2021 Post #11 -- Discovering Juxtaposition

by John Waite

The poem “The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski features simple language but enough linguistic flourishes and ambiguities to put it in the sweet spot for high school students. His theme or message is stated immediately, so students should not have difficulty locating that.

In teaching poetry, my goal is to give students strategies that they can use as they approach any poem. Here are some of the strategies they would use as they worked with the poem.

Have students look for juxtaposition. For instance, the use of “dank” and “darkness” juxtaposed with the instances of “light” in the poem. Another instance would be the idea that you “can’t beat death but / you can beat death in life.” How does juxtaposition help Bukowski create meaning?

Have students debate which word in the poem is the “most important” to the poem’s meaning. They could choose their own word to argue, or you could give them options like “sometimes,” “delight,” and “life.”

Have students look for repetition (of ideas, words, images, forms, etc.) What in the poem repeats? What is the effect of that repetition?

Before giving the poem to students, the teacher replaces some of the important words in the poem with blank spaces (a strategy related to what is called “cloze reading”). Have students predict what words go in the blanks. Then have students compare and contrast their choices with the actual words, considering why the poet made the choices they made.

If you don’t want to do cloze reading as detailed above, have students try to replace words in the poem after they have read it. Why do different words not have the same effect as the ones the author chose?

Have the students mark the poem for lines or images that seem positive, negative, ambiguous, or neutral. What trends do they see? What do these trends tell them about how the poem works?

Possible discussion/investigatory questions specific to this poem include:

1. What does the word “dank” mean? Why did he choose that specific word? Over, say, “Dark.”
2. What do you think the author means by “light” in line 5? What different types of light could there be?
3. What do you think the author means in line 13? Why do you think he includes the word “sometimes”?
4. How do you relate the tone of the title with the rest of the poem? Why does he not repeat the word “laughing” elsewhere in the poem?

Further Reading:

John Waite is a teacher at Downers Grove North High School in Downers Grove, Il. He is a licensed Reading Specialist and National Board Certified Teacher. Reach John at jwaite@csd99.org.