PART I
'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us-don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
Questions for Discussion
1. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem? Meter?
2. Who is the poem's speaker addressing?
Questions for Reflection and Writing
1. Explain the poem's frog simile.
2. What does the speaker mean by declaring that he or she is a "nobody"?
3. What is the poem's tone? What kind of social commentary might this be regarding a "nobody" versus a "somebody"?
Part II: Find another internet resource ( this might be a text-based website or a Youtube video or a journal article)that provides some additional insight or helps you understand any of this week's poems. Share the link and describe what the resource is and how it helped you.
PART III
Song of Myself
Walt Whitman
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.