Sweetest"

1. According to the speaker, who is likely to count success as sweetest? Do you think the poet is accurate in describing the feelings of people who fail?
2. Purple is a color associated with blood shed in battle (the Purple Heart medal is given to soldiers wounded or killed in action). It is also a color associated with royalty and nobility. What do you think is the “purple Host” in line 5?
3. Whose ear is mentioned in line 10? Why is the ear “forbidden”?
4. Describe the image you see in the last stanza. How could this image be extended to refer to other situations in life? Explain.
5. Have you ever been like the soldier in the last stanza – in agony because someone else is proclaimed the winner? What other circumstances in life (other than a wartime battle) could this situation be applied to? (Could it describe the feelings of a poet who could not publish her work?)

Questions for "Medusa"

1. The poem opens with a surprising statement. Who is speaking? What is ironic about what she is saying?
2. Medusa is both a victim of metamorphosis and one of its greatest agents. What do you think is the tone of line 6 – “I too was human”? How does Medusa feel about her own metamorphosis?
3. Humans dread Medusa, yet Medusa herself dreads something. According to lines 11-14, what does she dread, and why?
4. Lines 15-27 delve deeply into Medusa's character. What does Medusa threaten to do? What is her motivation – the reason for her plans?
5. In the final stanza, what is about to happen, unknown to Medusa?
6. How does the poet's use of the first-person point of view affect your feelings about Medusa?

Questions for the William Carlos Williams poems

1. Think about what Williams has in mind when he says, “so much depends upon a red wheel barrow.” What might he be saying about poetry or art? Do you agree with him?
2. In “The Red Wheelbarrow,” Williams focuses on an ordinary workday object. Are the subjects of “The Great Figure” and “This Is Just to Say” eqully ordinary? Explain.
3. The painter Charles Henry Demuth (1883-1935) was so struck by the dynamic imagery in “The Great Figure” that he painted The Figure 5 In Gold (which I will post, if need be). What movement do you see in the painting? What do you hear in the poem itself?
4. What one word is used metaphorically to describe the fire truck as if it were a person?
5. How would the feeling of “The Great Figure” change if the colors were different? Try it and see.
6. Which one of the five senses does the imagery in “This Is Just to Say” primarily appeal to?
7. Whom do you think the speaker of “This Is Just to Say” is addressing? What response do you imagine he or she will receive and why?
   

Question for three paragraph essay

Do you think writing a poem is an effective way to “bear witness to historical events”? Explain.

Questions for "The Memory of Elena"

1. Who is speaking in the poem? Whose story is the narrator telling?
2. Write a sentence or two summing up what happens in each stanza.
3. The visual imagery of the poem is deliberately shocking. Which images do you see most clearly? How do they link past and present events?
4. Find three images of sound in the poem and three instances of silence. Why does the speaker emphasize silence?
5. What details of Elena's identity and her experiences in Buenos Aires are spelled out in Bill Moyers's interview with Forche? (the interview is a little long for me to post, but if it is necessary, I will) Do you need to know these details in order to understand the poem? Would you have preferred the poem to include all the details Forche gives in the interview? Why or why not?

Questions for "Plenos poderes"/"Full Powers"

1. In the first stanza, why might the night inhibit the speaker from writing?
2. What could the “keys” in line 8 unlock for the speaker? What do you think he means by “night” and “darkness in the second stanza?
3. In line 14, what does the speaker mean by “I am weary neither of being nor of non-being”? Explain.
4. What could the speaker mean by his “debts to minerality” (line 17)?
5. Why does the speaker “keep on going,” according to lines 19-20?
6. Why might the poem be titled “Full Powers”? What is the source of the speaker's creative powers?