MERRY CHRISTMAS

If case any of you wondered what I wanted! (Just kidding).

Do Not FAIL

THE AP OPEN QUESTION

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the question minus the answer.” Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes’ observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author’s treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

2004, Form B. The most important themes in literature are sometimes developed in scenes in which a death or deaths take place. Choose a novel or play and write a well-organized essay in which you show how a specific death scene helps to illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

2005. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess “That outward existence which conforms, the inward life that questions.” In a novel or play that you have studied, identify a character who outwardly conforms while questioning inwardly. Then write an essay in which you analyze how this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning contributes to the meaning of the work. Avoid mere plot summary.

2005, Form B. One of the strongest human drives seems to be a desire for power. Write an essay in which you discuss how a character in a novel or a drama struggles to free himself or herself from the power of others or seeks to gain power over others. Be sure to demonstrate in your essay how the author uses this power struggle to enhance the meaning of the work.

2006. Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue and peace or one of primitivism and ignorance. Choose a novel or play in which such a setting plays a significant role. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the country setting functions in the work as a whole.

I'm A MAD DOG

You might want to read up on rabies on wikipedia -- for a general overview go HERE


QUESTION: Why does Tea Cake have to die? Is it important that he saves Janine from the dog? To what extent does Janine to stay with Tea Cake even though she knows it might be hopeless? The ending - is Tea Cake really dead? Why or Why not?

Okeechobee Hurricane

The 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane is the hurricane presented in THEIR EYES WHERE WATCHING GOD. It is considered the 3rd most deadliest hurricane to strike the U.S. coast (greater than Katrina); it killed over 4,078 people.

Where is Eatonville?

Here are some interesting questions

These question could be used to help direct your dialectical journals if you need help, or to make you glad that you're not answering other people's questions on the text (you're asking and answering your own! - wow, think about that).

NOTE: I didn't write these questions (except question 1), but I don't quite remember where they came from.

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God has been compared to Huck Finn in its use of a journey to discover self. Do you see a connection? How does this work?

2. Why does Janie choose to tell her story only to her best friend Pheoby? How does Pheoby respond at the end of Janie’s tale?
3. Did you like Janie? Do you admire her?
4. Hurston uses nature – the pear tree, the ocean, the horizon, the hurricane – not only as plot device but also as metaphor. How do they function as both?
5. The novel’s action begins and ends with two judgment scenes. Why are both groups of people judging her? Is either correct in its assessment?
6. Many readers consider the novel a coming-of-age novel, as Janie journeys through three marriages. What initially attracts her to each man? What causes her to leave? What does she learn from each?
7. In the novel, speech is used as a mechanism of control and liberation, especially as Janie struggles to find her voice. How does she choose when to speak out or to remain quiet?
8. How important is Hurston’s use of vernacular dialect to our understanding of Janie and the other characters and their way of life? What do speech patterns reveal about the quality of these lives and the nature of these communities?
9. What are the differences between the language of the men and that of Janie and the other women? How do the differences in language reflect the two groups’ approaches to life, power, relationships, and self-realization? How do the novel’s first two paragraphs point to these differences?
10. The elaborate burial of the town mule draws from an incident Hurston recounts in Tell My Horse, where the Haitian president ordered an elaborate Catholic funeral for his pet goat. Although this scene is comic, how is it also tragic?
11. How does the image of the black woman as “the mule of the world” become a symbol for the roles Janie chooses or refuses to play during her quest?
12. Little of Hurston’s work was published during the Harlem Renaissance, yet her ability to tell witty stories and to stir controversy made her a favorite guest at elite Harlem parties. Can you think of some of the passages of wit and humor in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
13. What do the names of Janie’s husbands – Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, Vergible “Tea Cake” Woods – tell us about their characters and their relationships with Janie?
14. What kind of God are the eyes of Hurston’s characters watching? What crucial moments of the plot does the title allude to? Does this God ever answer Janie’s questioning?
15. How do the imagery and tone of the last few pages of the novel connect with other moments in the novel? Does Janie’s story end in triumph, despair, or a mixture of both?
16. What is the importance of the concept of horizon? How do Janie and each of her men widen her horizons? What is the significance of the novel’s final sentences in this regard?
17. How does Janie’s journey – from West Florida, to Eatonville, to the Everglades – represent her, and the novel’s increasing immersion in black culture and traditions?
18. To what extent does Janie acquire her own voice and the ability to shape her own life? How are the two related? Does Janie’s telling her story to Pheoby in flashback undermine her ability to tell her story directly in her own voice?
19. In what ways does Janie conform to or diverge from the assumptions that underlie the men’s attitudes toward women? How would you explain Hurston’s depiction of violence toward women?
20. What is the importance in the novel of the story telling on the front porch of Joe’s store and elsewhere? What purpose do these stories, traded insults, exaggerations, and boasts have in the lives of these people?
21. Why is adherence to tradition so important to nearly all the people in Janie’s world? How does the community deal with those who are “different”?
22. After Joe Starks’s funeral, Janie realizes that “She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her.” Why is this important “to all the world”? In what ways does Janie’s self-awareness depend on her increased awareness of others?
23. Are there any questions you would like to ask, or things you would like to discuss?

THEIR EYES WHERE WATCHING GOD sites

A great radio program on Their Eyes Where Watching God and Zora Neale Hurston's life can be found here

I think you can watch the entire movie (in 11 parts) on youtube. Here is part 1. Note the immediate changes from the novel.




Here's one of the Bessie Smith's song featured in the essay you read for class. The recording is old - so don't judge it on that merit - listen to her voice and lyrics. Apply the lyrics to the novel.

Terms

Signifying: : a good-natured needling or goading especially among urban blacks by means of indirect gibes and clever often preposterous put-downs. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

Methusalem is the oldest person in the Bible. He supposedly lived to be 969.

I Love Myself When I'm Laughing and Then Again When I'm Looking Mean and Impressive

Read this article on Their Eyes Were Watching God as performance.

Today we'll read a selection from Mules and Men and research Zora Neale Hurston's life.

A couple of sites to visit: Zora at UCF (University of Central Florida), and Zora Neale Hurston's homepage

This is Just To Say

So now that we're leaving poetry for a time, I want to leave you with something fun. Listen to the following and laugh a little. Note: Sean Cole, the person who reads "This Is Just to Say" is a damn good poet.

This Is Just to Say

by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Zora Neale Hurston

As you read this book you should be aware of a few things:

1) Zora was an Anthropologist who immersed herself in the folklore, music and religion (including Voodoo - or Hoodoo) of Southern African-American Society. You should read "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" as an introduction to her, and look up one of her pieces of forklore - she published two books of folklore during her life. One of them happened to include Voodoo in Haiti and zombies. Her fiction arises from her folklore collecting.
2) Zora grew up in Eatonville - the town in THEIR EYES WHERE WATCHING GOD.
3) She claimed to have written the book in one month after the break-up of a relationship. She claims to have poured all the love and heartache of the relationship into the novel. You might look up Eatonville on the web (NOTE: It's outside of Orlando - I moved to Orlando and worked at Disney because of this novel. I had to see Zora's hometown).
4) Zora lied about her birth. She was ten years older than what she claimed. This would have made her about 45 when she wrote THEIR EYES WHERE WATCHING GOD.
5) She was a member of the Harlem Renaissance - considered the greatest writer of the Renaissance by some, but her books weren't published until after the renaissance was over - and even after some of the members of the Renaissance (poor Wallace Thurman) were dead. She and Langston Hughes wrote a play together and were good friends, but something happened between them and so when she left New York in the 30s her connection with the Renaissance was gone. If you know nothing of the Harlem Renaissance you need to do some brief research.
6) Think about why she uses a Southern African-American vernacular. Think who tells the story. Is there an American Dream here? Mark her imagery, symbolism and metaphors. Think beyond them. What about the title?

Okay - I've read every book Hurston wrote and Their Eyes Were Watching God both as an undergrad and as a graduate, and I helped teach a college course on The Harlem Renaissance. So - you're going to have fun!

You'll need to have the first 60 pages read by the time you return from Thanksgiving Break! Also, post 20 journals.

Note - we'll be focusing on meaning of the title; author's life; structure of book; central symbols and central themes.

POETRY TEST

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”

WASTE LAND part 4 and 5

"Death By Water" -

There are relatively no allusions in this section. Why? It is short and straight forward. Why?

"What the Thunder Said"

Refers to a Hindu text: The Upanishad.
Other allusions in this section: Bible - New Testament (Matthew, Mark, John). Holy Grail Legend, Shakespeare and the Roman General Coriolanus.

Return to the Desert. The Falling of Cities. The Drying up of Rivers. The lack of rebirth?

This is a HARD Section and yet it ends the poem. What is going on here. What are the connections to the other sections?

Here are some sites that might help: Modernism and The Waste Land and some general notes on the entire poem

The Fisher-King is an important figure in the Waste Land

Go here for a radio program on the Fisher King

Here is a link to an essay on the Fisher King in "The Waste Land".

The following is from the University of Idaho student research project on the Fisher King:


(IV) THE WASTE LAND: The concept of physical sterility carrying over into other spheres of life was an appealing objective correlative for poets in the wake of the first World War (used most effectively by T.S. Eliot to symbolize social and moral decay). But the intimate relationship existing between a monarch and his provinces probably relates back to a pagan strand from much earlier times. The waste land ultimately springs from an old Celtic belief in which the fertility of the land depended on the potency and virility of the king; the king was in essence espoused to his lands. In his comprehensive study, The Golden Bough, J. G. Fraser identifies a similar ritual in various cultures the world round. "The king's life or spirit is so sympathetically bound up with the prosperity of the whole country," he writes, "that if he fell ill or grew senile the cattle would sicken or cease to multiply, the crops would rot in the fields, and men would perish of widespread disease." Such is the case in the Grail legends as well. The woes of the land are the direct result of the sickness or the maiming of the Fisher King. When his power wanes, the country is laid waste and the soil is rendered sterile: the trees are without fruit, the crops fail to grow, even the women are unable to bear children. To suggest that the waste land functions at the very heart of the problem seems a gross understatement indeed. Once again, Weston takes the matter one step further: "In the Grail King we have a romantic literary version of that strange mysterious figure whose presence hovers in the shadowy background of the history of our Aryan race; the figure of a divine or semidivine ruler, at once god and king, upon whose life, and unimpaired vitality, the existence of his land and people directly depends."

In the case of the waste land the solution assumes the form of the questing Grail Knight. He is the one who must ask the loaded question that restores fertility to king and land alike. However, as Cavendish notes, the healing of the Fisher King and his lands is never satisfactorily resolved in the medieval romances that have been handed down:

The tradition of the king as the mate of his land lies behind the Waste Land theme in the Grail legends, but the theme in incoherent and amorphous. The pattern ought to be this: a king is crippled or ill; as a result his land is barren; the hero heal s the king and fertility is restored to the land; probably, the hero's feat shows that he is the rightful heir. There is no Grail story in which this simple and satisfactory pattern appears (nor has any Celtic story survived which contains it). In the First Continuation there is a waste land which is restored, but no crippled or ill king and consequently no healing. In Parzival there is a crippled king who is healed by the hero, but there is no waste land. In Perlesvaus there is an ill king and a waste land, but no healing.


Finally you can always check out Wikipedia for general info.

THE FIRE SERMON

The title is suppose to be a reference to Buddha.

There are a lot of links in this section to previous sections. See if you can find them.

Allusions:

To His Coy Mistress (we read yesterday - find)

TIRESIAS - appears in both Oedipus Rex and The Odyssey. He can see the future. Relate him to the fortune teller in section 1.

Tempest - remember there is a ship wreck in the Tempest.

St. Augustine.

WWI

There are also songs in this section and the nightingale chirps with the reinforcement of rape (which is one way of looking at the relationship seen by Tiresias)


NOTES:

Mrs. Porter ran a brothel in Cairo and was well known to Aussie troops (important because Gallipoli was where Eliot lost a good friend).

Smyrna = Izmir (an ancient town in Turkey)


Elizabeth I and Earl of Leicester were thought to have an affair (even through Elizabeth had to deny it because she was suppose to be a virgin and reserve herself for royalty of other nations)

The City (LONDON) in this section is a dump - made so in part by a coal plant.



The Fire Sermon
(Aditta-pariyaya-sutta)

Thus I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Gaya, at Gayasisa, together with a thousand bhikkhus. There he addressed the bhikkhus.

"Bhikkhus, all is burning. And what is the all that is burning?

"The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.

"The ear is burning, sounds are burning...

"The nose is burning, odors are burning...

"The tongue is burning, flavors are burning...

"The body is burning, tangibles are burning...

"The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.

"Bhikkhus, when a noble follower who has heard (the truth) sees thus, he finds estrangement in the eye, finds estrangement in forms, finds estrangement in eye-consciousness, finds estrangement in eye-contact, and whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful- nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, in that too he finds estrangement.

"He finds estrangement in the ear... in sounds...

"He finds estrangement in the nose... in odors...

"He finds estrangement in the tongue... in flavors...

"He finds estrangement in the body... in tangibles...

"He finds estrangement in the mind, finds estrangement in ideas, finds estrangement in mind-consciousness, finds estrangement in mind-contact, and whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, in that too he finds estrangement.

"When he finds estrangement, passion fades out. With the fading of passion, he is liberated. When liberated, there is knowledge that he is liberated. He understands: 'Birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived out, what can be done is done, of this there is no more beyond.'"

That is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus were glad, and they approved his words.

Now during his utterance, the hearts of those thousand bhikkhus were liberated from taints through clinging no more.

WASTE LAND

Part I: The Burial of the Dead


You should think about breaking this section up into four speakers. Eliot was working with dramatic monologues. You should also think about his allusions in this section:

1) The title to THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER (as for burial services)
2) Allusions to Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes, Isiah
3) Allusions to WWI
4) Allusions to Dante's Inferno
5) Allusions to Tristan and Isolte
6) Walt Whitman
7) Chaucer
8) Drowning
9) Greek Mythology
10) Tarot Cards - and fate
11) Other religions

Also think about winter, spring and seasons.

PART II: A Game of Chess

The key to Eliot is usually through his allusions. In this section there are allusions to Shakespeare: Anthony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, and Hamlet.
The Aeneid - story of Dido,
Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, and Ovid. Most of these allusions are connected to women.
Example: Cleopatra - a suicide over love. Dido - a suicide over love. Paradise Lost - a seduction by the Devil (or snake). Dante - lustful lovers in Hell. Ovid - a rape of a woman by her brother in-law. Hamlet - Ophelia - a suicide over love.

This section can be read as a contrast of sex and love from the viewpoint of upper and lower classes. The 1st woman, the upper class, has been compared to a female Prufrock.

The title of this section comes from an obscure play that uses chess as a metaphor for stages in seduction.

The following is from a website called, "EXPLORING THE WASTE LAND" :

"From Greek mythology. Philomela and Procne were sisters. Procne married King Tereus. Tereus raped Philomela and cut out her tongue to silence her. Philomela weaved her story into some cloth to tell her sister what happened. Procne fed their son to Tereus as punishment. The sisters fled, with Tereus in pursuit. The gods intervened, changing Philomela into a nightingale, Procne into a swallow, and Tereus into a hawk (some versions of the myth vary this.)"


I hope this helps!

Ballads, Aubades, Elegies.

Ballad: recounts a story, generally a dramatic episode and uses a ballad stanza (a quatrain with abab rhyme scheme that is somewhat sing-songy, though the rhyme could be approximate rhyme rather than perfect rhyme). The ballad usually contains refrains, repetitions of phrases or lines, dialogue, characters, simple and impersonal language. The most famous "literary ballad" is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798) which can be found here.

John Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane" and Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." also contain features of a traditional ballad.



Aubade: a lyrical/love poem delivered at dawn generally involving lovers who must part. Examples include the following:

The Sun Rising

by John Donne



Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains call on us ?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run ?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school-boys, and sour ’prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices ;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long :
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late tell me,
Whether both the Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday
And thou shalt hear, ‘All here in one bed lay.’

She’s all States, and all Princes I ;
Nothing else is.
Princes do play us ; compared to this,
All honour’s mimic ; all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus ;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere ;
This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.


Elegy: Typically a poem that laments the loss of something or someone.

Example: Dylan Thomas, "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London"

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.


If you're having trouble with these definitions you can go to THE GLOSSARY OF POETIC TERMS for help.

Due Dates:

POETRY FINAL: Tuesday 11/22.

HOMEWORK

I'll post definitions and examples of a Ballad, Aubade, and Elegy later today. Homework for tonight:


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”

Fern Hill

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.

NOTES

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.

Here are two Litanies:

Prose Poetry

So can a prose be poetry? If so, how? This is a question for your test.

What is a prose poem? How is it different, or is it different, than Flash Fiction?

Is it the used of metaphor, the conciseness of the writing, the attention to language?

Go here for more.

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

Volleyball Trip

Make sure on the trip you read and as a group discuss the following poems:

FERN HILL by Dylan Thomas
THE SECOND COMING by William Butler Yeats
NANI by Alberto RIos
MY MISTRESS EYES by William Shakespeare
TO HIS COY MISTRESS by Andrew Marvell
HOME BURIAL by Robert Frost
HEIGHTS OF MACHU PICCHU by Pablo Neruda
THE COLONEL by Carolyn Forche

Each person will be required to write an explication on a different poem, post it and be able to present their findings to class. Everyone is responsible for understanding each poem.

BLUES

GO HERE

Here is a list of items you should begin to know for your final on the POETRY UNIT:

Things you should start studying for the POETRY test:
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

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 others?), haiku, quatrain, tercets, couplets, litany, ballad, aubade, elegy, etc.

Poems:
“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” “Home Burial” “Death of the Hired Man” “The Flea” “My Last Duchess” “The Wastelands” “To His Coy Mistress” and others as we discuss this week and next week.

Robert Johnson and the BLUES

Robert Johnson - according to legend - sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. AP students are sometimes tempted to do this in order to pass the poetry section, but don't go to extremes (yet!).

Sonnets

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). 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.

e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Sonnet Help!

Listen to the following link IN OUR TIME which contains a special episode on sonnets (do you hear quiz).

You should also check out the following: sonnets.org

And read chapter fourteen: "PATTERN" in your textbook, STRUCTURE, SOUND, AND SENSE.

The hybrid sonnet form will cause you the most trouble.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

The Sheep Child

The following is according to James Dickey, the author. The full text can be found here at the University of Illinois website.


"The Sheep Child" comes out of the most horrible thing anybody ever told me in my childhood. A boy named Dick Harris once gave me to understand that a man and a sheep can conceive progeny. I asked him if that was really true and he said, "Oh sure, everybody knows that! Way down on the south side of Atlanta there’s this museum, and way back in the corner where nobody would ever look, there’s this little thing like a woolly baby in a bottle of alcohol, because those things can’t live. I could probably find out where it is, and take you down there and show it to you." He never did, thank God! To this day I’m afraid to run into him again, because he might still take me down there and show it to me! But one day I thought this was a possibility for a poem, and so I wrote it. I took the situation seriously and tried to discover some of the implications of what such beings might be like.

I believe that farm boys develop a kind of private mythology that has the effect of preventing too much of this sort of thing from going on. It doesn’t prevent all of it, you understand, but it keeps it within reasonable bounds—whatever they might be. The first part of the poem is a recounting of the farm boys’ legend of the sheep child in the museum. But the second part of the poem is supposed to be spoken by the sheep child himself from his bottle of formaldehyde in the museum. I don’t know what other defects or virtues this poem might have, but I think it can hardly be faulted from the standpoint of originality of viewpoint, at least in the latter section!

I intended no blasphemy or obscenity by this poem at all. I tried to the best of my ability to write a poem about the universal need for contact between living creatures that runs through all of sentient nature and recognizes no boundaries of species or anything else. Really the heroine of the poem is the female sheep who accepts the monstrous conjunction and bears the monstrous child, because in some animal way she recognizes the need that it is born from. I tried to give the sheep child himself a double vision of the destiny of man and animal.

Friday 11/04/11

Today we will look one more time at sestinas and then move on to reviewing last year's AP Poetry Question and sample responses. This should give you an idea of types of poetry prompts.

Your homework for the weekend is to define and find examples of the following types of sonnets: Italian, English, Spencerian, and Hybrid. Note: Think about how each sonnet form works and where the TURN comes. How does form = idea? What types of themes does a sonnet form invoke?

John Ashberry

Go here for an critical essay on Ashberry's sestina

Also here is some help HERE

Pantoum or Villanelle

Remember your assignment for tonight is to write a pantoum or a villanelle poem.

SESTINA

A French syllabic poem of 39 lines with repeating end words. The thirty-nine lines are divided into six sestets and one tercet. The tercet is called the envoi. The six end words are picked and reused in a particular order. Lines can be of any single length; the length is determined by the poet. The end words shift according to the following pattern:

1
2
3
4
5
6

6
1
5
2
4
3

3
6
4
1
2
5

5
3
2
6
1
4

4
5
1
3
6
2

2
4
6
5
3
1


TERCET:
1 2
3 4
5 6

The Sestina

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.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Villanelles

Today we are going to look at villanelles - so go here

Homework tonight is to write an explication on one of the villanelles on either the linked website or handed out in class. Also to look up the five types of rhythm (iamb, trochee, anapest, dactyl and spondee), and give an explanation of each with an example.

Note: I expect more referencing of the poem in your explication.

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

Punk Pantoum

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?

God's Grandeur

NOTES:

When looking for the theme - and you should always look for a theme in a piece of literature - think about the connection between nature and God.

Other things to note - vocabulary: reck = recognize; trod = to set down the foot or feet in walking.

-- Form: this is an Italian Sonnet (and therefore is broken into an 8 / 6 stanza structure with a turn in idea happening at line 9). The rhyme scheme is ABBAABBA CDCDCD. The first eight lines set up an idea and the last six comment on that idea. Further you could look at the eight lines as a set of two quatrains (the rhyme scheme is called envelop as the outer rhyming words enclosed the inner rhyming words as seen here: God (1), foil (2), oil (3), rod (4).

In the first quatrain (or 4 lines) you should think about the following: charge (think electricity or lightning) - charge is connected to flame and to foil (foil is golden foil - like golden tinfoil). "ooze of oil" is olive oil. Olive oil was used to anoint kings. Rod is a metonymy for ruler (or laws).

In the first four lines note the on place of enjambment. This is important. Also note the alliteration (and how the alliteration connects two or more words together in both sound and idea): Line one: grandeur God; Line 2: flame foil shining shook; Line 3: gathers greatness; Line 4: reck rod now not. How does the connection of these words reinforce meaning?

In the 2nd quatrain (lines 5-8) there's a sift in tone. Note the repetition of "have trod, have trod, have trod" - what effect does this have? Does it make you weary? Note, in line 2 the alliteration trade toil seared smeared and the rhyme with bleared. Trade is commerce; toil is work or labor. The tone here is negative. Line 3: Alliteration smudge, shares, smell, soil. Line 4: foot feel now nor. Note, shod means shoed (wearing shoes). Note the one enjambment and how it twists the meaning (or creates duality of meaning in the lines). "soil" meaning "dirty or to make dirty" and soil meaning earth.

The last six lines move away from mankind and back to nature. Again note enjambment and the connotation of words like "spent" "bent" "springs" "wings".

Good luck with the four questions.

Enjambment

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.


TWO POEMS by e. e. cummings as examples:

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)




may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she

(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she

(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)

may i stay said he
which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she

may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she

but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she

(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she

(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)

Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light.

- Millay



Chapter 11: Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance: 899-907, various poems

Poems to look at and answer questions: "Traveling Through the Dark".

Denotation, Connotation, Procrastination

Read Denotation and Connotation in Class.

HW:

Homework

Okay, so it appears that some of you are stressed out and a little behind in your work.

NOTE: Just make sure you get 1 poetry explication done this weekend - either on "My Last Duchess" or "The Flea". You don't need to do both.

Tone

Today in class we will read the chapter on Denotation and Connotation. We will go over your allegory poems.

We'll also look briefly at "The Flea".



Most of you did not write an explication of "My Last Duchess" yet. Think about the following things:

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?


HOMEWORK

Tone: 880-885, “The Man He Killed” – Questions. "The Telephone" and "Love in Brooklyn" questions. Read "The Flea" and questions.

My Last Duchess

Today in class we will review: Paradox, Irony, Satire: 829-839, “My Last Duchess” – Journal
We will also discuss "How To Read A Poem" and poetry explication.

You should know the following after reading last night's homework: Hyperbole, Understatement (including litotes), Satire, Verbal Irony, Dramatic Irony, and Situational Irony.

So, if you haven't read chapter 2 - "How To Read A Poem" you'll need to read it tonight.

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.

When writing a poetry explication make sure you start with a HOOK and a THESIS STATEMENT. Put here are a set of rules:

Poetry Explications

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.

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What is being dramatized? What conflicts or themes does the poem present, address, or question?
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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?
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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.?
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When does the action occur? What is the date and/or time of day?
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Where is the speaker? Describe the physical location of the dramatic moment.
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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:

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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?
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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.
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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?
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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:

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Rhetorical Patterns: Look for statements that follow the same format.
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Rhyme: Consider the significance of the end words joined by sound; in a poem with no rhymes, consider the importance of the end words.
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Patterns of Sound: Alliteration and assonance create sound effects and often cluster significant words.
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Visual Patterns: How does the poem look on the page?
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Rhythm and Meter: Consider how rhythm and meter influence our perception of the speaker and his/her language.


Basic terms for talking about meter

Meter (from the Greek metron, meaning measure) refers principally to the recurrence of regular beats in a poetic line. In this way, meter pertains to the structure of the poem as it is written.

The most common form of meter in English verse since the 14th century is accentual-syllabic meter, in which the basic unit is the foot. A foot is a combination of two or three stressed and/or unstressed syllables. The following are the four most common metrical feet in English poetry:

(1) IAMBIC (the noun is "iamb"): an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, a pattern which comes closest to approximating the natural rhythm of speech. Note line 23 from Shelley's "Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples":
And walked with inward glory crowned

(2) TROCHAIC (the noun is "trochee"): a stressed followed by an unstressed syllable, as in the first line of Blake's "Introduction" to Songs of Innocence:
Piping down the valleys wild

(3) ANAPESTIC (the noun is "anapest"): two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable, as in the opening to Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib":
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold

(4) DACTYLIC (the noun is "dactyl"): a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, as in Thomas Hardy's "The Voice":
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me

Meter also refers to the number of feet in a line:

Monometer
Dimeter
Trimeter
Tetrameter
Pentameter
Hexameter
one
two
three
four
five
six

Any number above six (hexameter) is heard as a combination of smaller parts; for example, what we might call heptameter (seven feet in a line) is indistinguishable (aurally) from successive lines of tetrameter and trimeter (4-3).

To scan a line is to determine its metrical pattern. Perhaps the best way to begin scanning a line is to mark the natural stresses on the polysyllabic words. Take Shelley's line:
And walked with inward glory crowned

Then mark the monosyllabic nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that are normally stressed:
And walked with inward glory crowned
Then fill in the rest:
And walked with inward glory crowned
Then divide the line into feet:
And walked with inward glory crowned
Then note the sequence:
iamb | iamb | iamb | iamb

The line consists of four iambs; therefore, we identify the line as iambic tetrameter.

I got rhythm

Rhythm refers particularly to the way a line is voiced, i.e., how one speaks the line. Often, when a reader reads a line of verse, choices of stress and unstress may need to be made. For example, the first line of Keats' "Ode on Melancholy" presents the reader with a problem:

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

If we determine the regular pattern of beats (the meter) of this line, we will most likely identify the line as iambic pentameter. If we read the line this way, the statement takes on a musing, somewhat disinterested tone. However, because the first five words are monosyllabic, we may choose to read the line differently. In fact, we may be tempted, especially when reading aloud, to stress the first two syllables equally, making the opening an emphatic, directive statement. Note that monosyllabic words allow the meaning of the line to vary according to which words we choose to stress when reading (i.e., the choice of rhythm we make).

The first line of Milton's Paradise Lost presents a different type of problem.

Of Man's First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Again, this line is predominantly iambic, but a problem occurs with the word Disobedience. If we read strictly by the meter, then we must fuse the last two syllables of the word. However, if we read the word normally, we have a breakage in the line's metrical structure. In this way, the poet forges a tension between meter and rhythm: does the word remain contained by the structure, or do we choose to stretch the word out of the normal foot, thereby disobeying the structure in which it was made? Such tension adds meaning to the poem by using meter and rhythm to dramatize certain conflicts. In this example, Milton forges such a tension to present immediately the essential conflicts that lead to the fall of Adam and Eve.


Writing the explication

The explication should follow the same format as the preparation: begin with the large issues and basic design of the poem and work through each line to the more specific details and patterns.
The first paragraph

The first paragraph should present the large issues; it should inform the reader which conflicts are dramatized and should describe the dramatic situation of the speaker. The explication does not require a formal introductory paragraph; the writer should simply start explicating immediately. According to UNC 's Professor William Harmon, the foolproof way to begin any explication is with the following sentence: "This poem dramatizes the conflict between …" Such a beginning ensures that you will introduce the major conflict or theme in the poem and organize your explication accordingly.

Here is an example. A student's explication of Wordsworth's "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" might begin in the following way:

This poem dramatizes the conflict between appearance and reality, particularly as this conflict relates to what the speaker seems to say and what he really says. From Westminster Bridge, the speaker looks at London at sunrise, and he explains that all people should be struck by such a beautiful scene. The speaker notes that the city is silent, and he points to several specific objects, naming them only in general terms: "Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples" (6). After describing the "glittering" aspect of these objects, he asserts that these city places are just as beautiful in the morning as country places like "valley, rock, or hill" (8,10). Finally, after describing his deep feeling of calmness, the speaker notes how the "houses seem asleep" and that "all that mighty heart is lying still" (13, 14). In this way, the speaker seems to say simply that London looks beautiful in the morning.

The next paragraphs

The next paragraphs should expand the discussion of the conflict by focusing on details of form, rhetoric, syntax, and vocabulary. In these paragraphs, the writer should explain the poem line by line in terms of these details, and he or she should incorporate important elements of rhyme, rhythm, and meter during this discussion.

The student's explication continues with a topic sentence that directs the discussion of the first five lines:

However, the poem begins with several oddities that suggest the speaker is saying more than what he seems to say initially. For example, the poem is an Italian sonnet and follows the abbaabbacdcdcd rhyme scheme. The fact that the poet chooses to write a sonnet about London in an Italian form suggests that what he says may not be actually praising the city. Also, the rhetoric of the first two lines seems awkward compared to a normal speaking voice: "Earth has not anything to show more fair. / Dull would he be of soul who could pass by" (1-2). The odd syntax continues when the poet personifies the city: "This City now doth, like a garment, wear / The beauty of the morning" (4-5). Here, the city wears the morning's beauty, so it is not the city but the morning that is beautiful ...

The conclusion??

The explication has no formal concluding paragraph; do not simply restate the main points of the introduction! The end of the explication should focus on sound effects or visual patterns as the final element of asserting an explanation. Or, as does the undergraduate here, the writer may choose simply to stop writing when he or she reaches the end of the poem:

The poem ends with a vague statement: "And all that mighty heart is lying still!" In this line, the city's heart could be dead, or it could be simply deceiving the one observing the scene. In this way, the poet reinforces the conflict between the appearance of the city in the morning and what such a scene and his words actually reveal.

Tips to keep in mind

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Refer to the speaking voice in the poem as the speaker" or "the poet." For example, do not write, "In this poem, Wordsworth says that London is beautiful in the morning." However, you can write, "In this poem, Wordsworth presents a speaker who…" We cannot absolutely identify Wordsworth with the speaker of the poem, so it is more accurate to talk about "the speaker" or "the poet" in an explication.
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Use the present tense when writing the explication. The poem, as a work of literature, continues to exist!
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To avoid unnecessary uses of the verb "to be" in your compositions, the following list suggests some verbs you can use when writing the explication:

dramatizes
presents
illustrates
characterizes
underlines


asserts
posits
enacts
connects
portrays


contrasts
juxtaposes
suggests
implies shows


addresses
emphasizes
stresses
accentuates
enables

A helpful link to the approach by Duke University can be found here

HOMEWORK

Tone: 880-885, “The Man He Killed” – Questions. "The Telephone" and "Love in Brooklyn" questions. Read "The Flea" and questions. Write an explication of "My Last Duchess". Have a detailed definition for TONE. Come to class prepared to share all the above.