My Mother Pieced Quilts

What lines help prove the theme of this poem?

• "knotted with love/ the quilts sing one"

• "sewn har and taut to withstand the thrashings of twenty-/five years

• but it was just that every morning I awoke to/these october ripened canvases

• me lounging on your arm/and you staking out the plan

What does the quilt represent to the author?

• Her life story

• Her parents story before her

• nothing

• memories of her past

The authors mentions canvases several times. Why?

• an actual canvas

• she saw making quilts like art

• a piece of art

Read the lines from “My Mother Pieced Quilts.” Line 1They were just mean as covers Line 2 In winters Line 3 As weapons Line 4 Against pounding January winds The poet uses this image to create a feeling of –

• grief

• hope

• panic

• security

Read the lines from “My Mother Pieced Quilts.”

Line 30 and you staking out the plan:

Line 31 whether to put the lilac purple of easter against the red plaid of winter-going-into-spring

Line 32 whether to mix yellow wit blue and white and pain the

Line 33 corpus christi noon when my father held your hand

Line 34 whether to shape a five-point star from the

Line 35 somber black silk you wore to grandmother’s funeral

The poet uses this image to appeal mostly to the reader’s sense of –

• taste

• sight

• touch

• sound

In “My Mother Pieced Quilts,” the quilt pieces also describe the speaker’s –

• family history

• unknown future

• new knowledge

• forgotten dreams

The tone of “My Father Is a Simple Man” and “My Mother Pieced Quilts” is

• funny

• angry

• loving

• gloomy

Both poems, “My Father Is a Simple Man” and “My Mother Pieced Quilts,” are about

• justice

• freedom

• gratitude

• education

How is the father in “My Father Is a Simple Man” like the mother in “My Mother Pieced Quilts”? Write a paragraph response comparing the two parents and the feelings the speakers have about them. Be sure to include details from both poems in your paragraph

Which detail from the poem describes the materials used in the quilts?

• The quilts are made of silk and satin

• The quilts are made of old clothes and scraps

• The quilts are made of new fabric

• The quilts are made of wool