One of the consistent issues that I have to combat throughout the year is that my students – in their close reading and analysis – keep tripping themselves up because they can’t “find any literary devices” in the passage or poem.  They seem to think, as much as I try to break them from this belief, that close reading is an act of scavenging for literary terms, and that by merely identifying a metaphor or a simile or personification will magically grant them access the elusive “author’s purpose.”  Over the course of the year, many of my students become particularly adept at identifying weighty text within a passage or poem; however, many of them become fixated upon the idea that it needs to be formally classified under one of the aforementioned devices, and if they’re not able to classify it under a larger term, many simply discard it or neglect to discuss its significance.  

So I came up with an activity that helps some of my struggling writers focus solely on the text and deprive them of the opportunity to categorize it under the many terms that we covered early in the year.  I took the traditional Blackout Poetry assignment, which is, for the most part, a creative-type activity, and modified it to be of use in strengthening their analysis and breaking them from the bad habits of scavenging for literary devices.

The first thing we do is look at the prompt and determine what the larger purpose is, at least according to the prompt.  I’ve used The Mayor Casterbridge prompt from 2016 for this assignment, though it can modified to use with any passage (or poem).  When they’ve determined what the author’s purpose is, then we read with the intention of looking for any text that contributes to the holistic purpose, in this case, the depiction of the “complex relationship” between the two characters.  

At this point, I introduce them to the assignment.  We go over what a Blackout Poem looks like and what its function is.  Again, traditionally speaking, a Blackout poem is an opportunity to take random words from a text and make something poetic out of it, and many students are familiar with the concept, so I go over my expectations for their Blackout Poem. Yes, it is still somewhat of a creative assignment, but it’s focused creativity, something grounded in honing a specific skill.   

So I tell my students that they’re responsible for two tasks:  

• Come up with a title for your Blackout Poem that accurately describes what the complex relationship between father and daughter is like.  *Don’t be vague!  Make sure you clearly express the complexity of their relationship! The title should express the same information that you’d convey in your thesis statement.  Your title can be long!  

• Go through the passage and black out everything EXCEPT the important pieces of text that you feel encapsulate the complex relationship between father and daughter, as expressed in the title you created.  When you are done, your poem should, theoretically, convey the complex relationship between father and daughter.  In other words, it should make sense when read from beginning to end!  

Then I give them time to go through the text with a partner.  They usually re-read it a couple of times to get a better grasp of what the complex relationship is between father and daughter, then they comb through the text, blacking out everything except those important details & words that contribute to the author’s characterization of the two.  

And their final products are actually quite good!  They’re usually able to come up with something that sounds poetic and, more importantly, identifies the weighty, significant text within the passage.  Their responses tend to be relatively similar to each other’s, which is a good thing, because it conveys that they’re approaching the text similarly and walking away with relatively similar insights.  The only real outliers, I’ve found, are the students who didn’t take the assignment as seriously as their classmates and managed to isolate the words that somehow depicted the father and daughter in an intimate relationship, which isn’t what the author intended, I assume… 

We then go over a couple of exemplary sample essays which – to their surprise, but not to mine – discuss the majority of the significant text that they already picked out themselves, so it’s a good way to validate their findings, give them some reinforcement that they’re not alone in their analysis of the text.  

What I find particularly worthwhile about this assignment is that it forces students to just focus on the text.  As I said earlier, so many students get frustrated with themselves because they’re not able to classify their findings under a specific device; this assignment doesn’t give them that option.  I constantly tell them that nobody reading their essays cares if they’re using AP buzzwords like diction, selection of detail, etc..  What’s most important in their essays is that they discuss the significance of the text in its relation to the larger purpose, not if they’re able to formally attach a term to their evidence.  Another added benefit of the assignment is that since they’re not able to categorize their findings, they’re able to organically work their way through the passage chronologically instead of twisting their mind around how they’re going to split up their body paragraphs by device.  

Anyhow, just wanted to share something that worked well for me!  Again, you should be able to do this assignment with any passage.  It works with poetry, too, but it’s a bit more difficult because the language in poetry is already so condensed and impactful.  

Here’s the LINK for the assignment!  Please let me know if you have any questions!  

Brian Hannon teaches AP Literature and Composition and English 11 at Hayfield Secondary School in Alexandria, Virginia. Outside of school, Brian currently serves as the Youth and Education Development Fellow at the Washington D.C. non-profit poetry organization, Split This Rock.  He also works part-time for the Ultimate Fighting Championship and as a Muay Thai instructor. In 2018, Brian was a finalist for Fairfax County Public Schools Teacher of the Year and was his conference’s Coach of the Year for Hayfield’s Varsity Tennis Team.