Ryan's Blog

Poem Assignment

For the Poem Analasys,I chose snapshot land as it reached out to me the most

Snapshotland

By Sylvia Kantaris

In Snapshotland everyone is happy all the time.
It is the promised land where people sit with flasks of tea
On smooth sand by a flat sea and smile and smile and smile.

The sun shines all day long and every day in Kodachrome
Or sepia on sandboys and sandgirls who never
Stop smiling from the time they first appear, with buckets,
In crisp, gingham pinfores and nonnets on the sea-shore.

Lovers stay in love forever, married couples never
Grow tired of each other; everything is always just right.
The dolphins know exactly when to leap into the air
And stay there for the permanent delight of passengers
Aboard the pleasure-boat which never passes out of sight.

Noboday in Snapshotland grows old unless they want to,
Juding by the way they go on smiling so, in deck-chairs,
On the beach, or in old-fashioned gardens with lavender
And grandchildren here and there - and no one dies, ever.

Even if they don't appear later, the people are still
Always there, smiling through the lavender and dolphins
And the buckets full of pebbles on the same sea-shore.


Step 1: Forget what the poem may or may not mean, or what it may be about.

Step 2: Look at just the title and WRITE DOWN about half a dozen things that it suggests to you. Give literal meanings as well as other associations.

~Camera
~Perfect Paradise
~Record Happy Memories
~An Amusement Park
~Each Photo has a story

Step 3: Read the poem once quickly, and then several times more slowly. Try to hear the poem aloud in your head. DO NOT recite the poem aloud in class; if you must hear it aloud, read it quietly to yourself.

4. WRITE DOWN a list of all those things in the poem that force their attention on you or which catch your interest for any particular reason. This includes unusual/odd/striking words, rhymes, or repetitions/patterns/contrasts, etc

~Repetition of "smile and smile and smile"
~Sandboys and sandgirls who never stop smiling
~people sit with flasks of tea an smooth sand by a flat sea
~nobody in Snapshotland grows old
~The sun shines all day long
~everything is always right
~Kodachrome

5. WRITE DOWN any features of figurative language in the poem: metaphors, similes, personification, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, symbolism, etc.

~metaphor - "Snapshotland is the promised land"
~repitition and alliteration - "smile and smile and smile"
~alliteration -"same sea-shore"
~metaphor - "snapshotland is the promised land"

6.WRITE DOWN groups of words that may be thematically similar (for example, that all similes make reference to animals/death/plants, etc., or all the first words of lines are conjunction words, etc.). Don't worry about whether your groups of words seem silly or improbable; look at what you have observed and ask yourself: what is its significance?

~Everything is all the same forever just like their frozen
~There are alot of alliterations

7. Look at your lists, notes, and groups. Do you see any pattern taking shape? If so, WRITE DOWN this pattern.
~Every stanza has at least one word that is related to happiness
~Time is frozen in Snapshotland
~In Snapshotland, everything is perfect

8. Read the poem again and WRITE DOWN your intelligent guesses of what the poem may mean.
~The life in Snapshotland are in photos, the time is frozen, and it is in a perfect world there.

9. Answer the following questions:

Who is speaking in the poem? Is it the POET or a PERSONA?
~Persona

Who is the poem "spoken" to? In other words, who is the audience for this poem? Is it to a particular person, to the poet himself (reflective) or to the public in general?

~It is to the public in general

What is the speaker's attitude to this audience? Is it angry, sincere, joking, teasing, etc.?

~happiness

What is the POET's attitude to this audience? (This may be different from the speaker.)

~to better describe the picture without being very direct that it is describing a picture, not a scenario.

Why is the poem organized in the way that it is?
~Each line is long so that the reader would need to read it slower

What is the EFFECT of all the things you have written down in Steps 2-8?
~It makes the reader feel that Snapshotland is a paradise and everthing is perfect.