Teaching Allusions in Poetry: Why, How, When, and 11 Recommendations

Teaching high school English can be a strange job.

This is true for many reasons. But a big one is that we happen to love a subject known for being nitpicky and “extra.” Whether it’s an adult who assumes we’re going to police their grammar or an eye-rolling teenager who thinks we made up that whole “the green light at the end of the dock means something” insight, we’ve had at least one moment where we question whether we have become that person.

Teaching allusions in poetry can really make us wonder whether we’re wasting our time. On the one hand, we recognize the value of literary allusions and want to introduce students to the language of our discipline.

But more often than not, teaching allusions in poetry requires an inordinate amount of explanation just for students to understand a single word or line.

It’s worth acknowledging that allusions are everywhere in literature, not just poetry, and we share suggestions below for teaching allusions in the part of your curriculum that works best for you. But poetry’s conciseness tends to draw allusions out of poets and makes for an efficient lesson plan (probably why allusions are incorporated in Unit 5: Poetry II in the AP Literature curriculum). Because of this, we’ve made allusions in poetry our primary focus here.

Despite the challenges, it is possible to teach allusions in poetry meaningfully and efficiently. We’ve had fantastic discussions with students while covering this topic. In this post, we share strategies for incorporating allusions into your curriculum as well as 11 poems we’ve used successfully with our students.

Why Literary Allusions Matter

Literary allusions matter because they’re everywhere. Students have heard them before, and they will hear them in the future, even if they aren’t English majors.

The definition of allusion that we give our students is “a reference to history, literature, pop culture, or any other source that is not explained; the reader is intended to recognize the reference and use it to help understand the current text.”

The AP Literature Course and Exam Description elaborates: “Allusions in a text can reference literary works including myths and sacred texts; other works of art including paintings and music; or people, places, or events outside the text” (67). The specific reference to myths and sacred texts like the Bible will be familiar to any of us who introduce our students to symbolism and intertextuality using Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

Allusions, used effectively, can be quite powerful. They allow authors to infuse their work with the meaning and emotions of an entire text in only a word or two. In poetry, a concise form of language where every word counts, this is particularly valuable.

As powerful as allusions can be, they’re not easy for us to teach or for our students to understand.

Why Literary Allusions Are Challenging to Teach

Why do literary allusions pose such a challenge for our students and for us? There are three primary reasons.

Fortunately, these are not impossible barriers to overcome. A few simple strategies can help your students grow in their ability to discuss allusions in poetry.

How to Overcome Barriers to Analyzing Allusions in Poetry

The first (and most important) step to overcoming the barriers our students face in identifying and analyzing allusions is to assume your students will need background information. While there are certainly exceptions, we’ve found that students are increasingly unfamiliar with the myths, Bible stories, Shakespearean plays, and fairy tales that authors love to reference. This is why we devote time every year to helping our students grow their cultural toolkit.

When you assume your students will need background information, you save yourself and your students from frustration by building in an opportunity for review. This is also a way to be inclusive, ensuring that all students, regardless of their background, can achieve success. There are many ways to provide this background information, and we outline some options below when discussing where to teach allusions.

When students have the appropriate background information, they’re on their way to identifying literary allusions when they encounter them. But it’s worth reminding students that whenever they see a capitalized name (that isn’t a character), they should consider the possibility that they’ve encountered an allusion and check their “toolkit” or perform a quick Google. (Certainly, not all allusions incorporate a capitalized name, but it’s a good starting point for beginning students!)

Finally, students must move beyond mere identification. If they don’t discuss an allusion’s function—how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole—there isn’t much value in having recognized it.

Questions like these can help you point your students toward this function.

Discussing an Allusion’s Function: Questions to Ask Yourself

These basic strategies will work no matter where you incorporate allusions into your curriculum. Deciding where to incorporate them, however, might require some additional thought.

When to Teach Literary Allusions

We’ve found that teaching allusions in poetry tends to work better for our students than teaching allusions with other genres. After all, poems are relatively short, allowing us to discuss a relatively minor literary device without embarking on a six-week novel unit. With poetry, we can meaningfully cover the term and its function within a lesson or two.

But there are many ways to teach literary allusions in your class, and they can all be effective, depending on what texts are in your curriculum and how much practice your students need.

Provide direct instruction on literary allusions at the beginning of the year.

If your students, like ours, need quite a bit of background on common literary allusions, you might consider making a review of mythological and biblical allusions part of your introductory unit. In addition to assigning How to Read Literature Like a Professor, which includes four chapters on allusions, we provided students a list of key mythological and biblical allusions to review for a test at the end of the first six-week grading period. This helped build their cultural toolkits and gave everyone a common foundation.

Address literary allusions as part of a novel unit.

If you’re teaching a novel that is rich with allusions, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, then it makes sense to discuss allusions within that unit. You can provide any relevant background information in your introductory lessons, and then students can identify the allusions as they read. The function of the allusions can be part of your class discussion.

Similarly, you can supplement a novel unit with other texts, like poems that allude to the novel. If you’re teaching Macbeth, you can introduce Robert Frost’s “Out, Out—” (see below) after the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy in Act 5. We used this approach when reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, incorporating W.B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming” into our discussion of the novel.

Wait until an allusion appears in a text.

If you’re short on time or teaching a text with a relatively obscure allusion, it may be best to address allusions as a “step-aside” when they come up.

We used this strategy when teaching Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, providing students with background information on the biblical prophet Elijah and several verses from Malachi when discussing Ely’s characterization. This isn’t an allusion we expected students to recognize on their own, but just five minutes of explanation enriched our students’ discussion of the text.

Devote a few lessons directly to allusions.

Finally, if you have time, teach novels that don’t rely on allusions, or have students who need lots of practice, consider devoting a lesson or two specifically to allusions in poetry. This is the approach we took most years: our students benefited from multiple opportunities to practice one literary device at a time. 

It’s important to select poems with allusions that students are likely to recognize or plan to engage with the original text as part of your lesson.

Below, you can find a list of poems that worked well with our students during these lessons.

11 Recommendations for Teaching Allusions in Poetry

“Failing and Flying,” by Jack Gilbert

Poems that allude to the Daedalus and Icarus myth tend to work nicely since most students are familiar with it. Steph encountered this poem while tutoring and thought it was a gem, especially because it provides a refreshingly different take on the myth.

Most Daedalus and Icarus allusions focus on the dangers of pride or the indifference of the universe in the face of death; Gilbert’s poem, however, reminds us “that Icarus also flew” and failing doesn’t mean that an experience was not worth undertaking (1).

“Hazel Tells LaVerne,” by Katherine Howd Machan

One of our favorite poems to teach, Machan’s dialogue between two cleaning ladies relies heavily on an allusion to The Frog Prince. You’ll want to be prepared to read the fairy tale in class, however, as Disney’s The Princess and the Frog doesn’t provide the context they’ll need.

The poem is fun and straightforward, but Machan subverts our expectations, allowing students to explore complexity in an accessible context.

“I Hear America Singing,” by Walt Whitman and “I, Too,” by Langston Hughes

This pair of poems makes for an excellent inclusion in your poetry unit. Hughes’ poem is in direct conversation with Whitman’s poem, allowing you to show your students intertextuality in action as you consider who, in fact, is considered to be an “American.”

“Journey of the Magi,” by T.S. Eliot

Eliot’s poem focuses on the Nativity story, which many students have at least some passing familiarity with. It also incorporates multiple allusions to the life of Christ, which students may be able to pick up on (or at least recognize as something worth Googling).

As is often the case with Eliot, the poem subverts our expectations. Instead of rejoicing “with exceeding great joy” (Matthew 2:10), the speaker recalls struggling with trials and doubts along the way, an experience that mirrors the complex reality of religious belief for many people.

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by T.S. Eliot

Speaking of T.S. Eliot, his poem about the timid Prufrock is packed full of allusions. Students certainly won’t recognize all the allusions, but analyzing this poem is a great opportunity to put students in the driver’s seat (especially toward the end of your lesson sequence). They can work in groups to research the original text and discuss how it applies to the poem’s characterization of Prufrock.

“My Son the Man,” by Sharon Olds

If you’d like to include a poem that doesn’t rely on mythology or the Bible, Olds’s reflection on motherhood leans heavily on a reference to Harry Houdini, the escape artist from the early 1900s. Students are likely to need background information before reading, but once they have it, they’re able to develop interesting insights about the mother-son relationship.

“Out, Out—,” by Robert Frost

Frost’s poem is perfect if you and your students read Macbeth, but you can also assign the original and Frost’s poem as a pair: the actual soliloquy is only ten lines. Frost’s poem on the abruptness of death and the indifference of the universe is enhanced by the connection to Shakespeare’s poem and is perhaps more emotionally resonant to students.

“Same Song,” by Pat Mora

We used Mora’s poem with both our standard-level and AP Literature students. It’s an easy entry into discussing the function of allusions, and because it’s about teenage body image, it’s highly relatable to students. The poem alludes to Snow White, specifically the appearance-obsessed Evil Queen, and the negative connotations evoked by the allusion highlight the speaker’s concerns about her children.

“Sonnet,” by Billy Collins

This little delight pairs nicely with (or after) a lesson on sonnet form. Collins pokes fun at the Petrarchan sonnet tradition (which we tend to bypass in favor of Shakespeare), and the light, breezy poem can be discussed relatively quickly.

This poem would also pair nicely with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes . . .”), where Shakespeare pokes fun at the romantic sonnet traditions in his own way. (We always told our students the poem would be like someone writing a parody of Bruno Mars’s “Just the Way You Are” or One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful.”)

“Yet Do I Marvel,” by Countee Cullen

If your students have an intermediate or advanced understanding of Greek mythology, they might enjoy Cullen’s poem, which alludes to the myths of Tantalus and Sisyphus. The poem portrays the experience of a Black poet who questions God’s goodness, a complex text that leads to rich discussion.

Teaching allusions in poetry may be challenging, but it can be done meaningfully and efficiently with a little planning. If you expect that students will need some background information and make space in your curriculum to provide that context, students can capably participate in rich discussions about the role allusions play in the meaning of a wide range of poems.

For more tips and tricks related to teaching allusions in AP Literature, check out this blog post to learn more about how we incorporate literary allusions into our introductory unit. Our Free Resource Library includes a curated list of mythological and biblical allusions and accompanying practice Kahoots. You can also purchase our complete assessment package with multiple test variations to fit diverse classroom needs.