Early Sunday Morning
Write a poem about a favorite place at a specific time

a. View and discuss Hopper’s painting, Early Sunday Morning, 1930. Ask your students to imagine they are walking down the street in the painting. What do they notice? Where do they think this street might be? Why? What time of day do they think it is? How can they tell? 

b. Writer John Stone wrote an evocative  poem about Edward Hopper’s iconic painting, Early Sunday Morning, 1930. Read the poem with your students and compare their observations and thoughts about the painting with Stone’s. What did students notice about the painting that is different from Stone’s view?

http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/sunday.html

c. Before making his paintings, Hopper started off with sketches. In his studio he combined them, often adding added things from his own imagination. For Hopper, it was more important to capture a feeling or mood than to represent the world exactly as it looked. What kind of mood do your students think he is expressing here? Ask your students to brainstorm words to describe the scene and the mood it evokes for them. Write the words on a board or “word wall.”

d. Have students think of their favorite street or place at a certain time of day or night. Ask them to come up with ten descriptive words for this place and write a short poem using their selected words.