“Acquainted With the Night” is one of the most commonly cited examples of American terza rima.ĭepending on the level of your students, have them identify the rhyme scheme on their own, and then talk about this particular form. It is much less common in English, because of the difficulty in finding rhymes to fit. Dante (of The Divine Comedy fame) developed this form, but it’s much easier to write in Italian, because so many words end in vowel sounds. The rhyme scheme is terza rima, or ABABCBCDCDADAA. The poem is written in the same meter as a sonnet – iambic pentameter. Theme – The speaker is clearly in the throes of depression: his mood informs his interpretation of everything that he sees as he walks through these dreary streets, avoiding even the human contact of the night watchman, and taking a sad offense at the fact that the anonymous crier does not recognize his presence.įor more analysis, check out these quotes from Robert Frost’s poems. Metaphor – referring to figurative time rather than literal, pointing out that even the clock has had its moorings thrown off by the way things are on this night Personification – the clock “proclaiming” the time being neither wrong nor right Repetition – the use of “in rain” twice on line 2, to emphasize that the speaker seeks out the night to the point where he would endure discomfort, or that the discomfort might match his current mood Repetition – the use of “I have” to begin lines 1-5, 7, and 14 to emphasize the personal nature of this poem to the speaker An “Acquainted with the Night Analysis” should include the following examples: Lead a discussion going from device to device throughout the poem. Once you finish reading the poem, turn off the music, and ask students what they noticed about the poem. If you read it yourself, turn your musical background down, but let it continue to play in the background as you read. If you’d prefer, and you have the technological capability, play an audio interpretation of the poem from the website. Once it looks like everyone is done, read Robert Frost’s “Acquainted With the Night” out loud to your students. Give them about 10 minutes to finish their thoughts. Put some music on while students file in – something of a slow jazz piece, like “Harlem Nocturne.” Students should just come in and start writing. “How do you feel at night? Use a story from your personal experience to describe the way that night makes you feel.” Multimedia projector or overhead projector, put a writing prompt for today: At the beginning of your class period, as an introduction to Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall," post this writing prompt on your multimedia projector or overhead screen: “What are the purposes of a fence? Make a list of as many jobs that a fence can perform as you can – at least 10.” If you have the flexibility within your classroom, arrange student desks to where students are facing away from another.Create a darkened atmosphere in your room by turning out at least some of the lights for when students come in. You could cluster desks so that they are in groups of four or five, but all face away from the center – the opposite of cooperative learning, at least for the purposes of this activity. Give students about 5 minutes to make their lists, and then have a brief discussion of the lists that the students made. Make enough copies of “Mending Wall” so that each student has one. For now, keep the unusual seating arrangement if you had room to set it up. Then, either read the poem aloud to the students, or ask for volunteers to read. If you have students read, remind them to base their pauses on the punctuation, not on line endings. If you haven’t introduced free verse yet, you may want to do so before you read the poem.Īsk the students to annotate as they hear the poem, marking devices that they recognize and words or phrases that they either do not understand or that jump out at them. Robert Frost wrote that “writing in free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.” His work shows the ability to work with just about any rhyme and meter schemes, so you might want to ask students why Frost might have chosen to write this poem without any of those strictures.įree verse, of course, refers to poetry with no rhyme scheme and no set meter. Here are some literary devices that should come up in your large-group discussion of the poem. If your class is more advanced in terms of finding literary devices, you could split your class up into partners or small groups, have them look for the devices, and then have them share what they found. Personification – “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,/That sends the frozen ground-swell under it,/And spills the upper boulders in the sun” – a force is at work that opposes boundaries, an unseen force in nature.
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