Today, we marked questions 34-43 of your commas booklet. I will return them after I mark them for further revision. I then handed out the poem "Comparing Beginnings" for you to analyze. I have pasted this poem below. I want it fully analyzed for tomorrow's class so we can work in pairs on the questions.
COMPARING BEGINNINGS
Both of us have early memories of escape.
You, when you were three years old,
walked out an open window and up a hill.
The day was hot: you were free and peaceful.
A black man found you
and coaxed you home again.
You learned later that the hill
was the home of dangerous snakes.
At the same age I ran away
out of our backyard, across the road
to the home of an old neighbour woman
with a face like a nutcracker
who wore a flannel cap[1] in the daytime.
She fed me sugar cookies
and played on the cranked-up gramophone
a record of fiddle music
to which I danced on the kitchen floor
while her old bachelor brother
step-danced and snapped his fingers
on the other side of the room.
And my mother came to take me home
and scold me
and said to my father later
that she didn't trust the old bachelor brother
one little bit:
he was no better than he should be.
After that escape,
you and I both
wore halters to prevent us from straying
into dangerous places
that looked green and peaceful
where there might be siren music[2]
or poisonous snakes.
Elizabeth Brewster
Contemporary Canadian poet,novelist, and short story writer
[1] flannel cap-nightcap; a cap worn in bed
[2] siren music-in Greek mythology, music of the sea nymphs who sang seductively to travellers at sea, causing them to steer their ships onto the rocks
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