115 pages • 3 hours read
David LevithanA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.
“The Song of A: Every Day and the Poetry of Walt Whitman”
While learning about a classic poem of American literature, students will flex their creative muscles as they imagine a dialogue between the formless A with the all-encompassing “I” from Walt Whitman’s groundbreaking poem “Song of Myself.”
Published in 1855 in his seminal poetry collection Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself” is an epic poem by Walt Whitman that celebrates life, nature, and the mysteries of the universe. The narrator is a shapeshifting “I,” and the poem is famous for lines such as these:
In these lines, you might recognize something similar to what A describes in Every Day as “enormity,” and you may also see something of a Fluid Identity, which is explored at length in the character of A.
By David Levithan