ENG 3U: Poetry Unit
Critical Approaches
Readings
a. “The Baker” by Heather Cadsby (p.3)
Biographical/Historical
Criticism (p.2)
b. “Hiroshima Exit” by Joy Kogawa (p.3)
c. “Doctor’s Journal Entry” by Vikram Seth (p.4)
Reader Response Criticism
(p.5)
a. “An African Elegy” by Ben Okri (p.6)
b. “Silhouette” by Pauline Johnson (p.7)
a. “In Exile” by Barbara Kingsolver (p.10)
Feminist Criticism (p.9)
b. “The Child Who Walks Backwards” by Lorna Crozier
(p.11)
a. “Callum” by Milton Acorn (p.13)
Marxist Criticism (p.12)
b. “Tosca with Man in Bedrock” by Anne Winters
(p.14)
2
Biographical/Historical Criticism
Assumptions
1. Meaning is contextual.
2. The context for a literary work includes information about the author, his or her
historical moment, and the systems of meaning available at the time of writing.
3. Thus, interpretation of the work should be based on an understanding of its
context.
Strategies
1. Research the author’s life, and related that information to the work.
2. Research the author’s time (the political history, intellectual history, economic
history, etc.), and relate that information to the work.
3. Research the systems of meaning available to the author, and relate those
systems to the work.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
2
3
“The Baker” by Heather Cadsby
I would buy anything from you
last week’s bread
cakes I’m allergic to
something I’ve never tried before.
It’s that blue code on your arm
four numbers I can’t decipher.
They are fixed veins.
Ovens belch and sweat
and you mold, bake
and remember
other barely brown loaves.
Your face is stamped
with kick-shod feet
and the reek of screams.
None of that grows stale.
Yet now here
as you push and jab
sweet dough
I see no revenge.
My gentile money
arms me with bagels
stuffs me with tears.
“Hiroshima Exit” by Joy Kogawa
In round round rooms of our wanderings
Victims and victimizers in circular flight
Fact pursuing fact
Warning leaflets still dip down
On soil heavy with flames,
Black rain, footsteps, witnessing –
The Atomic Bomb Memorial Building:
A curiosity shop filled with
Remnants of clothing, radiation sickness,
Fleshless faces, tourists mettering
“Well, they started it.”
Words jingle down
“They didn’t think about us in Pearl Harbor”
They? Us?
I tiptoe round the curiosity shop
Seeking my target
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4
Precision becomes essential
Quick. Quick. Before he’s out of range.
Spell the name
America?
Hiroshima?
Air raid warnings wail bleakly
Hiroshima
Morning.
I step outside
And close softly the door
Believing, believing
That outside this store
Is another door.
“Doctor’s Journal Entry for August 6, 1945” by Vikram Seth
The morning stretched calm, beautiful, and warm.
Sprawling half clad, I gazed out at the form
Of shimmering leaves and shadows. Suddenly
A strong flash, then another, startled me.
I saw the old stone lantern brightly lit.
Magnesium flares? While I debated it,
The roof, the walls an, as it seemed, the world
Collapsed in timber and debris, dust swirled
Around me – in the garden now – and, weird,
My drawers and undershirt disappeared.
A splinter jutted from my mangled thigh.
My right side bled, my cheek was torn, and I
Dislodged, detachedly, a piece of glass,
All the time wondering what had come to pass.
Where was my wife? Alarmed, I gave a shout,
‘Where are you, Yecko-san?’ My blood gushed out.
The artery in my neck? Scared for my life,
I called out, panic-stricken, to my wife.
Pale, bloodstained, frightened, Yecko-san emerged,
Holding her elbow. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I urged –
‘Let’s get out quickly.’ Stumbling to the street
We fell, tripped by something at our feet.
I gasped out, when I saw it was a head:
‘Excuse me, please excuse me –‘ He was dead:
A gate had crushed him. There we stood, afraid.
A house standing before us tilted, swayed,
Toppled, and crashed. Fire sprang up in the dust,
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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5
Spread by the wind. It dawned on us we must
Get to the hospital: we needed aid –
And I should help my staff too. (Though this made
Sense to me then, I wonder how I could
My legs gave way. I sat down on the ground.
Thirst seized me, but no water could be found.
My breath was short, but bit by bit my strength
Seemed to revive, and I got up at length.
I was still naked, but I felt no shame.
This thought disturbed me somewhat, till I came
Upon a soldier, standing silently,
Who gave the towel round his neck to me
My legs, stiff with dried blood, rebelled. I said
To Yecko-san she must go on ahead.
She did not wish to, but in our distress
What choice had we? A dreadful loneliness
Came over me when she had gone. My mind
Ran at high speed, my body crept behind.
I saw the shadowy forms of people, some
Were ghosts, some scarecrows, all were wordless dumb –
Arms stretched straight out, shoulder to dangling hand;
It took some time for me to understand
The friction on their burns cases so much pain
They feared to chafe flesh against flesh again.
Those who could, shuffled in a blank parade
Towards the hospital. I saw, dismayed,
A woman with a child stand in my path –
Both naked. Had they come back from the bath?
I turned my gaze, but was at a loss
That she should stand thus, till I came across
A naked man – and now the thought arose
That some strange thing had stripped us of our clothes.
The face of an old woman on the ground
Was marred with suffering, but she made no sound.
Silence was common to us all. I heard
No cries of anguish, or a single word.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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6
Reader Response Criticism
Assumptions
1. An author’s intentions are not reliably available to readers; all they have is the
text.
2. Out of the text, readers actively and personally make meaning.
3. Responding to a text is a process, and descriptions of that process are valuable.
Strategies
1. Move through the text in superslow motion, describing the response of an
informed reader at various points.
2. Or describe your own response moving through the text.
3. React to the text as a whole, embracing and expressing the subjective and
personal response it engenders.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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7
“An African Elegy” by Ben Okri
We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
We are precious.
And one day our suffering
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.
There are things that burn me now
Which turn golden when I am happy.
Do you see the mystery of our pain?
That we bear the poverty
And are able to sing and dream sweet things.
And that we never curse the air when it is warm
Or the fruit when it tastes so good
Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters?
We bless the things even in our pain.
We bless them in silence.
That is why our music is so sweet.
It makes the air remember.
There are secret miracles at work
That only Time will bring forth.
I too have heard the dead singing.
And they tell me that
This life is good
They tell me to live it gently
With fire, and always with hope.
There is wonder here
And there is surprise
In everything the unseen moves.
The ocean is full of songs.
The sky is not an enemy.
Destiny is our friend.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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8
“Silhouette” by Pauline Johnson
The sky-line melts from russet into blue,
Unbroken the horizon, saving where
A wreath of smoke curls up the far, thin air,
And points the distant lodges of the Sioux.
Etched where the lands and cloudlands touch and die
A solitary Indian tepee stands,
The only habitation of these lands,
That roll their magnitude from sky to sky.
The tent poles lift and loom in thin relief,
The upward floating smoke ascends between,
And near the open doorway, gaunt and lean,
And shadow-like, there stands an Indian Chief.
With eyes that lost their lustre long ago,
With visage fixed and stern as fate's decree,
He looks towards the empty west, to see
The never-coming herd of buffalo.
Only the bones that bleach upon the plains,
Only the fleshless skeletons that lie
In ghastly nakedness and silence, cry
Out mutely that naught else to him remains.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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9
Feminist Criticism
Assumptions
1. The work doesn’t have an objective status, an autonomy; instead, any reading of
it is influenced by the reader’s own status, which includes gender, or attitudes
toward gender.
2. The production and the reception of literature historically has been controlled
largely by men; it is important now to insert a feminist viewpoint in order to
bring to our attention neglected works as well as new approaches to old works.
3. Men and women are different: they write differently, read differently, and write
about their reading differently. These differences should be valued.
Strategies
1. Consider the gender of the author, the characters: what role does gender or
sexuality play in this work?
2. Specifically, observe how sexual stereotypes might be reinforced or undermined.
Try to see how the work reflects, or distorts, or recuperates the place of women
(and men) in society.
3. Imagine yourself as a woman reading the work.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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10
“In Exile” by Barbara Kingsolver
These mountains I love
are knuckles
of a fist
that holds your dreams to the ground
while a ghost-woman boards the city buses
you knew, lifts her eyes to another horizon,
living the life you planned.
A thousand lives like hers move
through Santiago, invisible as a decade without days.
Their colours bled out through the last
open doors of Chile
while Victor Jara curled his soul in his fist
and threw it to a cold star
and Allende died.
In the streets near your home
a ghost-woman moves
through walls that were not yet built,
through trees that have grown surprisingly
in fourteen years.
To know you
is to learn to resist beauty
of the single red rose in a glass.
It could belong on my table
were it not for roots and leaves,
the possibility of fruit,
the stem
that is only cut once.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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11
“The Child Who Walks Backwards” by Lorna Crozier
My next door neighbour tells me
her child runs into things.
Cupboard corners and doorknobs
have pounded their shapes
into his face. She says
he is bothered by dreams,
rises in sleep from his bed
to steal through the halls
and plummet like a wounded bird
down the flight of stairs.
The child who climbed my maple,
with the sureness of a cat
trips in his room, cracks
his skull on the bedpost,
smacks his cheeks on the floor.
When i ask about the burns
on the back of his knee,
his mother tells me
he walks backwards
into fireplace grates
or sits and stares at flames
while sparks burn stars into his skin.
Other children write their names
on the casts that hold
his small bones.
His mother tells me
he runs into things,
walks backwards,
breaks his leg
while she lies
sleeping.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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12
Marxist Criticism
Assumptions
1.
2.
3.
4.
Literature reflects social institutions out of which it emerges.
Literature is a social institution with a particular ideological function.
Literature reflects class struggle and materialism.
Marxists view literature as products of the economic and ideological
determinants specific to that era.
5. Literature reflects an author’s own class or analysis of class relations.
Strategies
1. Be mindful of issues related to power and money as you read.
2. Look for answers to the following questions:
a. Are there any signs of oppression? Who is being oppressed by whom?
b. Does the work serve as propaganda for the status quo or does it try to
undermine it?
c. Does the work suggest solutions to social conflicts that are being
described?
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
12
13
“Callum” by Milton Acorn
He had hair like mustard-weed;
shoulders like a scoop;
eyes like a lake you see the rocks on bottom;
and his voice swung a loop
with music in what it said
that tangled inside your head.
‘Callum’ was his name
-- pronounced as if he’d sign it on the sun.
From ‘The Island’ he came:
don't know which one.
We dropped to work in our cage,
hearts somewhere behind on a parachute.
That pusher was cute
-- saw him a guy who’d count doing right important,
put him at a hard job beside a well
... a hundred and forty feet,
and he fell.
Look anywhere:
at buildings bumping on clouds,
at spider-grill bridges:
you’ll see no plaque or stone for men killed there:
but on the late shift
the drill I’m bucking bangs his name in code
...‘Callum’;
tho where ‘The Island’ is I’ll never know.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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“Tosca With Man in Bedrock” by Anne Winters
The Met's first winter broadcast, Tosca, amberized
in her ivory court dress, lets fall
one by one the pure drops of the Vissi d'Arte,
while the cantilevered mezzanine, underlit,
bright-eyed in its nests of stoles and fur tippets, hangs
breathless … Straight down, past sallow platforms, sewer
outfalls and steam lines, the man in the bedrock
sidesteps in his worklamp's flattened yellow,
spools out more wire, lowers his radio probe
to the back of a rust-ridged centenary main
fed by watersheds in the still half glacial Catskills—
and hears, through bellcurves of pings, each note
rebound off his shaft of preCambrian schist. Grey, void—
the Manhattan Schist, laid down too early for fossils.
ENG 3U POETRY UNIT
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