A Simile Lesson: Balloons

A W. B. Yeats poem popped up in my email Inbox this morning. Ah, Yeats! So childlike, so romantic, so earnest, so terrifying, so beautiful. So academic, so innocent! It's a short poem that employs the technique of simile in the title, to lead the reader into the poem. 

 

The Balloon of the Mind 
Hands, do what you're bid:
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.


What a delicious description of the mind as an unruly colorful organism that must be tamed or disciplined.

The AAP email suggests several related poems. One is "The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity" by Mary Jo Bang. (I was previously unaware of Ms. Bang, and I will follow her work more closely now. Such mysterious language!) AAP has included an audio recording of the poet reading her poem. I try to use audio in poetry lessons as much as possible, and having a recording of the poet is a plus when engaging kids, especially older ones, paradoxically, who will listen to a recording more readily than to you reading it aloud. The balloon image appears only in the title in this poem.

Another related poem is "The Armadillo" by Elizabeth Bishop. (This is one of the luxuries of AAP's website -- they link you to poem after poem and that can be a delightful way to spend a distracted afternoon--.)  The first stanza includes the balloon image this time, where Bishop has used it as a metaphor for fireworks. Here are the first two stanzas. AAP includes an audio of this poem, too. Lucky lucky us. This reading will give your young listeners a way to hear rhyme rendered masterfully by a modern poet. 

The Armadillo
For Robert Lowell

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height, 

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Bishop's work is rife, filled, huge with metaphors and similes, and I particularly love the way she likens the light coming and going to the beating of a heart. She likens the fireworks later on to an egg, which is also like a balloon, but in a different way.

I imagine this lesson beginning with actual balloons. Kids can blow them up, you can talk about breath. Or you can bring them into the classroom in a huge bouquet -- every child or student can hold one on a string, you can talk about color, buoyancy, edges between one pocket of air and another, all the associations the students have with balloons previously in their life. You can talk about motion and all the verbs that go with balloons. There is a lot to do.

Depending on how much time you have, read one of these three poems. Or, make it a three day lesson. Have the children write poems about balloons, or encourage them to come up with their own metaphors and similes for the mind, the eye, fireworks. The possibilities are endless. 

If you want to incorporate the science of balloons or armadillos, the lesson possibilities are even more endless than normally endless. Here is a link to some wonderful images of armadillo behavior. They look like balloons, sort of, except made of armor. But of course, that was part of the poet's point.