If you decide to include a tape of your reading in your portfolio, date the tape and attach a brief reflection:

What did I learn about performing for an audience?

How would you interpret line 3, "But I hung on like death"?

Journal and Poem Write at least one paragraph comparing Dorothy Wordsworth's journal entry (see Connections on page 512 ) with "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." Before you write, identify the similarities and differences between the two accounts. For your comparison, consider the details and the figurative language in the poem and in the journal entry.

If those occasions won't work for you, there are other ways of finding topics for poems: a. Look through a newspaper for items that catch your imagination. b. Pretend you are Cinderella, a rock star, the last dinosaur (or any other figure from a story or a movie or real life). c. Begin with a question:

• "What kind of house would I have lived in in 1600?"
• "How would I be remembered if I disappeared this very moment?"
• "Twenty years from now, who will I be?" d. Choose an object or a creature and speak to it as though it were capable of understanding what you say. You might call your poem "A Conversation with a House" or "To a Pizza Pie" or "Words for an Old Dog." e. Write a poem consisting of a series of images. Its title might be "A Catalog of Sounds" or "A List of Memories." Or its first line might be "I see _-" (or "I smell," "I taste," "I touch," "I hear"). f. Write a poem consisting of a series of contrasting metaphors.
• "A cat seems to be _________ , but it really is_________ "
• "Fog seems to be_________ but it really is_________ "
• "An onion seems to be _________ but it really is_________ .

Your Own Prose Poem Solzhenitsyn probably got the idea for his prose poem on page 589 when he saw the puppy frolicking in the snow. Write a prose poem of your own about freedom. Base it on something you've observed in everyday life. Be sure to check the notes you made for the Quickwrite on page 588 for ideas. THE PUPPY, HARLEM, "HOPE"

A Machine Fantasy Using your notes from the Quickwrite for "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace," write a paragraph about how your life would be different without your favorite machines. Think hair dryer, washing machine, toaster, car, computer, popcorn popper, chain saw, lawn mower, snow blower, water heater, oil furnace, electric lights.