Can You Punctuate the Following Poem?

Mandana Arfa-Kaboodvand, Uzbekistan

Mandana Arfa-Kaboodvand has a PhD in TESOL from the University of Exeter, UK. She has been a language teacher for almost 30 years. She was a university lecturer in Tehran, Iran. At present she works as a senior lecturer at Westminster University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Her main areas of interest are language teacher education and development; language and culture, and teaching English to YLs. Email address: m_arfa@yahoo.com

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Introduction
Exercise
Poem

Introduction

This exercise is based on the poetry of a popular and famous American poet of the early 20th century called Don Marquis /Markwis/. He chose the character of a cockroach as the poet of his own poems, and since the cockroach could not push the shift button of the keyboard, his poems were not capitalized and punctuated properly. This poem is the first poem is the series. The cockroach is called Archy. There is the also a cat, called Mehitabel and a rat called Freddy. According to the poem in their previous lives Mehitabel used to be Cleopatra and Freddy was also a poet.

I first came across this exercise almost 25 years ago in a series of books called ‘Language and How to Use it book 6’, by Scott Foresman Publisher’s. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the book anymore. I have used it several times in my own classes with young adults and it has always been fun.

Exercise

Invite the students to punctuate and capitalize the poem. This activity demonstrates that in order to punctuate correctly, you have to clearly understand the passage. In addition, it shows the importance of punctuation and its frequency. It is suitable for upper-intermediate classes. This poem and some more can be retrieved form the following website:
http://donmarquis.com/reading-room/coming-of-archy/

Poem

expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook upon life
i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i cant eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why dont she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be fore
there is a rat here she should get without delay
most of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats it
i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems showing how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddy dies i hope he wont be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then
dont you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i haven’t had a crumb of bread for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste and leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.