Pivotal Words and Phrases

UNIT
Pre-AP English 1
®
STUDENT READER
Pivotal Words and Phrases
Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 1 16/04/20 1:52 AM

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Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 2 16/04/20 1:52 AM

Contents
hat Happened uring the Ice torm im He nen .......................................................................
otter asma Haidri ...............................................................................................................................
The ight ohn Montague ....................................................................................................................
Tamara s pus oshua Bennett .........................................................................................................
Excerpt from Hamlet illiam ha espeare ........................................................................................
Excerpt from Romeo and Juliet illiam ha espeare ...................................................................
Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 3 03/04/20 8:28 PM

“ What Happened During
the Ice Storm”
JIM HEYNEN
From You Know What Is Right
Student Reader 1 Pre-AP English 1

© 2021 College Board

“What Happened During the Ice Storm”
Unit 2
One winter there was a freezing rain. How beautiful! people

MY NOTES
said when things outside started to shine with ice. But the
freezing rain kept coming. Tree branches glistened like glass.
Then broke like glass. Ice thickened on the windows until
everything outside blurred. Farmers moved their livestock
into the barns, and most animals were safe. But not the
pheasants. Their eyes froze shut.
Some farmers went ice-skating down the gravel roads with

clubs to harvest the pheasants that sat helplessly in the
roadside ditches. The boys went out into the freezing rain
to find pheasants too. The sa dar spots along a fence.
Pheasants, all right. Five or six of them. The boys slid their feet
along slowly, trying not to break the ice that covered the snow.
They slid up close to the pheasants. The pheasants pulled
their heads down between their wings. They couldn’t tell how
easy it was to see them huddled there. The boys stood still in
the ic rain. Their reath came out in slo pu s of steam. The
pheasants reath came out in uic little hite pu s. ome of
them lifted their heads and turned them from side to side, but
the ere lindfolded ith ice and didn t ush.
The boys had not brought clubs, or sacks, or anything but

themselves. They stood over the pheasants, turning their own
heads, looking at each other, each expecting the other to do
something. To pounce on a pheasant, or to yell Bang! Things
around them were shining and dripping with icy rain. The barbed
wire fence. The fence posts. The broken stems of grass. Even
the grass seeds. The grass seeds looked like little yolks inside
gelatin whites. And the pheasants looked like unborn birds
glazed in egg white. Ice was hardening on the boys’ caps and
coats. Soon they would be covered with ice too.
4 Then one of the o s said, hh. He as ta ing o his coat, the

thin la er of ice splintering in a es as he pulled his arms from
the sleeves. But the inside of the coat was dry and warm. He
covered two of the crouching pheasants with his coat, rounding
the back of it over them like a shell. The other boys did the same.
They covered all the helpless pheasants. The small gray hens
and the larger brown cocks. Now the boys felt the rain soaking
through their shirts and freezing. They ran across the slippery
fields, unsure of their footing, the ice clinging to their s in as
they made their way toward the warm blurry lights of the house.
Pre-AP English 1 2 Student Reader


“Lottery”
RASMA HAIDRI
From Poem, Revised: 54 Poems, Revisions, Discussions


“Lottery”
Unit 2
illiam ords orth s famous definition of poetr as the

MY NOTES
spontaneous over o of po erful feelings from emotions
recollected in tran uilit appears at first to argue against
revision. Something in the word spontaneous seems
antithetical to revision, or so I thought hen I first learned
about Wordsworth back in college. At that time, I imagined
he meant he lounged dreamily on a divan until, with a gold nib
quill, he set about drafting the lines of a poem.
I believe part of this may have been right. Not the part about
lounging dreamily, but the part about drafting. In this essay, I
want to explore how through the hard work of revision over a
long time, I as a le to recollect the spontaneous over o
of powerful feelings” that were central to my poem “Lottery.”
The incident that spurred my poem was a time I took my

mother grocery shopping, and she unexpectedly asked me
to help her buy a lottery ticket. I was moved by the event and
felt a need to tell about it. Now, I could have gone home and
told my spouse about what happened and how it made me
feel, but this retelling wouldn’t have been a poem. In order
to get at the poem, I needed to grasp the deepest feelings
the incident aroused in me. In other words, I needed to get
to what Wordsworth meant by recollecting a “spontaneous
over o of po erful feelings.
4 The problem with words about feelings or emotions is that

they are abstract. Any word I might insert into the phrase “It
made me feel ” is going to be theoretical, as if we are
talking about the emotion. In poetry, we need to recollect the
emotion itself. In doing so, we come up with a rendering of
an ordinary event that is somehow bigger than the sum of its
parts.
Sometimes beginning writers feel that to take a poem

through many drafts is to apply some sort of censorship to
it, to tame its spirited individuality and make it conform. They
resist revision because they fear editing away the poem’s
essence. Experience has taught me that revision can be the
very means by which I recollect in tranquility. Each revision
removes hindrances until the poem s spontaneous over o
of powerful feelings” is released.


“Lottery”
Unit 2
6 Let us see how this worked in the poem “Lottery.” The

MY NOTES
situation was that my mother depended on me for grocery
shopping. During one routine outing, she surprised me
by saying she wanted to buy a lottery ticket. I found the
experience disquieting and wrote about it afterwards in
my journal.
Man elements of hat ill e the final poem are alread

here, the beginning line in particular. “That’s 6 and a
half million a year ... ” is at the heart of the poem. Had
my mother not said these words, I probably would have
e perienced the entire lotter tic et incident di erentl .
I didn’t think about this as I scribbled hurriedly in my
journal, but intuitively I must have known it, which is why
it s the first thing I rote. The line remains intact in all the
revisions, and the final version is positioned as a hinge
that widens the poem’s perspective, essentially dividing
it in two parts: what happened and what I felt about what
happened.
8 The point of view of the journal entry switches between

speaking to the mother using the second-person pronoun
(you) to speaking about her in the third person (she). Here
already the emerging poem hints at the need to try out
di erent ordings efore it settles on a final perspective
and answers the core questions that must be asked about
all poems. Just who is being addressed? Who is being
asked to identify with the speaker of the poem? How does
changing the relationship between the poem’s speaker
and audience a ect the poem s impact
The journal entry strives for verisimilitude in its use of

descriptive details such as swaying, weaving, rummaging,
digging; the color of the cardboard and wallet; the almost
slow motion observation of the contents of the purse
o ing out. There is also attention to hat e might
call plot detail: I also bought a ticket, it was computer
generated, the purchase happened two weeks before
my departure on a trip and now we’re back in the store to
check the winning numbers, and so on. I’m all for authentic
description and concrete sensory detail. They typically
lend credibility and vitality to a poem, and steer one away
from the pitfall of abstractions. However, the journal entry


“Lottery”
Unit 2
shows the tedium of excessive details that don’t know why

MY NOTES
they are there. We can say these details are not “organic”
to the poem, meaning they are not a natural expression of
the poem’s bigger idea. It took me many drafts to realize
that removing inorganic details was my main task in revising
“Lottery.” At this journal stage of writing, I didn’t know the
poem’s bigger idea. In fact, I had only the vaguest inkling of
why I was compelled to write about the event at all.
raft of the poem is essentiall identical to the ournal

entry. It appears that as soon as I had a hard copy in my hand,
I attacked it with a pencil. Note the hard black lines indicating
m confidence that, for e ample, removing the line rea at
“a year” was going to improve the poem. I am glad that I work
through my drafts like this with a pencil instead of obliterating
text on a word processor, because inevitably my revision of
the first draft overcompensates. or e ample, isn t the line
break at “half a million / a year for life” much better than the
more pedestrian “ ... million a year / for life”?
That’s 6 and a half million a year after taxes you tell me,
of the man who won $111 million. That’s more than Trump!
I have our lottery tickets in here you pt to your black
billfold with the brown ribbing. Rummage further for into
your handbag. Kleenex, and bent envelopes, a crumpled
single dollar rising over your wrist as you dig. The lottery
tickets are two weeks old. Bought on the eve of my
departure for California when I took her to Woodman’s to
buy everything she needed while I was gone. Two cartons
of ciggarettes, 3 gal. of milk, rice cakes and black bellied
bottles of diet rite — I want to buy a lottery ticket you said,
and weaved your way, half blind, exhausted, sore knees
Hand ritten ournal entr , page , une


“Lottery”
Unit 2
from side to side pushed the weight of your body to the far MY NOTES
end of the store, by videos and ice cream and packaged

liquor.
You had your numbers picked out, written large and clear
on a tear of scrap cardboard, bright yellow.
Neither of us knew how to go about it. Mother could

not teach daughter. Daughter could not get it done. I
rubbed in the dots for you. Bought a computer generated
one for me — only lingering slightly over your numbers.
Trying to register their significance — and not seeing
any immediately didn’t dare ask intrude into their origin
— ask on what you are basing your luck. Just as now I
don’t ask you how they figur if you know how they figured
decided how many years to divide $111 million by to make
this man rich for the rest of his life, or what
(I don’t want to know ask) you would do if our tickets had

one with the money — could it buy back your teeth, your
eyesight, your light strong bones and lean flesh.
You didn’t check our numbers that night I was on vacation

But no one else has claimed it you tell me as if that’s all
it takes to mean everything, all of it, is out there waiting
for us to win, to call claim, start celebrating.
Hand ritten ournal entr , pages , une
t this stage in the revision, I am fiddling ver much ith

words, not having yet grasped the poem’s central idea.
Much of this is trivial. I seem to think in line 4 that “winter”
instead of “summer” will bring the poem more alive, as
will substituting “deeper’” for “further’” two lines down.
In some ways, I am only making the poem more wordy,
such as adding “though” (an abstract word and therefore
est avoided in the first line of the fourth stanza. hat
was I thinking? Presumably I was looking for some kind of
uidit , having found the full stops arring.
I am somewhat aware in this draft of needing to cut down

on plot-detail. In the second stanza, “the eve of my trip”
is meant to supplant the entire first t o and a half lines.


“Lottery”
Unit 2
“That week” instead of “while I was gone” is an attempt at

MY NOTES
succinctness. Neither of these really accomplishes much.
more significant change is that I have removed m o n
lottery ticket from the narrative. In the poem’s penultimate
line “for us to claim our winnings” gives way to “just waiting /
for you,” which brings the poem’s focus more onto the “you”
ho is m mother. small ord change in the final line ma
on first glance seem trivial. Ho ever, replacing a ith this
works toward bringing the poem more in touch with itself.
The indefinite article a ma es the cele ration generic,
belonging to anyone, and limits it to a celebration of the
winnings referred to in the preceding line. The demonstrative
pronoun (“this”) brings the celebration closer to the “you” and
opens up the possibility that the celebration is potentially
of much more than the winnings. Along with the insertion of
“this,” the word “winnings” has been decisively crossed out.
Here I am instinctively getting closer to the poem’s central
idea, the essence that will show the event to be bigger than
the sum of its parts.
T o other alterations in raft significantl aid the poem s

evolution. irst of all, ith the parentheses around the first
stanza and arrow pointing down I am aware of the need to
move the section starting ith That s si and a half million ...
to its pivotal position farther on in the poem. I have also
added “for life,” which I remembered my mother had said,
even though it was not written in the original journal entry.
Compared to ord fiddling, this is a ma or insight. The other
mar ed change from the ournal entr is at the end of the fifth
stanza where I have added a long line. This addition is not plot
detail, but rather what we might call story:
The long southern evenings

when you and four 4 children you + the children playing (with)
s uirt guns netting fire ies


“Lottery”
Unit 2
First Draft
Rasma Haidri MY NOTES
6422 Hubbard Ave.
Middleton, WI 53562
The Lottery Ticket
That’s six and a half million a year

a year for life
you tell me of the man
who won. last summer winter.
I have our lottery tickets in here,
you point to your black billfold,
ing
as you rumage further into your purse, deeper
an
as Kleenex, bent envelopes, a crumpled dollar bill
rising over your wrists as you dig.
for one two week old
The lottery tickets are two weeks old.
Bought on the eve of my departure
for California, when I took you to Woodman s the eve of my trip
to buy everything you would need while I was gone.
that week
Two cartons of cigarettes,
Three gallons of milk,
6 xxxx
Rice cakes and black bottles of diet cola.
I want to buy a lottery ticket, you had said, added
and weaved your way, half-blind, worn out
on stiff knees, to the far end of the store
by the videos, ice cream and packaged liquor.
You already had your numbers picked out,

written in large clear cursive on a scrap of yellow cardboard.
Neither of us knew how to go about it, though

I fumbled, rubbing in the dots for you.
ed
Lingering only slightly over your numbers,
trying to register their significance. and finding none, and found none
I did not Not seeing any I didn’t try into their origin, ask ask their origin,
on what you were banking your luck.
now, as you search for the ticket,
Just as know I don’t ask you how they figured
the number of years in “the rest of his life”
for the last $100 million winner, or what
you would do with the money.
B
Could you buy back your teeth,
your eyesight, you light strong bones
and lean flesh? The long southern evenings where
you and xxxxx If children xxxxx the children playing squirt guns netting fireflies
You didn’t check our numbers the ticket number
that night I was on vacation.
But no one else has claimed it…
You say, as if that alone
that everything, all of it,
is still out there for us, just waiting
for us to claim our winnings for you to lay claim
and strike up a celebration.
this
raft of otter , undated
These lines are evidence of recollection in tranquility, to

return to Wordsworth a moment. They were not part of
what happened on the grocery outing, but as I worked
ith this first draft the came to me, a childhood memor
connected to the idea of what the lottery money could
buy back. They had been in my subconscious all along,
subliminally feeding the pathos I felt for my mother during
this whole lottery ticket episode. While working with the


“Lottery”
Unit 2
first draft, and feeling some frustration at the ine ectiveness

MY NOTES
of m ord fiddling, the came as ords orth sa s a
spontaneous over o of po erful feeling recollected in
tranquility.” They are at the heart of the poem that is trying
to emerge from this overl detailed and heavil narrative first
draft.
My process is always the same when writing poems:

hand ritten ournal entr ecomes a t ped first draft. Then
the printed first draft gets mar ed up ith hand ritten notes,
and the whole thing gets typed into a second draft, which is
then printed and marked up and so on. Until I am able to read
a typed and properly set up version of the poem, the way it
would appear in print, I cannot see (or hear) where changes
need to be made. The subsequent drafts of “Lottery” each
achieve a significant alteration, as ell as ord su stitutions
and line breaks.
In raft , I have t ped in the lines a out the fire ies and
elaborated fur ther: we caught them because in my hometown
of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, researchers would pay us thirty
cents for a hundred bugs. The fact that we had to freeze the
fire ies doesn t get added until the final draft of the poem,
but the importance of being paid for them is clear to me. The
handwritten comment to the right of the penultimate stanza
confirms this. I otted it do n as a oman in m poetr group
said it: “Big expectations of Big money.”
This as not the first time that someone in m poetr group

pointed out the essence of my own poem to me. That is the
value of a good poetry critique group. “Big expectations of
Big money” is an overt statement of the theme implicit in the
lines I had chosen to add. This was encouraging. It meant I
had started to feel the pulse of the poem.
ne of m changes in raft is of paramount importance,

and remained unaltered through the remaining drafts:
switching from the second- to third-person pronoun. The
seemingl simple changes in the first t o lines of raft
actually represent leaps of development. I can recreate them
like this:


“Lottery”
Unit 2
Everything you would need

MY NOTES
the week of my vacation
could be found at Woodman’s:
Everything you would need

during the week of my vacation
Everything my mother needed


The fourth set of lines does two things that appear nearly
counterintuitive. First, it says much more than the previous
ones, even though it has fewer words. Why? Because
it is not atered do n super uous information. M
going on vacation had nothing to do with the poem,
yet it was hard for me to let go of talking about it. We
sometimes refer to lines li e this as sca olding. The
were a necessary structure to get into the poem, but
once the actual poem emerges, much like a house under
construction, more and more of the sca olding must e
done away with. Writers are averse to doing this. Often
e don t recognize sca olding for hat it is. e feel
emotionally attached to it because it was in the poem from
the onset. From this we get the well-known adage: Kill your
babies.
Second, the reduction in the fourth set of lines brings the

reader more closely into the poem. This is done, oddly
enough, by removing the rather intimate personal pronoun
“you” and referring to the mother in the third person. This
distancing of the mother works to draw the reader in
ecause the poem s first-person narrator is no confiding
her observations in the reader. When the “I” was engaged
directly with the mother, we, the readers, were observing
the scene from a distance and didn’t really feel involved
with these two people huddled over their lottery ticket.
With “you” gone from the poem, the reader observes the
scene shoulder to shoulder with the narrator. Now the “I” is


“Lottery”
Unit 2
MY NOTES
The Lottery Ticket
my mother
Everything you would needed
two cartons of cigarettes
three gallons of milk
unsalted rice cakes and
six black bottles of diet cola.
I want to
buy a lottery ticket,
she you added and weaved worn-out,
stiff-kneed, half-blind,
to the far end of the store
near the videos, ice cream,
and packaged liquor
Neither of us knew how to go about it.

She the
You had already chosen your numbers,
written them in large cursive
on a tear of yellow cardboard.
I fumbled, rubbing in the dots for you.

her
lingered slightly over your numbers
to register their significance ut ound none.
rumage You did not check the ticket while I was gone, She kept the ticket
and look for it now in the depths of your purse, I have our ticket in here
kleenex, envelopes, a dollar bill when it returned
She said, rumaging in her,
rising over your wrists as you dig.
Kleener, envelopes, a loned
That’s six and a half million a year for life! rising over her wrists
she tells me say
you tell me of the man who won last winter,
and I do not ask how they figured
the number of years in his life, nor do I ask
she
what you would do with the money
her and
uy ack your teeth? our eyesight
her light ones and lean flesh?
Buy back the Tennessee summers
she you played squirt guns with ussold
and caught fireflies we could sell to science Big expectations of Big m
or thirty cents a hundred?
No one else has claimed it!

she you say,s as if that alone
is still
means makes everything possible,
out there
and all of it is just waiting for you
to start up this celebration.
telling the reader about the mother, allowing the reader to share
observations and know thoughts the mother is not privy to.
These thoughts, the ones a out fire ies and s uirt guns and a
long ago youthful mother, contain the poem’s soul. They are the
thoughts over o ing ith po erful feeling. The are the ones
that ere recollected in tran uilit hile fiddling ith revisions.


“Lottery”
Unit 2
In raft , the contents of the purse, stanza si , are isel

MY NOTES
removed. ot much else happens. The first stanza remains
in past tense, and I still can t decide on the indefinite or
demonstrative pronoun for the celebration in the last line.
I have un isel turned the fire ies into edding rings, a
true fact from childhood, but I seem to have decided “Big
expectations of Big money” was not the theme after all.
ith raft , I thought ma e the poem as as good as

it was going to get. Unfortunately, these drafts are not
dated, but they cover the course of a year. The original
ournal entr as in une . raft has a hand ritten
note I no as from summer .
In Draft 4, things pick up. I return to the idea of selling the

fire ies to science. I spot prosaic language in the fifth
stanza and realize that “lingering over her numbers trying
to register their significance is depicted more clearl if
I don t actuall sa it. T o other ver significant changes
are made, ones that shake the poem fully loose of its
sca olding I put the poem into present tense and cut
the last two lines. The switch to present tense, tried out
methodically from verb to verb, releases the poem from its
anchor in the past. This immediacy brings the reader even
closer to the narrator’s shoulder, right into the moment
itself. The speaker is no longer relating something that
once happened but delivering a blow-by-blow account of
the poignant event as it unfolds.
By cutting the two last lines of the poem, I do away with

the troublesome “celebration.” Often when a word or
line is a source of recurring doubt and consternation, it
is reall identif ing itself as part of the sca olding. Ta e
these lines away, and lo and behold, the poem has found
its true ending. “As if / everything is still possible” made
my breath stop. Note the emphatically solid period I
drew at the end. Still possible. Full stop. By Draft 4, I have
egun to grasp the poem. uper uous portions of the
original poem are removed, and essential memories that
concretize my feelings are added. The poem’s relationship
to the reader is enhanced by two grammatical changes:
the third-person point of view and present verb tense. The
poem is there.


“Lottery”
Unit 2
MY NOTES
Lottery

two cartons of cigarettes
three gallons of milk
I want to buy a lottery ticket,

she added and weaved a stiff-kneed,
half-blind, to the far end of the store
near the videos and packaged liquor.
She had already chosen numbers,

I fumbled, rubbing in the dots,

lingering slightly over her numbers
to register their significance ut ound none.
I have ticket in here, she says,

Kleenex, envelopes, a lone dollar
rising over her wrists as she digs.
That’s six and a half million a year for life!

she says of the man who won last winter.
and I do not ask
how one figured the years le t in his li e
nor do I ask
if we could buy back she will
her teeth and eyesight, her mouth full of teeth,
her light bones
and lean flesh.
Buy back the Tennessee summers
she played squirt guns with us
and caught fireflies we ade into wedding rings.

that means
she says, as if everything is still possible,
just waiting for her
all
fit to start up this celebration.
a
till I eep fiddling. u se uent drafts sho I still elieve

there reall is a right and rong choice et een filling and
ru ing in the dots. There is a revision dated pril in
which I am changing line breaks to beat the band. Still, no
more significant changes happen or are needed. out three
years after I initially wrote the poem, I type up a draft that I
start sending out for publication.
final episode in the evolution of this poem is orth sharing.

ometime in , I sent a atch of a out five poems to the
literary journal Prairie Schooner, and in anuar , I as


“Lottery”
Unit 2
delighted to receive an acceptance contract for a poem

MY NOTES
called “Books.” I shared this news with my mother, as I did
all news regarding my poetry, so long as it wasn’t about
her. I would never, for example, have shown her the poem
“Lottery.” In fact, had a poem such as “Lottery” come into
publication, I would have made very certain it was in a
journal my mother had not heard of or would never come
across. If, for example, Prairie Schooner had accepted
“Lottery,” I would never have mentioned the journal’s
name to my mother, and certainly not boasted about my
publication contract with them.
Ten months later, on a Saturday in November, my mother

awoke early, sat up in bed, and died instantly of a heart
attack. This shock had me still reverberating in some zone
of incredulity and disbelief when three days later, along
ith the ver first s mpath cards to arrive in m mail o ,
were proofs from Prairie Schooner for my poem “Books”
and the poem “Lottery.” I stared dumbfounded at the
papers in my hand, and when I had recovered somewhat
went searching for the magazine contract. Sure enough, it
was for one poem only. For “Books.”
There are two versions of the world we can choose to

live in. In one, we are constantly struggling against the
fact that things go wrong, mistakes are made, bad things
happen, and people die. In the other world, there are no
mistakes. Everything just happens and is perfect. I didn’t
know about that second world until the poem “Lottery”
managed to get itself published in what seemed to be
cahoots with my dead mother. Posted in Nebraska on the
last day of her life, the poem came into my hands as a gift,
a mistake, or a miracle. It was labeled “proof.”


“Lottery”
Unit 2
MY NOTES
Rasma Haidri
6422 Hubbard Ave.
Middleton, WI 53562
Lottery
s
nse
two cartons of ciggarettes e nt te
a three gallons of milk p r es
I want to buy a lottery ticket,

s ing
she added and weaved a stiff-kneed,
has the
She had already chosen numbers,
I fumbled, rubbing in the dots,

lingering slightly over her numbers prosy

she says of the man who won last winter.
and I do not ask
s
Nor do I ask
if she will buy back
her teeth and eyesight, Silye –
af
Buy back the summers apple = le
she we played squirt guns us
into wedding rings.

30 1/2 a hundred
she whispers, as if
everything is still possible,
o to lilkha
just waiting for her When u g
to start up a celebration.
Draft 4 of “Lottery,” undated


“Lottery”
Unit 2
Lottery MY NOTES
Everything my mother needs

can be found at Woodman’s:
two cartons of ciggarettes
a gallon of milk,
I want to buy a lottery ticket.
she adds and weaves stiff-kneed,
She has already chosen the numbers,

on a scrap of yellow cardboard.
Neither of us knows how to go about it.
I fumble, rubbing in the dots,

lingering slightly over her numbers
but find no significance.
she says of the man who won last winter
and I do not ask how one figures
the number of years left in his life.
Nor do I ask if she will buy back
her teeth, eyes, strong bones and lean flesh.
Buy back the summers
she played squirt guns with us
and caught fireflies I could sell to science
for thirty cents a hundred.
No one has claimed it!
she whispers, as if everything
is still possible.
inal draft of otter ,
In the spring of , otter as printed in a special

poetry issue of Prairie Schooner. I had spent nearly
five ears ith that poem, revisiting it, tr ing to get it to
breathe and speak My work in revising the poem was
to remove verbiage and supply the words and grammar
it asked for. In other words, I worked to get to know it. I


“Lottery”
Unit 2
worked to hear what it had to say. When you revise a poem,

MY NOTES
think of yourself as listening to it. Strain your ears and screw
o our o n chatter. or the longest time, I thought I ne
that “Lottery” was about despair. Then the poem showed up
on my doorstep of its own accord, and I glimpsed something
bigger. Perhaps everything is still possible.


“The Fight”
JOHN MONTAGUE
From Collected Poems


“The Fight”
Unit 2
When I found the swallow’s

MY NOTES
Nest under the bridge—
Ankle-deep in the bog stream,
Tra c drumming overhead
I was so pleased, I ran
To fetch a school companion
To share the nude fragility
Of the shells, lightly freckled
With colour, in their cradle
Of feathers, twigs, earth.
It was still breast warm

Where I curved in my hand
To count them, one by one
Into his cold palm, a kind
f troph or o ering. Turn-
Ing my back, to scoop out
The last, I heard him run
Down the echoing hollow
Of the bridge. Splashing
After, I bent tangled in
Bull wire at the bridge’s
Mouth, when I saw him take
And break them, one by one
Against a sunlit stone.
For minutes we fought

Standing and falling in
The river’s brown spate,
nd I ould still fight
Though now I can forgive.
To worship or destroy beauty—

That double edge of impulse
I recognize, by which we live;
But also the bitter paradox
Of betraying love to harm,
Then lungeing, too late,
ith fists, to its defence.


“Tamara’s Opus”
JOSHUA BENNETT
From Disability Studies Quarterly


Unit 2
Tamara has never listened

MY NOTES
to hip-hop
Never danced
to the rhythm of raindrops
or fallen asleep to a chorus of chirping crickets
she has been Deaf
for as long as I have been alive
and ever since the da that I first turned five
My father has said:
“Joshua. Nothing is wrong with Tamara.
God just makes
some people different.”
And at that moment
those nine letters felt like hammers
swung gracefully by unholy hands
to shatter my stained-glass innocence
into shards that could never be pieced back together
or do anything more
than sever the ties between my sister and I.
I waited
was patient numberless years
anticipating the second
her ears would open like lotuses
and allow my sunlight sentences to seep
into her insides
make her remember all those conversations
we must have had in Heaven
back when God hand-picked us
to be sibling souls centuries ago
I still remem er her th irthda

readily recall my awestruck eleven-year old eyes
as I watched Deaf men and women of all ages
dance in unison to the vibrations
of speakers booming so loud
that I imagined angels chastising us
for disturbing their worship
with such beautiful blasphemy
until you have seen
a Deaf girl dance
you know nothing of passion.


Unit 2
There was a barricade between us

MY NOTES
that I never took the time to destroy
never for even a moment
thought to pick up a book and look up
the signs for sister

for family
for goodbye, I will see you again some day
remember the face of your little brother.
It is only now I see
that I was never willing
to put in the e tra e ort to love her properl
So as the only person in my family
ho is not uent in sign language
I have decided to take this time
to apologize
Tamara, I am sorry
for my silence.
But true love knows no frequency

So I will use these hands
to speak volumes
that could never be contained
within the boundaries of sound waves
I ill shout at the top of m fingertips
until digits dance and relay these messages
directly to your soul
I know
that there is no poem
that can make up for all the time that we have lost
but please, if you can,
70 just listen


Excerpt from
Hamlet
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE


Excerpt from Hamlet
Unit 2
From Act 1, Scene 2

MY NOTES
KING
64 But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son,—
HAMLET
[Aside.] A little more than kin, and less than kind.
KING
How is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET
Not so, my lord; I am too much in the sun.
QUEEN
68 ood Hamlet, cast th nighted colour o ,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ‘tis common; all that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
HAMLET
Ay, madam, it is common.
QUEEN
If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
HAMLET
Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not ‘seems.’
‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly; these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show—
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.


Excerpt from
Romeo and Juliet

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE


Excerpt from Romeo and Juliet
Unit 2
From Act 3, Scene 1

MY NOTES
TYBALT
ollo me close, for I ill spea to them.
Gentlemen, good e’en. A word with one of you.
MERCUTIO
And but one word with one of us? Couple it
with something, make it a word and a blow.
TYBALT
ou shall find me apt enough to that, sir,
and you will give me occasion.
MERCUTIO
Could you not take some occasion without giving?
TYBALT
Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo—
MERCUTIO
Consort! What, dost thou make us minstrels? An thou
ma e minstrels of us, loo to hear nothing ut discords.
Here s m fiddlestic , here s that shall ma e ou dance.
’Zounds, consort!
BENVOLIO
We talk here in the public haunt of men.
Either withdraw unto some private place,
And reason coldly of your grievances,
Or else depart; here all eyes gaze on us.
MERCUTIO
Men’s eyes were made to look, and let them gaze;
I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I.
Enter Romeo.
TYBALT
Well, peace be with you, sir, here comes my man.


Unit 2
MERCUTIO
MY NOTES
But I’ll be hang’d, sir, if he wear your livery.
Marr , go efore to field, he ll e our follo er
Your worship in that sense may call him man.
TYBALT
omeo, the love I ear thee can a ord
No better term than this: thou art a villain.
ROMEO
Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee
Doth much excuse the appertaining rage
To such a greeting. Villain am I none;
Therefore farewell, I see thou knowest me not.
TYBALT
Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries
That thou hast done me, therefore turn and draw.
ROMEO
I do protest I never injured thee,
But love thee better than thou canst devise,
Till thou shalt know the reason of my love,
And so, good Capulet—which name I tender
s dearl as mine o n e satisfied.
MERCUTIO
O calm, dishonorable, vile submission!
Alla stoccata carries it a a .
Draws.
Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?
TYBALT
What wouldst thou have with me?
MERCUTIO
Good King of Cats, nothing but one of your nine lives;
that I mean to make bold withal, and as you shall use me
hereafter, dry-beat the rest of the eight. Will you pluck


Unit 2
your sword out of his pilcher by the ears? Make haste, lest
MY NOTES
mine be about your ears ere it be out.
TYBALT
I am for you.
ROMEO
Gentle Mercutio, put thy rapier up.
MERCUTIO
Come, sir, your passado.
They fight.
ROMEO
Draw, Benvolio, beat down their weapons.
Gentlemen, for shame, forbear this outrage!
Tybalt, Mercutio, the Prince expressly hath
Forbid this bandying in Verona streets.
Romeo steps between them.
Hold, Tybalt! Good Mercutio!
Tybalt under Romeo’s arm thrusts Mercutio in.
Away Tybalt with his followers.
MERCUTIO
I am hurt.
A plague a’ both houses!


Credits
Unit 2
Credits
“The Fight” by John Montague from Collected Poems, cop right a e orest
University Press. Used by permission of Wake Forest University Press.
“Lottery” by Rasma Haidri from Poem, Revised: 54 Poems, Revisions, Discussions by Marion
treet ress, cop right asma Haidri. sed permission of asma Haidri.
“Tamara’s Opus” by Joshua Bennett from Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. , no. ,
cop right oshua Bennett. sed permission of oshua Bennett.
“What Happened During the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen from You Know What Is Right,
cop right im He nen. sed permission of the author.


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UNIT

Pivotal Words and Phrases

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 1 16/04/20 1:52 AM

PRE-AP EQUITY AND ACCESS POLICY

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 2 16/04/20 1:52 AM

hat Happened uring the Ice torm im He nen .......................................................................

otter asma Haidri ...............................................................................................................................

The ight ohn Montague ....................................................................................................................

Tamara s pus oshua Bennett .........................................................................................................

Excerpt from Hamlet illiam ha espeare ........................................................................................

Excerpt from Romeo and Juliet illiam ha espeare ...................................................................

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 3 03/04/20 8:28 PM

Student Reader 1 Pre-AP English 1

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 1 03/04/20 8:28 PM

One winter there was a freezing rain. How beautiful! people

Some farmers went ice-skating down the gravel roads with

The boys had not brought clubs, or sacks, or anything but

4 Then one of the o s said, hh. He as ta ing o his coat, the

Pre-AP English 1 2 Student Reader

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 2 03/04/20 8:28 PM

Student Reader 3 Pre-AP English 1

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 3 03/04/20 8:28 PM

illiam ords orth s famous definition of poetr as the

The incident that spurred my poem was a time I took my

4 The problem with words about feelings or emotions is that

Sometimes beginning writers feel that to take a poem

Pre-AP English 1 4 Student Reader

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 4 03/04/20 8:28 PM

6 Let us see how this worked in the poem “Lottery.” The

Man elements of hat ill e the final poem are alread

8 The point of view of the journal entry switches between

The journal entry strives for verisimilitude in its use of

Student Reader 5 Pre-AP English 1

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 5 03/04/20 8:28 PM

shows the tedium of excessive details that don’t know why

raft of the poem is essentiall identical to the ournal

Hand ritten ournal entr , page , une

Pre-AP English 1 6 Student Reader

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 6 03/04/20 8:28 PM

end of the store, by videos and ice cream and packaged

Neither of us knew how to go about it. Mother could

(I don’t want to know ask) you would do if our tickets had

You didn’t check our numbers that night I was on vacation

Hand ritten ournal entr , pages , une

t this stage in the revision, I am fiddling ver much ith

I am somewhat aware in this draft of needing to cut down

Student Reader 7 Pre-AP English 1

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 7 03/04/20 8:28 PM

“That week” instead of “while I was gone” is an attempt at

T o other alterations in raft significantl aid the poem s

The long southern evenings

Pre-AP English 1 8 Student Reader

Eng1_U2_SR_Reader.indd 8 03/04/20 8:28 PM

That’s six and a half million a year

You already had your numbers picked out,

Neither of us knew how to go about it, though

raft of otter , undated

These lines are evidence of recollection in tranquility, to

Student Reader 9 Pre-AP English 1