Lesson 1: Images (Preview Content)

In this session, join Christine Perrin for a roundtable discussion with four students about the use of images in poetry.

Discussion topics

• (02:45) How would you define an image?
• (11:30) How do images work in poems?
• (14:30) Reading and discussion of The Panther
• (19:45) Is there anything else to add to the observation of the basic picture that we are looking at? How is the image being made into an experience?
• (22:00) How do you know that there is some empathy on the part of the observer towards this cat?
• (23:30) What do you observe about the ending of the lines and the kind of punctuation that is being used?
• (25:40) What is happening in the second stanza, and why does the punctuation aid the content?
• (30:25) Rilke creates and image, which is symbolic, which is so powerful that as readers we enter into his imagination, and we fill in some of those blanks.
• (31:00) Can you think of cages that culture can put people in?
• (35:30) Reading and memorizing of Dust of Snow by Robert Frost
• (36:35) Are there any vocabulary words that we need to define?
• (39:05) What are we looking at, touching, and feeling?
• (41:40) Has a little thing ever pierced your mood or your day, and lifted you up?
• (43:00) Are there any other comments about imagery and its relationship to our emotional lives, or its ability to stop time for a little bit?
• (44:15) If we were going to over interpret this poem, what direction would we try to take the conversation?