Poetry Introduction 1: Identity

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Poetry Introduction 1 Identity Family

• Tone, Sound and Free Verse

Image source
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Housekeeping

• 12/9 400 a sound-effect person Jessica
• 12/9 540
• 12/10 1200
• 12/12 800
• Other Questions?

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12/9 work schedule
12 0550 0620
34 0620 0650
56 0650 0720
78 0720 0750
910 0750 0820
1112 0820 0850
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Poetry Week 2

• Read Behn, Aphra On Her Loving Two Equally (p.
  684 ref. 684-)Burns, Robert A Red, Red Rose
  (p 808)Wordsworth I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
  (p 677)Whitman A Noiseless Patient Spider (p.
  1106) Mary Oliver Wild Geese  
• Annotate two poems (one paragraph analysis) due
  12/17
• Schedule EngSite changes

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Outline

• I. What is poetry?
• A. Its basic Components. B. Its Functions What
  is poetry good for?
• II. Poetry I Identity
• III. A Moment of Life Condensed
• Stopping By Woods Those Winter Sundays
• II. Our Emotions Expressed
• Im Nobody We Real Cool
• IV. Our interest in music and rhythm.
• This is Just to Say The Word Plum
• V. How do we read a poem?
• VI. Sound and Sense, Meter and Rhyme

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Poetry Definitions
meter
Denotation ? connotation

• 1) literature in metrical form (wordnet.princeton.
  edu/perl/webwn )
• 2) Poetry is life distilled. Gwendolyn
  BrooksPoetry is thoughts that breathe, and words
  that burn. Thomas Gray
• Traditional poetry is language arranged in lines,
  with a regular rhythm and often a definite rhyme
  scheme.
• Nontraditional poetry free verse does away with
  regular rhythm and rhyme, although is usually is
  set up in lines. The richness of its suggestions,
  the sounds of its words, and the strong feelings
  evoked by its line are often said to be what
  distinguish poetry from other forms of
  literature.(source)

Sound, shape sense
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Poetic Elements

• Poetry

• Fiction

• wk 1 Speaker and Voice
• wk 2-3 Sense imagery and figures of speech
  (???????)? denotation (??) and connotation (??)
• wk 4 Sound rhythm (??), meter(??), rhyme(?).
• (this next S) Shape line arrangement poetic
  form

• Plot
• Structure
• Narrator
• Language

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What is poetry good for?
Our Themes Identity Daily Life, Love
NatureDeath and Society, Art and Modern
Society

• It explores and deepens meanings of life
• -- to expand our vision,
• -- to beautify and enrich our lives.
• Its imagery and sounds
• -- paint life and compose music with words,
• Its language
• -- renews and pushes beyond the limits of human
  language. (Ref)
• It sharpens our ears (for listening), trains our
  pronunciation, expands our knowledge of language
  (syntax, words) and activates our imagination.
• As a start, lets talk about how it (1) presents
  a moment in life, (2) expresses our emotions and
  (3) satisfies our need to sing and feel the
  rhythm of life.

Poetic Elements
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Poetry is

• Life Story Condensed
• Self Expression
• Musical

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Understanding Poetry

• From Paraphrasing, Analysis to Application

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Poetry (1) Tone, Identity and Daily Life

• Life Story
• Frost, Robert Stopping by Woods (p1091)
• Hayden, Robert Those Winter Sundays (p 783)
• Self-Expression
• Dickinson, Emily Im Nobody! Who Are You?
• Brooks, Gwendolyn We Real Cool (p 720)
• Music
• W. Carlos Williams This is just to say (p.
  797)
• Chasin, Helen The Word Plum (p. 828 ref. 830)

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General Questions

• What is identity?
• What determines our identities?

Text Identity Factors (self vs. society)
20/20 Gender What we pay attention to
A Rose for Emily Gender The American South industrialism
A P Class/Gender Small town America commercial society
Araby Age/Gender Religion vs. Commercialism Dublins social problem
Pygmalion Class/Gender Late Victorian society English
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General Questions

• What is identity?
• What determines our identities?

Text Identity Factors
We Real Cool Collective Cool Actions Black
Im Nobody. Who Are you? Private and Associative Social visibility
A Noiseless Patient Spider (wk2) Soul -- Associative Vast surrounding
Stopping by Woods Private Duty vs. rest
Those Winter Sundays Familial Family poverty and paternal care Black
This is Just to Say Familial Daily order a couples relation
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General Questions

• Which of the factors of identity (society,
  family, your interest, gender) concerns you the
  most?
• Are parents always loving?  What makes their love
  difficult to express, or 'difficult' for their
  children to understand? 
• Can you see poetry out of daily life?

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Poetry I Lyric and Tone 

• Reading and ParaphraseGroup 1-2 W. Carlos
  Williams This is just to say (p. 797)
• Group 3-4 Chasin, Helen The Word Plum (p.
  828)Group 5-6 Brooks, Gwendolyn We Real Cool
  (p 720)Group 7-8 Hayden, Robert Those Winter
  Sundays (p 783) Group 9-10 Frost, Robert
  Stopping by Woods (p1091) Group 11-12
  Dickinson, Emily Im Nobody! Who Are You?

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(1) Poetry offers

• Vignettes of Life

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(No Transcript)
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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
rhyme  a a b a  b b c b   c c d c d d d d
Whose woods these are I think I know.His house
is in the village, though He will not see me
stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with
snow.My little horse must think it queerTo
stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods
and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the
year.He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask
if there is some mistake.The only other sound's
the sweepOf 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.
Whose woods these are I think I know.His house
is in the village, though He will not see me
stopping hereTo watch his woods fill up with
snow.My little horse must think it queerTo
stop without a farmhouse nearBetween the woods
and frozen lakeThe darkest evening of the
year.He gives his harness bells a shakeTo ask
if there is some mistake.The only other sound's
the sweepOf 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.
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Discussion Questions

• I Who is the speaker? How would you
  characterize him and his tone? Why do you think
  he has decided to stop to look at the woods?
• The horse What thoughts and feelings does the
  speaker attribute to his horse?
• Speaker vs. the woods What do you think the
  speaker means by the line But I have promises to
  keep? Why does he use the conjunction but
  here? What promises might he be thinking about?

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An Unfulfilled Desire for Nature, Magic, Rest
(and Death?)
Pay attention to its sound effects, use of
personification, images and symbols
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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Sound and
Sense

• Form 4 rhymed quatrains meter iambic
  pentameter repetition of the last two lines
• Sound long vowels, mellifluous sound (/m/, /n/
  or /v/) vs. explosives (aspirated explosive /t/
  /p/ see the poem)
• Tone (expression of attitude and feelings towards
  the subject)?
• calm, meditative, tired, resigned to fate

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Frosts New England Mentality (ref)

• Frost's expression of the New England mentality
  toward woods dark, deep and snow-filled has at
  its roots a place where all are snug in
  farmhouses or cozy village homes a place where
  all travel in security with the safety of a
  favorite, contented horse pulling reliable
  sleighs. This mentality views wintery woods as
  friendly, peaceful places. It is not a mentality
  that casts--under normal circumstances--woods as
  dangerous, malevolent places. New Englanders
  enjoy watching the dark, deep woods that surround
  them quietly, almost magically, fill with snow,
  watching almost mesmerized as the snow creeps
  higher and higher up the tree bark or fence post.
• For a New Englander, like Robert Frost was from
  1885 on (37 years by 1922), winter snow is like a
  warm comforter descending on the land and on
  one's soul for a long, peaceful slumber after a
  year of hard work and toil. Falling snow filling
  a dark wood at the evening of the day is a
  quieting sight that lights the eyes with a gentle
  glow and warms the heart with thoughts of a later
  flower-strewn spring coming at the end of winter
  quietude and slumber. The feeling produced is
  dreaminess, and critic George Montiero, Professor
  Emeritus of Brown University, uses the word
  "dreamy" to describe the poetic tone of the poem.
  He speaks of the poet's "dreamy mind and that
  mind's preoccupations..." (George
  Montiero, Robert Frost and the New England
  Renaissance). (source)

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Robert Frost (18741963)
Norton
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"Those Winter Sundays" (1962)
alliteration, explosive sounds

• Sundays too my father got up early
• and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
• then with cracked hands that ached
• from labor in the weekday weather
• made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked
  him. 
• I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
  
• When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
• and slowly I would rise and dress,
• fearing the chronic angers of that house. 
• Speaking indifferently to him,
• who had driven out the cold
• and polished my good shoes as well,
• What did I know, what did I know
• of love's austere and lonely offices? rituals,
  ceremonious

Open vowels Long and short lines
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Questions for Discussion

• Why does the poem begin Sundays too (rather
  than On Sundays)?
• What does the use of alliteration, as in
  clothes, cold, cracked (lines 23) and
  blueblack, banked, blaze (lines 2, 5),
  contribute to the poem?
• What is the significance of the speaker's
  reference to his fear of the chronic angers of
  that house (line 9)?
• What are the austere and lonely offices of love
  in the poem (line 14)?
• What does the poem suggest about how the speaker
  felt about his father as a child? As an adult?

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Clues to the Last Question

• 1) Contrast between the last two lines and the
  rest of the poem.
• What did I know, what did I know
• of love's austere and lonely offices?
• 2) Do you have similar experience with your
  parents, where their love and care dont get
  appreciated?

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"Those Winter Sundays" --

1. Paraphrasing
2. Analysis (1) Connotation the contrast between
   the past view and the present one about the
   speakers father and his work.
3. Analysis (2) Poetic Language descriptions of
   the cold and the house. Sound pattern.
4. Analysis (3) Does it matter to you whether you
   know of the poets background? Is the poem
   relevant to you?

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Robert Hayden (19131980)
Norton
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(2) Poetry expresses

• our emotions
• ? Poetry can be understood in its context, but
  also related to ours.

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"We Real Cool" (1960  p. 685)  

•   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.

alliteration internal rhymes
repetitions
Strike straight 1) attacking others 2) play
billiard balls Jazz 1) empty talk to or sex
with a woman named June 2) going here and there
in June
?
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"We Real Cool"  

1. Paraphrasing
2. Analysis (1) Connotation Speakers identity?
   Why cool?
3. Analysis (2) Poetic Language Their tone? How do
   the stress and sound Pattern help convey the
   meaning? Symbol-- Golden Shovel?
4. Analysis (3) What is cool for you? Does
   developing a group identity matter for you?

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I'm Nobody! Who are you?

• I'm Nobody! Who are you?
• Are you--Nobody--too?
• Then there's a pair of us!
• Don't tell! they'd banish usyou know!
•  
• How dreary--to be--Somebody!
• How public--like a Frog--
• To tell your name--the livelong June--
• To an admiring Bog!

repetitions
alliteration Iambic meter
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I'm Nobody! Who are you?

• Paraphrasing
• Analysis (1) Connotation Speakers identity?
  That of you? The differences between nobody
  and somebody?
• Analysis (2) Poetic Language The speakers tone
  in the 1st and 2nd stanzas? The use of dashes?
  The metaphor of bog and frog.
• Analysis (3) Do you like to be a somebody, or
  nobody? Or neither? What do you feel about the
  speakers criticism of somebody like a frog?
  

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Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

• A reclusive poet with mental energies.
• produced 1,775 known poems as well as the
  hundreds of letters. Only 7 (or 11) of the poems
  were published anonymously in her lifetime.
• a traumatic experience (between 1858 and 1862)
• Stayed in her own house for the last seventeen
  years of her life.

Film Emily Dickinson The Poet In Her Bedroom
http//www.youtube.com/watch?vPU8XijqmnT0
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(3) Poetry satisfies

• our need to sing and feel the rhythm of life.

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One example ???????

• ??????????,????????
• ??????????,???????
• ??????????,????????
• ??????????,??????? (source)
• ???????,????????
• ???????,????????
• ???????,????????
• ???,???,????????
• ??????????,????
• ?????,????????
• Line Rhythm?????? repetition with variation)

Stressed unstressed
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This is Just to Say

• Is this art? And how?

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.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
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The Word Plum 

• The word plum is deliciouspout and push, luxury
  ofself-love, and savoring murmurfull in the
  mouth and fallinglike fruittaut skinpierced,
  bitten, provoked intojuice, and tart
  fleshquestionand reply, lip and tongueof
  pleasure.

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The Word Plum 

• Analysis (1) The poem describes the uttering of
  the word plum (pout, push, rolling of tongue,
  closing of lips)
• Analysis (2) It also allows us to imagine how
  the fruit is savored.
• Analysis (3) a. Which word do you like the
  mostits sound, or shape or meanings? b.

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Poetry and Popular Songs

• The two are interrelated, so
• -- if you like songs, you may like poetry
• -- if you know how to analyze poetry, you must
  know how to do that to songs (its music
  excluded).

Poetry and painting and other arts
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How do we read and re-read a poem?

• Read and Paraphrase Read a poem silently once to
  try to catch its general meaning and mark new
  words too.  After you checked all the new words,
  read the whole poem again and check and see if
  you can paraphrase it. Remember that poetic
  syntax may be different from that of our daily
  language. 
• In other words, you sometimes need to move
  around different parts of a sentence to
  understand its meaning and paraphrase it.
• 2. denotation ? connotation Read the poem the
  third time and mark expressions that impress you.
  Try to figure out the poem's deeper meanings. 
• For some poems with intricate image pattern or
  dense symbolic meanings, you need to stop and
  dwell on some parts of the poem and their
  interconnections. 

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How do we read and re-read a poem?

• 3. sound ? sense Read the poem out loud to feel
  its sound effects.
• Sounds explosive or mellifluous sounds, long or
  short vowels, nasal sounds, aspirated (p) and
  unaspirated (b)
• The meanings of a (good) poem can not be
  exhausted. Re-reading a poem (out loud or
  silently) and taking note of your responses is
  always good. The more times you read, the more
  you will get from a poem.

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Understanding Poetic Language Ref.

• Sound and Sense

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Sound Sense

• Different sounds create different effects in
  different contexts. In general
• easily pronounced consonants (e.g. l, r, m,
  n) and open and long vowels can be create a
  sense of ease or fluidity
• Explosive sounds (t, d, g, k,p b),
  sometimes combined with short vowels,  can create
  a sense of vitality or difficulty.
• nasal sounds (m n) can create a sense of
  melancholy
• etc.

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Rhyme Rhythm

• Rhyme is a sound device that usually entails the
  repetition of the final vowel and consonant
  sounds in two words.
• internal rhyme Some poems have rhymes within the
  lines. This is called.
• Assonance is the repetition of vowels sounds,
  either at the beginning of words or within words.
  
• Head rhyme Alliteration is related to assonance
  in that alliteration also involves the repetition
  of sounds, this time the repetition of consonants
  at the beginning or middle of words.
• Meter (??) a regularly repeating rhythm, divided
  for convenience into feet (??). Meter describes
  an underlying framework actual poems rarely
  sustain the perfect regularity that the meter
  would imply.
• (e.g. iambic pentameter ????? reference)

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Lyric

• The most personal of poetic forms, lyric is
  usually a short but intense expression of
  personal feelings. 
• Although it is originally sung to the music of a
  lyre, not all lyrics are to be sung.  Still,
  musical quality can be found in some of the poems
  we have read (e.g. A Noiseless Patient Spider).
• Although it involves personal expressions, the
  speaker of a lyric is not necessarily the poet. 

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Conclusion

• Identity
• Social vs. Personal, Public vs. Private
• the parents and family relations
• Those Winter Sundays hardship and stern care
• This is Just to Say casual and familiar

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Review

• QuestionsPersonal Views, Sound and Line Pattern,
  connections between the poem and the poet.
• Close Reading
• Sound Effect, Sound Pattern, (consonance,
  assonance and alliteration) Line Length, Line End
  and Sentence End
• Lyric

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Performances Today 1100 1200
SM Crew Things to do-your plan (including
coordination w/ other groups) -- Write on the
board.
1100 1110 Act 1 Group 5 6
1110 1120 Act 2 Group 11 12
1120 1130 Act 3 Group 3 4 Group 9 10
1130 1140 Act 3 Group 3 4 Group 9 10
1140 1150 Act 4 Group 7 8
1150 1200 Act 5 Group 1 2
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See you next time!!!