This website is for sale! Don't miss the opportunity to make hundreds a month!
Integrating Quotes into
Essays
INTEGRATING
QUOTES PRACTICE
Read the following poem by Gary Soto.
Then, in your small group, write a paragraph analyzing the purpose and
symbolic value of the poem’s images.
Old House in My Fortieth Year
by Gary Soto
The clod’s stubbornness gives in to my fist.
The snails groans a single bubble under my shoe
The roots of every chinaberry I’ve swung from
Needle even further into the moist earth.
I’m home in these weeds.
I’m home in these bones,
This flesh with its laughter and fatherly scent,
Flesh held up by a frayed belt on its last hole.
I don’t have to walk far to hear the jay
Or a vicious dog, a coal breathing in each eye.
The old house
has been smoothed by sand
And the rake of years.
I don’t know this place,
Really, or the boy buried in this flesh of mine.
One error, and I’m the man pushing a cart.
Another error, and I march a long row of cotton
Or beets. The
stars wheeled around an icy comet,
And by fortune, I’m now at home in this body—
The heart down to business
And slapping blood through its swinging door.
"The water was grayish
blue...." (116) which symbolized the blending of the colors of the
soldiers' Civil War uniforms and the philosophies those soldiers believed in.
|