Poetry with Class

Narrative poetry is as old as we are as a race. This week we will be looking at and thinking about story telling. THink about the ways in which story telling is a part of your life. How do you tell your stories? What are the stories that have influenced you–either books or in the oral tradition of your family? What stories will you keep telling?

As you approach the poems of this week “Home Burial” and “Theme for English B” consider your own relationship to story and storytelling. Then look at the poems–two very different poems. Home Burial has two voices and is noticeably long. Theme for English B is a single voice speaking to someone but in monologue fashion, through the screen of the essay theme, it is a short poem. Both use the tools of poetry but for the purpose of telling a story.

I’m not going to include the text of these two because they are significantly longer than the other poems we’ve looked at. Use your book to read them and then comment on either one.

Hello!

This week we are studying the short lyric poem as a category. Here are three examples that range from the 8th century to our own. I’ve decided not to post the “Poet’s CHoice” introduction for the week because I think it would be redundant. This is the place where we’ll pre and post talk the introduction, certainly though, we will be attentive to what the poet’s choice introduction alerted us to.

On another note, please be aware that the poet’s choice introduction is supposed to address the formal aspects of the poem (stanzas, rhythm, rhyme scheme, sound etc…) and meant to be accompanied by a written essay (not a power point alone, though adding a power point to it is fine) 2-5 pages in length. I will have a stack of the expectations for this assignment in class today (it has also been sent in an email previously).

It is a delight to read your entries here and hear people think aloud but in the privacy of their own rooms about these poems. Keep up the meditative work.

You don’t need to commment on each poem unless you’d like to. Chose one, or compare/contrast them, or explore the category they are in (short lyric) in relationship to the poem itself.

A Mountain Spring
Ch’u Ch’uang I (early 8th century)

There is a brook in the mountains,
Nobody I ask knows its name.
It shines on the earth like a piece
Of the sky. It falls away
In waterfalls, with a sound
Like rain. IT twists between rocks
And makes deep pools. It divides
Into islands. It flows through
Calm reaches. It goes its way
With no one to mind it. The years
Go by, its clear depths never change.

Those Winter Sundays
(Robert Hayden 1913-1982)

Sunday’s 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?

Morning Song
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place amoong the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window spare

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
You handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

This week we’re talking about Robert Frost’s poems. Please be conscious of the role of tone in these poems, and the complexity (especially of the second). Frost loves symbolism.

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.

The Road Not TAken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that mornign equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leas on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Dear Class, here are the two poems we will discuss this week together, which your mates will introduce on Monday and Wednesday. Your early conversation may help them to begin formulating their thoughts. Any comments on this post will be for week two of class.

Dickinson did not title her poems

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Poem 2

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

Hello! So begins our blog conversation. Take some time with “A Noiseless Patient Spider” today, we are going to memorize it together and discuss it in class tomorrow. Notice the structure of it, the number of sentences, the parallelism. Ask yourself what the tone is, how does the writer feel about this enormous world and small self? This is one of my favorite poems, it describes a sensation that I have experienced all my life. It is also in the tradition of the psalms–and you O my soul…..I can’t wait to discuss it with you all.

On another note: syllabus transmission problems apparently persist. I have emailed the 12:40 class individually with the attachments (a forward). There is a copy of the daily syllabus with work due for tomorrow and friday outside my office door, Boyer 157. I am talking to the Blackboard administrators today.

Don’t forget to collect some images today.