Page 18 - Point 5 Literature Program Option 1 Teachers Guide (2) (1)

Answer Key to Summative Assessment
(see rubrics on page 87)

the Answer Key offers possible answers to the Summative Assessment questions. Students’ answers
will vary. remember to accept any answer that the student can justify from the text.

Answers might include:
1. I is the speaker/poet and them are the students/readers of the poem.
2. The poet is saying that understanding poetry is experimental but also systematic and logical, like science.

3. The poet wrote the poem to encourage students to read and enjoy poetry.
4. a. Explaining patterns
b. Repetition and alliteration are ways of creating patterns that cohere or unify a poem. For example, the
grammatical structure of the first four lines of the poem is ask, and, or repeated in a very similar structure in the
next three lines, say, and, or.

Alliteration is used frequently in the poem, for example, I want them to waterski.
I think Collins purposely did not use a rhyme scheme, as he wanted the poem to be free, like a conversation, so
anyone could understand it easily without having to have a knowledge of classical poetic meter.

Also, a rhyme scheme can be seen with the eye but repetition and especially alliteration are more obvious
to the ear, which means the poem would need to be read aloud to be properly appreciated, and this is what
Collins believes is necessary for all poetry to be fully understood.
c. I chose the HOTS of Explaining patterns because the repetition creates word patterns and alliteration is a
sound pattern, used to unify themes and images in a poem.
5. Collins’ own experience taught him that if you listen to a lot of poetry, as he did from his mother, you can learn
to love it. This helps me understand why he started Poetry 180 – to give students an opportunity to listen to
poetry on a regular basis – and why he chose this poem, which talks about the pure enjoyment of poetry, to be
the first poem. Perhaps in this way, many more people would learn to love poetry as he did.

18 introduction to poetry