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."