A teacher s guide to HOOFPRINTS: Horse Poems by Jessie Haas

Transcription

1 - 1 - A teacher s guide to HOOFPRINTS: Horse Poems by Jessie Haas Hoofprints is a history of horses, in poems. Horses go back sixty million years, Jessie Haas says. It s a fascinating story, but a long one. I was despairing of filling in all the blanks when I asked myself, Could this be poetry? It could; poetry allowed me to follow my own interests, to grieve, to joke, to be angry. There s laughter here, tears, vast uncharted stretches of time, and a lot of manure. Expect almost anything! CURRICULUM OPTIONS What does the author gain by writing a history in poems? What does she lose? Ask students to choose a subject they are passionate about and write a history of it, choosing either prose or poetry. Ask them to discuss the reasons for their choices. Ask students to discuss whether the rhyming poems in Hoofprints tend to be less serious than the ones that don t rhyme. Are there comic poems here that do not rhyme? Many of these poems look at history from unusual points of view for instance, accounts of Alexander taming Bucephalus don t suggest that his father, King Philip, might have been frightened to see such ability in his son. (Philip was killed by unknown assassins a few years later, and Alexander became king.) Ask students to choose a poem they find exciting or interesting, one that makes them angry, or one that makes them sad. Ask them to write an answering poem from another point of view. Why did the author choose the point of view she did? Have students look at the role titles play in these poems, and list five examples in which the titles function in different ways. For instance, in Roman Riders, (p. 79), the title is also the first line; in (No) Contest (p. 56), the title telegraphs the author s answer to the poem s final question; A Claim Not Made by UPS or FedEx (p. 97) anchors the reader in today s world as a scene 800 years old unfolds in the poem. Some poems rhyme; that is, they have words that sound alike at the ends of certain lines. Explain that rhymes can occur at the end of every line, every two

2 - 2 - lines, or in other patterns, and explain the way rhymes are notated e.g., abab cdcd efef gg, for the Shakespearian sonnet. Taking The Great Hunt (p. 27) as an example, ask students to notate the rhyme scheme. Is it regular or does it vary? Then ask them to consider a poem with a more complex rhyme scheme, such as Pack Ponies (p. 77). Not all poems rhyme. Find a poem in Hoofprints that doesn t rhyme. Read it aloud, and ask students to discuss what makes it a poem even though it doesn t rhyme. Such elements as condensed and heightened language, rhythm, and words chosen for their sound as well as their meaning are used in various poems in Hoofprints. Read The Great Hunt (p. 27) aloud and discuss its rhythm. Which are the strongly accented words? Does everyone who reads the poem aloud accent the same words? Now read First Rider (p. 33), a non-rhyming poem. Does it have rhythm? How is the rhythm different from the rhythm in The Great Hunt? Discuss attitudes authors may have satirical, ironic, reverent, amused, etc. Choose a poem to read aloud; ask students to determine the attitude of the poem and speculate about why the author wrote it that way. Does Hoofprints take an overall attitude toward horses and history? If so, how would students describe that attitude? Geography Afghanistan bred the best horses in the ancient world. Turkey was a great innovator in chariot technology. Iran, Iraq, and Egypt had great chariot empires. Have students identify these countries on a map. Are they regions that we think of as being world leaders today? What are living conditions like? What is the relationship of the United States to each of these countries? Geography/ Map the area that Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Esteban journeyed through. Which tribes might they have encountered? How were those Native Americans living at that time? Geography/ Have students identify their own ethnic backgrounds and investigate how the horse may have influenced where they live and who they are today. Geography/

3 - 3 - Several rare breeds of horses are mentioned in Hoofprints, for instance, the Caspian horse (p. 3) and the Moyle horse (pp ). Others aren t rare but are exotic, such as the Mangalarga Marchador (p. 165). Have students research either a breed of horses mentioned in Hoofprints or a breed they ve never heard of before. A good research project would show what a horse of that breed looks like; tell where the breed comes from, what it s useful for, and why that kind of horse was needed in that place; and describe the breed s status in the world today. Good resources include The International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds, by Bonnie Hendricks, or the website of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Horses and power go together, Jessie Haas states in the introduction to Hoofprints. Have students think about whether this remains true in our time. Is there another animal, element, or type of possession that goes together with power today? Three thousand years ago, wars were fought for access to good horses. Today wars are sometimes fought for oil or natural gas. Have students engage in a discussion on some of the following questions. Is a war for horses any better or worse than a war for oil? What functions do oil (now) and fast horses (then) serve? Does the use in warfare of horses (then) and petroleum (now) create a cycle like the one in Riding with the Horde (p. 93)? Around 4000 B.C. human life changed drastically when we tamed horses. What trends did the horse unleash in our lives? Could anything reverse these trends and turn us into walkers or stay-at-homes? How might modern society adapt to such a change? What if horses had become extinct before we had tamed them? How might your life be different? Discuss, or write a story. Compare the invention of the World Wide Web with the invention of riding and driving horses. Art Have students create a piece of artwork illustrating or otherwise responding to one of the poems. Art The cover of Hoofprints uses a piece of contemporary artwork reminiscent of cave paintings. A Stone Age carving follows the dedication page, and an Etruscan

4 - 4 - sculpture decorates the back cover. Ask students to compare the three pieces. Discuss the changes in technique and in the intentions of the artists over the 30 thousand years in question. Several poems in Hoofprints deal with the theme of manure in some way. Discuss with students the impact of manure on the horse-drawn world. How is horse manure similar to automobile exhaust? Which is more polluting? Mare s milk is becoming popular today in Europe, and it has been popular in north Asia for 6000 years. Ask students to research mare s milk, its properties and purported benefits, and the prospects for horse-milk farming in the U.S. Stephen Budiansky s model of horse vision in The Nature of Horses (The Free Press, 1997) has horses seeing red, but not green, as in The Color of Heaven (p. 182). In Equus magazine (October 2003), Joanne Meszoly proposes that horses see greens in the yellow range, and no red. Have students research whether Meszoly s model is an advance in scientific understanding, or just a difference of opinion. Discuss the difficulties of seeing through the eyes of another species. Western veterinarians have recently been attending the Tsagaan Sar race in Mongolia to care for the horses, many of whom die in the course of running the race or traveling to and from the site. Ask students to investigate folk livestock breeding and make the case either for or against modern veterinary intervention. Consider individual suffering versus the Mongolian need for tough horses. Interested students might investigate the Asian taboon system of raising horses free and outdoors in large herds, with little human care. THEMES War Twenty-three poems in Hoofprints deal with horses and war. Ask students to identify those poems and discuss any differences in attitude they seem to have. Do some seem pro-war, or accepting of it? Do some seem anti-war? Can you make any assumptions about the author s attitude toward war? Rediscoveries In poems on many subjects, from horses rediscovering America to an American woman rediscovering an ancient breed of horse, Hoofprints considers the theme of the lost being found again. Ask students to discuss the implications of finding

5 - 5 - lost animals that were thought to be legendary or extinct. What lost legend would they most like to rediscover? Is it possible? Why or why not? Skepticism and Wonder Is That So? (p. 83) asks readers to take on a certain mental attitude. Ask students to discuss and identify the attitude. Does the author sustain it herself throughout the book? Does Proof (p. 62), for instance, support or contradict Is That So? Speed From the moment that the jungle world begins to dry and cool around the Grandmother (p. 11), Hoofprints deals with horses and speed. Ask students to discuss what makes speed so compelling to people. Do they quest for greater speed in their own lives? Can there be too much speed in the world? When might they seek slowness instead? DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. Imagine you live in the world before the invention of the wheel. Everything heavy must be carried, dragged, or floated. What might give you the idea for the wheel? What would your first experiments be like? What would the neighbors say? 2. The area of the world that was once a battleground of chariot empires Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, etc. is now the battleground of oil empires. Is this a coincidence? Why or why not?