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Slam Dunk and Hook by Yusef Komunyakaa

Fast breaks. Lay ups. With Mercury’s
Insignia on our sneakers,
We outmaneuvered the footwork
Of bad angels. Nothing but a hot
Swish of strings like silk 5
Ten feet out. In the roundhouse
Labyrinth our bodies
Created, we could almost
Last forever, poised in midair
Like storybook sea monsters. 10

A high note hung there
A long second. Off
The rim. We’d corkscrew
Up & dunk balls that exploded
The skullcap of hope & good 15
Intention. Bug-eyed, lanky,
All hands & feet…sprung rhythm.
We were metaphysical when girls
Cheered on the sidelines.
Tangled up in a falling. 20
Muscles were a bright motor
Double-flashing to the metal hoop
Nailed to our oak.

When Sonny Boy’s mama died
He played nonstop all day, so hard 25
Our backboard splintered.
Glistening with sweat, we jibed
& rolled the ball off our fingertips. Trouble
Was there slapping a blackjack1 30
Against an open palm.

Dribble, drive to the inside, feint,
& glide like a sparrow-hawk.
Lay ups. Fast breaks.
We had moves we didn’t know 35
We had. Our bodies spun
On swivels of bone & faith,
Through a lyric slipknot
Of joy, & we knew we were
Beautiful & dangerous... 40

1. Find two similes in the first stanza. What things are being compared and why?

2. Find two metaphors and explain their meanings

3. How is alliteration used in lines 5, 10, and 32? Write down the phrases where the alliteration is used. What purpose does it serve?

4. Which two literary devices are used in the lines, “Trouble/ Was there slapping a blackjack/ Against an open palm.”?

5. Find two examples of onomatopoeia.

6. Find two examples of assonance.

7. Is this poem written primarily in free verse, slant rhyme, or blank verse? How do you know?

8. How many stanzas are there? How many octaves?

9. Find an example of imagery that evokes the sense of touch.

Wild Things by Judith Steinbergh
What is it that makes us love wild things?
That after long patience and a kind of thirst, after speculating on the slap of water, whir of wings, out of the grainy dusk, some wild creature bursts

from the forest. Before we focus on its shape, almost before it can be named, it twists back, leaps, makes its escape.
Whatever it was, we know it can’t be tamed.

Do we want the whole deer quivering under our gaze?
The fox frozen as a statue in its track?
No. Only the glaze of eyes, the lightning bolt of legs, the otter’s wake. We want the power to attract.

Wildness to be skimmed, sensed, not faced.
We want to love wildness, to feel that we’ve been graced.

1. Where is the volta?

2. How many couplets are there? How many quatrains?
3. What meter is the 12th line written in?
4. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?
5. What kind of poem is this?

Write one-two lines of poetry that demonstrate or define the poetic term in parentheses. An example has been done for you.
1.(simile) Her memory of the ill-fated picnic now felt as hazy as a twilight sky, and she was glad for the softening of the sharper angles of it.
2. (metaphor)

3. (alliteration)

4. (assonance)

5. (personification)

6. (internal rhyme)

7. (slant rhyme)

8. (couplet)

9. (blank verse)

10. (free verse)