Tuesday

 We will discuss sestinas and sonnets today. And see what you came up with about the two sestinas you read yesterday in class.

HOMEWORK: Read part 1 of the Waste Lands 

The hybrid sonnet form will cause you the most trouble.

SONNETS: Are almost always written in iambic pentameter (if you don’t know what this is please check your notes). The sonnet is usually used for the serious treatment of love, but has also been used to address questions of death, God (or religion), political situation and other related subjects. A sonnet almost always contains a turn, also known as a volta.

Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet – rhyme scheme: ABBAABBACDCDCD or ABBAABBACDECDE. It is usually divided into eight lines called an octave and six lines called a sestet. Usually between the octave and the sestet there is a division of thought: the turn coming in line nine. The octave presents a situation and the sestet a comment, or the octave presents an idea and the sestet an example, or the octave presents a question and the sestet an answer. Thus form reinforces idea.

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;
"
Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."

John Milton

English or Shakespearian Sonnet – rhyme scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGG

The English sonnet is composed of three quatrains and a couplet. There is often a correspondence between the units marked by the rhyme and the development of thought. The three quatrains may present three examples of an idea and the couplet a conclusion, or the quatrains may present three metaphorical statements of one idea and the couplet an application of the idea. Thus, again, form reinforces idea. The turn usually comes in line 13 or during the final couplet.

Sonnet #130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go, --
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.


Spenserian Sonnet – rhyme scheme: ABABBCBCCDCDEE

Like the Shakespearian sonnet you have 3 quatrains that seem to overlap with the rhyme, yet it develops up three distinct yet closely related ideas. The turn appears in the couplet. The couplet is used as commentary to the three quatrains or a conclusion to an argument formulated in the three quatrains.

The Spenserian Sonnet is based on a fusion of elements of both the Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet. It is similar to the Shakespearan sonnet in the sense that its set up is based more on the 3 quatrains and a couplet,a system set up by Shakespeare; however it is more like the Petrarchan tradition in the fact that the conclusion follows from the argument or issue set up in the earlier quatrains.

Spenser usually used a parody of the blazon. A blazon was the idealization or praise of a mistress (usually by singling out different parts of the woman’s body and finding appropriate corresponding metaphors, or by using Metonymy, a part of the woman, or her body to stand for the whole – SEE “My Mistress Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun”).

"Sonnet LIV"
Of this World's theatre in which we stay,
My love like the Spectator idly sits,
Beholding me, that all the pageants play,
Disguising diversely my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in mirth like to a Comedy;
Soon after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I wail and make my woes a Tragedy.
Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in my mirth nor rues my smart;
But when I laugh, she mocks: and when I cry
She laughs and hardens evermore her heart.
What then can move her? If nor mirth nor moan,
She is no woman, but a senseless stone.
 

Hybrid or Modern Sonnet:

A hybrid or modern sonnet can take on any variety of sonnet forms (combing them or ignoring them altogether as in half English/half Italian). Some modern sonnets have rhyme scheme (though not all use true rhyme) and others do not. Usually the all have a turn, though the turn can come anywhere from line 9 to line 13. Just note that if the poem has fourteen lines it is probably some form of sonnet. Look for the turn.  

 

There is also nonce sonnets - poems of variable meter and rhyme scheme.

 

Envelope Sonnet - ABBACDDCEFEFEF

Monday

 Today, I need you to look at "Nani" and "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape" and look at the sestina form. We can do this in a small group. I need you to make notes (I might collect these) on both poems. Email me if you have questions.

Sestina (we will look at "Nani" and "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape"): https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47763/farm-implements-and-rutabagas-in-a-landscape

https://poets.org/poem/nani 

For a humorous introduction go here
One of the most complex forms. Here is an overview of the form from poets.org

The sestina is a complex form that achieves its often spectacular effects through intricate repetition. The thirty-nine-line form is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provencal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style.

Courtly love often was the theme of the troubadours, and this emphasis continued as the sestina migrated to Italy, where Dante and Petrarch practiced the form with great reverence for Daniel, who, as Petrarch said, was "the first among all others, great master of love."

The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE

The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme.

 Go here for another sestina 

 This is a drawing by Shelby Surdyk of the Popeye poem.

POETRY TEST: THINGS TO KNOW

Elements: Know both definitions and examples
Imagery, denotation, connotation, irony – verbal, situational, dramatic, sarcasm, metaphor, personification, metonymy, apostrophe, synecdoche, symbol, allegory, paradox, overstatement, understatement, allusion, tone, alliteration, assonance, consonance, internal rime, slant rime, end rime, approximate rime, refrain, meter, iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, spondee, monosyllabic foot, line, stanza, cacophony, caesura, enjambment, onomatopoeia

Forms:
Structure, line breaks, how the poem looks, rhyme and rhythm and how it is created
Blues, Sestina, Villanelle, Pantoum, Sonnet (English, Italian, Spenserian, and hybrid), haiku, quatrain, tercets, couplets, litany, ballad.

Poems:
“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” “Home Burial” “Heights of Machu Picchu” “The Flea” “My Last Duchess” “The Wastelands” “To His Coy Mistress”, “The Waste Lands” “Nani” “The Colonel” “One Art” “Fern Hill” “The Waking” “My Mistress’ Eyes” “The Second Coming”

 

 

\

 

Thursday

 Today we will be discussing "God's Grandeur" and then look over litany, blank verse, and if we have time we will look at James Wright.

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Definition of LITANY

1 a prayer consisting of a series of invocations and supplications by the leader with alternate responses by the congregation
2 a : a resonant or repetitive chant
b : a usually lengthy recitation or enumeration: example litany of formal complaints

NOTE: The litany has been used by poets for Political Poems, Poems of Complaints, Poems of Empowerment. Remember the handout: "Song No. 2" - "i say. all you sisters waiting to live" (you can listen to this poem on NPR - here)

Here is a link to a litany by Billy Collins.

Blank Verse: Broadly defined, any unrhymed verse but usually referring to unrhymed iambic pentameter (NOTE: HAMLET is blank verse). Most critics agree that blank verse, as it is commonly defined, first appeared in English when the Earl of Surrey used it in his translation of books 2 and 4 of Virgil's THE AENEID. It appeared for the first time in Thomas Sackville and Thomas Northon's GORBODUC. Over the centuries, blank verse has become the most common English verse form, especially for extended poems, as it is considered the closest form to natural patterns of English speech. Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and especially John Milton (particularly in his epic PARADISE LOST) are generally credited with establishing blank verse as the preferred English verse form.

An example from Robert Frost's "Birches"

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter dark trees
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do....

Free Verse : Poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme, and uses irregular (and sometimes very short) line lengths. Writers of free verse disregard traditional poetic conventions of rhyme and meter, relying instead on parallelism, repetition, and the ordinary cadences and stresses of everyday discourse. In English the form was made important by Walt Whitman.

Example:


poetry readings

by Charles Bukowski

poetry readings have to be some of the saddest
damned things ever,
the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,
week after week, month after month, year
after year,
getting old together,
reading on to tiny gatherings,
still hoping their genius will be
discovered,
making tapes together, discs together,
sweating for applause
they read basically to and for
each other,
they can't find a New York publisher
or one
within miles,
but they read on and on
in the poetry holes of America,
never daunted,
never considering the possibility that
their talent might be
thin, almost invisible,
they read on and on
before their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,
their wives, their friends, the other poets
and the handful of idiots who have wandered
in
from nowhere.

I am ashamed for them,
I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,
I am ashamed for their lisping egos,
their lack of guts.

if these are our creators,
please, please give me something else:

a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,
a prelim boy in a four rounder,
a jock guiding his horse through along the
rail,
a bartender on last call,
a waitress pouring me a coffee,
a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,
a dog munching a dry bone,
an elephant's fart in a circus tent,
a 6 p.m. freeway crush,
the mailman telling a dirty joke

anything
anything
but
these.

"poetry readings," by Charles Bukowski from Bone Palace Ballet © Ecco, 2002.

Two Litanies

 

Wednesday

 I will be at the police station for the first few minutes of class. I want you to read "To His Coy Mistress" as a class (it is in your textbooks) and discuss it as a class. You will teach me the poem when I get back from the police.

Homework: Read "God's Grandeur" in your textbook and mark it up. Come to class prepared to discuss about how the poem (particular the sounds) create meaning. If no-one is prepared you will have a quiz.

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Definition of LITANY

1 a prayer consisting of a series of invocations and supplications by the leader with alternate responses by the congregation
2 a : a resonant or repetitive chant
b : a usually lengthy recitation or enumeration: example litany of formal complaints

NOTE: The litany has been used by poets for Political Poems, Poems of Complaints, Poems of Empowerment. Remember the handout: "Song No. 2" - "i say. all you sisters waiting to live" (you can listen to this poem on NPR - here)

Here is a link to a litany by Billy Collins.

Blank Verse: Broadly defined, any unrhymed verse but usually referring to unrhymed iambic pentameter (NOTE: HAMLET is blank verse). Most critics agree that blank verse, as it is commonly defined, first appeared in English when the Earl of Surrey used it in his translation of books 2 and 4 of Virgil's THE AENEID. It appeared for the first time in Thomas Sackville and Thomas Northon's GORBODUC. Over the centuries, blank verse has become the most common English verse form, especially for extended poems, as it is considered the closest form to natural patterns of English speech. Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and especially John Milton (particularly in his epic PARADISE LOST) are generally credited with establishing blank verse as the preferred English verse form.

An example from Robert Frost's "Birches"

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter dark trees
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do....

Free Verse : Poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme, and uses irregular (and sometimes very short) line lengths. Writers of free verse disregard traditional poetic conventions of rhyme and meter, relying instead on parallelism, repetition, and the ordinary cadences and stresses of everyday discourse. In English the form was made important by Walt Whitman.

Example:


poetry readings

by Charles Bukowski

poetry readings have to be some of the saddest
damned things ever,
the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,
week after week, month after month, year
after year,
getting old together,
reading on to tiny gatherings,
still hoping their genius will be
discovered,
making tapes together, discs together,
sweating for applause
they read basically to and for
each other,
they can't find a New York publisher
or one
within miles,
but they read on and on
in the poetry holes of America,
never daunted,
never considering the possibility that
their talent might be
thin, almost invisible,
they read on and on
before their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,
their wives, their friends, the other poets
and the handful of idiots who have wandered
in
from nowhere.

I am ashamed for them,
I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,
I am ashamed for their lisping egos,
their lack of guts.

if these are our creators,
please, please give me something else:

a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,
a prelim boy in a four rounder,
a jock guiding his horse through along the
rail,
a bartender on last call,
a waitress pouring me a coffee,
a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,
a dog munching a dry bone,
an elephant's fart in a circus tent,
a 6 p.m. freeway crush,
the mailman telling a dirty joke

anything
anything
but
these.

"poetry readings," by Charles Bukowski from Bone Palace Ballet © Ecco, 2002.

Two Litanies

 

Tuesday

 Today we are going to look at a previous AP Lit Poetry Question and look at some student responds. Then I will have you look at "The Waking" and do the study questions connected to the poem.

"The Waking" is in your textbook.

Monday

Today we will discuss the Pantoum Form and why a poet might decide to use it.  Lastly, read and comment on pantoum poems. You will have some time to work on essays. 

¥ou will also some study questions on a villanelle ("The Waking") due on Wednesday. Please find it and do the poems in your textbook on it.

You need to know a little bit about the PUNK movement in the 70s. You might want to listen to the following songs, "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols; "London Calling" by The Clash; "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones; "Speak No Evil" by Television. You could also listen to Richard Hell's "Blank Generation" and Lou Reed's "Heroin". These songs could give you a backdrop for the poem. You could also read up on the PUNK movement on the web.

FORM: PANTOUM

A Malayan Form. A pantoum consists of an indefinite number of quatrain stanzas with particular restrictions: lines 2 and 4 are repetons- the become become lines 1 and 3 of the following stanza. The pantoum usually ends with a quatrain whose repetons are lines 1 and 3 of the first stanza in reverse order.

So the pattern might be:

Quatrains 1

1
2
3
4

Quatrain 2

2
5
4
6

Quatrain 3

5
7
6
8


Quatrain 4

7
9
8
10

Quatrain 5

9
11
10
12

Quatrain 6

11
3
12
1

According to poets.org "one exciting aspect of the pantoum is its subtle shifts in meaning that can occur as repeated phrases are revised with different punctuation and thereby given a new context." Also, "an incantation can be created by a pantoum's interlocking pattern of rhyme and repetition; as the lines reverberate between stanzas, they fill the poem with echoes."

When you read the poem play close attention to each image and think about what the image can mean. How does the meaning of the image change with the repetition of the image in the next stanza?

https://poets.org/poem/balance-0

POETRY TEST: THINGS TO KNOW

Elements: Know both definitions and examples
Imagery, denotation, connotation, irony – verbal, situational, dramatic, sarcasm, metaphor, personification, metonymy, apostrophe, synecdoche, symbol, allegory, paradox, overstatement, understatement, allusion, tone, alliteration, assonance, consonance, internal rime, slant rime, end rime, approximate rime, refrain, meter, iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl, spondee, monosyllabic foot, line, stanza, cacophony, caesura, enjambment, onomatopoeia

Forms/Structure:
Structure, line breaks, how the poem looks, rhyme and rhythm and how it is created
Blues, Sestina, Villanelle, Pantoum, Sonnet (English, Italian, Spenserian, and hybrid), haiku, quatrain, tercets, couplets, litany, ballad.

Poems:
“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” “Home Burial” “Heights of Machu Picchu” “The Flea” “My Last Duchess” “The Wastelands” “To His Coy Mistress”, “The Waste Lands” “Nani” “The Colonel” “One Art” “Fern Hill” “The Waking” “My Mistress’ Eyes” “The Second Coming”

Friday

 Please use the class to work on your explications. These will be due on Tuesday at the beginning of the class. On Monday we will be moving on to pantoums and looking at AP test poetry questions. On Monday you will also have some study questions on one of the villanelles that we looked at yesterday and/or the day before.

Thirsday

Today we are going back to discuss villanelles and then working on explications.

Where does the turn in a villanelle happen?
GO HERE

A villanelle description according to aboutpoetry.com

Definition:
The word “villanelle” comes from the Italian villano (“peasant”), and a villanelle was originally a dance-song sung by a Renaissance troubadour, with a pastoral or rustic theme and no particular form. The modern form with its alternating refrain lines took shape after Jean Passerat’s famous 16th century villanelle, “J’ai perdu ma tourtourelle” (“I Have Lost My Turtle Dove”).
The villanelle is a poem of 19 lines — five triplets and a quatrain, using only two rhymes throughout the whole form. The entire first line is repeated as lines 6, 12 and 18 and the third line is repeated as lines 9, 15 and 19 — so that the lines which frame the first triplet weave through the poem like refrains in a traditional song, and form the end of the concluding stanza. With these repeating lines represented as A1 and A2 (because they rhyme), the entire rhyme scheme is:

A1
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1
A2

Other famous villianelles - One Art, The Freaks,
Mad Girl's Love Song The Waking

Rockin' a Man, Stone Blind 

Do Not Go Gentle into that Goodnight 

http://www.versedaily.org/2024/rereadingthetrial.shtml 

 

Wednesday

Today, we are going to discuss "The Colonel", prose poetry, and "The Second Coming". Then we will move onto villanelles.

HW: Choose either "Fern Hill" or "The Second Coming" and outline an explication.

Where does the turn in a villanelle happen?
GO HERE

A villanelle description according to aboutpoetry.com

Definition:
The word “villanelle” comes from the Italian villano (“peasant”), and a villanelle was originally a dance-song sung by a Renaissance troubadour, with a pastoral or rustic theme and no particular form. The modern form with its alternating refrain lines took shape after Jean Passerat’s famous 16th century villanelle, “J’ai perdu ma tourtourelle” (“I Have Lost My Turtle Dove”).
The villanelle is a poem of 19 lines — five triplets and a quatrain, using only two rhymes throughout the whole form. The entire first line is repeated as lines 6, 12 and 18 and the third line is repeated as lines 9, 15 and 19 — so that the lines which frame the first triplet weave through the poem like refrains in a traditional song, and form the end of the concluding stanza. With these repeating lines represented as A1 and A2 (because they rhyme), the entire rhyme scheme is:

A1
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1
A2

Other famous villianelles - One Art, The Freaks,
Mad Girl's Love Song The Waking

Rockin' a Man, Stone Blind 

Do Not Go Gentle into that Goodnight 

http://www.versedaily.org/2024/rereadingthetrial.shtml 

 

So, today we are going to discuss your explications and then  "Fern Hill" and "The Second Coming"

HOMEWORK: Prose Poetry - read "The Colonel". Also re-read "The Second Coming" and try and figure out what it is about.

The Colonel
For a good example of a prose poem by Charles Simic go here

Audio Player

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

THEMES: Good vs. Evil, Warfare, Visions/Reality  

"Fern Hill"

THEME(S): Childhood, Loss of Innocence.

Things to look for: repetition of words (you should circle all the words that repeat).

Stanza and line structures. There is a parallel structure set up stanza by stanza: example line one in stanza one parallels line one of every following stanza; Line two in stanza one parallels line two in every following stanza; line three parallels line three in every following stanza and so on. This parallelism reflects not just line length but also the ordering and repetition of words and grammar [think syntax] as well as the thoughts, ideas contained within each line. You might think about how this parallelism reinforces theme? Also think about what the long lines do (example: the stretch of time and energy, versus the short lines which could reinforce youth or something young and small).

Personification - TIME is personified in this poem. Why? What are some of the things time does?

Allusions: Adam and Eve - the fall of grace, Paradise, Eden (there are apples around though not directly mentioned in the poem). Fern Hill is an actual place. This could be important. Is Fern Hill the name of a farm? Does it symbolize anything beyond this place?

Alliteration, Assonance, Internal Rhyme, Slant Rhymes: There are a lot of sounds going on in this poem. What do this sounds do? What ideas do they reinforce? You can connect these internal sounds to the sounds of the things on the farm and the sounds of youth. Also, Dylan Thomas believed poetry should be heard. This poem is meant to be read aloud.

Colors: What colors show up? Symbolically what do these colors represent?

Animals - what animals appear? Do they represent anything?

Punctuation - you can tell the turn of the poem by playing attention to the punctuation (and the tone shift) of each stanza. The turn comes at the end of stanza five (if you didn't catch it).

Tone: What is the tone of the poem. Note there is a tone shift in stanza four (on the line "So it must have been after the birth of the simple light") and at the end of the poem (end of stanza 5 and stanza 6).

It's argued that this poem is influenced by a Welsh form called the cynghanedd. Dylan Thomas should also remind you of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

PARALLELISM (a definition): a rhetorical figure used in written and oral compositions since ancient times to accentate or emphasize ideas or images by using grammatically similar constructions. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, and even larger structural units may be consciously organized into parallel constructions, thereby creating a sense of balance that can be meaningful and revealing. Authors or speakers implicitly invite their readers or audiences to compare and contrast the parallel elements.

An example from Charles Dickens A TALE OF TWO CITIES

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

An brief interpretation of "Fern HIll" from bachelorandmaster.com follows:

Fern Hill is an autobiographical poem in which Dylan Thomas uses the memories of childhood days in order to explore the theme of journey from innocence to experience. The theme is based on William Blake’s division the world of experience and it is reinforced through the use of Wordsworthian double consciousness. The poem can be divided into two parts: at the first three stanza re related to the poets experience as a child when he uses to spend his summer holidays at his uncle’s farm (Fern Hill, it is in Wan sea in Wales) but the last three stanzas are about an awakening in the child which signifies the loss of the world of innocence. At the center of this loss of the innocence are the myths of fall of the first human beings (Adam and Eve).

The world of innocence (child) as described in the first three stanzas is like the Garden of Eden. This is a world in which the child is in complete union with the nature. This world of fantasy offers the child an Edenic bliss. The way Thomas describes this world; it appears to be timeless world without sense of loss and decay.
 

In the third stanza the poet slowly moves towards the transition between the world of innocence and the world of experience. In the forth stanza the speaker’s sleeping is a symbolic sleeping which ends a flashing into the dark. This flashing is a kind of awakening as hinted by the first line of the fourth stanza. In this awakening the child (speaker) initiates into the world of maturity. “Sleeping” in the poem is symbolic that refers to the loss of innocence that equates the Adam and Eve who had slept after fall form the Grace of God. This initiation of the world of maturity entails the loss of Edenic bliss, innocence, grace and freedom. Moreover poet loses creative imagination and fantasies in which a union with nature was possible.
 

In the last stanza the poet once again contemplates on the memoirs of his childhood but this time the awareness, becomes dominant. In the last line the poet refers to his chained situation in the world of experience. Now he is in chain, green color is withered now.
So, this poem is the journey from childhood to manhood when the manhood comes, the man suffers form an agony. Now I am not what I was in the past. The use of verb “song” hints that the losses can be captured through art in the last line stanza.

This performance by actor Richard Burton should help you pick out the tone changes - and make the poem come alive for you.

 

 

 

"The Second Coming" 

The key to this poem is in the symbols (and there are many many many).

The falcon and the falconer are symbols, as is the widening and widening gyre. The blood-dimmed tide is a symbol. The lion man is a symbol. The desert birds circling is a symbol. The Spiritus Mundi is a symbol.

Note: You need to know some allusions here: The Book of Revelations (you might read this quickly to get the depth of what Yeats is referring to; an explanation/interpretation of Revelations can be found here and the book itself can be found here); the lion-man is an allusion to the sphinx (not the sphinx in the desert but the mythological being that the sphinx in the desert is based on - you might note that the word Sphinx comes from a Greek word meaning strangle and and that the Greek Sphinx was a demon while the Egyptian Sphinx was a representation of the Sun God. Ah, is Yeats choosing an image that represents two things?) It might also be helpful to know a little about World War I and its aftermath. Also Bethlehem.

Note: Yeats believed that history ran through cycles (circular cycles - think of spinning wider and wider) and these cycles (happening every 2000 years or so) moved from ORDER to CHAOS and then CHAOS to ORDER.

Spiritus Mundi is just an idea that we all have a supernatural connection to one another and to the past (the collective unconscious). The idea that each of us and all our thoughts, emotions, and things that happen to all of humanity is stored somewhere and we can, during moments of heighten sensitivity, tap into it.

The poem is written in Blank Verse. Why? What does it reinforce?

The Suborbitals have a song that uses one of Yeats' lines - you can find the recording here. Listen to it and let me know your thoughts.

Definition of Blank Verse. Blank verse is a literary device defined as un-rhyming verse written in iambic pentameter. In poetry and prose, it has a consistent meter with 10 syllables in each line (pentameter); where, unstressed syllables are followed by stressed ones, five of which are stressed but do not rhyme. (from literarydevices.net)

 

 

 

Thursday/Friday

 We are going to finish reading the chapter on musical devices 2 and give you some time to work on your poetry explications.

Wednesday

 We are going to read the chapter on musical devices 2 and return to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and give you some time to work on your poetry explications.

Monday

 We are going to look at "Not My Best Side" activity, and then discuss enjambment.

HW: Start to outline a poetry explication on either "My Last Duchess" "The Flea" or "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break.  Enjambment would fall under the category of syntax.

 

 

Why would a poet use enjambment?  To create interest by breaking standard syntax; to create tension; to create different levels or duality of meanings.

 

Questions to ask about enjambment:

 

Syntax: How do the poet’s syntactical choices change or expand the ideas in the poem?

1) Enjambment: How are lines broken? Are they broken before a grammatical or logical completion of a thought to create an enjambment? Or are they end-stopped, breaking after the completion of a sentence or other grammatical pauses? How does the use of enjambment create a duality of meaning in the lines?

 

 

No, enjambment is not always

better, but sometimes,

if you cut the line just

right, it produces a tension-

resolution effect.

 

Other times it makes the

lines harder to read.

 

Some poets break their lines

at exact syntactic boundaries.

This generates a high degree of predictability,

which makes the poem less interesting.

 

 

e. e. cummings as an example:

 

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

 

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

A poetry explication is a relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem. Writing an explication is an effective way for a reader to connect a poem's plot and conflicts with its structural features. This handout reviews some of the important techniques of approaching and writing a poetry explication, and includes parts of two sample explications.

Preparing to write the explication

1. Read the poem silently, then read it aloud (if not in a testing situation). Repeat as necessary.

2. Consider the poem as a dramatic situation in which a speaker addresses an audience or another character. In this way, begin your analysis by identifying and describing the speaking voice or voices, the conflicts or ideas, and the language used in the poem.

The large issues

Determine the basic design of the poem by considering the who, what, when, where, and why of the dramatic situation.

*

What is being dramatized? What conflicts or themes does the poem present, address, or question?
*

Who is the speaker? Define and describe the speaker and his/her voice. What does the speaker say? Who is the audience? Are other characters involved?
*

What happens in the poem? Consider the plot or basic design of the action. How are the dramatized conflicts or themes introduced, sustained, resolved, etc.?
*

When does the action occur? What is the date and/or time of day?
*

Where is the speaker? Describe the physical location of the dramatic moment.
*

Why does the speaker feel compelled to speak at this moment? What is his/her motivation?

The details

To analyze the design of the poem, we must focus on the poem's parts, namely how the poem dramatizes conflicts or ideas in language. By concentrating on the parts, we develop our understanding of the poem's structure, and we gather support and evidence for our interpretations. Some of the details we should consider include the following:

*

Form: Does the poem represent a particular form (sonnet, sestina, etc.)? Does the poem present any unique variations from the traditional structure of that form?
*

Rhetoric: How does the speaker make particular statements? Does the rhetoric seem odd in any way? Why? Consider the predicates and what they reveal about the speaker.
*

Syntax: Consider the subjects, verbs, and objects of each statement and what these elements reveal about the speaker. Do any statements have convoluted or vague syntax?
*

Vocabulary: Why does the poet choose one word over another in each line? Do any of the words have multiple or archaic meanings that add other meanings to the line? Use the Oxford English Dictionary as a resource.

The patterns

As you analyze the design line by line, look for certain patterns to develop which provide insight into the dramatic situation, the speaker's state of mind, or the poet's use of details. Some of the most common patterns include the following:

*

Rhetorical Patterns: Look for statements that follow the same format.
*

Rhyme: Consider the significance of the end words joined by sound; in a poem with no rhymes, consider the importance of the end words.
*

Patterns of Sound: Alliteration and assonance create sound effects and often cluster significant words.
*

Visual Patterns: How does the poem look on the page?
*

Rhythm and Meter: Consider how rhythm and meter influence our perception of the speaker and his/her language.

Friday

We need to discuss tone, "The Flea" and then the following poems (at the bottom of this blog entry). Finally - if there is time: read the chapter on enjambment.

First we will look at The Chimney Sweeper 

HW: None, but on Monday you will be writing a poetry explication.

TONE: The author’s implicit attitude toward the reader or the people, places, and events in a work as revealed by the elements of the author’s style. Tone may be characterized as serious or ironic, sad or happy, private or public, angry or affectionate, bitter or nostalgic, or any other attitudes and feelings that human beings experience.

John Donne was a metaphysical poet. Find out what this means. "The Flea", a very witty and humorous poem, is one of his masterpieces. So did the girl yield to him?

 


Love in Brooklyn
By John Wakeman

"I love you, Horowitz," he said, and blew his nose.
She splashed her drink. "The hell you say," she said.
"Not love. You don't love me. You like my legs,
and how I make your letters nice and all.
You drunk your drink too fast. You don't love me."

"You wanna bet?" he asked. "You wanna bet?
I loved you from the day they moved you up
from Payroll, last July. I watched you, right?
You sat there on that typing chair you have
and swung round like a kid. It made me shake.
Like once, in World War II, I saw a tank
slide through some trees at dawn like it was a god.
That's how you make me feel. I don't know why."

She turned towards him, then sat back and grinned,
and on the bar stool swung full circle round.
"You think I'm like a tank, you mean?" she asked.
"Some fellers tell me nicer things than that."
But then she saw his face and touched his arm
and softly said, "I'm only kidding you."

He ordered drinks, the same again, and paid.
A fat man, wordless, staring at the floor.
She took his hand in hers and pressed it hard.
And his plump fingers trembled in her lap.




The Telephone    (Robert Frost)

"When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from that flower on the windowsill--
Do you remember what it was you said?"

"First tell me what it was you thought you heard."

"Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it?  Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
Someone said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed."

"I may have thought as much, but not aloud."

"Well, so I came." 

 

Thursday

 We are going to continue to discuss "My Last Duchess" and then move onto the chapter about Tone.

 

Themes: Power, Language and Communication (or lack of), Jealousy, Madness.

Symbols: “Spot of Joy”, statue of Neptune, the painting of the Duchess.

Form: Dramatic Monologue in open couplets (why couplets? Why open?), and in iambic pentameter.

Characters: The Duke. Look at how the Duke talks, his punctuation within the lines, the flow of his thoughts. Can the Duke express himself (he claims at one point that he can’t).

Irony: Dramatic irony, and a few situation ironies.

The title: What's the meaning behind it?

The setting: Is there any thing important about the setting?

POEMS ON TONE. Look at "The Flea" and the poems below. 

Love in Brooklyn
By John Wakeman

"I love you, Horowitz," he said, and blew his nose.
She splashed her drink. "The hell you say," she said.
"Not love. You don't love me. You like my legs,
and how I make your letters nice and all.
You drunk your drink too fast. You don't love me."

"You wanna bet?" he asked. "You wanna bet?
I loved you from the day they moved you up
from Payroll, last July. I watched you, right?
You sat there on that typing chair you have
and swung round like a kid. It made me shake.
Like once, in World War II, I saw a tank
slide through some trees at dawn like it was a god.
That's how you make me feel. I don't know why."

She turned towards him, then sat back and grinned,
and on the bar stool swung full circle round.
"You think I'm like a tank, you mean?" she asked.
"Some fellers tell me nicer things than that."
But then she saw his face and touched his arm
and softly said, "I'm only kidding you."

He ordered drinks, the same again, and paid.
A fat man, wordless, staring at the floor.
She took his hand in hers and pressed it hard.
And his plump fingers trembled in her lap.




The Telephone    (Robert Frost)

"When I was just as far as I could walk
From here today,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--
You spoke from that flower on the windowsill--
Do you remember what it was you said?"

"First tell me what it was you thought you heard."

"Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word--
What was it?  Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say--
Someone said 'Come'--I heard it as I bowed."

"I may have thought as much, but not aloud."

"Well, so I came."

Wednesday

Today we are going to go over your questions on "After Apple Picking" and then read the chapter 5-7 (Paradox, Overstatement, Understatement, Irony) and look at "My Last Duchess" 

 HW: Finish reading chapters 5-7 and the chapter on imagery

HOW TO READ A POEM  

Advice for reading a poem according to PIerrine in Sound and Sense

1) Read the poem more than once. A good poem will no more yield its full meaning on a single reading than will a Beethoven symphony on a single hearing.
2) Keep a dictionary by you and use it. It is futile to try to understand poetry without troubling to learn the meaning of the words in which it is composed. A few other reference books should also be invaluable. Particularly desirable are a good book on mythology and a Bible.
3) Read as to hear the sounds of the words in your mind. Poetry is written to be heard: its meanings are conveyed through sound as well as through print. Every word is therefore important.
4) Always pay careful attention to what the poem is saying. One should make the utmost effort to follow the thought consciously and to grasp the full implications and suggestions. Because a poem says so much, several readings may be necessary, but on the first reading you should determine the subjects of the verbs and antecedents of the pronouns.
5) Practice reading the poem aloud. A) Read it affectionately, but not affectedly. B) Read it slowly enough that each word is clear and distinct and that the meaning has time to sink in. C) Read the poem so that the rhythmical pattern is felt but not exaggerated. Remember that poetry is written in sentences, just like prose is, and that punctuation is a signal as to how it should be read.

A poetry explication is a relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem. Writing an explication is an effective way for a reader to connect a poem's plot and conflicts with its structural features. This handout reviews some of the important techniques of approaching and writing a poetry explication, and includes parts of two sample explications.

Preparing to write the explication

1. Read the poem silently, then read it aloud (if not in a testing situation). Repeat as necessary.

2. Consider the poem as a dramatic situation in which a speaker addresses an audience or another character. In this way, begin your analysis by identifying and describing the speaking voice or voices, the conflicts or ideas, and the language used in the poem.

The large issues

Determine the basic design of the poem by considering the who, what, when, where, and why of the dramatic situation.

*

What is being dramatized? What conflicts or themes does the poem present, address, or question?
*

Who is the speaker? Define and describe the speaker and his/her voice. What does the speaker say? Who is the audience? Are other characters involved?
*

What happens in the poem? Consider the plot or basic design of the action. How are the dramatized conflicts or themes introduced, sustained, resolved, etc.?
*

When does the action occur? What is the date and/or time of day?
*

Where is the speaker? Describe the physical location of the dramatic moment.
*

Why does the speaker feel compelled to speak at this moment? What is his/her motivation?

The details

To analyze the design of the poem, we must focus on the poem's parts, namely how the poem dramatizes conflicts or ideas in language. By concentrating on the parts, we develop our understanding of the poem's structure, and we gather support and evidence for our interpretations. Some of the details we should consider include the following:

*

Form: Does the poem represent a particular form (sonnet, sestina, etc.)? Does the poem present any unique variations from the traditional structure of that form?
*

Rhetoric: How does the speaker make particular statements? Does the rhetoric seem odd in any way? Why? Consider the predicates and what they reveal about the speaker.
*

Syntax: Consider the subjects, verbs, and objects of each statement and what these elements reveal about the speaker. Do any statements have convoluted or vague syntax?
*

Vocabulary: Why does the poet choose one word over another in each line? Do any of the words have multiple or archaic meanings that add other meanings to the line? Use the Oxford English Dictionary as a resource.

The patterns

As you analyze the design line by line, look for certain patterns to develop which provide insight into the dramatic situation, the speaker's state of mind, or the poet's use of details. Some of the most common patterns include the following:

*

Rhetorical Patterns: Look for statements that follow the same format.
*

Rhyme: Consider the significance of the end words joined by sound; in a poem with no rhymes, consider the importance of the end words.
*

Patterns of Sound: Alliteration and assonance create sound effects and often cluster significant words.
*

Visual Patterns: How does the poem look on the page?
*

Rhythm and Meter: Consider how rhythm and meter influence our perception of the speaker and his/her language.

Allegory and Symbolism
From THE BEDFORD GLOSSARY OF CRITICAL AND LITERARY TERMS

allegory: The presentation of an abstract idea through more concrete means. The typical allegory is a narrative -- whether in prose, verse, or drama -- that has at least two levels of meaning. The first is the surface-level story line, which can be summed up by stating who did what to whom and when. Although allegories have coherent plots, their authors expect readers to recognize the existence of a second and deeper level of meaning, which may be moral, political, philosophical, or religious. To that end, allegories are often thinly veiled; sometimes characters even bear the names of qualities or ideas the author wishes to represent. (Personification is a device common to many allegories). Allegories need not be entire narratives, however, and narratives may contain allegorical elements or figures. Many critics consider the allegory to be an extended metaphor and, conversely, consider metaphors -- which involve saying one thing but meaning another -- to be "verbal allegories."

symbol: Something that, although it is of interest in its own right, stands for or suggests something larger and more complex -- often an idea or a range of interrelated ideas, attitudes, and practices.

Within a given culture, some things are understood to be symbols: the flag of the United States is an obvious example, as are the five intertwined Olympic rings. More subtle cultural symbols might be the river as a symbol of time and the journey as a symbol of life and its manifold experiences. Instead of the appropriating symbols generally used and understood within their culture, writers often create their own symbols by setting up a complex but identifiable web of associations in their works. As a result, one object, image, person, place, or action suggests others, and may ultimately suggest a range of ideas.

A symbol may thus be defined as a metaphor in which the vehicle -- the image, activity, or concept used to represent something else -- represents many related things (or tenors) or is broadly suggestive. The urn in John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1820) suggests interrelated concepts, including art, truth, beauty, and timelessness.

Symbols are distinguished from allegories. Like symbols, allegories present an abstract idea through more concrete means, but a symbol is an element of a work used to suggest something else (often of a higher or more abstract order), whereas an allegory is typically a narrative with two levels of meaning that is used to make a general statement or point about the real world.