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    The Wasps Nest Questions Guide

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    Janya Gambhir
    The poem describes two wasps that have built their nest in the speaker's mailbox. Over the speaker's objections, the wasps continue working on their nest, undeterred by the threats to their fragile home. Though the speaker could easily destroy the nest, they do not, feeling an affinity for the wasps struggling to build in a vast, alien world where they do not belong.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Wasps Nest Questions Guide

    Uploaded by

    Janya Gambhir
    351 views3 pages
    The poem describes two wasps that have built their nest in the speaker's mailbox. Over the speaker's objections, the wasps continue working on their nest, undeterred by the threats to their fragile home. Though the speaker could easily destroy the nest, they do not, feeling an affinity for the wasps struggling to build in a vast, alien world where they do not belong.

    Original Description:

    Study guide for poem

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    The poem describes two wasps that have built their nest in the speaker's mailbox. Over the speaker's objections, the wasps continue working on their nest, undeterred by the threats to their fragile home. Though the speaker could easily destroy the nest, they do not, feeling an affinity for the wasps struggling to build in a vast, alien world where they do not belong.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    351 views3 pages

    The Wasps Nest Questions Guide

    Uploaded by

    Janya Gambhir
    The poem describes two wasps that have built their nest in the speaker's mailbox. Over the speaker's objections, the wasps continue working on their nest, undeterred by the threats to their fragile home. Though the speaker could easily destroy the nest, they do not, feeling an affinity for the wasps struggling to build in a vast, alien world where they do not belong.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    The Wasps Nest

    by James L Rosenberg

    Two aerial tigers,


    Striped in ebony and gold
    And resonantly, savagely a-hum,
    Have lately come
    5 To my mailboxs metal hold
    And thought
    With paper and with mud
    Therein to build
    Their insubstantial and their only home.
    10 Neither the sore displeasure
    Of the U.S. Mail
    Nor all my threats and warnings
    Will avail
    To turn them from their hummed devotions.
    15 And I think
    They know my strength,
    Can gauge
    The danger of their work:
    One blow could crush them
    20 And their nest; and I am not their friend.
    And yet they seem
    Too deeply and too fiercely occupied
    To bother to attend.
    Perhaps they sense
    25 Ill never deal the blow,
    For, though I am not in nor of them,
    Still I think I know
    What it is like to live
    In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger,
    30 Building the fragile citadels of love
    On the edge of danger.
    The Wasps Nest by James L Rosenberg

    1. What materials have the wasps used to build their nest? (1 point)

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    2. Identify 2 ways in which the speaker personifies the wasps. (2 points)


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    3. In your own words, in lines 26-31, what does the reader learn that the speaker
    and the wasps have in common? (1 point)
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    4. Clearly explain 2 reasons why the metaphor in line 1 is effective. (2 points)


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    5. The poet writes their only home instead of their only nest. Why is the poets
    choice effective? (1 point)
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    6. What is the speakers attitude towards the wasps? Justify your answer with
    evidence from the text. (1 points)
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    7. Onomatopoeia is when a word is spelled like it sounds. Find an example of


    onomatopoeia in the poem. (1 point)
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    8. An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two contradictory terms work together
    to create meaning. If citadels are fortresses, how does fragile citadels work as an
    oxymoron? (1 point)
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    9. What figure of speech best captures the poets use of my mailboxs metal hold in
    line 5? (1 point)
    a. simile
    b. personification
    c. metaphor

    10. What word best captures the way the speaker use alien in line 29? (1 point)
    a. foreign
    b. extraterrestrial
    c. native

    11. What is the danger of their work that the speaker mentions in line 18? (1 point)
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    12. Why is the wasps nest described as insubstantial in line 9? (1 point)


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    13. Where does this poem take place? How do you know this? (1 points)
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