The Stress of a HS English Teacher Test

Slice on Tuesdays at http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/

Apostrophe is more than a mark–

It’s talking to a dead person

or an inanimate object

like a corpse in the park, even a piece of bark.

 

Caesura is a pause in poetry

Time to breathe.

Did the pause of a seizure

Come from caesura?

 

Sarcasm literally means–

tearing of flesh.

Interesting to know–

Distracting me from what I need to show.

 

Metonymy is when you speak

of something loosely related

or part of a whole

Though you mean only part,

How are the Oval Office actions metonymy?

Yet the Cabinet talking to the president is synecdoche?

Why does this matter to me?

Internet definitions do not agree.

 

Bildungsroman is a novel of formation

Die Bildung means a building, I remember.

David Copperfield is one,

so is Catcher in the Rye.

 

To Kill a Mockingbird might be one.

Unless you consider it regional,

By now maybe

it’s historical.

 

Terza rima is three lines of something.

Octava rima is 8 lines,

Petrarch grouped by 8

Or was that Spenser,

 

The Italian Sonnet

Also know as Petrarchen,

A Octava rima

than a quatrain.

 

The Italians like ABBA.

Spenser wrote of fairies,

As easy as ABC.

That will help me remember the first line of each quatrain.

 

I already know refrain.

My focus is beginning to wane.

My pencil had got to be number two.

Oh, when will this test be through?

 

Saturday from 2 to 6

I’d rather be home watching flicks.

I feel like such a ditz!

I am thinking all this cramming is hit or miss.