Poetry Quiz

• What is reading poetry like?

  • Reading fiction

• Why is reading poetry like reading fiction?

  • We observe details of action and language

  • We make connections and inferences

  • We draw conclusions

  • The same intellectual and emotional dispositions

• What is the difference in reading poetry and reading fiction?

  • We pay attention to the connotations of words

  • We pay attention to the qualities of sound and rhythm

  • We pay attention more to structure and punctuation

• What are the three parts of reading a poem?

  • Experience - we pay attention to the subjective responses or personal reactions; our viewpoint and experiences

  • Interpretation - intellectual processes as we begin to understand the poem; we concern ourselves less with how it affects us than with what it means or suggests

    • Observing

    • Connecting

    • Inferencing

    • Concluding

  • Evaluation - judge its quality and poetic intentions, then how significant it is to us (subjective) and how it may affect others.

    • Context: the circumstances of a poem’s composition, the poet’s life, the attitudes and beliefs he or she may have expressed in letters or other comments, the audience and occasion for which a particular poem was written, its publication history and reception by readers past and present.

    • Evaluation = judgement

      • Based on our own combination of cultural, moral, and aesthetic values

• True or false? To read poetry well we need to slow down enough to observe details of language, form, and sound. By doing so, we give ourselves a chance to form connections among the poem’s details.

• What does evaluation depend upon?

  • Our interpretation

• What should we strive for when evaluating poems?

  • Judge the poem fairly, the poem’s merits, and ultimately, a sense of literary tact.

    • Literary tact: the kind of informed and balanced judgement that comes with experience in reading and living, coupled with continued thoughtful reflection on both.

• What are the two types of poetry?

  • Narrative: stress story and action/poetry that tells a story and has all the elements of a story

    • Epics: long narrative poems that record the adventures of a hero whose exploits are important to the history of a nation

    • Romance: adventure is a central feature; the plots tend to be complex but with surprising even magical actions are complex

    • Ballads: Most popular form of poetry, meant to be sung or recited, passed on orally

  • Lyric: stress emotion and song/subjective poems, often briefs, that expresses the feelings and thoughts of a single speaker, more of a poetic manner than a form, more variable less subject to strict conversation

    • Villanelle: heavy on repetition, five three-line tercets and a final four-line quatrain

      • Ex: Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

    • Sestina: six stanzas of six lines each followed by a three line conclusion

      • Conclusion = envoy

      • Ex: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina”

    • Sonnet: condenses into 14 lines an expression of emotion or an idea according to either Italian or English (Shakespeare)

      • Italian is composed of an eight-line octave (problem) and a six-line sestet (solution)

      • English is three four-line quatrains (subject and then expand) and a concluding two-line couplet (conclusion)

    • Aubade: a love lyric expressing complaint that dawn means the speaker must part from his lover

      • Ex: John Donne’s “The Sun Rising”

    • Ode: a long stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form

      • Ex: John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”

    • Elegy: a lament to the dead

      • Ex: Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break”

    • Epigram: a brief witty poem that is often satirical

      • Ex: Alexander Pope’s “On the Collar of a Dog”
        

• True or false? Lyric poetry is typically characterized by brevity, melody, and emotional intensity

• True or false? Italian and Shakespearean sonnets can be combined

• What are four line sections?

  • Quatrains

• What is a pair of rhymed lines?

  • Couplets

• Syntax: order of those words

• Diction: selection of words

• Imagery: details of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch

• Figurative language: nonliteral ways of expressing one thing in terms of another, such as symbol and metaphor

• Structure: formal pattern of organization

• Tone: its implied attitude towards its subject

• Dramatic Monologue: a poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener

• Elision: the omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter

• What are the ways a poem can be an image?

  • Visual

  • Aural

  • Tactile

  • Olfactory

  • Gustatory

• Imagery: pattern of related details in a poem

• Symbol: any object or action that represents something beyond itself

• Allegory: a form of narrative in which people, places, and happenings have hidden or symbolic meaning

• Syntax: the arrangement of words in a sentence, phrase, or clause

• End rhyme: rhyming at the end

• Internal rhyme: rhyming within lines

• Alliteration: repetition of consonant sounds

• Assonance: repetition of vowel sounds

• Caesuras: pauses in poetry //

• Meter: measure or patterned count of a poetic line

• Foot: uit of measure consisting of stressed and unstressed syllables

• Trochee: reversing the order of accented and unaccented syllables

• Anapest: two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one

• Dactyl: reverse of anapest

• Spondee: two accented syllables together

• Metonymy: substituting an attribute of a thing for the thing itself

• Synecdoche: substituting an attribute of a thing for the thing itself

• Pyrrhic: two unaccented syllables together

• Enjambed: run-on lines

• Writing:

  • Reading the poem more attentively

  • Writing stimulates thinking = making poems more meaningful

• Why write about poetry?

  • Find out what you think about a poem

  • Induce yourself to read a poem more carefully

• What are the informal ways of writing about poetry?

  • Annotation and freewriting

• What is the formal way of writing about poetry?

  • An analysis

• Parody: a humorous, mocking imitation of another work

• In Roman times and during the Renaissance, poems were characterized as speaking pictures and painting as ?

  • Silent poetry

Poetry Test

• John Keats

  • Parents & Brother died of tuberculosis

  • Contracted tuberculosis himself

  • Most poetry came before his death

    • Like Sylvia Plath

  • “When I have fears that I may cease to be”

    • Fear of dying

    • Scared of not living a mark on the world

    • Scared of never feeling the love and fame he dreams of

  • “La Belle Dane sans Merci”

    • Story of a knight meeting a beautiful elfin woman who abandons him

    • Like “when I have fears…,” shows his fear of not having love, not experiencing life to the fullest

  • “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

    • Trying to understand an urn

    • Art captures perfection

    • Once again, not living life the fullest, specifically regarding love

  • What is an example of Italian sonnet by John Keats?

    • “On First Looking into Champman’s Homer”

      • About Homer’s great poems - The Illiad and the Odyssey, and how reading Champman’s translation is excitement

  • “Ode to Nightingale”

    • Broken into stanzas

    • Lyric

    • Nightingale = songbirds

    • Death, sorrow = darkness, the element of it being night time

    • Starts with the narrator being drowsy

    • Narrator wants to forget

    • Narrator wants to know why the nightingale is signing - why is it so happy during this darkness (night)?

    • Then the narrator is drunk because he wants to fade away and relieve his pain

    • People in the world are sad, in despair, dying, so what is the point in ever trying for love/joy?

    • Posey = poetry

    • Poetry is his escape

    • Hope is found through poetry

    • Nature is beautiful

    • Requiem = song for death

    • Nightingale is immortal; hope is eternal

    • With the night ending, the narrator has to face his issues

• Lucille Clifton

  • African American & Female

  • From NY

  • Was Poet Laureate of Maryland

  • “Homage to my Hips”

    • Self-love

    • Goes against the grain of beauty standards or ideals

    • Freedom

    • Feminine power of controlling oneself

    • Does not let someone else control her

  • “Here Rests”

    • About her (deceased) sister Josephine

    • Josephine was a sex worker

    • Josephine was desirable, educated, and cared for those in her life

    • The connotation of being a prostitute does not include those things

    • References Book of Job - someone who never lost faith in God

    • Do Not Judge

      • Bad things May happen to good people

  • “In Praise of the Menustral Cycle”

    • Powerful

    • Power - capability of a women to have children

    • All animals have a cycle

    • Women have the power to create other human beings

  • “Tuesday 9/11/01”

    • America before believed to be invincible

    • We pretend God loves us more than is Israel, Ireland, and Palestine

    • America does have the ability to sing - freedom, liberties, BUT

    • no one is exempt from fear, life, and death

• Lawrence Ferlenghetti

  • Wrote constantly risking absurdity

  • City of Lights - publishing company for the Beats poets

  • Imprisoned from publishing “Howl”

  • Died in 2021 at 101

  • Wrote lyric often

  • “People Getting Divorced”

    • Extended metaphor of pairs of shoes being like a couple

    • Find a replacement of your sole/soul

    • Divorce occurs everywhere and to anyone

  • “Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West”

    • Use of syntax, looks like the text is dancing

    • How time changes everything

    • Dreams can fade away, but you can still hold true to them all the while

• Dylan Thomas

  • Died from alcohol poisonings

  • Inspired/wrote similarly to T.S. Elliot

  • Was on a “Tour of America” at his death - in Chelsea Hotel

  • “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”

    • Perfect villonola

    • To his father

    • Father is dying

    • do NOT just accept death

    • Death is natural, but fight, do not just let it occur

    • Does not want his father to die

    • Selfish plea for his father to live, not go into the night

  • “Fern Hill”

    • About his childhood

    • Thomas had a good childhood

    • Nostalgia

    • Moving on from childhood, to the adult world which is not the same

    • You must move on from the good times

• John Milton

  • Known for his sonnets (Italian) - Paradise Lost

  • Educated

  • “When I consider how my light is spent”

    • Sonnet- iambic pentameter

      • Octave and Seset

    • Serving God

    • God does not need us, not our work at least, but just us

    • Do not judge others actions, for it is faith and love that bring God into your life

  • “At A Vacation Exercise”

    • More about God

    • Lots of Greek/Roman references

  • “How Soon Hath Time, the subtle thief of youth”

    • 23rd birthday

    • Time will move, feels he is nearing manhood

    • Recognizes death will come to with age

    • Hopes for heaven and to see God at the end

    • Life goes by quickly

• Alfred Lord Tennyson

  • Influenced by John Keats

  • Lyric - flow, which made him popular

  • Poet Laureate

  • “Ulysses”

    • Odysseus = Ulysses (The Odyssey)

    • End of Odysseus’ life

    • Should he be idle or adventure?

    • Live how you want to live life

  • “The Eagle - A Fragment”

    • Strength

    • We must face life head-on

    • There are limitations in life, but we should still try to soar

• Seamus Heaney

  • Irish

  • Modern - died in 2013

  • Successor to William Bather Yeats

  • Political, religious, and civil issues

  • “The Forge”

    • Blacksmith does beautiful work

    • Respects Blacksmith, not everyone could do his job

    • Narrative

  • “ Mid-Term Break”

    • 4 year old brother died and hit by car

    • Knelling = funeral/death bells

    • Embarrassed by being comforted

    • Poppy - void of feeling/peace without violence

  • “Digging”

    • Seamus is a Poet

    • Holds the power to kill with words

    • Respects his father and his grandfather

    • Could be bitter about his poor, uneducated family, but he is not, as his poet

• William Blake

  • Radical

  • Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experiences

  • 1757-1827 and Issue with Religion

  • Wrote companion poem often

  • “The Lamb”

    • Rhymes i - as

    • Tender and Sweet

    • Religious - about Jesus

  • “The Tyger”

    • Series of questions

    • Satan - did God make Satan?

    • Why did God make evil?

  • “The Garden of Love”

    • What is taught in church - what you shouldn’t do

    • Turning away from church

    • Everyone is dead in the garden

    • Love thy neighbor as thyself

    • Don’t do it - what the church says

    • Blake sees issue of religion judgement

  • “A Poison Tree”

    • Foe winning against you

    • Apple stolen from you

    • We want to see those who steal/cheat fail

    • About how we hate those who succeed by theft or deceit

  • “The Sick Rose”

    • Roses associated with love and thorns (duality of good and bad)

    • Having an affair

    • Invisible warm = syphilis being spread due to prostitution

    • Women can carry syphilis without knowing, men cannot

    • Syphilis is deadly

• Rita Dove

  • Youngest and 1st black woman to serve as a U.S. Poet Laureate

  • Collections: The Yellow on the Corner and Museum

  • Ohio

  • Criticized for not writing “black poetry”

  • Book - Thomas and Bulia

    • About her grandparents

  • “Canary”

    • In cages usually (people keep them as songbirds)

    • About Billie Holiday - famous singer

      • Faced adversity for being a black woman

    • Wants to do what she wants

    • Forever held back

    • If you can’t be free, be intangible

    • If you can’t be free, be a mystery

  • “Maple Valley Branch Library 1967”

    • Education = Elephants

    • Education through reading

    • You can do anything, you can learn anything

    • Go and get it!

  • “Fifth Grade Autobiography”

    • Spending time with grandparents in Michigan

    • Memories, nostalgia

    • How simple life was then, but how we can still remember the pains then

    • Being jealous of her brother

    • Remembering her grandfather smelling of lemons, even though he is now dead.

• Billy Collins

  • Lionized (NYC Public Library)

  • NYC

  • Modern, Contemporary

  • Alive

  • Common - like William Carlos Williams

  • “The History Teacher”

    • History is to NOT repeat the past

    • Truth must be told

    • Without knowing and acknowledging the past, society will not advance

    • History and truth must be taught

    • Includes many allusions

  • “My Number”

    • Imagery about death

    • Death happens to everyone

    • When, where? - no one knows

    • Death is natural, but still try to fight it - even though it will happen

    • Humour is used with death

    • Simile about Death sprinkling seeds of cancer

  • “Introduction to Poetry”

    • Seeing and interpreting a poem to its fullest

  • “Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes”

    • Exposing Emily’s emotions and sexuality to the world

• W.H. Auden

  • Wyston Hugh Auden

  • Gay and was in a beard marriage

  • from England, emigrated to US

  • Fought for rights

  • NYC - Greenwich Village

    • Art Colony

  • Sympathized and tried to understand Christians

  • “The Unknown Citizens”

    • All of us are a number

    • No one knows what anyone is going through

    • Pursuit of happiness is a guarantee, but not happiness itself

    • We should all pursue happiness

  • “Funeral Blues”

    • Lost someone he loved - Chester

    • Wants to dismantle the Sun

    • Beauty is gone from the world

    • Death of his love = life is over

  • “Musee des Beaux Arts”

    • Do not Turn a blind eye to problems, but you cannot fix the world

    • Icarus Story

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  • Struggled with drugs and alcohol

  • Had 4 children

  • Struggled financially

  • Founder of Romanticism

  • “Kubla Khan”

    • Fragment of dreams

    • Xanadu - Heaven

    • Locations are made up

    • Basically about sex

    • 1st anti drug poem?

    • Honey dew and milk of Paradise

  • “Work Without Hope”

    • Springtime

    • Does not work as hard as nature does

    • Samuel does not have hope, one cannot work with out hope

    • Likely connects to his drug usage/mental health issues

  • “The Good, Great Man”

    • A good man may have wealth or merit

    • But, a great good man has LOVE, LIGHT, and CALM THOUGHTS

    • Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!

Poetry Test 2

• Gwendolyn Brooks

  • Black Woman

  • Feminist

  • Poet Laureate of North

  • Spent time in NYC and Chicago

  • Friends with MLK

  • Family oriented poetry

  • Deals with important subjects

  • Went to Wilson Junior college

  • Born in topeka kansas

  • Taught at university wisconsin madison and city university of new york

  • Published Maud Martha

  • A street in bronzeville

  • “The mother”

    • Abortion

    • Clear and simple poem used to make a point

    • She’s for the mother (not against abortion)

    • Focuses on the mother instead of child

    • Abortion isn’t an easy decision

    • Having an abortion does not make you a bad person

    • Only the mother can make the decision

    • baby=fancy parasite

    • “Abortions will not let you forget”

  • “The Bean Eaters”

    • When things get old they get yellow (old people)

    • Lots of stuff = memories

    • People, who are old, just sit around

  • “We Real Cool”

    • Themes of youth, rebellion, and living recklessly

    • Young pool players who are more concerned about current experiences than future consequences

    • Counterculture of Youth

    • Ends with the line “Jazz June. We Die soon”

  • “First fight. Then fiddle.”

    • Struggle comes before art, politics before poem

    • Sonnet

    • Gracefully fight

    • About social injustice

    • “Deaf to music to beauty blind”

• Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • Got in trouble with royalty due to his radical beliefs

  • Well known wife (teenage wife, famous for frankenstein, her mom wrote about women’s rights)

  • A bit out there, radical guy

  • Supported middle class

  • Born in 1792

  • Influenced by ideas of liberty and intellectual freedom

  • Wrote a pamphlet on Atheism

  • Traveled Ireland speaking about political injustice

  • Ode to the west wind

  • Verse drama- Prometheus Unbound

  • “Ozymandias”

    • Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Egyptian ruler Ramses the second who made himself a big statue of himself with other monuments

    • Found traveler in desert where they find a statues legs in sand

    • See a plaque, it says “my name is ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair”

    • Stupid because ozymandias didn’t even sculpt it, credit to the sculptor

    • Importance of workers and the working class

  • “Love’s Philosophy”

    • Uses how nature always comes together (rivers flowing into the ocean, the mixing of the winds in the sky) as a way to say that physical intimacy between two people is natural

    • Why shouldn’t people mingle if nature does?

    • Mountains kiss, waves clasp, everything comes in pairs

    • Natural and divine

    • “What is all this sweet work”—that is, the beautiful unity of the world—"worth / If thou kiss not me?”

  • “A Lament”

    • Poem about grieving over past glory

    • A bit unclear what he’s grieving

    • the poet asks when the glory of their prime will return

    • Can’t return to the past

    • The changing seasons move his heart with grief but not with delight as they used to do in the past. All joy seems to have departed from the world. Nor is there any hope that joy will return.

• John Donne

  • Metaphysical poetry: a group of poems that share common characteristics: they are all highly intellectualized, use rather strange imagery, use frequent paradoxes and contain extremely complicated thought.

  • Poetry is not super straightforward

  • Cleric of church of England

  • Preacher at St. Pauls Cathedral in London

  • Wrote worldly love lyrics at the court of Queen Elizabeth I

  • Songs and Sonnets (His works collection)

  • Changed, he grew up

  • “The Flea”

    • Flea jumps from young women to man

    • Blood mixes, but woman does not lose virginity

    • About purity and sexuality

    • If blood is mixed then why not have sex?

    • She says no by killing the flea with her purple nail

  • A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

    • Farewell speech, telling someone not to be sad

    • He’s leaving but he’s coming back eventually

    • If you pound gold thin, it's still gold

    • You should be sad when someone dies, but he's not dying

    • They are always connected, like twin compasses (mathematical ones used for drawing circles)

  • “Song”

    • About infidelity?

    • Women are unfaithful in society

    • Mention of a child with mandrake root (like a child born from infidelity is wrong?) mandrake is kind of dark and unnatural? Root is human shaped. In folklore they were believed to have magic powers. Hallucinogenic.

    • Falling star = crushed dreams, lost purity

    • Devil's foot = religious unease

    • Mermaid = attraction and danger of sex

  • “Death, be not proud”

    • Death is natural; normal part of life

    • Instead it is just a way to transport souls to heaven

    • Pictures Death as a slave to humanity since he has no power over human souls

  • “Batter my heart, three-personed God”

    • Three personed god is father, son, holy spirit

    • Talking to all of them (god)

    • Wants god to take him and make him new, test him so he can be better

    • We are all human and we sin

    • Asking god to make him better

    • Set to be married to the devil because we all sin

    • All humans are destined for hell

    • He wants to divorce satan

    • Tells god to batter him, beat him up, make him suffer to prove his worth

• William Butler Yeats

  • Irish

  • Son of well known Irish painter

  • Studied painting 

  • Poems about art, Irish nationalism, folklore, occult, Irish legend

  • Wrote The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose

  • Inspired Seamus Heaney

  • Loved some girl who really was not a fan of him

  • “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”

    • Desire to leave city and build a cabin on an Island (Innisfree in Ireland where yeats vacationed as kid)

    • Transcendentalism a bit

    • Desire for simplicity 

    • Peaceful nature

  • “The Second Coming”

    • World is ending, spiraling and breaking

    • World is in chaos and violence, war

    • Prophecies The collective spirit of the world (Spiritus Mundi)

    • In the form of a lion with a man head (sphinx)

    • The figure moves towards Bethlehem, reference towards Christianity

    • Negative Nancy viewpoint of the world

    • The end of a war

  • “Leda and the Swan”

    • Leda is a mortal woman

    • The swan is Zeus in disguise as a swan

    •  Swan/Zeus rapes Leda

    • Idea of power dynamics between gods and humans

    • Can a mortal learn from physical closeness to a god?

    • “And agamemnon dead” Reference at the end towards the child conceived after the rape, Helen of troy who is so beautiful she causes a war between the greeks and the trojans

    • Swan described beautifully; honoring gods despite their actions

  • “Sailing to Byzantium”

    • Themes of aging, immortality, art, wisdom

    • Describes that the world is made for the young, not for the old

    • Speaker wishes to die and leave behind his old and dying body

    • Instead he asks to be turned into an eternal work of art 

    • Can overcome physical decay through art and knowledge

    • Immortality through art and learning

  • “When You are Old”

    • Dramatic monologue

    • Speaker addresses a beloved woman, imagining her when she gets older

    • Asks her to take a book and read it, while remembering her when she was young and all her admirers

    • Says he loved her for her “pilgrim soul” and the sorrows of her changing face while others loved her for her beauty and charm

  • “Adam’s Curse”

    • Conversation between speaker, a woman, and another person, they both talk about effort required to create beauty

    • Labor

    • Effort is required to sustain love

    • Beauty takes effort

  • “The Wild Swans at Coole”

    • Written after seeing lots of wild swans

    • Life is fragile

    • Speaker talks about time at park 19 years earlier

    • Poem possibly alludes to the speaker's lost love?

    • Moments are fleeting ect ect

  • “An Irish Airman Foresees his death”

    • Airman flying, says he knows one day he will die

    • World War I

    • Thinking about his death and life

    • Flight allows the airman to face his death on his own terms

    • Yeats tries to show how they struggled with their identity as Irishmen risking their lives for a country they did not feel was their own.

  • “A Dream of Death”

    • Dreamed someone he loved died far away in a strange place

    • Mourning

    • The lady he loved was traveling to france at the time and he was worried she'd die because she’s predisposed to illness

    • Importance of home

    • Lonely death, nobody knew her there when she died

    • Her beauty fades as she remains dead

• Gary Soto

  • Mexican American

  • Writes narratives

  • Writes about himself; autobiographical poems

  • Engineer

  • Went to UCI

  • Writes about discrimination against Mexican Americans

  • Still Alive

  • “Mexicans Begin Jogging'“

    • Border control comes in to factory

    • Gary doesn’t run because he is an American

    • They think he’s lying

    • His boss puts money in his hand and tells him to run

    • So he does

    • Ran past crowds, like a parade

    • Change of seasons, people pale when autumn comes

    • Soft houses = not permanent, they are farmers so when autumn comes their job is done

    • Factory workers and farmers

    • Long live baseball, milkshakes, sociologists

    • White people automatically assume Mexicans are illegal, uneducated. Tell sociologists to keep thinking that because they are actually bettering their lives. Underestimate them and see what they can do.

  • “Behind Grandma’s House”

    • Problematic attention seeking child that craves attention from his grandma

    • Child lashing out so they could be noticed

    • Grandma comes to help him (apron flapping in the wind) but actually punches him in the face

    • Threw light bulbs, kicked trash cans, stole a dog (?), kicked fences, threw rocks at cats, shooed pigeons, spit on ants, had a comb and two coke bottles, a tube of Bryl-creem all for attention

  • “Making Money: Drought Year in Minkler, California”

    • Father and Son bet on what year the car is

    • The car is personified

    • Shows it's tough to be a laborer

    • Making money

    • Fixing up an old beat up Buick, someone says its a ‘49, then says its a ‘50 because it doesn’t have a running board

    • The guy that says that is his dad presumably, he gives his son a buck for fixing it

    • The dad hits his wife with a towel to get her out of his chair

    • He then bets on the fact that a plane will fall from the sky and explode.

• William Wordsworth

  • Romantic poetry

  • Died in 1850s

  • Upbeat, Transcendentalism, connection with nature

  • Lyrical, sing songy poems (Lyrical Ballads)

  • Friends with Samuel Coleridge

  • Born in Lake district of northern England (what many of his poems are about)

  • His sister Dorothy inspired him, they were friends, maybe too close

  • “The world is too much with us”

    •  Feels like he doesn’t have enough time to bask in nature

    • Wishes he was a Pagan so that he could have time to 

    • Explaining takes away the mystery and wonder of nature

    • Why do we have to know everything

  • “The Solitary Reaper”

    • Solitary Reaper is a woman in a field reaping grain

    • She’s got a grim reaper sickle

    • She’s singing a sad song, it's sad because shes alone

    • He doesnt think its bad that shes out there, but he wants to know why

    • Stark and interesting image

  • “Lines (Tintern Abbey)”

    • Wordsworth had first visited the Wye Valley when he was 23 years old.

    • His return five years later occasioned this poem, which Wordsworth saw as articulating his beliefs about nature, creativity, and the human soul. 

  • “I wandered lonely as a cloud”

    • Walk in lake district 

    • Sees a strip of daffodils

    • The daffodils leave a long lasting impression on wordsworth, he remembers them later on the couch

    • They make him feel at peace

    • Tranquility of nature and life

  • “It is a beauteous evening”

    • A beautiful evening, its quiet

    • Sonnet

    • Calls for the appreciation of nature

    • Walking with his daughter (dear child)

    • Coastal sunset

    • In Calais, France

    • His daughter doesn’t seem in awe of the sunset, but wordsworth says that is because children have god with them all the time

• Niki Giovanni

  • Princess of black poetry

  • Deals with racial inequality and feminism

  • Received many honorary doctorates

  • Spoke up for women’s rights

  • Racism 101 - Famous work

  • “Ego Tripping”

    • Inflated ego

    • She’s everything

    • The world without a woman is nothing

    • World is a woman

    • Noah, Hannibal, both had mothers

    • “I turn myself into myself and I was Jesus” - When praying you have to look inside for Jesus

    • Women and people are amazing!

  • “BLK History Month”

    • Saying Black History Month is important

    • If its no longer around, who will tell black people that they are same as everybody else?

    • Metaphor, people and the message are the seed, black history month is the water, the wind, and the sun that helps it grow

  • “Poem for a Lady Whose Voice I Like”

    • Some lame guy saying that a black lady wouldn’t have made it in her career if she wasn’t pretty

    • She says that God created black people too

    • He says again that others told him she isn’t that impressive, that other people can do better, he talks again, she says, “that's good”

    • The lady stays positive despite the mans negativity

    • Says shes only making it big because she’s sleeping with white people

    • She says that god made her again, She replies that God:

    • Took a big Black greasy rib from Adam and said we will call this woman and her name will be sapphire and she will divide into four parts that simone may sing a song:

      • Simone is likely the famous black african rights singer and civil activist, talking about four women (a song that talks about stereotypes against women)

    • The guy accuses her of being full of herself, but she says if someone wasn’t full of themselves they would be hungry (idea of ego tripping and people being amazing)

    • “Nikki Rosa”

      • Memories of growing up in a Suburb in Cincinnati

      • Primarily black population

      • Happy with family

      • Strong sense of community

      • Refutes common stereotypes of black people living in hardship, instead focusing on love and connection between everyone

• Rainer Maria Rilke

  • German poet born in Prague

  • Most significant figure in the twentieth century

  • Attended military school and trade school, dropped out and attended University of Prague

  • Divorced

  • Secretary to Auguste Rodin

  • Wanted to make poetry unique and different

  • Said if you were meant to do something you wake up thinking about it every day

    • If you wake up thinking about poetry every day you’re probably meant to be a poet; Have a passion in life!

  • “The Cadet Picture of My Father”

    • Looking at a picture of his dad (his memory)

    • Hands fade first, he is forgetting what his dad’s touch feels like?

    • Memory of his dad is fading

    • Memory fades

  • “Song of the Dwarf”

    • Speaker is getting old

    • He’s ready to die

    • As he's shriveling up he says look at my hands

    • Hands are so important to him because he is a writer, he is losing his talent

    • Is he talking about himself dying or is he losing his talent?

    • Dwarf represents his writing talent

  • “Day in Autumn”

    • People go inside with fall beginning

    • People follow nature

    • As nature changes, so do we

• Theodore Roethke

  • Born in Saginaw Michigan

  • Father (a drunk) oversaw a substantial greenhouse

  • Knowledge of flowers and vegetation

  • Rough family life

  • Uncle died by suicide, father by cancer

  • “My Papa’s Waltz”

    • Being beaten by his dad who is drunk (whiskey on his breath)

    • Mom is upset (frowning)

    • Palm caked hard by dirt (his dad worked in the greenhouse)

    • He doesn’t hate his dad, from a child’s perspective

    • Not necessarily a negative perspective

    • They both love eachother still

    • Clings to his father

  • “Elegy for Jane”

    • Student named Jane dies

    • Her death creates loss, a void

    • Non Romantic love for her 

    • Feels like he doesn’t have a right to mourn her, he’s not her father or partner.

    • Jane seemed like she was shy, felt emotions deeply

    • She had curly hair

    • He is unconsolable, the moss, and the rocks

    • Compared her to a skittery pigeon? And calls her a maimed darling and also a sparrow (death is flying)

    • Death affects everyone

    • Personification of the world makes it seem like nature lives for her

  • “Root Cellar”

    • Cellar root growing in his cellar

    • Cellar is disgusting

    • Pungent and repulsive

    • Plants and soil that are there are strong and determined to live though

    • Boxes, manure, planks, and hardy plants

    • Maybe about how awful life is, life and nature still finds a way?

  • “The Waking”

    • Villanelle

    • the value of taking life slowly, trusting one's intuitions, and learning by doing

    • He wakes to sleep and takes his waking slow

    • Uncertainty of life's direction, life is mysterious

    • Everything in life is a lesson, you learn from your mistakes

• Sharon Olds

  • Still alive

  • Pulitzer prize

  • Abused by her father

  • 25 year marriage, she got cheated on, really affected her

    • Saw a change in her poetry

  • Private person

  • “I go back to May 1937”

    • Parents graduating from Harvard

    • They are pure and innocent and do no wrong

    • She wants to tell them not to do it and be together because awful things are going to happen

    • She knows because she lived through it

    • Stops herself because if they didn’t she wouldn’t exist

    • Paper dolls (bangs them together at the hips like flint, like she’s making a fire, the fire is her)

    • She’s going to tell us what happens so we don’t make the same mistakes as her parents

  • “Sex Without Love”

    • Bitter

    • Writing about her husband

    • How do you make love without being in love?

    • Maybe they are the pure ones

    • Maybe they know they are actually alone

    • We’re all looking for our own best time because the world revolves around you

  • “Size and Sheer Will”

    • Growth and change

    • Boy named gabriel is impatient to grow up

    • Says that if he could age himself in a machine to 16 he would

    • Longs for life when he is older

    • Comparing him to grass I believe

  • “Rite of Passage”

    • Poem about the roots of male violence

    • The poems speaker is a mother of a boy in first grade

    • While watching her son's birthday parties she observes the aggressive at competitive behavior between the boys

    • They try to one up each other with how old they are some are 6 and some are 7

    • Her son says, “We could easily kill a two year old” in an attempt to boast, the other boys agree

    • Initiation into the violent culture of men in contrast to his youth and innocence

    • Then they go play pretend war.

  • “35/10”

    •  Hair is turning gray

    • Her skin is beginning to wrinkle

    • Her daughter is young and becoming an adolescent

    • She wants to spend time with her, but she’s old and going to die while her kid lives on

    • Young replace the old; this is the normal part of life

• Elizabeth Bishop

  • Dad died, mom went insane, so she lived with her grandparents in nova scotia very young

  • Lots of awards (National book award, Pulitzer prize)

  • Wrote armadillo in reaction to Robert lowell's skunk hour, which was about her

  • Lived in brazil for fifteen years

  • North and South 

  • Painter

  • “One Art”

    • Talking about losing things

    • The more you lose things, the better you get at it

    • Lost someone

    • Trying to convince herself she's fine and its not a disaster

    • Admits it's a disaster

    • Repeated words and lines

    • Lyric poem but starts to feel like a villanelle

  • “Sestina”

    • Tears and loss have filled the little girl's life

    • The grandmother believes that the almanac predicted both her sorrow and weather

    • Explores family trauma, the gap between adult understanding and childhood innocence, and the persistence of grief.

    • Grandma and girl laughing and talking at the table while rain falls

    • Grandma suddenly starts crying and the girl draws a house with her father

    • As the girl continues to draw, her father will appear less and less

  • “The Fish”

    • Extended metaphor about how people fight back in life, life always has its setbacks

    • Caught a fish

    • Fish didn’t fight it

    • Fish looks rough, has barnacles, blood and “sea lice”

    • Fish had already been caught at least 5 times prior (it has five hooks and line in its lip)

    • Compares them to medals with ribbons

    • Rainbow oil in the water it came from

    • Let the fish go

  • “First Death in Nova Scotia”

    • Wake held for her cousin Arthur in the family parlor

    • Fascination and unease surrounding the reality of death

    • Realization of death as a child

    • Taxidermied bird (loon) is there and silent since Uncle Arthur killed it

    • Above were colored pictures of royalty

    • Dead bird in relation to arthur’s death

    • Basically about how death is mystic to children, and natural

• Anne Sexton

  • Taught creative writing

  • Committed suicide

  • Won the pulitzer prize for Live or die

  • Born and raised in Massachusetts

  • Worked in boston literary milieu

  • Mental illness and depression

  • Was taught by Robert Lowell

  • Grief

  • Confessional poetry

  • Suffocated herself in her garage at 49

  • “The Starry Night”

    • 11 stars

    • The stars are moving and alive, sky is too

    • Like a serpent or a dragon gobbling up the stars

    • That’s how she wants to die, falling as sleep as night devours her whole

  • “Two Hands”

    • Wonders about the origin of humanity

    • Hands coming up from the sea, one is man the other is woman

    • Themes of creation by god

    • Even simple things are sacred, like drinking coffee and looking at bugs

    • Men and women are interconnected

    • Celebration of the human experience 

    • Humanity brought through divine word

    • Applauding is no sin

    • Part of a larger plan

    • God created us all and everything we do is holy

  • “Her Kind”

    • Death and killing herself

    • Talks not just about herself but other women

    • Witch, homemaker, cart driver women

    • Witch- strong, powerful, single, independent women, must be a witch (salem witch trials). She burnt, Anne says “I have been her kind”

    • Homemaker- A married woman becomes a wife, a woman with a child becomes a mother. She loses herself

    • Driver- She’s got a job, so she’s no good and selfish because she doesn’t take care of her family

• Louise Glück

  • Died last year

  • Poet Laureate of the US from 2003 to 2004

  • National humanities medal

  • Born in NYC

  • Taught poetry

  • No degree

  • Focused on emotional intensity with mythological references

  • Professor of Practice in Poetry at Yale

  • Her dad invented the X-acto knife

  • Had anorexia

  • Divorced then remarried 

  • Her House burned down

  • Sister died before she was born

  • October about 9/11 - Famous Work

  • Died from cancer

  • “Mock Orange”

    • Mock orange is a flower

    • Speaker is disillusioned with sex, romance, and male domination

    • Confessional

    • Personal hurt, sexual experiences, and gender roles

    • Light from the yard doesn’t come from the moon but a mock orange

    • She hates the flowers

    • I think she might be referring to men as the flowers, she calls men an odor “How can I be content when there is still that odor in the world”

    • Feminist ideas, but focuses on the idea that men are the root of women’s problems

  • “The School Children”

    • Children going to school

    • School is framed pretty harshly here

    • Distance between children and mothers while they are at school.

    • Maybe a bit of rivalry between teachers and mothers?? They both need the kids time

    • Mothers sad/anxious sort of while their kids are at school

    • Apple imagery

  • “The Untrustworthy Speaker”

    • Narrator talking to someone says:

    • She puts on a facade

    • She seems smart and passionate but she’s actually a liar and a cheat

    • Has a way with words

    • Everything is subjective to her

    • About the nature of storytelling, can you really trust anyone

    • Mentions her dead sister, purity of her sister vs her own failures

    • Self critical and honest poem

    • Says you have to block out “the older daughter” which I’m assuming means you have to block out innocence in order to see the truth