Imagery and Personification

1. Imagery and Personification A poetic activity

2. Personification Personification is giving human qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics to things that are not human. The mirror is a fortune teller, It shows images for concern. Hair clumped like seaweed, From yesterday’s bad perm. The mirror sneers and laughs As I battle with my brush, I have curled my hair to death, It is no longer shiny and lush. Example

3. Personification "The ancient cargroaned into third gear." "The cloudscattered rain throughout the city." "The tropical stormslept for two days.” • The nonliving objects in the above sentences (car, cloud, storm) have been given human qualities (groaned, scattered, slept). • Adding meaning to nonliving or nonhuman objects in this manner is called personification.

4. Personification • Personify the following sentences. Change the words in parentheses to words that would describe a human's actions: 1.My bedroom door (opened). 2.The puppy (barked) when I left for school. 3.The leaf (fell) from the tree. 4.The flashlight (went on). 5.Hair (is) on my head. 6.The CD player (made a noise). 7.The net (moves) when the basketball goes through. 8.The player piano keys (moved up and down). 9.The space shuttle (took off). 10.The little arrow (moves) across the computer screen. My bedroom door yawned.

5. Step One: Create vivid, active and interesting imagery Imagery is language that appeals to the five senses (taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound.) Youhave one minute to arrange the nouns and verbs at the top of your worksheet into random pairs. Do not try to arrange the words to make sense — the stranger the combination, the better! For example, don’t choose ‘fly’ and ‘swoop’ because a fly can swoop. You could choose fly and mumbles because a fly doesn’t mumble in real life.

6. Step Two: Link words • Choose you favorite word pairs and link them together with a theme. • For example, I might link my favorite word pairs by the themes of either sleeping and dreaming.

7. Step Three: Let your mind create crazy images of your pairs • Answer the following questions about each pair. • Try to keep the theme in mind when answering them.

8. Step Four: Edit (because more is less when it comes to poetry) Cross out the words you don’t want, circle the ones you do want to keep and then try to make a line of poetry.

9. Step Four: Edit (because more is less when it comes to poetry) • Cross out the words you don’t want to keep . • Circle the words you do want to keep. • Try to make a line of poetry. • Here is an example: • The full moon boils at midnight in a starless sky. • My smile shouts, "I'm not quite ready to wake up yet!" • My eyes swing under blankets of dreams. • My mind dances with blue unicorns and cotton candy flowers.

10. Step Five: Put the lines in order • Order can really change the meaning and help your ideas seem more connected. • Compare the original example to the reordered example. • How has reordering the lines changed the meaning slightly? • Which one do you think is better? Original The full moon boils at midnight in a starless sky.My smile shouts, "I'm not quite ready to wake up yet!" My eyes swing under blankets of dreams.My mind dances with blue unicorns and cotton candy flowers. The full moon boils at midnight in a starless sky. My eyes swing under blankets of dreams. My mind dances with blue unicorns and cotton candy flowers. My smile shouts, "I'm not quite ready to wake up yet!" Reordered

11. Illustration • Rewrite your poem on drawing paper. • Decorate it with the images you visualize when reading your text. The full moon boils at midnight in a starless sky. My eyes swing under blankets of dreams. My mind dances with blue unicorns and cotton candy flowers. My smile shouts, "I'm not quite ready to wake up yet!"