Poetry Terms

Poetry Terms

homework
Complete the poetry terms worksheet this week (in the rough draft, you will be asked to use at least 5 of them, so learning them now makes sense. Eng 1B Poetry Terms 2015.docPreview the documentView in a new window; DO pay attention to the poetical terms in the Canvas lectures, found here:
Eng 1B Poetry Lectures 1 – 6 Fall 2014.docxView in a new window
Use any scholarly site to define any terms not included in the lectures; DO NOT use a dot com, as these sites do not define the terms in a literary context.
After you submit the definitions to Assignments, post them on Discussions, as we did for the fiction terms. Read through your peers’ definitions to see if you need to review any of the information. Do not post and remove terms to make corrections; if you want to “correct” information on your terms, do so, and submit them again, through Assignments AND on Discussions. Follow the details on Discussions for this part of our work this week.
Go to http://www.learner.org/resources/series57.html (Links to an external site.) and choose one film by one of the featured poets. Watch it, using the closed caption feature as needed to take notes. Choose 3 ideas, statements, or quotations that you find interesting. Create a simple thesis (“After watching the Voices and Visions film on Sylvia Plath, the three most interesting points/fascinating details to me are _______________, _________________, and ___________.”) This is a personal response essay, so you may write in the 1st-person voice. Some students, though, have found they’re more comfortable in the usual 3rd-person voice for college and university work, so do choose that voice if you prefer.
Write 3 – 4 pages, total, including a short introduction, 3 body paragraphs, and a short conclusion.
Read these sample papers for an idea of how to begin this assignment:
Eng 1B Bishop_Voices_Sample Paper.docxPreview the documentView in a new window
Eng 1B Voices and Visions sample Frost Fall 2013.docView in a new window

1B Poetry Terms

Know these terms, and use at least 5 in the researched analysis, per assignment details; use the chapter information as noted in the Poetry Section in the text, as well as the Poetry file on Canvas.

sight, eye rhyme
true rhyme
slant rhyme
feminine rhyme
masculine rhyme
meter
ballad
couplet
triplet, tercet
quatrain
metaphor
simile
Shakespearean sonnet
Italian sonnet
cacophony
euphony
speaker
situation
symbol
alliteration
assonance
villanelle
haiku
iamb
trochee
anapest
dactyl
paradox
allusion
imagery and its types
free verse/open form
traditional verse/closed form
enjambment
the “father of free verse”

Poetry: Introduction and Overview
By Barbara Nelson-Burns
LECTURE 1
The history of poetry is rich and varied. All cultures and languages include poetry, some from the oral tradition, some in the written form. While styles, forms and subjects may vary, in general poetry includes many timeless techniques and purposes.
Consider Robert Frost’s “Dust of Snow”:
The way a crow
Shook down on me,
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree,
Has given my heart
A change of mood,
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
What do you notice about this poem? Its form is regular; its rhythms and rhymes are arranged in a particular order, and so we label the form traditionalor closed form. What is the the pattern of the rhythm? What sound connections do you see and hear?
The short but powerful poem is also rich with imagery. What mind pictures does the poem create for you? Which senses are awakened? An image (consider the root of the word and its cousins–imagination, magi, magic) is visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile or gustatory, appealing to our senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. It may also create a sense of movement or change (kinetic or kinesthetic).
Consider the following poem as well:
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor–
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you find it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now–
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Langston Hughes
Who is the speaker or voice, and what does she really want to say to her son? What is the situation in the poem? How common is this type of situation? Have you received similar advice from anyone?
Consider the speaker and situation in this next poem by Walt Whitman:
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
What is the speaker’s situation? What is he feeling, and what does he do in reaction to those feelings? How does his experience change when he is off by himself, in the night air? What ironies do you see in the situation? In a way, this series of questions and the course itself may prompt you to react as the speaker; have you ever just wanted to experience an idea or a subject and not work so hard to understand it?
Diction
Diction is the selection of words the poet makes in a poem. Diction can be abstract or concrete, general or specific, formalor informal. “Chair” is more general than “recliner.” A recliner conjures a specific rather than a general image in your mind. The idea of a chair is also concrete; a recliner is a specific type of chair, even though many styles of recliners exist. On the other hand, “fear,” “love,” “hate,” and “beauty” are abstract concepts. To communicate fear, Dickinson, for example, desribes “a tighter breathing” when describing a snake in “A narrow Fellow in the Grass.” Browning shows love in the phrase “two hearts beating as one” in “Meeting at Night.” Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose” uses that concrete object, a rose, described specifically, to illustrate beauty.
Lines from Robert Francis’s “Pitcher” show abstract, general, formal language: “His art is eccentricity, his aim/How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at.” A baseball pitcher does do something that is eccentric, if you think about it (throwing a ball in a pattern that doesn’t appear to have a pattern), and he does try to give the appearance of one pitch and deliver another, all to be successful (to get the batter out). Francis could just say in very common, straight-forward diction: “Baseball is kind of an eccentric art; the pitcher’s goal is to fake-out the batter”; his abstract, general and more formal language, however, seems to contribute to meaning, turning a pitcher into a clever artist, unique and to be admired.
The speakers’ diction in the next poem contrasts with Francis’s poem in almost every category:
We Real Cool
The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
Here Gwendolyn Brooks uses monosyllables and vernacular, including non-standard grammar to create a rhythm, tone and even an unfolding of the theme. Diction is the poem.
Connotation and denotation are also important aspects of diction. A word’s associations as well as the dictionary meaning are essential to understand any poem’s purpose. The person in charge of a group may be described as a leader or a dictator, even though the denotations of those words don’t differ that much. How the reader interprets the speaker’s meaning differs greatly, though, when we consider the connotations of “leader” and “dictator.”
Consider Dickinson’s “A narrow Fellow in the Grass”:
Several of Nature’s People
I know, and they know me–
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality–
But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone–
When Dickinson uses “Nature’s People,” the reader feels an intimate, friendly tone. “Transport” suggests something being carried across or over a boundary or obstacle. Trans in Latin means across, and portare means to carry. When the speaker crosses the boundary separating the human and animal worlds, he or she experiences “cordiality,” a friendly feeling. Cordiality comes from the Latin cordaor heart (cuore in Italian, corazon in Spanish, coeurin French), and so this warmth or close and intimate feeling is communicated and then contrasted with the “tighter breathing” and that awful “I-just-saw-a-snake-in-the-grass-right-in-front-of-me” feeling at the end. Wouldn’t you love to own that line? “Zero at the Bone” is not able to be literally dissected, and yet its meaning is known by the reader, especially if the reader has even once been surprised by a snake. A simple poem about walking through the grass and feeling all “friendly” with Nature suddenly also includes that “real” aspect of the walk: being surprised and frightened by a snake.
Imagery
As noted earlier in this overview of poetry, imagery is the general term to describe the mind experiences we have when we encounter an idea: we see, hear, smell, taste and touch in our imaginations through images. An image, then, speaks to our senses, appealing to one or more, sometimes in a single word, and, thus, the poet brings us to that scene in the poem to almost experience the idea as the speaker is or as the situation describes. These categories, visual,auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile, are used sparingly or profusely in poems, and sometimes certain poets are known for their use of imagery as a part of their poetic style. Other poets may rely heavily on imagery during a certain period of their writing lives or for a particular poem and then use imagery only sparingly during other writing phases or within particular poems. Look at Robert Browning’s “Meeting at Night”; how many types of imagery can you identify?
Meeting at Night
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
Each line carries specific imagery, and the scene unfolds in the delicate tone and lovers’ moment; this is a quiet meeting for this couple on a beautiful night, not without anticipation and emotion, but tender and cool and then warmed by eachother. The images in this poem are not merely decoration; Browning, like all skilled poets, uses imagery to engage our senses, yes, but also to convey feeling and contribute to meaning.
Read William Butler Yeats’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” and note how he describes an emotional experience in physical terms:
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavement gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
Consider also Ezra Pound’s “The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter”; here the wife describes what she sees and hears as she waits for her young husband. What she communicates, though, in this letter-like poem is her loneliness.
While my hair was still cut straight across my forhead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling.
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August,
Over the grass in the West graden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down throught the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
The imagery, here, helps reveal the young wife’s state of mind: the monkeys’ noise is to her “sorrowful”; the moss is overgrown as she sees it, and perhaps we even sense depression (Is moss really too deep to clear away?); even the butterflies are in pairs (almost by design, a cruel reminder of her separation). The poet uses the imagery to reveal the speaker, create tone and enrich meaning.

LECTURE 2
Tone is the implied attitude in the poem. Note speaker, situation, imagery diction and the resulting tone in Bishop’s “First Death in Nova Scotia”:
In the cold, cold parlor
my mother laid out Arthur
beneath the chromographs.
Edward, Prince of Wales,
with Princess Alexandra,
and King George with Queen Mary.
Below them on the table
stood a stuffed loon
shot and stuffed by Uncle
Arthur, Arthur’s father.
Since Uncle Arthur fired
a bullet into him,
he hadn’t said a word.
He kept his own counsel
on his white, frozen lake,
the marble-topped table.
His breast was deep and white,
cold and caressable;
his eyes were red glass,
much to be desired.
“Come,” said my mother,
“Come and say good-bye
to your little cousin Arthur.”
I was lifted up and given
one lily of the valley
to put in Arthur’s hand.
Arthur’s coffin was
a little frosted cake,
and the red-eyed loon eyed it
from his white, frozen lake.
Arthur was very small.
He was all white, like a doll
that hadn’t been painted yet.
Jack Frost had started to paint him
the way he always painted
the Maple Leaf (Forever).
He had just begun on his hair,
a few red strokes, and then
Jack Frost had dropped the brush
and left him white, forever.
The gracious royal couples
were warm in red and ermine;
their feet were well wrapped up
in the ladies ermine trains.
They invited Arthur to be
the smallest page at court.
But how could Arthur go,
clutching his tiny lily,
with his eyes shut up so tight
and the roads deep in snow?
Bishop describes here a child’s first experience with death, with a child’s sense of confusion and answers to a difficult situation, but with an adult’s sensibility. Bishop further mixes the child-adult perception with a child’s syntax (word order) using an adult’s diction.
Read through the poem again, noting the rich imagery. The parlor is “cold, cold,” the table “marble-topped,” like a “white, frozen lake,” and the stuffed loon, while “cold and caressable” has eyes of “red glass.”
This cold and unfamiliar-to-the-child scene uses additional details that show the child’s distance from and yet immersion in the scene, with few words of explanation. As children do, this speaker explains to herself what has happened (no adult seems interested in doing so), relying on Jack Frost and the British royal family to complete the “story” of what has happened to the speaker’s cousin Arthur. This is a poignant situation and an intelligent speaker who is making sense out of an experience that is often lacking any explanation.
Figurative Language
Language is either literal or figurative. Many poetical devices are figurative, and include more than 250 “figures of speech.” Of this list, metaphor and simile are most often used in poetry. Aristotle defined metaphor as “an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.” He also felt that to be a “master of metaphor” was a writer’s greatest achievement. In the same way, contemporary writers respect metaphor and its use; Frost said that metaphor is the heart of poetry, “saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another.”
Simile compares unlike things and uses the words “like” or “as.” Metaphor is an implied comparison, with no “linking” word between the disparate ideas or objects.
When Wordsworth writes, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” the simile is clear and also engaging. The reader considers a cloud, its form, composition, habits and how it “wanders” and then connects that idea to how the speaker in the poem is spending his day. Does he have a not-so-obvious plan, part of a complete “day-sky,” or is he just being blown about, a random and out-of-control individual? Understanding clouds even a little helps us as readers to see the speaker’s situation, and perhaps we can begin to surmise how he is lonely. Simile is a powerful tool for poets.
Metaphors are everywhere in our language, enough of them to sometimes be called “fresh” or even “dead.” Our table has legs, our needles have eyes, and even the PTA has a head. Comparisons or analogies are at the heart of metaphor.
Consider the next two poems. How effectively does each rely on its use of metaphor or simile? The first poem is by N. Scott Momaday (you may be familiar with his HouseMade of Dawn), and the second is by Sylvia Plath (we’ll do an entire lecture on her in the contemporary section of this course, toward the end).
A Simile
What did we say to each other
that now we are as the deer
who walk in single file
with heads high
with ears foreward
with eyes watchful
with hooves always placed on firm ground
in whose limbs there is latent flight.
Metaphors
I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on tow tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
These examples are fairly straight-forward. Even the diction is simple, the lines clean and uncluttered. The images and ideas developed throughout each of the poems, however, are rich and lead us to multi-leveled experiences with tone and meaning.
Consider these first lines from Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a poem we’ll cover in the contemporary section of the class:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells;
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming questions . . .
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
Which comparisons stand out to you? Why do they seem particularily appropriate? You might also note how much of Eliot’s detail here includes personification, giving human qualities to objects, ideas, animals….. We’ll explore this technique and other Figures of Speech in the next lecture.

Lecture 3
More Figures of Speech
Other important poetical devices include: Paradox, an apparent contradiction; hyperbole, an overstatement; litotes, an understatement; personification, when abstract concepts or inanimate objects are given human qualities; synecdoche, something substituted for the whole; and metonymy, when one thing stands for something associated with it.
Paradox is used effectively in Dickinson’s “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–
Here Dickinson shows that madness can be “sense,” and what is considered “sense” or sanity can sometimes be madness. Consider Caesar, the children living in Blake’s London, Abraham Lincoln, Hitler, going to the moon, making money, not making money, pursuing a degree in poetry; each of these people or ideas has been considered sane or then insane. History, society or our own limitations and growth or needs or blindnesses determine what we consider “sense” or madness.” Dickinson also suggests that disagreeing with the majority can be dangerous, and, while her ending may seem somewhat humorous in its concrete, specific image of “handled with a chain,” readers also see her serious intent.
Hyperbole or overstatement is also used frequently in poetry. In Donne’s last stanza of “The Sun Rising,” he relies on hyperbole:
She’s all states, and all princes, I,
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All’s honor’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 center is, these walls, thy sphere.
The “all” or “nothing” ideas make his point and add emotion to the speaker’s voice.
Litotes or understatement is the opposite of hyperbole. Frost, like so many other poets, loved understatement as shown in “Fire and Ice,” as well as many of his other pieces.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Frost says less than what he means, and readers infer the implications of the language he does offer. Often litotes or understatement allows the reader to see symbolic connections in what is “missing,” as in “Fire and Ice.” Meaning, then, follows closely behind, and litotes has accomplished its work.
Personification is sprinkled throughout most poems, and while we may at first associate a child’s poem or simplistic idea with the technique, many very sophisticated poems rely on personification to connect an unknown (the poet’s idea–the concept or inanimate object) with a known (how a person feels, walks, is wise….). Consider William Carlos Williams’ “Winter Trees”:
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
thedisattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
To create tone and bring the reader to the kind of moon and moment he wishes to communicate in the poem, he offers a moon that moves gently. The trees, in an almost nurturing, maternal way, have prepared their buds as if they are consciously working to protect them from winter. The trees are wise, and it seems they choose to stand in the cold, as patient protectors who know what will come.
In synecdoche a part of something is substituted for the whole: in another era you might have just gotten some new wheels and then gone for a drive with a friend; a factory manager might ask her foreman how many hands a job requires. Obviously, the wheels represent a car, and the hands stand for workers, but each example demonstrates this colorful aspect of our language that poets often include in their work. In metonymy, one thing stands for another: a candidate’s campaign office issued a statement; the White House changed its mind. As with many figures of speech, synecdoche and metonymy are often seen as symbols or extended metaphors for larger ideas. When the reader moves past the literal to the figurative, meaning is enlarged and the poems’ themes revealed, layer by layer. Note how many of the techniques we’ve so far considered are included in Antony’s speech from Act III, Scene ii, lines 75 – 109, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest
(For Brutus is an honorable man,
So are they all, all honorable men),
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me;
But Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill;
Did this Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And sure he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Burtus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason! Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Lecture 4
Tone, Syntax, Form
As we’ve noted so far in the course, tone or implied attitude is an abstraction we make from the many details of the poem: diction, stanza and line breaks or even punctuation can affect the “mood” or feeling of the poem. Tone, like all of the poetical devices in any poem, always leads to meaning and is consistent with other patterns of technical devices in the poem.
Irony is a type of tone many poets use to heighten meaning. Verbal irony (the speaker says one thing and means another), situational irony (irony of circumstance; something unexpected happens) and dramatic irony (the speaker’s or character’s perceptions in the poem differ from the reader’s; the reader may “know” something the speaker doesn’t) are used often in poetry. Read Stephen Crane’s poem “War Is Kind” to identify many examples of irony:
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle god, great, and his kingdom
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because you father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
Crane uses verbal and situational irony well to communicate the losses so deeply felt by the lover, the babe and the mother. Dramatic irony is often seen at the end of a poem, revealing a truth not apparent to the speaker or characters throughout the poem. Consider William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence)” which is often paired with his “The Chimney Sweeper (Experience)” to reveal the horrible conditions for children in an unconcerned London during Blake’s lifetime (1787 – 1827):
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry “‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!”
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curl’d like a lamb’s back, was shav’d, so I said,
“Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.”
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight,
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe Ned & Jack,
Were all of them lock’d up in coffins of black;
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open’d the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho’ the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
A reader two hundred years ago or in 2008 sees that Blake’s Tom is doomed to much “harm” as a chimney sweep and most likely an early death like “Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack” in the poem; Tom, however, doesn’t see this. We’ll examine Blake’s social and political positions in his poetry as we look at the lyric poets of his era. While many contemporaries called Blake “mad,” soon after he died, most readers saw his power and skill with words as well as his talent as a visual artist.
Syntax is the order of words in a sentence, and in poetry word order is very important: it influences rhythm, meaning, sound connections and even our visual experience with the words on the page. Sometimes normal word order or syntax is altered to fit a rhythmical pattern in formal or traditional poems as shown in Dickinson’s line from “Crumbling is not an instant’s Act”: “Fail in an instant, no man did.” Normally we would say, “No man did fail in an instant,” but her ballad pattern, the same form as Blake’s poem but with a different rhyme scheme, relies on regular rhythm and rhyme, and so some manipulation of word order creates “the fit” Dickinson needs as well as the content she desires to speak her themes.
E.E. Cummings (scholars do not use lower case for his name as he did; his legal name used standard upper case first letters) pushed syntax to limits not often seen in poetry, in his day or ours:
Me up at does
Me up at does
out of the floor
quietly Stare
a poisoned mouse
still who alive
is asking What
havei done that
You wouldn’t have
Normal syntax might state these ideas as “A poisoned mouse, who, still alive, is asking ‘What have i done that you wouldn’t have’ does quietly stare out of the floor up at me.” Clearly, rhythm, idea and even meaning are affected by the control of syntax in this poem. Sometimes syntax is manipulated to emulate speech or the mental state of the speaker, as in Eliot’s “The Love Song of J.AlfredPrufrock,” a part of which we looked at in an earlier lecture. Needless to say, syntax is important in apprehending all a poem offers, and, though often overlooked, is vital in understanding the poet’s intended themes.
Form in poetry includes two main categories: traditional or formal or closed form verse; and free or informal or openverse. All poetry can be classified according to these categories, including variations of known types like the ballad or haiku. All poetry has form, and free verse or verslibre is not free from form but only demonstrates a form unique to that poem. In fact, in free verse readers must pay close attention to line breaks and stanza choices: the poet has put that word or phrase in that particular place for a very specific reason; no form has dictated a particular rhyme or rhythm, and so we can’t just casually say, “Well, this is a sonnet, you know, and the iambic pentameter is just a part of the form, as is the rhyme pattern.” Free verse while free from a prescribed pattern does contain its own patterns.
Traditional verse and free verse also use rhyme and rhythm in carefully chosen ways. Rhyme can be classified by placement, sound and where the stresses occur in the repeated sounds. By definition rhyme is simply the matching final vowel and consonant sounds of at least two words. If these sounds occur at the ends of lines, they are called end rhyme. If they occur internally in the lines, we see internal rhyme. Repeated exact sounds are examples of true rhyme (“though” and “know”), and sound connections not quite so closely linked are slant rhymes or approximate rhymes. Some poets and scholars also call these imperfect rhymes (“slow” and “law”). Rhymes that end a line and that do not end with an accent (a stressed syllable) are called feminine rhymes (“easy”). Those repeated sounds that end a line with stressed syllables are masculine (“a lone”).
Consider Frost’s poem for its form and rhyme. Note also how its beautiful rhythms are tied to its meaning.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
In this familiar poem we see how beautifully the sounds add to meaning, and the repeating pattern echoes the subject (the speaker’s life is full of routine, repeating patterns, and he has stopped to step away from his cares for just a minute before he has to return to his life full of “promises”). In discussing rhyme patterns, we can label the sounds to help see just what the poet is creating with the end rhymes. Frost’s rhyme pattern for this poem is a, a, b, ain stanza one; b, b, c, bin stanza two; c, c,d, c in stanza three; d, d, d, din stanza four. Consider his use of true rhyme and even exact or perfect rhyme (when the sounds and stresses and syllable counts match, as in “near” and “year”; “mistake” and “lake” are true rhymes but not perfect or exact rhymes because while their sounds match, their stresses or accents and syllable counts do not).
Notice, too, how even the kinds of sounds he chooses to repeat seem to mirror the scene he describes, once again leading to meaning. He chooses vowel sounds that extend and continue, as in “know” and “though”; each word can be extended (say these words aloud), and the pace of the poem is slowed because of these kinds of choices. Note also how many “soft” consonant sounds Frost uses in his quiet description of the woods and snow and speaker’s necessary, extended moment. The p’s at the ends of the words in the last stanza are considered softer sounds than, say, words that end in t’s or even the k’s in stanza three. This is careful writing, subtle, rich and distinguishable from “half poets,” as even Frost labeled some self-proclaimed free verse “artists” of his day. His rhymes here while regular are neither predictable nor cliche. This poem like a huge, sweet onion, reveals itself in layers, and its center, its meaning, is sweet and simple, one of the reasons Frost was and remains so popular with readers and scholars. We’ll continue to examine this poem for its rhythms in the second part of Lecture 4.
Lecture 4, Part 2
If you haven’t yet Frost’s poem aloud, do so now. Read slowly, pausing slightly where the line breaks occur, a bit longer for a line break with a comma, and pause the longest for a period. He chose the line breaks for a reason; the punctuation is also intentional, and part of what he’s instructing the reader to do is follow the standard cues. Even with a form like the ballad or a ballad variation with tight rhythms and rhymes, line breaks and punctuation are a part of how we see, hear and apprehend the poem’s ideas.
In Frost’s poem like others that are carefully written, we see enjambment, like word wrap on the computer, when an idea moves through one line to the next. In reading a poem like this one, the poet wants us to pause at the end of the line if there’s no punctuation but not stop. With punctuation, we pay attention and increase the pause at the end of the line, considering the standard use of commas, dashes, semi-colons, colons, ellipses, questions, exclamation points and periods.
When Frost offers “He gives his harness bells a shake/To see if there is some mistake” we pause only slightly after “shake” to move through to the next line with the idea; the idea doesn’t end with “shake,” and Frost wants us to break the flow only slightly and then move to the end of what happens to be a grammatical sentence. After “mistake” we see a period. We pause longer, as that’s what a period directs us to do. In lines like “The only other sound’s the sweep/Of easy wind and downy flake” we see the skillful control and union of form and meaning and rhythm, in an almost organic way: the sounds, the line break, the stresses seem to imitate the casual, quiet and yet kinetic path of downy snow falling in this place of respite on the darkest day of the year.
Read these lines again. Picture the image of dry snow drifting, then caught up slightly with a light wind, falling almost as if directed by a conductor’s baton. Notice also the s and w sounds Frost chooses here; they are soft, slowly-formed in the mouth and clearly imitative of what is being described. This could be described as an organic relationship between technique, form, situation and meaning. We “get” the scene because of even these small details in just a couple of lines, drawn to this scene where the speaker has stepped away from life, enveloped in the moment and this snowy-woods offering, to, by the end of the poem, have to give it up and return to the responsibilities of every day life.
Enjambment, then, as well as line breaks need to be considered, always, when reading poetry. From a writer’s perspective, they aren’t accidents and are as important as the perfect word or phrase.
Consider the line breaks, use of enjambment and sound connections in the poems we’ve looked at so far this semester. Even Frost’s simple “half ballad,” “Dust of Snow,” demonstrates the poet’s skill and then the reader’s pleasure with the lines and sounds of the poem. Consider these techniques in the following poems:
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Break, Break, Break
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
**************************************************
William Carlos Williams This Is Just To Say
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
************************************************
Marianne Moore To a Snail
If “compression is the first grace of style,”
you have it. Contractility is a virtue
as modesty is a virtue.
It is not the acquisition of any one thing
that is able to adorn,
or the incidental quality that occurs
as a concomitant of something well said,
that we value in style,
but the principle that is had:
in the absence of feet, “a method of conclusions”;
“a knowledge of principles,”
in the curious phenonmenon of your occipital horn.
************************************************
W. S. Merwin When you go away
When you go away the wind clicks around to the north
The painters work all day but at sundown the paint falls
Showing the black walls
The clock goes back to striking the same hour
That has no place in the years
And at night wrapped in the bed of ashes
In one breath I wake
It is the time when the beards of the dead get their growth
I remember that I am falling
That I am the reason
And that my words are the garment of what I shall never be
Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy

Lecture 5
Form, Rhythm & Meter
As we complete our study of form, we’ll look at rhythm and meter in traditional and free verse. In a poem like “The Word Plum,” by Helen Chasin, we quickly identify the sound connections including alliteration (consonant sound repetition) and assonance (vowel sound repetition). We also see the importance of the line breaks and enjambment. We hear and feel the rhythm created by these line and sound choices and then the syllables of the word themselves. The beat or stress pattern, even in free verse, affects our experience with the poem and, ultimately, influences meaning. Read the poem aloud:
The word plum is delicious
__
pout and plush, 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.
The rhythms we hear and feel are up and down, with not too many accents or stresses in a row. This is an easy cadence, slowed by the line breaks, supported by the sound connections. Notice the “p” sounds which, are produced in the mouth with a puff of air through the lips as they touch eachother. The “f” sound in self, full, falling and fruit is also a “soft” consonant sound, produced with air released and then controlled by the upper teeth on the bottom lip. The “t” and “k” sounds in taut, skin, bitten, provoked, into, and tart speed up the pace a bit in those lines because they combine sounds produced with the teeth together or the teeth on the lips but from the front of the mouth, with less air. Notice also where the accents fall: a few multi-syllabic words move the rhythms up and down between the many monosyllabic words. This is a simple poem, sound conscious, sensual, confident and pure.
Read it again, slowly, and feel the effect of these carefully done sounds and rhythms. This is a great example of what seems to be just a basic free verse poem, but its form choices are just as important as those in a haiku or sestina. No accidents exist in well-done poetry; no device just “happens” to be present; no technique should be down-played: they all exist together, equally important, in a vibrant, dynamic relationship.
Rhythm, by definition, simply means the pulse or beat we hear and feel in any language. English, with its Anglo-Saxon and Latin roots grafted by history, is stress-based or accent driven to separate sound and meaning. Other languages work from a tone base or breath-unit system of separtion to create words/meaning.
In poetry, to distinguish the common patterns of stresses that are just a part of the English language and then relied on by poets to communicate their meaning and feeling in their work, we use names with which you may be familiar.
Meter, the measure or patterend count of accent or syllable groups in the line, is similar to the beats in a measure of music. A line in poetry may have 4 beats per line and be iambic, using 4 unaccented-accented “feet” to walk the reader through the rhythm. Just as we may describe a piece of music’s time signature as 4/4, four beats to the measure and the quarter note gets one beat, or six beats to the measure and the eighth note gets one beat (6/8), we can read one of Shakespeare’s sonnets and say, “Well, it’s iambic pentameter: 5 beats to the line or 5 iambs per line, in the down-up or unaccented-accented pattern.” Here is a list of often-used meters and their beats or feet:
*iamb: unstressed-stressed hello a lone
*trochee: stressed-unstressed story after
*anapest unstressed-unstressed-stressed ob so lete in the sky
*dactyl stressed-unstressed-unstressed anxiously preju dice said to her
Say these aloud. Hold the bold syllable longer, as is the practice in English, and notice that accented or stressed syllables in English have a slightly higher pitch. In multi-syllabic words the syllable with the strongest accent (held the longest) also is spoken at the highest pitch. Say, “su per cali frag ilis tic ex pi al i do cious.” Which syllable is held the longest, at the highest pitch? It’s “do,” right?
Every word, every line in poetry, has rhythm. Traditional poetry uses prescribed rhythms. Free verse has rhythm unique to each poem, custom, if you will. Carefully crafted poetry always “marries” its rhythms to its sounds to its meaning.
Consider the following poems:
William Shakespeare My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
__
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.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Jonathan Swift A Description of the Morning
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, showed the ruddy morn’s approach.
Now Betty from her master’s bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own;
The slip-shod ‘prentice from his master’s door
Had pared the dirt and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had shirled her mop with dext’rous airs,
Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep;
Duns* at his lordhips’ gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll** had screamed through half the street.
The turnkey*** now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees:
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands,
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.
*duns=bill collectors **brickdust Moll=woman who sold powdered brick for knife sharpening ***turnkey=jailer
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Sylvia Plath Crossing the Water
__
Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.
__
A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.
__
Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;
__
Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Francisco X. Alarcon The X in My Name
__
the poor
signature
of my illiterate
and peasant
self
giving away
all rights
in a deceiving
contract for life
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Elizabeth Barrett Browning How Do I Love Thee?
__
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ruth Stone Second Hand Coat
__
I feel
in her pockets; she wore nice cotton gloves,
kept a handkerchief box, washed her undies,
ate at the Holiday Inn, had a basement freezer,
belonged to a bridge club.
I think when I wake in the morning
that I have turned into her.
She hangs in the hall downstairs,
a shadow with pulled threads.
I slip her over my arms, skin of a matron.
Where are you? I say to myself, to the orphaned body,
and her coat says,
Get your purse, have you got your keys?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
These poems, while very different in style and meaning, all marry form and content, all relying on rhythms and sounds and line breaks to reveal themes.
We’ll consider the rhythm patterns in these poems in Part 2 of this lecture.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Part 2–Rhythm & Forms
So far this semester we’ve read poems in a number of forms, but we haven’t considered them just for the prescribed meter and rhyme that defines forms. Now we will. Consider the following poem, a ballad, for its rhymes and rhythms. Ballads are regular in both, and often have rhyme patterns that follow one of the patterns that follow the poem:
__
Thomas Hardy The Man He Killed
__
“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
__
“But ranged in infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
__
“I shot him dead because–
Because he was my foe,
Just so; my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although
__
“He thought he’d ‘list, perhaps,
Off-hand-like–just as I–
Was out of work–had sold his traps–
No other reason why.
__
“Yes, quanit and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown.”
__
Which of the following ballad patterns does Hardy’s poem follow?
_____
(1) x-a-x-a; x-b-x-b; x-c-x-c, etc. Lines 2 and 4 rhyme in each stanza, for as many stanzas as the poet creates. Ballads have no set length, and their rhythms can vary also, but they’re always regular within a particular poem. Note Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death.”
__
(2) a-x-a-x; b-x-b-x; c-x-c-x, etc. This is just the opposite of number 1. Lines 1 and 3 of each stanze rhyme; lines 2 and 4 can be any sound but keep the same rhythm.
(3) a-b-a-b; c-d-c-d; e-f-e-f, etc. Lines alternate. Note Hardy’s “The Man He Killed.”
__
(4) a-a-b-b; c-c-d-d-; e-e-f-f, etc. Lines 1 and 2 rhyme; lines 3 and 4 rhyme in each stanza. Note this Frank O’Connor translation of this 9th-century Celtic ballad which follows this pattern.
__
SeduliusScottus, trans. by Frank O’Connor The Scholar and His Cat
__
Each of us pursues his trade,
I and Pangur my comrade;;
His whole fancy on the hunt,
And mine for learning ardent.
__
More than fame I love to be
Among my books and study;
Pangur does not grudge me it,
Content with his own merit.
__
(5) Variations of the above patterns, such as x-a-a-a; x-b-b-b-; x-c-c-c-, etc., or a-b-b-a; c-d-d-c; c-d-d-c, etc, or a number of blends exist in ballad forms. For those variations, though, the pattern in the poem is clear, and the rhythm is regular. Ballads often use iambs, and trochees; anapests anddactyls are also common. Not all rhythms are perfect in every poem, but we can recognize the normative meter or rhythm and say, “Ah, that’s a ballad.”
__
The sonnet is found in poetry as two main types: the Shakespearean or Elizabethan or English sonnet; and the Petrarchan or Italian sonnet. A third type is used less often, the Spenserian, and we might describe it as somewhener in between the other two.
The older of two more common forms is Petrarch’s 14-line sonnet, made up of an 8 + 6 “logic,” if you will, an octave and a sestet. The first 8 lines’ rhyme pattern is set: a-b-b-a; a-b-b-a. The sestet can vary, as Petrarch defined the form. Often the last 6 lines follow a c-d-c; c-d-c or c-d-e; c-d-e; or c-c-d; c-c-d pattern, but sometimes lines 9, 10, 11 have one pattern, and lines 12, 13, and 14 have their own (c-d-c; d-c-d, etc.). The feel of the poem is one of questions and response or cause and effect or before and after or compare and contrast (think, “Does she love me? Yes, she does,” or “If you love me, I will make you so happy,” or “This woman makes me happy; that woman makes me sad.” Consider “How do I love thee…..” in Part 1.
Shakespeare, after living with the Italian sonnet, realizing the English language had fewer words in it than good ol’ latin-turned-Italian and determined to make new what had been great in generations before him, oceans away from late-to-the-Renaissance-England, came up with his own (sort of) version of the sonnet. It allows for more rhymes (and, thus, more word choices); its “logic” is quite different: it’s almost like an essay (he was heavily influenced by Aristotle’s Poetics): in stanza one, the poet introduces and gives examples; in stanza two, the idea is developed; stanza three develops the idea and/or starts to sum up; the rhyming couplet at the end connects the ideas, and is often summative or thematic (note Shakespeare’s “My mistress’ eyes….” couplet at the end; the speaker’s love is rare, but the first twelve lines seem a bit beyond a realist’s view). The Shakespearean sonnet, then, looks like this: a-b-a-b; c-d-c-d; e-f-e-f; g-g. Its content, as noted, is more of a 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 “logic.”
__
The ballad and the sonnet have been used for hundreds of years (the ballad is one of the oldest recorded forms), and both are still chosen by contemporary poets; you might not recognize them, though, because of contemporary vocabulary and lots of slant rhyme rather than true rhyme. The main reason we don’t often identify the form in contemporary poetry is because of enjambment; we keep reading, and, with subtle rhymes and focused diction, we feel the rhythms and rhymes but get caught up in the content.
__
Consider the following poems, and see if you don’t like forms not just because they’re forms but because they’re so organically joined to content and fit so perfectly to reveal the layers of themes the poet has created.
—
Richard Wilbur Mind
__
Mind in its purest play is like some bat
That beats about in caverns all alone,
Contriving by a kind of senseless wit
Not to conclude against a wall of stone.
__
It has no need to falter or explore;
Darkly it knows what obstacles are there,
And so may weave and flitter, dip and soar
In perfect courses through the blackest air.
__
And has this simile a like perfection?
The mind is like a bat. Precisely. Save
That in the very happiest intellection
A graceful error may correct the cave.
__
Francesco Petrarch (1304 – 1374) My ship is sailing, full of midless woe
__
My ship is sailing, full of mindless woe,
Through the rough sea, in winter-mindnight drear,
Between Scylla and Charybdis; there to steer
Stands my master, or rather stands my foe.
__
At each oar sits a rapid wicked thought
Which seems to scoff at storms and at their end;
The sail, by wet eternal winds distraught,
With hopes, desires, and sighs is mad to rend.
__
A rain of tears, a fog of scornful lines,
Washes and tugs at the too sluggish cords
Which by error with ignorance are wound.
__
Vanished are my two old beloved signs,
Dead in the waves are all reason and words,
And I despair ever to reach the ground.
__
Donald Hall My son, my executioner
__
My son, my executioner,
I take you in my arems,
Quiet and small and just astir,
And whom my body warms.
__
Sweet death, small sonk our instrument
Of immortality,
Your cries and hungers document
Our bodily decay.
__
We twenty-five and twenty-two,
Who seemed to live forever,
Observe enduring life in you
And start to die together.
__
William Shakespeare When, in disgrace with Fortne and men’s eyes
__
When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone betweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
__

Lauren Spencer
Professor Nelson-Burns
English 1B
13 April 2016
Elizabeth Bishop’s Geography
Elizabeth Bishop is one of the most respected poets in the United States. In the Voice and Visions film series, scholars, friends, editors, and poets agree that Bishop’s work is clearly influenced by where she lived and the relationships she had.
Bishop grew up in Worchester with her father’s relatives and partly in Nova Scotia with her mother’s parents; her mother suffered from mental illness after her father committed suicide when Elizabeth was just 18 months old. This life and her upbringing had a strong impact on her, and her world and attitudes toward life emerge in her poems. She writes with strong and specific imagery, appealing to all of the senses to bring the reader to the poem‘s situation and, ultimately, its themes. People and animals are a part of her poems, but so are specific locations, from dentists’ offices and kitchens to zoos or even Brazil and Nova Scotia. She was very developed as a young writer, and, while still in college, she had the chance to develop a friendship with established poet Marianne Moore. Their love for animals, imagery, a knowledge of a false sense of home, and an affection for the wisdom of childhood encouraged Bishop to explore these subjects in her own work.
Bishop once said, “Never could call a place home; never could find the sense of comfortability.” These ideas represent how her background kept her focus on the search for home and comfort and lasting relationships. With her father‘s death, her mother‘s mental illness, and then her mother‘s death when Elizabeth was five, young Bishop was moved around between relatives between Massachusetts and Nova Scotia until she went off to college at Vassar. Poet Mary McCarthy remembers that “Elizabeth was always. . .”

The essay continues, with more examples, including quotations from scholars whose names are noted in the body. A Work Cited page, with Voices and Visions as the source, may be included as the last page, but it‘s not necessary for this short response. Find MLA information, which we’ll use for research paper, at the Purdue OWL website.

Perez 1

Sonia Perez

English 1B

Professor Nelson-Burns

29 October 2013

Frost’s Nature

“I’ve only written two poems without people in ‘em. Does that make me a Nature

poet? Well, I don’t think so” (Frost). Robert Frost in an interview included

in the PBS Voices and Visions documentary argues that he’s really not a Nature poet,

and, while many of his poems do include natural details, most feature people in Nature or

using Nature. The poem “Mowing,” for instance, as featured in the film, includes a first-

person speaker who is cutting in a field. The speaker is the focus of the poem, not the

field.

As Seamus Heaney discusses “Mowing” for the film, he suggests that Frost’s

speaker is in control, not a passive observer as a Romantic poet might be:

This isn’t an “Ode to Autumn.” His speaker is there cutting the grass,

individualized and very present in the situation. Even the rhythms are his,

the use of the colloquial, imitating the movement of the scythe: “What was

it it whispered.” That’s colloquial, isn’t it, showing the rhythm of the

man, not the grass. He’s doing the mowing.

In the poem the speaker is the first thing we notice, not any element of Nature, and

throughout the poem we continue to follow the speaker’s experience in that activity.

He’s not enjoying the grass, he’s cutting it. He’s not hearing it blow in the fall breeze, he

hears it sliced and falling, and he admires his work.

Frost writes ……………………….
Discussion would continue to complete the 3-page assignment. Create an intro, a body paragraph for each quotation, and a conclusion. Use the first- or third-person voice, as noted with the assignment details.