Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School"
A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School"
A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School"
Ebook38 pages27 minutes

A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School"

By Gale and Cengage

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars

()

Read preview

About this ebook

A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 19, 2016
ISBN9781535841597
A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School"

Read more from Gale

Related to A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School"

Related ebooks

Teaching Methods & Materials For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School"

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings

0 ratings0 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

    Book preview

    A Study Guide for Jane Kenyon's "Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School" - Gale

    1

    Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School

    Jane Kenyon

    1986

    Introduction

    Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School first appeared in 1986 in Jane Kenyon’s second volume of poems, The Boat of Quiet Hours, and again in her collection of new and selected poems, Otherwise (1996). In both prose and poems, Kenyon readily confesses that math was her weakest subject. This poem recalls a humiliating moment in elementary school when academic difficulty leads to punishment, not help. In her case, it also leads to an inner change, a heart newly hardened against authority. In the short span of this three-stanza, 25-line poem we learn much about the settings, both outer and inner, for the change that takes place.

    Aside from the title, the poem does not specifically identify the nature of her trouble, nor does it directly track the processes of her inner transformation. The poem delivers this information obliquely. As a result, the context of her trouble with math expands in the widening rings of sensory details, such as the smell / of sweeping compound, the startling image of Christ on Ann’s blue bookmark, and the sound of a Haydn melody hummed in the furnace closet. These indirections help tell a story far larger than the central issue or event itself. Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School is typical of Kenyon’s attention to a single moment, and of her ability to make it present through sensory detail and clear, spare language. The poem provides insight into the mind of a child: what she perceives, and how she copes with adult perceptions.

    Author Biography

    When Jane Kenyon died from leukemia on April 23, 1995, one month short of her 48th birthday, she had lived nearly twenty years in rural Wilmot, New Hampshire, with her husband, poet Donald Hall. Eagle Pond had been the home of Hall’s family for generations, and it became the setting from which her mature poetry emerged. The farmhouse and countryside around Wilmot reminded Kenyon of her Michigan childhood before its landscape became paved over and subdivided: The move to New Hampshire was a restoration of a kind of paradise, she told an interviewer.

    Kenyon was born on May 23, 1947, and grew up in an old house crowded with pictures, books, and music on the rural outskirts of

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1