Part 3— The Strength of Family

1. BIG IDEA Part 3—The Strength of Family Family members sometimes seem to give one another endless grief, but the real truth about families lies in their healing power. The poems in Part 3 explore the strength of families. As you read the poems, ask yourself: What about my family might others find inspiring?

2. MENU Sound Devices LITERARY FOCUS Grape Sherbet Comparing LiteratureAcross Genres Good night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning Beyond the Bedroom Wall The Death of My Father Elena My Mother Combs My Hair • Visual Perspective:from Bone: Out From Boneville Lineage

3. LITERARY FOCUS Sound Devices What does sound contribute to poetry? A poem’s impact depends not only on what it says but on how it sounds. Read “The Bells” on page 620aloud or, if that is impractical, read each word so you hear it in your head.

4. LITERARY FOCUS Sound Devices • Sound devices are the elements in poetry that appeal to the ear. Poets use them to establish mood, create rhythm, reinforce meaning, or add a musical quality. Examples of sound devices include • alliteration • assonance • consonance • onomatopoeia • repetition

5. LITERARY FOCUS Sound Devices Alliteration The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words is called alliteration. Poets use alliteration as a way of emphasizing important words in the poem. Note the alliteration Poe uses in “The Bells”:

6. LITERARY FOCUS Sound Devices Assonance The repetition of similar vowel sounds within non-rhyming words is called assonance. Assonance is often used in place of end rhyme, especially in ballads and free verse. Like all sound devices, assonance helps unify a poem and emphasize important ideas.

7. LITERARY FOCUS Sound Devices Consonance Consonance When two words have different vowel sounds but share a single consonant sound —such as brick and clock — they are said to have consonance. Like assonance, consonance can be used in place of rhyme or to supplement rhyme.

8. LITERARY FOCUS Sound Devices Onomatopoeia Words such as “ping,” “splash,” and “knock” are examples of another sound device. Onomatopoeia is the use of words that imitate the sound of what they describe. Poe uses onomatopoeia in “The Bells”:

9. LITERARY FOCUS Sound Devices Repetition The repetition of a sound, word, phrase, line, or even an entire stanza is another frequently used poetic sound device. Repetition can occur anywhere in a poem, including within lines, and from one stanza to another. Among other things, poets use repetition to create unity and mood, and enhance meaning.

10. LITERARY FOCUS Sound Devices Repetition Notice how repetition affects the sound of the lines below:

11. MENU Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove • Selection Menu(pages 622–626) Before You Read Reading the Selection After You Read

12. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove • Meet Rita Dove Perhaps you think of a poet as a person with his or her head buried in a notebook all day, struggling to create the perfect phrase. Not Rita Dove. “If you don’t have a life, then I don’t see where you’re going to write your poems from,” she has said. Dove is serious about poetry, but she also finds joy in classical voice training, ballroom dancing, and playing the viola de gamba—a seventeenth-century instrument similar to the cello.

13. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERATURE PREVIEW • Connecting to the Poem “Grape Sherbet” takes place on Memorial Day, an American holiday created to remember those who died while serving their country in the armed forces. People often spend the holiday visiting with family and friends.

14. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERATURE PREVIEW • Connecting to the Poem Before you read the poem, think about the following questions: • Does your family have a traditional way of celebrating Memorial Day? • What childhood memories do you have of holidays spent with parents or guardians?

15. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERATURE PREVIEW • Building Background In 1868 General John Logan, the leader of a group of former Civil War soldiers, declared, “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” Memorial Day was traditionally observed on May 30, but is now observed on the last Monday in May.

16. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERATURE PREVIEW • Setting Purposes for Reading The Strength of Family BIG IDEA As you read “Grape Sherbet,” notice how Dove describes her father and what this description tells you about their relationship.

17. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERATURE PREVIEW • Setting Purposes for Reading Assonance and Consonance Literary Element Assonance is the repetition of the same or similar vowel sounds in poetry or other writing. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds, typically at the end of nonrhyming words and preceded by different vowel sounds. As you read “Grape Sherbet,” note instances of assonance and consonance.

18. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove READING PREVIEW Making Inferences About Setting Reading Strategy Setting is the time and place in which the events of a literary work occur. You can often determine the setting even if it is not directly stated. Look for clues in “Grape Sherbet” from which you can infer the setting.

19. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove READING PREVIEW Making Inferences About Setting Reading Strategy Reading Tip: Noting Details Create a chart like the one below to help you list and categorize details that define the setting in “Grape Sherbet.”

20. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove READING PREVIEW Vocabulary gelledadj. in a semisolid state after having been liquid; p. 624 The treat was made of gelled lemonade. dollopn. a glob of a soft, mushy substance; p. 624 He spooned a dollop of whipped cream onto his pie. Click a vocabulary term to listen to the definition.

21. BEFORE YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove READING PREVIEW Vocabulary Vocabulary Tip: Analogies Analogies are one way to show relation-ships between words that might not usually be thought of as similar. To finish an analogy, decide what relationship exists between the first two things or ideas. Then apply that relationship to another pair of words and see if it is the same.

22. READING THE SELECTION Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Making Inferences About Setting Reading Strategy • Read the first highlighted passage on page 624. • “. . .through the grassed-over mounds • and named each stone” What place is the speaker describing in these lines? She is describing a cemetery.

23. READING THE SELECTION Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Assonance and Consonance Literary Element • Read the second highlighted passage on page 624. • “I’ve been trying • to remember the taste, • but it doesn’t exist. Which words in these lines create assonance? Which create consonance? The words I’ve and trying create assonance by repeating the long i sound, and it and exist repeat the short i sound. The words taste, but, it, doesn’t, and exist all contain the t sound, which creates consonance.

24. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Responding and Thinking Critically • Respond How are the speaker’s Memorial Day experiences the same as or different from your own?

25. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Responding and Thinking Critically • Recall and Interpret (a)What is the masterpiece of the speaker’s father? (b)How do you know? (a) The grape sherbet (b) Clues are the title of the poem and lines 12–14: “each dollop / of sherbet, later, / is a miracle.”

26. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Responding and Thinking Critically • Recall and Interpret (a)List two ways the speaker describes the grape sherbet. (b)What do you think is so special about this treat? (a) “swirled snow, gelled light”; “a miracle” (b) The father makes it just for this holiday; it tastes different from anything else.

27. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Responding and Thinking Critically • Recall and Interpret (a)What did the speaker of the poem do that morning? (b)Why does that experience make the sherbet seem like “a miracle”? (a) The speaker played in the cemetery. (b) Eating the sherbet makes everyone glad to be alive, in contrast to the dead lying in the cemetery.

28. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Responding and Thinking Critically • Analyze and Evaluate In the first line of the poem, the speaker describes the day as “Memorial.” Explain at least two different meanings the word might have within the context of the poem. Use a dictionary if you need help. The literal meaning is the holiday set aside to remember the war dead. Memorial also means “a reminder of a person or of somebody’s life and work.”

29. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Responding and Thinking Critically • Analyze and Evaluate (a) What does line 2, “After the grill,” mean? (b) Why does the poet use so few words to describe what is happening? (a) It means “after the meal prepared on the grill.” (b) To suggest flashes of images or memories

30. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Responding and Thinking Critically • Analyze and Evaluate (a) Who is the speaker of this poem? Explain how you know. (b) Who is she referring to when she uses the pronoun we? (a) The speaker is an adult looking back on a childhood memory. The poem is in the present tense, as if the speaker were still a child, but in the last stanza we realize she is an adult because of the shift to past tense. (b) Everybody, as in lines 5 and 17, or the speaker and other children, as in lines 9 and 21

31. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove Responding and Thinking Critically • Connect The Strength of Family BIG IDEA The last three lines of the poem read “Now I see why / you bothered, / father.” What do those lines mean? The lines refer to the father making the sherbet, because a day set aside to remember the dead calls for something to remind people of the joys of living.

32. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERARY ANALYSIS Assonance and Consonance Literary Element A poem that lacks regular meter or rhyme can be unified using other techniques, such as assonance and consonance. Words that do not quite rhyme but contain some variation of assonance or consonance—such as owl and power, or jackal and buckle—are called slant rhymes.

33. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERARY ANALYSIS Assonance and Consonance Literary Element Identify three places in the first, second, or fourth stanzas of the poem where Dove uses slant rhyme. Possible answers: up and duck; lavender and grandmother; bothered and father.

34. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERARY ANALYSIS Assonance and Consonance Literary Element Read through the third stanza of “Grape Sherbet.” Focusing on the last word in each line, describe how assonance and consonance work to unify this stanza. The consonance between wonderful and refusal, which end the first and last lines of the stanza, tie the stanza together. There is assonance and consonance between lavender and grandmother and rhyme between porch and torch.

35. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERARY ANALYSIS Review: Metaphor Literary Element As you learned on page 590, metaphor is a figure of speech that compares or equates two seemingly unlike things. In contrast to a simile, a metaphor implies the comparison rather than stating it directly, so there is no use of connective words such as like or as. Poet Carl Sandburg once used the metaphor: “The past is a bucket of ashes.”

36. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove LITERARY ANALYSIS Review: Metaphor Literary Element Literary Element Activity Identify the metaphors in “Grape Sherbet.” Create a chart and fill in the left column with the poem’s metaphors and the right column with the effect each one has on the reader.

37. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove READING AND VOCABULARY Making Inferences About Setting Reading Strategy Settingincludes not only the physical surroundings, but also the ideas, customs, values, and beliefs of a particular time and place. Setting can help create an atmosphere or mood in a literary work.

38. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove READING AND VOCABULARY Making Inferences About Setting Reading Strategy Compare the different settings in “Grape Sherbet.” Describe each setting using details from the poem. The opening line, “The day? Memorial,” tells us it is Memorial day. “After the grill” indicates a cookout. The setting shifts to an earlier time and place when the speaker says, “That morning we galloped / through the grassed-over mounds / and named each stone / for a lost milk tooth.” These lines reveal that the setting is a graveyard.

39. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove READING AND VOCABULARY Making Inferences About Setting Reading Strategy What can you infer about the speaker’s family customs, values, and beliefs from the settings in “Grape Sherbet”? You may infer that the Memorial day cookout is an annual family event, that it is important for the adults to remember their deceased loved ones by visiting the cemetery, and that it is a custom for the children to play there.

40. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove READING AND VOCABULARY Practice: Choose the word that best completes each analogy. Vocabulary 1. masterpiece : art :: summit : a. success b. mountain c. valley 2. liquid : gelled :: rainy : a. stormy b. snowy c. sunny 3. dollop : spoonful :: expansion : a. growth b. contraction c. size 1. b 2. a 3. a

41. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove WRITING AND EXTENDING Writing About Literature Respond to Form “Grape Sherbet” is a lyric poem, a poem that expresses a personal experience or emotional state. Do you think free verse is the best form for this poem, or would the subject have been better served by the use of regular rhyme and meter? Write a one- to two-page analysis in which you defend or critique Rita Dove’s use of free verse in “Grape Sherbet.”

42. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove WRITING AND EXTENDING Writing About Literature Read through “Grape Sherbet” again and list the pros and cons of free verse in relation to this poem. Use a diagram to help organize your thoughts.

43. AFTER YOU READ Grape Sherbet—Rita Dove WRITING AND EXTENDING Internet Connection Use a search engine to find Rita Dove’s homepage on the Internet. Write a review that addresses the following questions, using specific descriptions of her Web site: 1. How user-friendly is the site? 2. What are the site’s strengths? 3. What could be improved?

44. COMPARING LITERATURE Comparing LiteratureAcross Genres Introduction Alice Walker Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning The last goodbye Larry Woiwode Beyond the Bedroom Wall Fear of the dark Steve Martin The Death of My Father Fear of the dark Nobody should have to die alone. Wrap-Up

45. COMPARING LITERATURE Comparing LiteratureAcross Genres Connecting to the Reading Selections What does it feel like to lose someone you love? The three writers compared here —Alice Walker, Larry Woiwode, and Steve Martin—express their thoughts and feelings about the loss of a parent.

46. COMPARING LITERATURE Comparing LiteratureAcross Genres Comparing the The Strength of Family BIG IDEA Some of life’s greatest lessons can come from one’s family. Alice Walker, Larry Woiwode, and Steve Martin use different genres to explore these lessons.

47. COMPARING LITERATURE Comparing LiteratureAcross Genres Comparing Sound Devices Writers try to make their words sing on the page. To achieve that effect, they use sound devices such as assonance, consonance, and alliteration. As you read, notice these sound devices and consider their effects.

48. COMPARING LITERATURE Comparing LiteratureAcross Genres Comparing Author’s Purpose Although they treat a similar subject, Walker, Woiwode, and Martin have different reasons for writing. The choice of genre and the elements in a literary work—for example, the details included —provide clues about the author’s purpose.

49. MENU Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning—Alice Walker Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning—Alice Walker • Selection Menu(pages 628–631) Before You Read Reading the Selection After You Read

50. BEFORE YOU READ Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning—Alice Walker • Meet Alice Walker When Alice Walker was eight, her brother accidentally shot her with a BB gun, blinding her in the right eye. Had this misfortune not occurred, Walker might never have become an inter-nationally acclaimed writer. Believing that the scar tissue in her eye dis-figured her, Walker became self-conscious and withdrawn. She began to spend much of her time alone, reading and writing poems. Her youthful passion for the written word would blossom into an impressive body of creative works.