Ask Questions
The next step in investigating your poem is to Ask Questions. Now is the time to be curious about your poem. It is okay to be confused on an initial reading of a poem. In fact, it's okay to still be confused about a poem after several readings. People are still confused about T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land after studying it for their PhD.
Ask questions. Investigate parts of the poem that you find troubling or puzzling: questions, confusions, ambiguities, incongruities. Are there words or passages you don’t understand? Circle them. Look them up. It’s important to note the parts of a poem that confuse you, so you can form your confusions into questions for which you can seek answers. What purpose or effect might the poet’s use of figurative language and poetic devices serve to you, the reader?
The key now is to shape your confusions into questions.
Questions to Ask in your DISRUPTion can related to (but are not limited to):
What does the poet mean by ______?
What does this word mean? (circle it and look it up later)
Ambiguities: words and phrases that can be interpreted in at least two different ways.
Who is this? (names are often a source of questioning)
What is the context in which this poem was written?
Who is the poet?
Is this poem autobiographical? Fictional?
What???
Huh?
Why?????
Really???? or Seriously??
Did this really happen?
Need to google this!