Students learn to recognize some of the most common strategies that poets use when writing about historical figures.

This lesson focuses on poems that enter into a voice other than the poet’s, perhaps not even a human voice, so that students can explore the dramatic possibilities within a poem.

In this lesson, students practice close readings of poems by analyzing the style—what musicians call the “dynamics” —of the poem: its volume, speed, language, syntax, lineation, and punctuation.