Introduction to Poetry - History of Poetry - Notes | ENGL 243, Study notes of Poetry

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Plumly Spring 2010 01/7/10 Stopping by Woods (Frost 1874-1963) & The Snow Man (Stevens 1979-1955) 1923 Topic Frost Stevens Style Iambic Petrameter (Formal verse) Strict measure Free verse Colloquial Location Rural Countryside Hartford, Ct (Small Town) Environment Heavy Snow Terrain Suburban Time Period Modern Around WWI Postmodern Around WWII Talking Style Narrative/Objectified First Person Interior – in the mind Third Person Misc Notes 1) Formality of verse = regularity 1) Enjambment  single sentence, complex compound sentence 2) Closure, caesura after every line as if you finished something in the end 3) Watch for onomatopoeia and consonance e.g. “Sound’s the sweet of easy wind and downy flake” Similarities between the two: 1) Written in 1923, 2) Set in New England 3) Describes snow *CONTENT is a consequence of FORM. Changing FORM will alter CONTENT. -e.g. It wouldn’t fit to put Steven’s poem into Frost’s style and vice versa. Iambic Pentameter - Two syllables in each foot – five feet in a line, unstressed stressed. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Frost) • Use of “stopping” vs. stop = Frost will move on • “darkest evening of the year” = lonely, coldest night • Onomatopoeia – “fill up with snow,” “sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake” • The poem is hypnotic/lulling/like the ocean – influenced by strict measure/rhyme/steady/constant (lovely dark and deep) HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks The Snow Man (Stevens) • Watch for enjambment, it’s basically one single, complex, compound sentence • The use of “one” instead of you keeps Stevens separate/distant • “Mind of winter” – projecting poem unto someone else • Stevens turns into the object, the snowman 02/01/10 My Papa’s Waltz (Roethke 1908-1963) & Those Winter Sundays (Hayden 1913-1980) Topic Roethke Hayden Location Michigan – Saganawl Countryside/Greenhouse Michigan – Detroit Ghetto NOT greenhouse Father’s Occupation Ran a greenhouse Hard Labor Style Formal shape (but with off beat) Informal/free verse Misc Notes Alternating stanzas have an “off” rhythm that is consistent The beat is like a Polka – an off/awkward waltz e.g. My PaPa’s Waltz Similarities 1) Childhood 2) Archetype of Father Tone of voice – how does author say what they want to say? -Tone and content = inseparable -Tone often ironic, Irony = contrast/opposition Free Verse – unannounced, reader has to discover formality 02/03/10 My Papa’s Waltz (Roethke) - 1948 • “My Papa’s Waltz”  the term “Papa” is warm but Informal, the term “Waltz” is formal – a combination of formal and informal e.g. Mother’s Waltz and Father’s Waltz would make sense (formal/formal) • The “Off” rhythm in poem is actually consistent – clumsy/informal waltz • Hyperbole - “Hung on like death” • “Still clinging to your shirt” – inevitable relationship • Father’s POV – affection or abuse? Child’s POV – could go either way o Tone UNCLEAR HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks “others” = us in future “glories” = Things are connected, have a purpose, and the purpose is good The only way to get across is a ferry since there is no Brooklyn Bridge You are committed to the 20 minute ride Whitman’s “well joined scheme” includes the yous – plural the impalpable the similtudes the glories 02/22/10 Road Not Taken, Wood Pile (Frost) Review: FORMAL VERSE FREE VERSE Stopping By Woods Snow Man English/Italian Sonnets Those Winter Sundays My Papa’s waltz Learn’d Astronomer Design Noiseless Patient Spider Road Not Taken Crossing Brooklyn Ferry -expansive free verse Road Not Taken (1916) ABAAB – Corrupted quatrain Extra line reinforces the rhyme scheme and makes it more complex (more thoughtful) Whitman – straightforward/not ironic Frost – dark/ironic/sardonic as other modernist poets Quatrain - Four lines of an alternating rhyme – almost always in iambic pentameter Sorry – shorthand for more complicated (regretfully, etc) Key Words in Road Not Taken Long – stopped dead in his tracks to stare down the road Oh – epiphany “I-/I” -another sigh, a hesitation HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks “sigh” – a sudden prolonged deep and more or less audible respiration following a deep-drawn breath expressing dejection, weariness, longing pain or relief Notes -Two travelers needed to go both ways -Frost wants to believe one road called out to him -Can’t tell which one was more trodden “Oh! I kept the first for another day” Rationalization, “I can do this!” Somewhere “ages and ages” hence – hyperbole “I took the one less traveled by” – reassurance And that has made all the difference – pity Background Written when he was 74 (an Old Man) Could be about the loss of imagination – Frost is a Manic Depressive 02/24/10 Directive (Frost) – 1947 Blank verse – iambic pentameter 1-12 = Domestic Farms, towns, houses 13-19 = Mythic 20-62 = Specific Setting – New Hampshire/New England (Fall) Parable – story that speaks in terms of metaphor, analogy. “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables; so that they may indded see but not perceive and may indeed hear but not understand.” – Mark iv. 11-12 -May be inspiration behind “So can’t get saved as Saint Mark says they musn’t” -What is a directive? A Directive is a set of Instructions -This is Frost’s darkest poem - vs. Whitman’s Brooklyn ferry – Whitman ddresses us as immediately as his concern, he’s clear and straightforward about the connection – sharing world and future -In Directive, we are OUTSIDERS. The idea is to find a way to bring us inside. Stop being confused outsiders. Frost is offering us how to get beyond the confusion First two lines Speaks in strict terms Circulates with the word loss, lost HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM B ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks Plays with Biblical (New Testament), there’s a way to be found Third Line “Of detail, burned, dissolved and broken off”  processes of time Playthings/Playhouse = innocence Weep for what little things could make them glad “Like a dent and dough” – like it was never there • Bread is the staff/stuff of life -- Biblical reference Frost thinks nothing is saved, it all gets destroyed, it all disappears “Humans are water creatures” – We are always saved by water • A broken drinking goblet just like the Holy Grail • The “wrong ones” can’t find this goblet 03/01/10 (Notes) 03/03/10 (Test) Church-Going (Larkin 1922-1985) 1954, 1955 Pentameter rhyme scheme ABABCADCD (slant lines) Stanzas 1 intro 2 intro 3 “yet” 4 “wondering”/middle 4 5 6  “for”  7 conclusion “edifice quality” – Poem built like a building, like a church Formalist – measured line, patterns in rhyme scheme Agnostic – God is unknowable – doesn’t mean they are or aren’t believers (doubters) Speaker: Larkin IS Agnostic Poem is performing his doubt and his ironic respect Anglicism – the type of church Larkin visits; a shade one way from Catholicism, lots of accoutrements, lots of structure HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks always haunting of ancient form (that’s what archetype means) Hyperbole – comedy and tragedy (suicide at ten, tries again) Background • Plath’s father was a stern professor at BU o Plath sees him as a monument (Colussus) stone cold • Mother upright/proper w/ New England accent (regality, superior, severe) • Lived in W.B. Yeats’ apartment • Kills herself in February, coldest Feb in 100 years in England Content Love/Hate relationship with Father Dominant Rhyme is YOU – (Achoo/Ach Du) Why is this poem being written? Extolling and hating her father. He made her into what she was so she’s grateful and spiteful at the same time. 03/22/10 (After Spring Break) Ode to a Nightingale (May 1819) – John Keats (1795-1821) Form 80 lines, 10 lines a stanza -pentameter -rhyme scheme (7th -beauty/truth (combination of Engl/Ital sonnet forms) line short) ABABCDECDE – anchoring quatrain AB Setting Wrote Nightingale IN Garden – this bird is flying back and forth from garden to Hamstead Heath (the next valley-glades) April 1819, Evening poem – gets darker as light changes Never sees the bird, just hears it and tracks the song Content HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks Nightingale – a poem of internal symbolic debate with the self 1) identifies his emotional state 2) alternate means of escape 3) why escape/ from what? 4) Realizes that poetry is the best means 5) But also realizes limitations 6) Death an escape – “rich to die” 7) Bird song, like poetry lives forever 8) “Emotional state” changed -in 80 lines, things CHANGE. Internal symbolic debate, goes after a series of example or otherwise to say what he’s trying to say –allusions • Hes paralyzed – in a form of stasis (brother’s death, falling in love) Nightingales Insomniac birds, stay awake at night and sing – keep Keats awake Song of sorrow or song of joy? (Roman Myth) Song of nightingale is forever (passed down), just as poem is Keats Oldest poet we study but dies at 25. First modernist – apparently difficult/complex and doesn’t seem to be about anything 03/24/10 The Whitsun Weddings (1958) – Philip Larkin (1922-1985) Whitsun Sunday is 7 weekends after Easter, Bank Holiday Form Nightingale form (2nd line is the short one) 1) Enjambment – technical way of looking at motion. Even stanzas are enjamebed, things are spilling into each other 2) Pastoral vs Industrial 3) Window Perspective 4) Arrow: leitmotif Content -NOT a poem about stasis HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM B ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks vs. Keats the only moving thing is Nightingale, but Larkin is moving with train the train IS moving. Speaker is moving as well, he’s stationary but he’s moving in the train Setting Fifteen years after WWII Four hour train ride, last hour entering London Has just started to get warm. Whitsun Weddings is the beginning of the bank holiday – you get Monday off -Nightingale = moving and getting darker. BUT Larkin’s poem is about space. 03/29/10 (Notes) 03/31/10 (Test) One Art (1976) – Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) Form Vilanelle (small house/dwelling): ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA Rhyme as counters (Structure) Content Lost “things” = door keys, bad hour, places, names, desitnation, my mother’s watch, next to last loved houses, two cities, realms, two rivers, a continent and finally YOU. (Texture) -things are growing in size but YOU, my relationship with You was the most important and the hardest loss. It’s why I’m writing this poem -Bishop poem is not smooth like Thomas “Do not go gentle” A WHOLE feeling – a poem about convincing herself that the art of loss isn’t hard to master Inanimatve objects have a will of their own – to be LOST! It’s not our fault, loss is involuntary Certain ideas get repeated, not just the rhymes *Bishop’s poem is a NARRATIVE – from lost door keys to YOU This poem is in the process of making itself 04/05/10 “The Day Lady Died” pg. 1728 – Frank O’Hara Form -Emphasis on the elegy – specific death or memory involved hard to separate love and grief HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo o Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks Setting (Environment) -Pastoral – shepherd leading the flock. -The person being mourned in the shepherd. -Spring is Rebirth. There’s a connection between the natural cycle of things and celebration. Why do we celebrate Christmas in the winter (beginning of winter). -There is a town called Freedom in NH Like O’Hara poem, don’t’ know where we’re going until we get there. Death creates life. The grass is so green in a graveyard because it fertilizes the plot. 04/14/10 Marriage – Gregory Corso “What is poetry?” compression – not reduction, a selection/arrangement of language that causes it to behave in a certain way. Associate with INTENSITY repetition – rhyme/meter and generally rhythm. “Stopping By Woods” is a good example. Anaphora is also, “Learn’d Astronomer, Brooklyn Ferry” imagination – “ a sahara of snow” that’s the imaginative part, the transformed part acceleration – speed with which a poem moves, poetry moves at its own special speed Talk about any one of these characteristics of poetry on the next exam and provide a good explanation Form Satire, Surrealism – super-real, extra real, heightened real self-evaluation, “disparate” sources SURREALISM – comes in at the adjectival level. At the ADJECTIVE “forked clarinets, werewolf bathtubs” Content Marriage 1) courtship part 2) ceremony/celebration part 3) honeymoon part 4) married life 5) children 6) fatherhood 7) fantasy alternative 8) love? HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks Great poem of anxiety, nervousness. Marriage = public Love = private “and none thought of the others they would never meet or how their lives would all contain this hour” Connection to Whitsun Weddings First two lines rhyme, good, hood, preliminary, cemetery, why and sky. He writes himself AWAY from these poetic structures into more open free-verse Right off the bat, it’s about sex and death Pie glue Is a rhyme for “I Do.” It fits into the poem because they’re talking about marriage. Lots of energy in the poem – he’s attacking the clichés of marriage and the social world around it Setting Corso– son of Italian immigrant. Was an orphan, lived in a lot of foster homes. He was a criminal and went to prison Marriage is the one great bond that cannot be by blood Most intimate/private in whole life. Marriage is a very public event and is a societal event “Back out of this that is too much for us.” You end up at the ruins, you end up where the leftovers are. Connection to Directive. 04/19/10 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock – T.S. Eliot Form Meditative lyric modes: “soliloquy,” monologue, interior monologue, dialogue, interior dialogue – itself talking to itself Stream of Conciousness Setting Written at Harvard, Boston/Cambridge 1910 - was very different from anything else the public had seen Content Eliot insights: “objective correlative” – he should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silences – elliot’s example of the objective correlative HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks “auditory imagination” “In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo” The o is the dominant vowel sound and the other nasals of “n” “m” as well as the “c” and “k” -marble in a museum creates echo, and the sound that echos in echo is o! THIS is auditory imagination “dissociation of sensibility” – a part of yourself not in touch with the other part; getting to be more of a whole person “Let us go then, you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky Like _______________” Simile is an announced metaphor THIS is a simile. He had to introduce this simile or else it wouldn’t make sense Why a patient? He’s horizontal; the patient is NOT dead, comatose. He is etherized, out of touch, dissociation of stabilization. Put to sleep. -Not a poem about memory – but a MOMENT and the tension of what’s to follow. -Alfred Prufrock: very formal guy -Prufrock is out of touch. It is a correlative of his own interior state – he is intuiting his own condition of not feeling. -Abyss (Dante Poem) – the speaker feels at the edge of an abyss weariness, regret, embarrassment, longing, and awareness of mortality -relays the thoughts of a sexually frustrated middle-aged man who wants to say something but is afraid to do so, and ultimately does not -The dispute, however, lies in to whom Prufrock is speaking, whether he is actually going anywhere, what he wants to say, and to what the various images refer. 04/21/10 Fern Hill – Dylan Thomas Form • Letimotifs – this poem sounds like a formal poem that rhymes BUT the meters shift all the time • 14-ers/tetrameter/trimeter does not rhyme but gives the effects of rhyme • Multiples/back and forth Setting Dylan Thomas spent a lot of time in fern hill in Wales Content • Great pastoral vision HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo kH ol de rs .c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks Splashing Loitering Brown-faced Negligent Scarlet  Guidon gayly Vigil Strange…Whitman Form Free Verse Content The lines that begin with "vigil" and an inversion ("Vigil strange," "Vigil wondrous" and "Vigil final") in effect divide this poem into three sections -- in plot terms, roughly that's the battle, the vigil, and the burial. At daybreak the speaker must reluctantly bury his comrade/son/soldier where he fell, and become once again a soldier himself. It is only at night, when not fighting, that the speaker can allow himself the luxury of human emotions; during the day he is a soldier who cannot grieve. Passing - this word is in the Vigil Strange Poem and it refers to time here The word passing in when lilacs lost refers to motion, the train is passing 05/03/10 When Lilacs last….- Walt Whitman Background • Whitman’s brother wounded in D.C. Hospital o Whitman stays for 10 years and becomes male nurse • Whitman saw Lincoln more than one occasion on the streets. Marked these sightings in prose during this period. Content: Lilacs: pastoral elegy (all of nature joining in) flowers represent renewal, spring/easter – at funerals they mean new life Whitman Is in two places during this poem – at the dooryard and funeral In this poem, we are moving back in time in terms of Lincoln, we are moving back in time from former president to where he’s from, where he started as a politician, back to Illinois where he’s from Perennial – return every year, they come always in the spring Synechodoche – (part of something to refer to whole or vice versa) part three the flower that he donates to the funeral/train HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks -Whitman describes so richly because its real (its not fanciful) “battle-corpses, myriads of them” section 15 Setting • Easter • Lincoln’s body travels through Midwestern states and northern states • Nation is already in the process of healing/reconciled • For Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, the Nation, Lincoln was assassinated April 14th • What is the condition to be overcome? The Condition is Grief – National Grief 1 2 ‘’ 3 first four parts - set up of major motifs the “trinity” of lilac (renewal), VENUS star (eternal), birdsong hermit thrush (reconciliation in swampy interior) Star-eternal – (Venus) --- Trinity “Complaint” 4 - same bird that Keats hears in Hampstead. Nightingale is too fanciful, the REAL name is Hermit Thrush Fanciful (Bleeding Throat, the thorn at the throat makes the music that much more piercing and grief-stricken) vs. Real “Death’s outlet song of life” paraphrases entire part 4 -- 5 “passing” – the funeral train, the black “cloud” – passing the body the landscape, different states have different kinds of spring/foliage 6 ‘’ 7 -- 8 return to the trinity (elaboration) undulating 9 ‘’ 10 ‘’ -- 11 – “passing” the Land – putting up pictures of spring 12 ‘’ -- 13 return to the trinity – trinity reinforced (becomes a summary) -- 14 consolation  the trinity, “tallied” talley < acceptance + embrace death in life This passage is VERY long. This is the real Whitman, no holding back The bird actually sings in the free-verse quatrain 15 ‘’ goes back to the train to rejoin the trinity (I saw that all of life suffered but not the dead soliders, they were done suffering) 16 coda  resolution • The second line of the poem "And the great star early droop'd ..." establishes the allusion to Lincoln. HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld er s.c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks • The blooming of the lilacs in April, the same month in which Lincoln was assassinated, serves as Whitman's yearly reminder of Lincoln's death o Whitman paradoxically relates spring as a time of mourning to illustrate the extent of his pain. • The lilacs that symbolize grief in the beginning now represent closure when he puts the spring on coffin 05/05/10 From Killing Time – Simon Armitage Youngest poem and most relevant to a fairly recent historical event and culture – Columbine Columbine is a flower “Meanwhile” -parodying /corrupting the norm of the implicit form indentation – its actually forty lines the rhyme scheme – its in couplets (Armitage parodying couplets) Flowers  ironic pastoral: sardonic Killing time comes from sense of parody of pastoral elegy Play Tone Parody Gothicism Distortion of the object excess HTTP://NOTES.BOOKHOLDERS.COM Bo ok Ho ld rs .c om Bu y a nd S el l T ex tb oo ks