HOW TO READ A POEM
READ IT MORE THAN ONCE
• First read it through without stopping just to
experience it.
• Second read it at a literal level.
• Annotate the important words and what they literally mean.
• Note the connotations of the words. Note any shifts
• Third read it at the figurative and symbolic levels
• Depending on the length and complexity you may have to
do these separately
• Look for comparisons, the bigger meaning, any shifts
KEEP A DICTIONARY BY YOU
(SAREEN )
• If you do not know the denotation of a word, then
you can not know the connotation of a word, and
the figurative and symbolic meaning will be lost.
READ THE POEM ALOUD
• You need to hear the sounds of poetry
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Meter
Rhyme
Sound imagery
Cacophonous words
PAY ATTENTION TO THE WORDS
• Sounds are important for the “beauty” of the poem,
but you still need to get the “message” or theme
the poet is establishing
• Look at the grammatical structure of the poem.
Grammar is still important in poetry.
• Subjects of sentences will help hone in on the subject of the
poem.
• Adjectives help establish the tone of poem.
• Punctuation helps to establish the message of the poet and
alleviate any confusion in your interpretation.
PRACTICE READING ALOUD
• Read it with feeling.
• Read at an appropriate pace to let the message
develop.
• Read to feel the rhythm. The meter is there to
reinforce the theme.
• Read “The Man he Killed” out loud in partners
PARAPHRASE
• Restate it in your own words.
• This helps you to understand the main idea of the poem
and form a connection with it.
• Read “A Study of Reading Habits”
• What does each stanza say?
• What is the difference between a paraphrase and an actual
reading of the poem?
• Remember this is the barest meaning of a poem.
ANNOTATE AND ASK QUESTIONS
• Who is the speaker?
• Poet? Version of themselves?
• What can you tell about a speaker?
• The more you know the more you can interpret everything
else about the poem.
• What is the occasion?
• What is the central purpose of the poem?
• Tell a story? Reveal human character? Impart a vivid
impression of a scene? An attitude?
• Look at “Is my team plowing” and lets discuss the questions
CENTRAL PURPOSE
• Once you figure out the bare information you can
look at how the poem achieves its purpose. We
know what it is, but how is it achieved
• Think about a building, you see it, but how did the
builder actually create it? What is it made up of?
How is it put together?
• Look at the building blocks of the poem.
• Figurative language, connotative words, figures of speech.
REVIEW AND APPLY
• Discuss the review questions
• Discuss one of the poems from your reading last
night.
• Choose One of the suggestions for writing and
complete it tonight in your poetry journal that I will
check but not grade until the end of the unit.
MEANING?
Stupid
Abrupt
Ignorant
Rude
Agreeable Enjoyable
DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION
• Practical vs Literary
• Three components of a word
• Denotation: basic meaning
• There may be multiple, do they mean both (pun)? Do they
mean one? Which one?
• Connotation: suggestions of the word (emotions)
• Allows poets to communicate more in less words.
• Sound: harsh(cacophonous), pleasant (euphonious)
• Read “There is no Frigate like a Book” and discuss.
READ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S
SONNET
“WHEN MY LOVE SWEARS THAT SHE IS
MADE OF TRUTH”
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Speaker?
Occasion?
Paraphrase?
Diction?
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Denotation
Connotation
Sounds
Tone
Theme?
REVIEW CHAPTER THREE
• Questions
• Discuss a poem and the questions
• Choose a suggestions for writing and add to your
poetry journal.
POEMS FOR ANALYSIS
• Get into pairs and discuss one of each of your
poems.
• Choose a suggestion for writing for your first entry in
your poetry journal.
IMAGERY
• Experiences come through our senses.
To truly experience a poem you must identify and analyze
the images in the poem
• The selection of sense impressions reveals a lot.
• Tone
• Meaning
• Theme
Language is more sensual with imagery
Poetry is a sensory experience
• Directly : through its music and rhythms
• Indirectly: through sense description, imagery, the
representation to the imagination of sense
experience.
• Image does not just refer to a visual experience, but
also auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile.
SENSORY DETAILS
• When you want to "bring something to life" in your writing, or
get concretely detailed (to show something with description
rather than just generally tell about that something), you
usually have to be a good observer of sensory detail which
has a lot to do with adjectives (modifies/enhances nouns) and
adverbs (modifies/enhances verbs), though one must always
beware of clichés.
• sight--his brown hair hangs down to the middle of his sloping
back
• sound--the train he sits on clanks metallically beneath him
• taste--his hair tastes like bad chemicals, sour and tinny
• touch--his skin must feel like sandpaper
• smell--there is something musty and moldy about him
• psychic/intuition (ha ha)--he seems sad like a dog laying on a
dusty sidewalk in Mexico--I sense his pain in the tired squint of
his eyes
WHAT EXPERIENCE?
Sight: darkness, bright light
Sound: creaking chairs, people softly talking
Smell: buttery popcorn, musty seats
Touch: cool air from the vents, the rough material of
the chairs
• Taste: sweet soda, buttery popcorn
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•
•
“MEETING AT NIGHT”
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Sight?
Sound?
Taste?
Touch?
Smell?
• Message, tone, theme?
• Now consider “Parting at Morning”
REVIEW
• Discuss the review questions for Chapter 4
• Journal entry from suggestions for writing page 71
any of your choice.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE: SIMILE,
METAPHOR, PERSONIFICATION,
APOSTROPHE, AND METONYMY
Your brother has just come in out of a rainstorm and
you say to him:
• Well, you’re a pretty sight! Got slightly wet, didn’t
you?
He replies:
• Wet? I’m drowned! It’s raining cats and dogs, and
my raincoat is like a sieve!
FIGURE OF SPEECH
• We can say things more vividly and forcefully by
figures of speech.
• Any way of saying something other than the
ordinary way, and rhetoricians classify 250 separate
figures
• More narrowly it means: saying one thing and
meaning another.
• Figurative language is using figures of speech
• Cannot be taken literally
COMPARISONS
• Simile: the comparison is expressed by the use of
some word or phrase such as: like, as, than, similar
to, resembles, or seems.
• Metaphor: the comparison is not expressed but
created when a figurative term is substituted for or
identified with the literal term.
“HARLEM”
LANGSTON HUGHES
What happens to a dream
deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy
load.
Or does it explode?
METAPHORS
• Named: both literal and figurative things being
compared are explicitly named
• “Sorrow is my own yard”
• Implied: when only the literal term is named and the
figurative is implied.
• “dream” is named and the figurative “bomb” is implied.
METAPHORS
• Literal is implied and the figurative is named.
• What is it?
• Goodbye England’s Rose…. Who is the rose?
• Both the literal and the figurative terms are implied.
• It sifts from leaden sieves….
• it=snow sifts=flour
PERSONIFICATION
• Gives attributes of a human being to an animal,
object, or a concept.
• Implied metaphor where the figurative portion of
the comparison is always a human being.
• When Keats describes autumn as a harvester “sitting
careless on a granary floor” it is personification.
• Look at “The Author to Her Book” and answer the questions.
APOSTROPHE
• Addressing someone absent or dead or something
nonhuman as if that person or thing were present
and alive and could reply to what is being said.
• “To an Athlete Dying Young”
• The time you won our town the race
• Who is “you”? an absent person.
O grim-looked night! O night with hue so black!
METONYMY AND SYNECDOCHE
• Synecdoche: part represents the whole
• Malt does more than Milton can—malt means beer
• Metonymy: something closely related to represent
what is meant
• Those guns will fire-- the police will fire their guns.
DEAD METAPHORS
• Redhead
• Hands
• Tongues
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
• Imaginative pleasure
• Additional Imagery
• Means of concentration
• Life is like a candle in that it begins and ends in darkness…
• Adds emotional intensity and attitudes to
informative statements.
• Books are a load of crap.
• Makes the abstract concrete
• Eagle falls like a thunderbolt
• Poetry compared to prancing coursers
EXERCISE AND REVIEW
• When analyzing poetry we must decide what it is
that the figures accomplish, not just identify them.
• On page 92, choose a poem from #3 in suggestions
for writing and discuss it in your poetry journal
SYMBOL AND ALLEGORY
• Symbol is something that means more than what it
is.
• Two Roads=choices in life
• Two roads in a wood are relatively unimportant, but the
significance he places on the decision claiming that he will
remember “with a sigh…..ages and ages hence” suggests
he is speaking about something important.
• When poets put much emphasis on anything, chances are
it is functioning as a symbol.
IMAGE, METAPHOR AND SYMBOL
• All seem to shade into each other and are
sometimes difficult to distinguish
• Image means only what it is: A shaggy brown dog
was rubbing its back on a white picket fence.
• The figurative term in metaphor means something
other than what it is: Some dirty dog stole my wallet
at the party
• A symbol means what it is and something more too;
functioning literally and figuratively at the same
time: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks
SYMBOL AND ITS IMPRECISION
• Symbol is the riches and the most difficult of the
poetic figures which result from its imprecision.
• A poet may pin down the meaning of a symbol to
something fairly definite and precise, more often
the symbol is so general in its meaning that it can
express a variety of meanings.
• Symbols vary in the degree of identification and
definition: sometimes they are specific and
sometimes they do not identify them at all.
A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER
• Stanza One: Literal, How?
• Stanza Two: Symbolic, How?
WHAT MAKES ONE A METAPHOR AND
ONE A SYMBOL?
What happens to a dream
deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy
load.
Or does it explode?
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little
promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant
vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament,
filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly
speeding them.
And you O my soul where you
stand,
Surrounded, detached, in
measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing,
throwing, seeking the spheres to
connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be
form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling
catch somewhere,
THE SICK ROSE
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
RE-READ “TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE
MUCH OF TIME”
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Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
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The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
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That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
ALLEGORY
• Narrative or description that has a second meaning
beneath the surface.
• The surface may have its own interest, the major
interest is the ulterior meaning.
• Defined sometimes as an extended metaphor.
• It has a system of related comparisons rather than one
drawn out one
• Defined sometimes as a series of related symbols.
• It puts less emphasis on the images for their own sake and
more on their ulterior meanings which are more fixed with
usually a one-to-one correspondence between the details
and a single set of ulterior meanings
• Peace: Read and discuss the questions with a
partner
• Exercise 1 a-d
• Review
• Poetry journal entry from suggestions for writing;
choose any
PARADOX AND ITS “SHOCK VALUE”
• An apparent contradiction that is nevertheless
somehow true.
• The contradiction usually stems from one of the words being
used figuratively or with more than one denotation.
• Situation or statement
• Paradoxical situation
• What first seemed impossible is actually entirely plausible and
not strange at all.
• Verbal paradox
• Difference?
MUCH MADNESS IS DIVINEST SENSE
Much Madness is divinest Sense To a discerning Eye Much Sense - the starkest Madness ’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail Assent - and you are sane Demur - you’re straightway dangerous And handled with a Chain -
OVERSTATEMENT (HYPERBOLE)
• Exaggeration, but exaggeration in the service of
truth.
• I’m starved
• You could have knocked me over with a feather
• I’ll die if I don’t pass this course
• Are these overstatements or hyperbole?
EFFECTS OF OVERSTATEMENT
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Humorous or grave
Fanciful or restrained
Convincing or unconvincing
Strained and ridiculous
UNDERSTATEMENT
• Saying less than one means; existing in what one
says or how one says it.
• It is paradoxical that this also is used for emphasis of the
truth.
• Sitting down to a loaded dinner plate “This looks like a nice
snack”
• Less than the truth
• Hand in a fire will experience “a sensation of excessive and
disagreeable warmth”
• Literally true but with a good deal less force
PRACTICE
• “The Sun Rising”
• Discuss the questions with a partner
• Thoughts?
IRONY
• Has meaning that extend beyond its use merely as a
figure of speech.
• Verbal: saying the opposite of what one means (not the
same as sarcasm, or satire)
• Sarcasm: bitter or cutting speech intended to wound
the feelings.
• Satire: written literature rather than speech, implies a
higher motive to bring about reform or keep people
from falling into similar vice or folly
• Think of the surgeon analogy
• The scalpel is the device (irony)
• The Surgeon is cruel and kind (Satire) it says mean to make good.
• The pain is cruel (sarcasm) it always intends to be cruel.
BARBIE DOLL
•
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.
•
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.
Marge Piercy :
DRAMATIC IRONY
• Always implies some discrepancy
• Discrepancy between what is said and what the poem
means as opposed to verbal irony which is what is said and
what is meant.
• The speaker may be straightforward but the author , by
putting words into the speaker’s mouth, may be attempting
to make an opposite point.
• The Chimney Sweep
• questions
SITUATIONAL IRONY
• Discrepancy between the actual circumstances
and the seemingly appropriate circumstances.
• A man and a woman on their honeymoon find
themselves in close proximity to his first wife.
• Alanis Morriset “Isn’t it Ironic”
• O’Henry “The Gift of the Magi”
• Situational and Dramatic allow the poet to suggest
meanings without stating them.
• “Ozymandias” and questions
• Review the chapter
• Journal Entry: suggestions for writng #2
ALLUSION
A reference to something in history or previous literature.
A richly connotative word or symbol.
Economical: it says so much in so little
Forces the reader to make a connection on his or her
own.
• Risks the whole meaning on the reader’s recognition of
the meaning of the Allusion.
• It is a means of reinforcing the emotions of one work with
the strong emotions of another work
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• She is the Mother Theresa of our group.
• He is her Prince Charming.
OUT,OUT-• The title calls to mind the Macbeth excerpt from act
5 scene 5 on page 140.
• Theme of premature death?
• Vanity and meaninglessness of life?
• Review chapter 8
• Analyze poems
• Journal entry: Suggestions for writing: choose one of the
poems and analyze the allusion and its evocation of
emotions.
MEANING AND IDEA
• Poetry is meant to be an emotional experience.
When people try to understand it with their minds it
gets difficult
• Total meaning: the experience it communicates
• Prose meaning: the ingredient that can be
separated out in the form of a prose paraphrase.
• NOT THE SAME
• Prose may not even be an idea. It can be a story, a
description, a statement of emotion, a presentation of
human character…
• The Eagle-is a primary expression of emotion; the idea is
different from the Eagle entirely, and unconcerned with
ideas.
POEMS WITH IDEAS
• Message hunting is dangerous
• Little Jack Horner- reach in pick out a plum and say
what a good boy am I! As if the pie existed only for
the plum.
• Idea in a poem is only part of the experience.
• Value is the entire experience, not by the truth of the idea.
• Poetic Faith: You need a willing suspension of disbelief.
• Readers must be willing to suspend ideas that they believe to
be fundamentally untrue in order to experience the poem fully.
• God-Atheistic poem
• Optimist-Pessimistic poem
CONSIDER
• Loveliest of Trees
• Ideas?
• Explicit or implicit?
• Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
• Ideas?
• Explicit or implicit?
• Review Questions
• Suggestions for Writing pg 165: choose one pair of poems and
write a journal entry.
TONE COMPARISON (PAGE 170)
• You can focus on the story or allusion to understand
tone. (Adam and Eve allusion is one of evil, disgrace)
• You can solely focus on the language (actual words
used through out the text)
• You can focus on the culmination of the “story” in the
poem and evaluate that as well (one poem is a sense of
loss, one poem is a sense of terror)
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•
Review Questions
Two poems Chapters 2-10 due Monday
Journal entry #1 pg 185
( you should have
MUSICAL DEVICES
• Poets use words for sound as much as meaning
• Poe describes it as “Music…combined with a
pleasurable idea”
• It is often adjunct to the meaning of the poem.
• Two ways to accomplish this:
• Choice and arrangement of sounds
• Choice and arrangement of accents (think metric feet)
REPETITION AND VARIETY
• Two aspects to consider:
• Repetition
• It will please the ear, emphasize words, and give structure
to the poem.
• Refrain: repetition of whole words, phases, lines or groups
of lines
• Variety
• All things we enjoy have them both, combined
• Baseball
• Music
• Art
• The beach
THE TURTLE (187)
• Paradox?
• What does it say?
• In what manner is it said?
• Read the two variations and discuss
TOOLS OF SOUND
• Alliteration
• Rhyme or reason
• Assonance
• Mad as a hatter
• Consonance
• Struts and frets
• Rhyme
• Masculine
• One syllable: support and retort
• Feminine
• Two or more syllables: turtle and fertile
• Internal
• Rhyme within the line of poetry: I wake to sleep, and take my waking glow
• End
• Rhyme at the end of consecutive or alternating lines: you know it!
• Approximate
• Almost but not quite a rhyme: began and gun, seen and own, you and go
• Review Questions
• Exercises
• Journal entry suggestions for writing #2 pg 201
RHYTHM AND METER
Rhythm: recurrence of rhythm or sound
Accented or stressed: syllables given more prominence
Rhetorical stresses: in speech to make our ideas clear
End stopped line: corresponds to natural speech pause
Caesuras: pauses with in lines, grammatical or rhetorical
Free verse: rhythm matches prose but arrangement is
poetry
• Prose poem: uses poetic devices but not meter (blank
verse)
• Meter: identify the characteristics of rhythmic language
• Foot: stressed and unstressed syllables (206)
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MANIPULATIONS IN METER
• Metrical variations:
• Calls attention to some part when departs from what is
regular
• Substitution
• Replacing a foot with another foot
• Extrametrical syllables: added at the beginning or end of a line
• Truncation: omission of an accented syllable at either end
• Scansion: defines metrical form
• Read Virtue on page 207
• Review questions
SOUND AND MEANING
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Poetry differs from music
Sound and sense not just musical quality
Meaning through sound
Support the meaning, but doesn’t steal the scene
Reinforces meaning through sound in numerous
ways
TOOLS
• Onomatopoeia: often expresses movement or action
• Harness jingles, creak across, ring, clatter,
• Phonetic intensives: sound to some degree connects
with their meaning
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Fl: idea of moving light, flame, flare, flash
Gl: accomplishes the idea of light, glare, gleam, glint
Sl: suggests smooth or wet, slippery, slick, slime
St: suggests strength, steady, stocky, stern
Medial att: suggests movement, spatter, scatter, chatter
Final er or le: indicate repetition, glitter, flutter, shimmer, rumble,
jingle, rattle
• Eight O’Clock pg 229
TOOLS
• Word selection: grouping of words
• Euphonious
• Line with high percentage of vowel sounds in proportion to
consonant sounds tend to be more melodious
• Long vowels, such as fate, are more resonant than short
vowels, such as fat
• Some consonants are melodious: liquids, ring, some, new
• Cacophonous
• Consonants such as plosives b, d, g, k, p and t are harsher
• Usually matches the meaning Read sound and sense pg
230
• Ulysses pg 115
• I heard a fly buzz- when I died pg 234
REVIEW
• Questions
• Complete two poems
• Journal: suggestions for writing pg 245, choose any
poem.
• Read chapters 15-16
PATTERN
• Structure: Internal ordering of material such as
ideas, thoughts, images etc.
• Form: external shape fulfilling our need for visual
satisfaction.
• Concrete poems
• Continuous form
• Element of design is slight
• Lines have no formal grouping and follow thoughts just as
paragraphs do in prose
• My Last Dutchess pg 135
STANZA AND RHYME
• Stanzaic form: written in stanzas; a group of repeated set numbers of lines
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Couplets: 2
Quatrains: 4
Sestets: 6
Octaves: 8
Terza rima: consists of an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the
Italian poet Dante Alighieri.
•
aba, bcb, cdc, ded; typically an iambic line
•
four lines which alternate between iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter
•
introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Ballad meter: called Common Meter (CM)
• Rhyme royal: consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme
is a-b-a-b-b-c-c. In practice, the stanza can be constructed either as a tercet and
two couplets (a-b-a, b-b, c-c) or a quatrain and a tercet (a-b-a-b, b-c-c).
• Spenserian stanza: fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem
The Faerie Queene. Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic
pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. Ababbcbcc
• Shakespearean sonnet: 14 lines, three quatrains, one couplet abab, cdcd, efef, gg
• Rhyme Scheme: pattern of repeated rhyme in consecutive lines of
poetry.
FORMS
• Fixed form: traditional pattern that applies to a whole
poem
• In English, the most common two:
• Villanelle: nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes
and two refrains. five tercets followed by a quatrain
• Aba aba aba aba aba abaa
• Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night pg 252
• Sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter
• Italian (Petrachan) has an octave (abbaabba)and sestet
(either cecece or cdecede)
• The division of the octave and the sestet usually indicate a division
of thought
• Form reflects structure: HOW?
• On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer pg 249
ENGLISH SONNET
• Invented by Surrey, but made famous by
Shakespeare
• Three quatrains (abab cdcd efef)
• Units and development of thought often correspond
• Present three examples or a thought and possible solutions
• Concluding couplet (gg)
•
a conclusion or answer or application
• That time of year pg 250
• Review questions
EVALUATING POETRY
• You must understand the poem first
• Intellectually
• Emotionally
• Discrimination between good and great is essential
• Judging a poem requires:
• What is the central purpose?
• understand the poem
• How fully has the purpose been accomplished?
• evaluate the poem on a scale of perfection
• How important is this purpose?
• evaluate the poem on a scale of significance
PURPOSE ACCOMPLISHED?
• We can only judge any element in a poem only as
it contributes or fails to contribute to the
achievement of the central purpose
• We can judge the total poem only as it contributes
to the central purpose of the poem with the
elements working together to form an integral
whole.
• Generalizations about successful poetry:
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•
•
•
No excess words
No words that do not bear their full weight (connotation)
No filler words simply for meter requirements
No inexact words; all fill out the entire meaning of the poem
EXCELLENT POETRY
• All Must Be Fresh
Thought
Emotion
Language
Sound
No Imitation
No appeal to stock, pre-established ways of thinking and
feeling
• Verse rather than true poetry
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•
•
•
•
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• sentimental
• Excessively rhetorical
• Purely didactic
VERSE RATHER THAN TRUE POETRY
• Sentimentality
• Indulgence in emotion for its own sake, or more emotion
than the occasion warrants.
• Aims at stimulating emotions rather than communicating
experience
• Rhetorical poetry
• Uses a language more glittering and high-flown than
warranted
• Language without corresponding reality of emotion or
thought underneath, artificially eloquent, superficial and
often overly trite
• Loves phrases such as “Old Glory”
• “whereat with blade, with bloody, blameful blade,
He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast”
• Didactic poetry
• Purpose is to teach or preach
• When didactic supersedes the poetic purpose
• When the poem communicates information or moral
instruction only it becomes didactic verse
• Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy and
wise.
• Subtle discriminations are very hard to make
• Always be honest; don’t pretend
• Do not hedge equivocate or try to find out others’
opinions
• Allow yourself to change your opinion through study,
comparison, and conversation
POETIC EXCELLENCE
Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, "What a
good boy am I!"
It sifts from Leaden Sieves It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road -
It makes an even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again It reaches to the Fence It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces It deals Celestial Vail
To Stump, and Stack - and Stem A Summer’s empty Room Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen Then stills it’s Artisans - like Ghosts Denying they have been -
• Verse
• Says virtually
nothing
•
•
Appeals to senses,
imagination and
conveys perfectly the
quality of freshly fallen
snow
But small talk about
weather
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do
hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the
cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds
sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take
away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished
by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love
more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere
long.
•
•
•
•
Deeply engages the emotions
and intellect
Core of human living and
suffering
Evokes universal human
concerns
Says more
GREAT POETRY
• Engages the whole person
• Sense, imagination, emotion, intellect
• Not merely to entertain
• Brings us along with pure pleasure, fresh insights, or renewed
insights into the nature of human experience
• Broader and deeper understanding of life, other people
and ourselves.
• No easy, mechanical tests
• Final test is the responsiveness, the taste and the
discernment of the reader
DUE MONDAY
• All review questions for chapters 1-15 (if not turned in)
• Two poems per chapter for chapters 2-10 (if not turned in)
• Journal entry for chapters (from suggestions for writing)
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2 (any)
3 (any)
4 (any)
5 (choose a poem from #3)
6 (any)
7(#2)
8 (choose one poem)
9 (choose one pair of poems)
10 (#1)
WRITING ABOUT POETRY
Why?
To practice writing clearly and persuasively
To deepen your understanding of literary works
For Whom?
The audience
Know their background
Make intelligent guesses about their intellect, interests
and previous reading
• For specific audiences you may need to explain certain
references that may not be needed for others.
• Clearly, essays written for different audiences and
different purposes differ considerable in content,
organization and style
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APPROACHES
• Explication “unfolding”
• Detailed elucidation of a work sometimes line by
line or word by word
• Not only what it means, but how it means what it
means
• Text needs to be rich enough to warrant the
attention to detail that is required for explication
• This is a method employed whenever you elucidate
even a small part of a literary work by close
examination that relates it to the whole.
APPROACHES
• Analysis “breaking up”
• Separate all of the parts and examining on aspect
or element or part that relates to the whole
• Better approach to longer works
• A literary work may be usefully approached through
any of its elements as long as it is related back to
the central meaning or the whole.
• Choose a topic appropriate for length
• Visual and auditory imagery in “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” is too large a topic to be usefully treated in two
pages.
CHOOSING A TOPIC