We went over “The Lanyard” today, beginning with Collins reading the poem at a poetry festival.

Students were surprised to hear the audience laughing at certain points. We mapped out when exactly they laughed and realized a certain pattern:

This led us to see the tonal shift at the end, when the laughter had died away completely and a new, confessional tone took over. With all this in place, I was able to help students see the epiphany at the end of the poem, and then I pointed out that all the poems we’d read to date had the tonal shift/epiphany dynamic.

Homework

• English I Honors: 
  • find the tonal shift of each of the poems we’ve read this year;
  • mark the shift in pencil;
  • label the second tone that appears.