Sequence of activities:
15 minutes
Mention that in ancient Latin, the word persona means "mask." The word also can refer to a character played by an actor.
Hand out (or project) the poems. Start with Ted Kooser’s poem, “Look for Me.” Ask a student to read this poem out loud, and then lead a discussion about it. Who or what is speaking in this poem? Is the speaker young or old? How do you know? Then have a student read, Louise Gluck’s poem, “The Wild Iris.” Who or what is speaking in this poem? I also like to mention that the poet suffered from writer’s block and depression before writing this poem. All she could do was work in her garden, until deciding to write this and an entire book of poems (of the same name) from the perspective of different flowers in her garden. This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. (Optional: we also look at the first stanza of Sarah Teasdale’s poem. — The whole poem can be used, but I think that the first stanza is a simpler illustration of persona. Ask students: Who or what is the speaker in this poem?)
10-15 minutes
In this activity, I hand out index cards to the students, and ask them to write the name of a person, animal, plant or object—it could be anything—although I discourage them using the name of someone in class. I encourage them not to overthink this, just write whatever comes to mind. Then, I ask them to fold the index cards in half. I collect these cards and put them in a container (I like to use a hollowed-out gourd, but any kind of basket or box will do). I then ask for a volunteer to randomly pull one of these cards out, and I write the word they pulled out on the board. I do this a number of times—this is especially interesting for the students and gives them a better sense of the variety of things, animals and people they could use in crafting a persona poem.
20-25 minutes
I hand out the persona worksheet, which can be found in the PDF version of this lesson plan. Students write a persona poem. This worksheet is optional. Students can write the poem without the worksheet, but many have found it to be a helpful starting place, and after filling it out, go on to create their own poem.
