Lily’s poem is an astute distillation of Letts’ play, in which she summarizes the plot and offers a clear characterization of the protagonist. Beyond this, she interprets the play’s ending and articulates her understanding of the playwright’s intent. Kaley tries her hand at using capitalization to identify theme development in Albee’s text, but the capitalization also reveals her character analyses of both Honey and Nick. Vincent uses consonance, assonance, and intentional line breaks to illustrate Biff’s paradoxical sentiments of resentment of his father and longing for validation. I was also intrigued by his deliberate breaking up of the cliché, “a dime a dozen” to show Biff’s perception that he is always falling short.

I like to think of confessional poems as “twofers,” in that students can practice the skills they themselves need to analyze in poetry, and see how poetic conventions emerge on their own (I didn’t “assign” consonance, assonance, capitalization or any other intentional strategy). Upon completion of their point-of-view confessional poems, they’re more likely to try their hand at writing poems from their own perspectives, confessional or otherwise. And that makes this writing teacher very happy.

Further Reading: