PERSONAL RESPOND



Just like the first poem, I have never heard of the poem nor the poet. You can try googling but I think there's nothing much there, so don't bother. She is an Indonesian writer and looking at it positively, I think that this is a good idea. But I really hope that MoE has asked for permission to use her poem because we don't want another conflict to arise (got my point?). Okay, enough rambling, let's start...

Dealing with the obvious first, let's look at the RHYMING SCHEME: a,a,a,a... yes, the rhyming scheme is uniformed throughout the whole poem. This is IMHO the strong point of this poem. This would be an x-factor that could attract students to this poem. Especially, in my case where nurturing the love towards the beauty of literature is quite challenging with poems with the like of Monsoon History (no offence, it's a good poem... but you got my point right?). For beginner-intermediate students who are still struggling with simple vocabularies, asking them to love such poems is almost like forcing a 0.7mm pencil lead into the 0.5 mechanical pencil :) This poem is different though. It's meaning is not entirely simple. Yet, it is verbally beautiful. The uniformed rhymes gives life to the poem. A lot of while reading activities can be crafted into interesting lesson when teaching this poem. Just by reading aloud, even without instruction, the poem would still sound interesting. And this is very important for beginner students. This poem is not unlike song lyrics, thus, I think you got my idea.