Literary Criticism
UIL Capital Conference
2013
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Explicating Poetry
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Friday 2:45 - 4:00 p.m.
Saturday 10:15 - 11:30 a.m.
Both sessions will use this collection; individual poems will (probably) not be addressed twice.
An Hymn to the Morning
Attend my lays, ye ever honour'd nine,
Assist my labours, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.
Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev'ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;
Harmonious lays the feather'd race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.
Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire:
The bow'rs, the gales, the variegated skies
In all their pleasures in my bosom rise.
See in the east th' illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away—
But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes th' abortive song.
Phillis Wheatley
An Old French Poet
When in your sober mood my body have ye laid
In sight and sound of things beloved, woodland and stream,
And the green turf has hidden the poor bones ye deem
No more a close companion with those rhymes we made;
Then, if some bird should pipe, or breezes stir the glade,
Thinking them for the while my voice, so let them seem
A fading message from the misty shores of dream,
Or wheresoever, following Death, my feet have strayed.
Siegfried Sassoon
1
Here
There is nothing concrete to grasp in
looking into the morning sky
The evidence of red-eye
flights east a plane drawn line presents
is not a wheelbarrow solid enough
dependency as day and night
carry in coming and going
You don't see the poem
saying anything you can't see in it
White dashes of contrails'
seemingly unmoving streak towards sunrise
disquiet the pale otherwise
unpunctuated blue of dawn
breaks it off
Here is that silence
Ed Roberson
If You've Seen a Mount of Sea Foam
If you've seen a mount of sea foam,
It is my verse you have seen:
My verse a mountain has been
And a feathered fan become.
My verse is like a dagger
At whose hilt a flower grows:
My verse is a fount which flows
With a sparkling coral water.
My verse is a gentle green
And also a flaming red:
My verse is a deer wounded
Seeking forest cover unseen.
My verse is brief and sincere,
And to the brave will appeal:
With all the strength of the steel
With which the sword will appear.
Jose Marti
Over the wintry
forest, winds howl in rage
with no leaves to blow.
Natsume Soseki
2
When I by Thy Faire Shape Did Sweare
I.
When I by thy faire shape did sweare,
And mingled with each vowe a teare,
I lov'd, I lov'd thee best,
I swore as I profest.
For all the while you lasted warme and pure,
My oathes too did endure.
But once turn'd faithlesse to thy selfe and old,
They then with thee incessantly grew cold.
II.
I swore my selfe thy sacrifice
By th' ebon bowes that guard thine eyes,
Which now are alter'd white,
And by the glorious light
Of both those stars, which of their spheres bereft,
Only the gellie's left.
Then changed thus, no more I'm bound to you,
Then swearing to a saint that proves untrue.
Richard Lovelace
Quiet Work
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson which in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity—
Of toil unsever'd from tranquility!
Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil,
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,
Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting;
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,
Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone.
Matthew Arnold
Hokku VIII
When the flower falls
The leaf is no more cherished.
Every day I fear.
Amy Lowell
3
The Dictators
An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,
with a snout full of ooze and silence
Pablo Neruda
Nuit Blanche
I want no horns to rouse me up to-night,
And trumpets make too clamorous a ring
To fit my mood, it is so weary white
I have no wish for doing any thing.
A music coaxed from humming strings would please;
Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences
Across a sunset wall where some Marquise
Picks a pale rose amid strange silences.
Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by
The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet
Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh,
Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet
And it is dark, I hear her feet no more.
A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank.
A drunken moon ogling a sycamore,
Running long fingers down its shining flank.
A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown,
Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass.
Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown—
Kiss me, red lips, and then pass—pass.
Music, you are pitiless to-night.
And I so old, so cold, so languorously white.
Amy Lowell
4
Rondeau Redouble
There are so many kinds of awful men—
One can't avoid them all. She often said
She'd never make the same mistake again:
She always made a new mistake instead.
The chinless type who made her feel ill-bred;
The practised charmer, less than charming when
He talked about the wife and kids and fled—
There are so many kinds of awful men.
The half-crazed hippy, deeply into Zen,
Whose cryptic homilies she came to dread;
The fervent youth who worshipped Tony Benn—
"One can't avoid them all," she often said.
The ageing banker, rich and overfed,
Who held forth on the dollar and the yen—
Though there were many more mistakes ahead,
She'd never make the same mistake again.
The budding poet, scribbling in his den
Odes not to her but to his pussy, Fred;
The drunk who fell asleep at nine or ten—
She always made a new mistake instead.
And so the gambler was at least unwed
And didn't preach or sneer or wield a pen
Or hoard his wealth or take the Scotch to bed.
She'd lived and learned and lived and learned but then
There are so many kinds.
Wendy Cope
Sonnet 129
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action: and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
William Shakespeare
5
Topography
After we flew across the country we
got in bed, laid our bodies
delicately together, like maps laid
face to face, East to West, my
San Francisco against your New York, your
Fire Island against my Sonoma, my
New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho
bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas
burning against your Kansas your Kansas
burning against my Kansas, your Eastern
Standard Time pressing into my
Pacific Time, my Mountain Time
beating against your Central Time, your
sun rising swiftly from the right my
sun rising swiftly from the left your
moon rising slowly form the left my
moon rising slowly form the right until
all four bodies of the sky
burn above us, sealing us together,
all our cities twin cities,
all our states united, one
nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Sharon Olds
Some Trees
These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance
To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try
To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.
And glad not to have invented
Such comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges
A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Placed in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.
John Ashbery
6
The Death-Bed
We watch'd her breathing thro' the night,
Her breathing soft and low,
As in her breast the wave of life
Kept heaving to and fro.
So silently we seem'd to speak,
So slowly moved about,
As we had lent her half our powers
To eke her living out.
Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied—
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died.
For when the morn came dim and sad,
And chill with early showers,
Her quiet eyelids closed—she had
Another morn than ours.
Thomas Hood
Epilogue
"O where are you going?" said reader to rider
"That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return."
"O do you imagin," said fearer to farer,
"That dusk will delay on your path to pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"
"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,
"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease?"
"Out of this house"—said rider to reader
"Yours never will"—said farer to fearer
"They’re looking for you"—said hearer to horror
As he left them there, as he left them there.
W. H. Auden
Long line at Macy's—
where Master Origamist
waits for gift-wrapping
S. M. Polonsky
7
Sonnet 54
O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.
William Shakespeare
The Rose of the World
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.
William Butler Yeats
[There was a young girl from St. Paul]
There was a young girl from St. Paul,
Wore a newspaper-dress to a ball.
The dress caught on fire
And burned her entire
Front page, sporting section and all.
Anonymous
8
Cheerfulness Taught by Reason
I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint
Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints? At least it may be said
"Because the way is short, I thank thee, God."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thistles
Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.
Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up
From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.
Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.
Ted Hughes
Short Measure
When you are writing hymns
Here is a pleasant lilt
To match the praise of seraphims
Or carry prayers for guilt.
Short measure is the name
This small device is given,
Though with short measure none can claim
The key to life is given.
Katie Msallett
9
The Word Plum
The word plum is delicious
pout and push, luxury of
self-love, and savoring murmur
full in the mouth and falling
like fruit
taut skin
pierced, bitten, provoked into
juice, and tart flesh
question
and reply, lip and tongue
of pleasure.
Helen Chasin
Climate Change
Currently the subject of much conversation
Learning of its effects through information
Internationally scientists are using education
Mankind's pollution is causing this situation
Altering our ways may stop the devastation
Time isn't on the side of the world's population
Ever we should be aware of its manifestation
Cycles of weather becoming stranger by the day
Heat is building up in the Earth's rocks and clay
Averting further damage cannot be put on delay
Neglecting our response to the planet won't pay
Globally hotter and wetter conditions will parlay
Everyone needs to heed the message of this day
Elizabeth Squires
Literary Concepts Addressed during Explication
(not exhaustive)
alliteration
allusion
allusion (topical)
anapest
anaphora
anastrophe
apostrophe
assonance
ballad stanza
chiasmus
consonance
couplet
dactyl
elision
enjambment
epilogue
epistrophe
epithet (Homeric)
eye rhyme
feminine ending
feminine rhyme
foot
haiku
heroic couplet
hyperbaton
hyperbole
iamb
imagery
inversion
internal rhyme
masculine ending
masculine rhyme
metaphor
meter
metonymy
mythopoeia
10
octave
onomatopoeia
paradox
pastoral
personification
ploce
polyptoton
quatrain
rondeau redouble
run-on line
senryu
sestet
short measure
simile
sonnet, Italian,
sonnet, English
spondee
synæsthesia
synecdoche
sigmatism
theme
tone
trochee
volta