C.E. Chaffin

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C.E. Chaffin
C. E. Chaffin's Blog http//cechaffin.blogspot.c
om/ Ongoing personal narrative by C. E. Chaffin
M.D., FAAFP, Editor of The Melic Review. Widely
published as a poet, critic and essayist, he
began this blog as therapy but fears it has a
larger audience than his other works. As an
unapologetic manic-depressive (bipolar), he also
hopes his adventures in mood fluctuation may be
of some benefit to others so afflicted.
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C.E. Chaffin
Dear Ms. Stewart,I am flattered to know that
anyone is reading me, high school juniors
especially.   Unfortunately biblical familiarity
has declined in the past decades.  The line is a
play on a quote by Jesus"A city set on a hill
cannot be hid", he said, just as men do not
"light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a
stand, and it gives light to all in the house"
(see Matt 514 KJV).The meaning should be
revealed in my bastardization of the original,
substituting revulsion for admiration.   I have a
new book coming out that includes the poem
perhaps I could give one to your class as a prize
of some sort?  Just a thought.Rarely do I
receive a letter so gratifying.   Sincerely,   C.
E. Chaffin
http//www.cechaffin.com/
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Poetic Terms

• A Review

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Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
Robert Lee Frost was born in San Francisco, and
after his fathers death in 1885, he moved with
his family to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he
became interested in reading and writing poetry
while in high school. Frost attended Dartmouth
College and Harvard University, but never
received a degree. He was a jack of all trades,
and had many different occupations after leaving
school, including a teacher, a cobbler, and an
editor of the local newspaper
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Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)
In 1912, he sold his farm and moved his family to
England, where he could devote himself entirely
to his writing. It was in England where he met
and was influenced by such poets at Rupert Brooke
and Robert Graves, and where he established his
life-long friendship with Ezra Pound, who helped
to promote and publish his work. Frost returned
to the United states in 1915, and by the 1920's,
he was the most celebrated poet in North America,
and was granted four Pulitzer Prizes. Robert
Frost lived and taught for many years in
Massachusetts and Vermont, and died on January
29, 1963 in Boston.
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Imagery

• the use of words to represent things, actions or
  ideas by sensory description. Poetry indirectly
  appeals to our senses through imagery.

Telling (Idea/Concept) Showing (Image)
Youve got nice legs. When I was young I never thought of death. I snore loudly. Your thighs are apple trees/whose blossoms touch the sky. William Carlos Williams I was a boy, I never knew cessation/ Of the bright course of blood along the vein. - Allen Tate For I can snore like a bullhorn - Galway Kinnell
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Imagery
Poets are not the maker of puzzles. Their
objective is not to confuse you. It is to
provide a meaningful insight into a particular
feeling, idea, or event. Imagery and figurative
language can hold more association than literal
language.
An Image is that which presents an intellectual
and emotional complex in an instant of time. -
Ezra Pound
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Visual Imagery

• Describes how something looks, and enables the
  readers to visualize the objects or actions in
  the poem.
• After Apple-Picking - magnified apples appear and
  disappear...every fleck of russet showing clear
• Once by the Pacific - the clouds were low and
  hairy...like locks blown forward in the gleam of
  eyes.
• Birches - the iced branches shed "crystal shells"
  

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Auditory Imagery

• Tries to capture a sound on paper, usually using
  a comparison to do so.
• Mowing - the scythe whispering to the ground
• The Runaway - the miniature thunder... the
  clatter of stone
• An Old Man's Winter Night - the roar of trees,
  the crack of branches, beating on a box

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Olfactory Imagery

• Represents a smell
• To Earthward - musk from hidden grapevine springs
  
• Out, Out - the sticks of wood "sweet scented
  stuff"
• Unharvested - A scent of ripeness from over a
  wall...smelling the sweetness in no theft.

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Gustory Imagery

• Represents a taste
• To Earthward - I craved strong sweets ...now no
  joy but lacks salt
• Blueberries - the blueberries as big as your
  thumb...with the flavor of soot
• A Record Stride - the walking boots that taste of
  Atlantic and Pacific salt

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Tactile Imagery

• Describes how something, even something
  intangible, feels, either to touch or to
  experience with the whole body.
• Moon Compasses - "So love will take between the
  hands a face.."
• The Witch of Coos - the bed linens might just as
  well be ice and the clothes snow
• On Going Unnoticed - You grasp the bark by a
  rugged pleat,/ And look up small from the
  forest's feet.

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Organic Imagery

• Internal sensation hunger, thirst, fatigue,
  fear
• After Apple-Picking - My instep arch not only
  keeps the ache, / It keeps the pressure of a
  ladder round
• Storm Fear - My heart owns a doubt, / It costs no
  inward struggle not to go
• Birches - It's when I'm weary of considerations /
  And life is too much like a pathless wood, etc

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Kinesthetic Imagery

• Movement or tension
• After Apple-Picking - "I feel the ladder sway as
  the boughs bend."
• A Late Walk - I was walking slowly past the
  gate/ When I saw a small bird broken there /
  Winged and faltering it stumbled over
• Once by the Pacific - "Shattered water ...Great
  waves looked over others coming in,"

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Imagery

• Visual
• Auditory (sound)
• Olfactory (smell)
• Gustory (taste)
• Tactile (touch)
• Organic (internal sensation)
• Kinesthetic (movement)

Find three examples of imagery in this poem.
There may be metaphors, personification, etc.
within the imagery. Imagery is often created
through the use of these devices.
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Short Assignments

• Describe an object, any object. Try to make your
  reader see, feel, hear, smell, taste this object
  (as applicable). Use figurative language to make
  comparisons. Place your description in your
  writing folder. (due Monday)

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Object Imagery(no silent reading today)

• Identify and label your use of imagery in your
  object description.
• Place your object description in your folder to
  be evaluated.

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Imagery Examples
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The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos
Williams so much dependsupon a red
wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the
whitechickens.
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from Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold Listen!
You hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the
waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up
the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then
again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and
bring The eternal note of sadness in.
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from Whoever You are, Holding Me now in Hand by
Walt Whitman
Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your
clothing, Where I may feel the throbs of your
heart, or rest upon your hip, Carry me when you
go forth over land or sea For thus, merely
touching you, is enoughis best, And thus,
touching you, would I silently sleep and be
carried eternally.
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from The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats
And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, In
blanched linen, smooth, and lavenderd, While he
from forth the closet brought a heap Of candied
apple, quince, and plum, and gourd With jellies
soother than the creamy curd, And lucent syrops,
tinct with cinnamon Manna and dates, in argosy
transferrd From Fez and spiced dainties, every
one, From silken Samarcand to cedard Lebanon.
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from Elijah Browning by Edgar Lee Masters
A woman lifted her open mouth to mine.I kissed
her. The taste of her lips was like salt.She
left blood on my lips.
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from The Wind, Growing Up by Roo Borson
The wind. It comes at night, trying to claw the
house apart. It goes at all the windows. The
windows shudders in their frames. The wind wants
you to come out and be blown forever through a
world moving too fast for you to see it. The way
the wind see it.
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from How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett
Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I
love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy
soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the
ends of Being and ideal Grace.
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Figurative Language

• Figurative language uses "figures of speech" - a
  way of saying something other than the literal
  meaning of the words.
• Poet Robert Frost often referred to them simply
  as "figures." Frost said
• Every poem I write is figurative in two senses.
  It will have figures in it, of course but it's
  also a figure in itself - a figure for something,
  and it's made so that you can get more than one
  figure out of it.

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Figurative Language

• Part of a poets work is to make original
  comparisons.
• In the Station of the Metro
• The apparition of these faces in the crowd
• Petals on a wet, black bough.
• - Ezra Pound

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Definition of Metaphor

• A figure of speech in which a comparison is made
  between two things essentially unalike.
• To Frost, metaphor is really what poetry is all
  about.
• Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty
  metaphors, 'grace metaphors,' and goes on to the
  profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry
  provides the one permissible way of saying one
  thing and meaning another. People say, 'Why don't
  you say what you mean?' We never do that, do we,
  being all of us too much poets. We like to talk
  in parables and in hints and in indirections

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Definition of Metaphor

• A figure of speech in which a comparison is made
  between two things essentially unalike.
• In the Station of the Metro
• The apparition of these faces in the crowd
• Petals on a wet, black bough.
• - Ezra Pound

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Definition of Simile

• A metaphor in which a comparison is expressed by
  the specific use of a word or phrase such as
  like, as, than, seems or Frost's favourite "as
  if"
• Examples
• Mending Wall like an old-stone savage armed
• Stars like some snow-white/ Minerva's snow-white
  marble eyes
• Going for Water We ran as if to meet the moon
  ---- we paused like gnomes
• Birches Like girls on hands and knees that throw
  their hair

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Definition of Personification

• A type of metaphor in which distinct human
  qualities, e.g., honesty, emotion, volition,
  etc., are attributed to an animal, object or
  idea.
• Examples
• Mowing the scythe whispers
• Range-Finding the spider sullenly withdraws
• Tree at my Window the tree watches him sleep it
  has tongues talking aloud

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Definition of Personification

• A type of metaphor in which distinct human
  qualities, e.g., honesty, emotion, volition,
  etc., are attributed to an animal, object or
  idea.
• The Fog by Carl Sandberg
• The fog comes
• on little cat feet.
• It sits looking
• over harbor and city
• on silent haunches
• and then moves on.

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Definition of Metonymy

• A type of metaphor that uses a closely
  associated object as a substitute for the
  original object. The substitution makes the
  analogy more vivid and meaningful.
• Examples
• Out, Out the injured boy holds up his hand "as
  if to keep / the life from spilling." The literal
  meaning is to keep the blood from spilling.
  Frost's line tells us that the hand is bleeding
  and the boy's life is in danger.

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Definition of Metonymy

• A type of metaphor that uses a closely
  associated object as a substitute for the
  original house. The substitution makes the
  analogy more vivid and meaningful.
• Examples
• Im reading Robert Frost. ( Im reading his
  poems. The actual person, Robert Frost, is
  unreadable, besides being quite dead.)
• The White House spoke today with world leaders.

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Definition of Synecdoche

• A type of metaphor in which a part represents
  the whole object or idea.
• Examples
• Not a hair perished Shakespeare, The
  Tempest
• And all mankind that haunted nigh,
• Had sought their household fire Thomas
  Hardy,
• The Darkling Thrush

To learn how to pronounce an unfamiliar word,
visit http//www.dictionary.com
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Definition of Allegory / Parable

• A poem in the form of a narrative or story that
  has a second meaning beneath the surface one.
  Frost is notable for his use of the parable using
  the description to evoke an idea. Some critics
  call him a "Parablist."
• Examples
• After Apple-Picking the apple harvest suggests a
  story of accomplishment
• The Grindstone the grinding of the blade
  suggests the idea of judging and recognizing
  limits
• The Lockless Door a story of self escape
• Birches the climbing suggests the value of
  learning and experience

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Definition of Allusion

• A brief reference to a person, event, or place,
  real or fictitious, or to a work of art. Casual
  reference to a famous historical or literary
  figure or event. An allusion may be drawn from
  history, geography, literature, or religion.
• Examples
• As the cave's roof collapsed, he was swallowed
  up in the dust like Jonah, and only his frantic
  scrabbling behind a wall of rock indicated that
  there was anyone still alive.
• "Well," said the Lieutenant, who had listened
  with amused interest to all this, and now waxing
  merry with his tipple "Well, blessed are the
  peacemakers, especially the fighting peacemakers!
  "
• Christy didn't like to spend money. She was no
  Scrooge, but she seldom purchased anything except
  the bare necessities

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Definition of Symbol

• A thing (could be an object, person, situation
  or action) which stands for something else more
  abstract. The use of symbols in Frost's poetry is
  less obvious. Frost was not known as a Symbolist.
  The Symbolists were a late 19thc. movement
  reacting against realism. Frost preferred to use
  metaphors.
• Examples
• The Road Not Taken the forked road represents
  choices in life. The road in this poem is a text
  book example of a symbol.
• Rose Pogonias Early in Frost's poetry, flowers
  become a symbol for the beloved, his wife Elinor.

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Definition of Hyperbole

• A bold, deliberate overstatement not intended to
  be taken literally, it is used as a means of
  emphasizing the truth of a statement. This is
  relatively rare in Frost. He has a penchant for
  fact and truth.
• Examples
• After Apple-Picking Ten thousand thousand fruit
  to touch.
• Stopping by Woods The woods filling up with
  snow.

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Definition of Understatement

• The presentation of a thing with underemphasis
  in order to achieve a greater effect. Frost uses
  this device extensively, often as a means of
  irony. His love poems are especially understated.
  He cautions, "Never larrup an emotion."
• Examples
• Hyla Brook the last line "We love the things we
  love for what they are."
• Brown's Descent After falling down an ice
  crusted slope, Farmer Brown still clutching his
  lantern says, "Ile's (oil's) 'bout out!"

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Imagery
Figurative Language

• Metaphor
• Simile
• Personification
• Metonymy
• Synecdoche
• Allegory / Parable
• Hyperbole
• Understatement
• Symbol

• Visual
• Auditory (sound)
• Olfactory (smell)
• Gustory (taste)
• Tactile (touch)
• Organic (internal sensation)
• Kinesthetic (movement)

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Definition of Irony

• Verbal irony is a figure of speech when an
  expression used is the opposite of the thought in
  the speaker's mind, thus conveying a meaning that
  contradicts the literal definition.
• Dramatic irony is a literary or theatrical
  device of having a character utter words which
  the the reader or audience understands to have a
  different meaning, but of which the character
  himself is unaware.
• Irony of situation is when a situation occurs
  which is quite the reverse of what one might have
  expected.
• Often, Frost's use of irony conveys one meaning
  by word and syntax, and another by the tone of
  voice it indicates by contradicting the words.
  Frost's irony is usually tricky because it is so
  subtle.

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Definition of Irony

• Verbal irony
• Dramatic irony
• Irony of situation
• Often, Frost's use of irony conveys one meaning
  by word and syntax, and another by the tone of
  voice it indicates by contradicting the words.
  Frost's irony is usually tricky because it is so
  subtle.

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Definition of Irony

• Verbal irony is a figure of speech when an
  expression used is the opposite of the thought in
  the speaker's mind, thus conveying a meaning that
  contradicts the literal definition.
• next to of course god america i
• next to of course god america i
• love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
• say can you see by the dawn's early my
• country 'tis of centuries come and go
• and are no more what of it we should worry
• in every language even deafanddumb
• thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
• -- e. e. cummings

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Definition of Irony

• Dramatic irony is a literary or theatrical device
  of having a character utter words which the the
  reader or audience understands to have a
  different meaning, but of which the character
  himself is unaware.
• (Found most commonly in narrative poetry)

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Definition of Irony

• Irony of situation is when a situation occurs
  which is quite the reverse of what one might have
  expected.
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• by Samuel Coleridge
• Water, water, every where,And all the boards
  did shrink Water, water, every where, Nor any
  drop to drink

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Considering Form

• Find five examples of form that contribute to
  the effectiveness of At the War Memorial.
• Work together
• Be prepared to explain your answer

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Doors

1. You have the rest of the period to go out into
   the school to complete the following assignment.
   This assignment is time sensitive. You must come
   back to class at with at least 5 minutes
   remaining in the period.
2. You may go anywhere inside the school, but you
   must not position yourself in a way that disturbs
   or distracts other students learning. Be on
   your best behaviour. Your actions are a
   reflection on me and misconduct will have
   consequences.
3. This assignment is due at the end of the class.
   Pass it in on a clean piece of paper.
4. Spelling, grammar, and neatness need not apply.
   Description and spontaneous figurative
   description is your objective.

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Words
Words
Words
Words
What is your favourite word or words? If you've
never thought about it, consider a word you've
heard that strikes you as sounding odd or
interesting. Be prepared to discuss your choice
on Wed.