Anne T.

Wilson
Roseway Heights K—8
Portland, Oregon
August 2009

Stafford’s House of Words

Third/Fourth/Fifth Grade Curriculum Ideas
Animal Poems

Forty Minutes Class Time

Curriculum timeline is proposed at 4 — 8 sessions (depending on time
allowed for expansion into sidebars (5th grade), digressions and in
class writing and art exercises.

General Focus:
Public Speaking
Imagery/Emotion
Sounds/Fluency/Punctuation
Alliteration/Assonance/Metaphor
Word Choices/Meanings/Sense of Place
Writing Expressively

Introduction to William Stafford

Introduce William Stafford – born in Kansas, 1941. Has a
younger brother and sister. Drafted in WWII but is
Conscientious Objector and is interned in work camps in
Arkansas, California, Oregon. He becomes a teacher of
humanities and moves with his family — ending up at Lewis
and Clark College in Oregon. He never loses his love for Kansas.
Talk generally about Stafford’s commitment to writing every
morning; and his being a teacher and father, too.
He was awarded the position of Oregon’s Poet Laureate in
1974.
 Sidebar to William Stafford Introduction

Sidebar: Discuss the word Laureate:

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia — In English, the word laureate has
come to signify eminence or association with literary or military glory.
History: The laurel, in ancient Greece, was sacred to Apollo (Greek god of poetry,
music (lyre), prophecy, healing and light, archery (not for war or hunting), he
wore the laurel wreath), and as such was used to form a crown or wreath of
honor for poets and heroes. “Laureate letters” in old times meant the dispatches
announcing a victory; and the epithet was given to distinguished poets.
If students are interested, then note how poets had real jobs:
In earlier times, minstrels and versifiers were part of the retinue of the King; it is
recorded that Richard Coeur de Lion had a versificator regis (Gulielmus
Peregrinus), and Henry III of England had a versificator (Master Henry); in the
15th century John Kay, also a “versifier”, described himself as Edward IV of
England!s “humble poet laureate”. In England, the office of the poet attached to
the royal household, first held by Ben Jonson, for whom the position of poet—
laureate was, in its essentials, created by Charles I of England in 1617.

Session One:
Poem: At the Salt Marsh
Beginning: Pass out copies of poem. Give three — five minutes of
silent reading time with the instruction to prepare oneself to read
aloud to class; alternatively, break class into groups; each group has
to choose one member to read poem aloud. Request students to stand
and read as it provides a greater arena to get them comfortable with
public speaking (how to hold their bodies, where to put their hands
and poem, how to make eye contact, etc.).
Discuss the act of reading poetry aloud. Practice reading above the
paper and across to the audience. Help students to come out from
behind the paper. Remember to discuss this aspect afterwards as well
– who was more easily heard; had eye contact; differed their voice for
emphasis, etc….
Emphasize that everyone has a job to listen to each reader.
Ask students to read aloud to class.
Note and discuss differences in individual breathwork, fluency,
stresses. Note and welcome differences: offer any takers a chance to
reread aloud; challenge them to read poem aloud differently and then
ask class how certain lines or words or the whole of poem is
heard/understood differently.

At the Salt Marsh January 8, 1947 (C0 QTRLY ’53)

Note date vs. 2009— have students do the math and discuss the
differences between 1947 and now. Note what is between paretheses
and talk about Stafford’s notation for publication – students will be
seeing more of this – Ask whether anyone can guess what ithe
notation means? Explain notation).
What does the poem talk about? Hunting….Ask whether anyone goes
hunting or knows hunters? Discuss and define imagery within the
context of this poem. How important is the visual imagery to what is
happening in the poem?
This poem gives the reader a feel for William Stafford’s masterful
description of a particular place and event via his creation of powerful
imagery through the use of well—chosen language.

Look at first stanza in detail.

Discuss/define the meanings of the word “teal”.
Ask students to find sounds that repeat. Teacher’s response varies
according to what kids hear.
What are the alliteratives in the poem? Search for repetition of letter
“t” = “teal/traveling/to” but note how the “t” sound becomes one of
assonance in “meat—deceitful”.
Ask students to find other examples of assonance:
ie., ing/wing/nothing in (1st S)
——— till/fell/fall/all (2nd S)
——— socks/licked/bark (3rd S)

Ask students to find other examples of alliteration:

————steamed/socks/stubborn———— (3rd S)
————raw/reeds/wrong ——— (4th S)
Discuss what the meaning is of the words “blind deceitful” in the fourth
line; what is the fourth line saying? Does anyone understand what a
blind is? Connect the definitions of “blind” to the idea of sight and
muse on openess/hiding and truth “being seeable” – leave open—
ended. Ask students about the choice of the word “deceitful.”
 Sidebars to Stafford’s At The Salt Marsh

Sidebar: Discuss alliteration as concept.

Etymology: From the Latin, “putting letters together”

The repetition of an initial consonant sound.
Examples:
“You’ll never put a better bit of butter on your knife.” (advertising slogan for Country Life
butter)
“The soul selects her own society.” (Emily Dickinson)

Sidebar: Discuss assonance as concept.

Etymology: From the Latin, “sound”

Identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.
Examples:
“It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.” (Slogan for Hoover vacuum cleaners)
“I must confess that in my quest I felt depressed and restless.” (Thin Lizzy, “With
Love”)
“Assonance, (or medial rime) is the agreement in the vowel sounds of two or more words,
when the consonant sounds preceding and following these vowels do not agree. Thus, strike
and grind, hat and man, ‘rime’ with each other according to the laws of assonance.” (J.W.
Bright, Elements of English Versification, 1910)
“The terms alliteration, assonance, and rhyme identify kinds of recurring sound that in
practice are often freely mixed together. . . . It may not be easy or useful to decide where
one stops and another starts.” (Tom McArthur, The Oxford Companion to the English
Language, 1992)

_____________________________________________
Second Stanza – At the Salt Marsh

Look at Stafford’s use of the word “arrowy”. Discuss its juxtaposition

to “killer guns”. Is there a metaphor here?
Discuss imagery of grass – is a particular season implied? Any
guesses? Then discuss where his observation leads him – to “look for
something after nightfall” and ask why does he wait until after dark to
look? Discuss possible meanings. (Fall is hunting season. Fall is the
end of the year, end of the life of the year. Darkness is the end of the
life of the day. Darkness is how humans can perceive death – as the
end of light.)
Ask class “What is the narrative shift?” Help them to note the shift to
singular narrator. Poem moves from a “we” to an “I”. What is “I”
doing?
Explore how this shift makes reader react....Does it change the
reader’s viewpoint of what is happening? Does it challenge it? How?

Sidebar: Discuss metaphor as a concept.

metaphor, by Richard Nordquist, About.com
Etymology: From the Greek, “carrying over”

Definition:
A figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that
actually have something in common. A metaphor expresses the unfamiliar (the tenor) in
terms of the familiar (the vehicle). When Neil Young sings, “Love is a rose,” “rose” is the
vehicle for “love,” the tenor. Adjective: metaphorical.
Examples:
“Between the lower east side tenements the sky is a snotty handkerchief.” (Marge
Piercy, “The Butt of Winter”)

“The streets were a furnace, the sun an executioner.” (Cynthia Ozick, “Rosa”)

“But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.” (William Sharp, “The
Lonely Hunter”)

“Men’s words are bullets, that their enemies take up and make use of against
them.” (George Savile, Maxims of State)
Third Stanza – At the Salt Marsh
Discuss the imagery and the action in the third stanza. Look for the
metaphor and explore the possible meanings in “felt through the
feathers all the dark”.
Note the quietness happening in this poem. What specific alliteration
reinforces this sense of quietude? Why?
Is there emotion expressed or alluded to here? Note that the I returns
to a “we” again. Note the juxtaposition of the dark with the light.

Fourth Stanza – At the Salt Marsh

“Raw blow” – Have students define “raw blow” – Kids may not have
been hunting, and so they don’t necessarily have any direct experience
to bring to this poem. Talk a
bit about the importance of hunting in Kansas, in America, throughout
human history. Digress into importance of Pacific Flyway. Ask students
to find how second line links to earlier image “setting” lines in poem’s
second stanza’s “dead grass” and first stanza’s “blind.”
What do student’s feel about the narrator’s question “I wonder…how
broken parts can be wrong but true”
Lots of emotion in that sentence – (back to “I”, not “we”)
Sit with the last two lines (play wait and see like a hunter does) and
see what thoughts and reactions the silence turns up in students.
Define wonder.
Does Stafford’s poem suggest a sense of reverence? (reverence for
light in eyes, for need of meat, for the awareness of having life?) His
poem couples this sense of being alive with an awareness of death and
the sense of loss.
Does his poem pose the reality of the juxtaposition between life and
death? Does his poem reveal the experience of how the narrator has
the choice (or appearance of a choice?) between those. Is the poem’s
narrator struggling with that duality in his own head, struggling to
allow it, choose it, accept it, view it, to learn to know how to be
responsible to making the choice?
Look again at the word coupling “blind deceitful”– How do you choose
to view its meaning now?
 Notes from William Stafford Archives on “At the Salt Marsh”, courtesy of
Kim Stafford
As a boy and young man, WS was a hunter. At ten, he killed a rabbit with a
bow made from a broomstick. And a few days before he was shipped off to
the C.O. camp in the opening weeks of World War II, according to a bit of
prose we have in his hand, he went hunting with a friend. Kansas was a
hunting culture, and still is. He does not write this poem as a judgment of
others, but!as often!of himself.

Session One Exercises:

1. Write examples of words that repeat alliterative and
assonant sounds.
2. Write words that rhyme together and identify whether
the shared rhymes are at the beginning, in the middle or
at the end of the words.
Session Two – Stafford 3/4/5 Animal Poems

Poem: Fish Counter at Bonneville

Have students read aloud. Discuss differences in rhythm/flow of

sounds as compared to At the Salt Marsh. Is it easier or harder to read
aloud? Why? Discuss punctuation. Reread aloud.

Fish Counter at Bonneville September 9, 1951 (Stories That Could

Be True)

Define “killed the river”. What is the reader’s initial emotional reaction?
Define turbine and flume — use photos off of the internet.
Who is the old man?
What are the ghosts of the game?
What game is being referred to?
Why are the shapes “deep dumb”?
Who/What are the Chinook? Silverside?
Explain uses of semi:colon, colon, long dash, white space.

Have several students read the whole of the first sentence aloud.
Compare the readibility some of the line structures, such as, “They
wire to here a light”. The structure of this second line is oddly written
and when spoken comes out rather haltingly.
Welcome, note and discuss differences in how students find their own
rhythm when they speak the line.
Ask students to find other areas that seem hard to read smoothly.

Stafford runs together sets of stressed syllables— practice saying:

“turbine strides high poles”
“spot glows white”
“deep dumb shapes”

Get a feel for what stressed means in those lines and compare to first
line of poem.
What is the effect of these stressed syllables for the reader? See how
students can describe it. If there aren’t any takers for this question,
then ask them to think about the structure of the language as
“stopping up one’s tongue, much as the water is stopped, pooled in a
dam”.

Ask students to think about the usefulness of the punctuation and the
extra white spaces as markers to slow the reader’s breathwork and
change the emphasis of the poem. Could this change the reader’s
comprehension.

Ask them to think of things that they have heard said with emphasis
as if punctuated, ie., STOP!, HALT!, WATCH OUT! or Hey! — wait—up!
vs. Hey, wait a minute. Practice all the different ways of saying hello
or hi and talk about how certain ones might be punctuated.

Talk about emotion stopping up people’s words – sometimes everyone

stutters or is unable to speak… what kind of emotions can lead to
speechlessness?
Sidebar: Wild Beauty, Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge,
1867—1957
Show some images from book by Terry Toedtemeier & John Laursen:
Pages:
Pictures of Columbia River
43, The Passage of the Dalles, Columbia River, 1867, Carleton E. Watkins
115, Celilo Falls, 1907, Benjamin A. Gifford
117, Home Guard on the Columbia, 1899, B. A. Gifford
119, Fishing from the Natural Arch at Celilo, 1905, B. A. Gifford
135, Celilo Falls, Low Water, 1903, Fred Kiser & Oscar Kiser
267, Celilo Falls, 1935, Alfred A. Monner – aerial shot incl. village
269, Celilo, 1930, Ray Atkeson – gillnetter
279, Indian Fishing at Celilo Falls, 1940s, R. Atkeson
281, Celilo Falls, 1940s, R. Atkeson, gillnetters

Pictures of Fishwheels – 1879 – outlawed in 1926 (Oregon)

59, Salmon Wheel Boat, Cascades, 1883, Carleton E. Watkins
247, Untitled, 1912, B.A. Gifford – Celilo Falls w/fishwheel
249, Untitled, circa 1920, Arthur M. Prentiss – Fishwheels outlawed

Pictures of Dams
275, Bonneville Dam and Mount Hood, 1946, R. Atkeson
283, Untitled, 1950s, R. Atkeson – Long Narrows/potholes
295, Untitled, March, 1951, unknown, USACE – 7,800 cubic feet per second
297, Untitled, May, 1951, unknown, USACE – 599,400 CFS
299, The Dalles Dam Blast, 1952, R. Atkeson
311, The Dalles Dam Under Construction, 1955, Everett Olmstead
315, The Dalles Dam, 1957, R. Atkeson

Last Photos of Celilo Falls

305, Untitled, 1953, Constantine Zimmerman –popular Fish Ladder
307, Untitled, 1953, A.A. Monner – Celilo cable cars
309, The Annual Salmon Festival at Celilo, 1954
313, Untitled, 1956, Gladys Seufert

Native American Art

(bolster with photos from Horsethief Lake petroglyphs and pictographs)
301, Untitled, 1953, A. A. Monner – petroglyph, whirlpool warning

___________________________________________
CONTINUATION OF WILD BEAUTY SIDEBAR:
How many students have seen the Columbia Gorge?
Compare and contrast photos. Note the sense of silence and power in
photos. Compare with the use of punctuation to create silence between
words and/or sentences.
Which photos reveal what Lewis and Clark saw? Which photos show
how much the river has changed? How much has the use of the river
changed?

Can choose to expand into several sidebars:

Geology — How the basalt flows allowed the natural Celilo dam to form.
Native American tribes use of the Celilo Falls — Talk about the history of Celilo
Falls and village and their importance to hundreds of different Native American
tribes. It was a Switzerland of Native America – where tribes came to trade and
celebrate life in the spring and put aside their differences.
Native American art – pictographs and petroglyphs — Talk about the
petroglyphs in the submerged canyon and the preserved ones on display at
Horsethief Lake on the Washington side of the Dalles Dam. The carvings and
drawings show that different tribes shared the area. Get more photos from
internet.
Lewis & Clark writings — Share descriptions, maps, drawings
Biology of salmon — Discuss names of salmon, the seasonality of the fish runs
and the essentialness of salmon to the Native American culture.
Railroad and dam engineering. How man!s railroad and dams changed the
nature of the river and the land beyond (electricity). Discuss the need for fish
ladders and hatcheries.
Session Two Exercises

1. Have students choose to write about hunting or fishing and then

experiment with the use of some punctuation other than a period or
white space. To get started, they can use a favorite line from one of
the poems or write a response to one of the poems.

2. Ask students to make an illustration/painting of where they live.

Where do they define “home” for themselves. The Columbia Gorge
was home for thousands of Native Americans. Draw a picture of some
part of you in your home.

3. Draw pictures or write a poem contrasting where you lived before

you moved to your current home.

4. Write a poem about how where you live has changed since you lived
there.

5. Have students taste smoked salmon.

Session Three — 3/4/5 Stafford Animal Poems
Poem: In the Deep Channel
Explore choral reading with students. Discuss the uses of the five
senses in writing. Discuss Stafford’s use of the word “secret” in the
poem – Does he create the feeling of a secret world? Imagine and
discuss different emotional reactions to making mistakes.

In the Deep Channel August 7, 1953 (Iowa City) (Stories That Could
Be True)
Read aloud.
Show 2 pictures of trotline from internet.
Show pictures of channel cats from internet.

Compare pictures with Stafford’s description. What don’t pictures

show? What senses are used by Stafford in his poem? What is the
timeline in the poem? What is a “rush on the tether?”

Try a choral read where everyone reads a line. Practice lines to help
students get the shared rhythm demanded when “performing” a choral
read. Try several times until students get comfortable with the words
and their shared timing. If doing this in groups, suggest that there are
two or three trotline setters (readers) and a channel cat and have
them practice acting out the poem while reading it aloud. Each stanza
is its “own” play – so students can switch out being the channel cat.

Share William Stafford’s explanation of trotline and his early childhood

memory of tossing it out by accident.
Notes from William Stafford Archives on “In the Deep Channel,” courtesty
of Kim Stafford:
The trotline was a long, strong rope, with side"lines tied on every six feet or
so, the side"lines terminating in a hook baited generally with some secret"
recipe, outrageously vile bait considered irresistible to catfish. The creation of
the trotline with its carefully coiled side"lines that must not tangle, and the
baited hooks, took a long time and much attention to prepare. On one
occasion, little Billy’s father prepared such a trotline, took his son to the
riverbank at night, and gave one end of the line to Billy to hold, while he, the
 mighty father, would hurl the other weighted end of the whole arrangement
far out into the river. My father reported the great heave of the weight, the
neat uncoiling of the line with side"lines, hooks, and bait spooling out
flawlessly!and then the sudden jerk of the line"end he held, and watching it
fly out of his hands: the whole arrangement lost in the dark river.

Discuss how that might have felt to William “Billy”, to his father or to
you and to your father? What are some possible emotional reactions?
Fear? Anger? Laughter? Horror? Sorrow? Rage? Joy?

Notes continued:
The interesting things about this story to me as a child was that there was no
sense of failure, or punishment. It’s just something that happened, and was
unfortunate, but funny.

Session Three Exercises: Write a poem or poems about:

1. Trying to catch something — whether it is a fish, a bus, your little
brother or a butterfly, snake or your dog

2. What is trying to catch you?

3. What do you know that likes to be kind of secret?

4. Describe something underwater.

5. Describe something at night by touch.

6. Describe something by your sense of smell and taste.

Session Four – Stafford’s 3/4/5 Animal Poems

Poem: Ceremony
Start to look at Stafford’s writing process. Ideally, teacher will need
one computer set up to project on screen or overhead and internet
connection to the William Stafford Archives.

Ceremony June 14, 1956 Audio

Read poem aloud.

Project the Archives onto a wall, show a photo of William Stafford and
then listen to Stafford read Ceremony.

On projector or overhead, show original handwritten daily write.

Discuss the Stafford process of daily writing. Look at editing marks
that he employed.
Discuss the process of “editing” as a writer and then as a poet. Can
students verbally compare and contrast between editing prose and
poetry?

Really look at the edits that Stafford chose on the Daily Writing archive
page and the final version.
Examples:
a) second finger to third
b) muskrat splashed that evening to whirled and bit to the bone
c) realer than escape, a swirl the mountains heard
d) owl softens to quavering...

Show map of Ninnescah,

Show pictures of muskrats.

How does the ocean “remember?” Is there a metaphor here?

Ask students how they understand the last four lines?
Is there an idea of permanence?
Is there an idea of change?
Notes from William Stafford and Kim Stafford on “Ceremony”
WS told about one of his ways as a boy!wading along the bank of a river like the
Ninnescah, reacing into hollows under the water"line in hopes of catching hold of a
“channel cat,” the big, whistered catfish that was one of the enchanting monsters of his
childhood. On this day, when he felt movement, he grabbed hold, hoping for a fish, but the
prey turned out to be the muskrat.

Sidebar: Incarnadined
From The Maven!s Word of the Day:
www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980708
As an adjective, incarnadine is slightly older. Its original sense, and its etymological
sense, is ‘flesh!colored’!the word is related to incarnate ‘given a bodily form’, and
the root, carn! ‘flesh’, is found in many English words, including carnal, carnivore,
and carnation. However, by influence of Shakespeare, it is now usually used in the
sense ‘blood!red; crimson’.
“Incarnadine is one of my all!time favorite words, based chiefly on this remarkable
passage from Shakespeare, wherein Macbeth ruminates on his murder of Duncan:
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
!!Macbeth, II.ii
This is the first use of incarnadine as a verb, meaning ‘to make red’. "And in a bonus
to bardolators, it’s also the first use of multitudinous, a remarkable twofer in one line
of poetry.#
You are right that incarnadine is not a terribly common word, and that’s chiefly
because English already has words such as red or crimson to express similar color
concepts. Incarnadine is a more poetic, rarer, and harder variant; even Shakespeare
had to translate it, in effect, in the next line "“Making the green one red”!note that
there is some disagreement over the parsing of even this line; “one” may not refer to
“ocean,” but may mean ‘entirely’#.
Still, the word is found in the works of various Good Writers: “You’ll...calmly wash
those hands incarnadine” "Byron, Marino Faliero#; “Repose had again incarnadined
her cheeks” "Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd#; “’Wine! Wine! Wine!/Red
wine!’!the Nightingale cries to the Rose/That yellow cheek of hers to incarnadine”
"FitzGerald; “The Rubayiat of Omar Khayyam”#. Nabokov also was a fan of the
word; he uses it in Lolita and other works. If you write in this manner, by all means,
use the word.”
Session Four Exercises:

1. Write a poem about a ritual or ceremony that you have taken

part in.
2. Write a poem in which something is surprised.
3. Imagine yourself to be a wild animal and write about what you
think you would experience while living as that animal.
4. Write about an injury that shocked you.