Understanding the Literal

Richard Cory - Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Literal level

SPEAKERSETTINGSITUATION

What's Implied – (What kind of town? What’s the conflict? What can we speculate?)

Tone is the emotional atmosphere of the poem. How do we know this?

Hearing and Seeing a Poem's Sounds and RhythmsIn poetry the form and the content (images, theme, point of view) are mixed together. The music of a poem should reinforce and represent the poem's meaning. Rhyme is part of this music. Consider the following poem by Robert Frost.

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Rhythm can also be visual. It can be sculpted to represent the content it contains. Consider the Poem 15 from the series "A Coney Island of the Mind" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

Constantly risking absurdity

and death

whenever he performs

above the heads

of his audience

the poet like an acrobat

climbs on rime

to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

above a sea of faces

paces his way

to the other side of day

performing entrechats

and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

and all without mistaking

any thing

for what it may not be

Look at the shape of these lines from "Death" by George Herbert:

Death, thou was once an uncouth, hideous thing,

Nothing but bones,

The sad effect of sadder groans:

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

Poems about AnimalsThe Thought Fox – Ted HughesI imagine this midnight moment's forest:Something else is aliveBeside the clock's lonelinessAnd this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:Something more nearthough deeper within darknessIs entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;Two eyes serve a movement, that nowAnd again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snowBetween trees, and warily a lameShadow lags by stump and in hollowOf a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,A widening deepening greenness,Brilliantly, concentratedly,Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox,It enters the dark hole of the head.The window is starless still; the clock ticks,The page is printed.

1. Identify the speaker:2. Setting: 3. Say what the writer is doing. Read the 2nd stanza4. What is happening?5. What could that “something” be?

Read the 3rd, 4th and 5th stanzas6. Punctuate the stanzas with three full stops (.) that you will place as logically as you can.7. Highlight verb and nouns groups. Using them, write a sentence in prose that says what it is doing8. What effect does the repetition of “now” create? 9. Read l.17 again. What effect does punctuation create? 10. Read l.22 : is the animal real, a metaphor or both?

Read "Poetry in the Making" on the next page and answer the questions.Does this advice apply to this poem? Study words, rhythms, sounds, images and punctuation.

Poetry in the Making – Ted Hughes

This is hunting and the poem is a new species of creature. (...) I have simplified everything a great deal, but on the whole that is the story. Some of it may seem a bit obscure to you. How can a poem, for instance, be like an animal? Well, perhaps it cannot look much of a giraffe or an emu or an octopus, or anything you might find in a menagerie. It is better to call it an assembly of living parts moved by a single spirit. The living parts are the words, the images, the rhythms. (...)

So, as a poet, you have to make sure that all those parts over which you have control, the words, the rhythms and images, are alive. That is where the difficulties begin. Yet the rules, to begin with, are very simple. Words that live are those which we hear, like "click" or "chuckle", or which we see, like "freckled" or "veined", or which we taste, like "vinegar" or "sugar", or touch, like "prickle" or "oily", or smell, like "tar" or "onion". Words which belong directly to one of the five senses. Or words which act and seem to use their muscles, like "flick" or "balance". (...)

Luckily, you do not have to bother about it so long as you do one thing. That one thing is, imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic. If you do this you do not have to worry about commas or full-stops or that sort of thing. (...) You keep your eyes, your ears, your nose, your whole being on the thing you are turning into words.

You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature. Taken from Poetry in the Making, Ted Hughes, 1967

Explain how a poem can be an animal. How can a poet bring a poem, his animal, to life? Make a list of tips Hughes gives us to write poetry.

TASK: You are now going to write a poem about a pet. It can be your pet if you have one.

Think of the animal’s physical qualities, its character, the way it moves etc before writing. Think of a context (is your cat sleeping on the sofa or chasing insects in the garden?).

Follow Ted Hughes’s tips to write your poem. Create a list of words you are going to use to write your poem. Choose your words carefully.

When you are ready, you can start writing your poem. Try to include figures of speech and enjambments. Try to create a rhythm and work on the prosody too.

Think about your animal before writing and look up words to describe it and your perception of it. Create a list of vocabulary associated with your animal.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire – Gerard Manley Hopkins

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Identify the allusion in this poem.

How is the animal used to convey meaning?

Identify three (3) poetic devices in this poem.

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,She looked so limp and bedraggled,So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,

Or a wizened aster in late September,I brought her back in againFor a new routine--Vitamins, water, and whateverSustenance seemed sensibleAt the time: she'd livedSo long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,Her shriveled petals fallingOn the faded carpet, the staleSteak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!--The dumb dames shrieking half the nightOr the two of us, alone, both seedy,Me breathing booze at her,She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me--And that was scary--So when that snuffling cretin of a maidThrew her, pot and all, into the trash-can,I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,I was that lonely.

TASK: Write a poem based on any object in your room. Make this object a person that (who) you love. Give it eyes, lips, actions, feelings. In other words, make full use of personification as a tool to express your loving feelings about this object.

POETRY PORTFOLIOHYPERBOLE – a large exaggerationEX: - I’m so hungry I could eat a horse! SIMILE – A comparison between two objects using “like” or “as”EX: - I’m hungry like the wolf.METAPHOR – A comparison between two objects – NOT using “like” or “as”EX: - I’m a ravenous wolf.PERSONIFICATION – giving an inhuman thing human qualitiesEX: - The tree waved it’s arms.ALLITERATION – repetition of a sound at the beginning of two or more neighboring wordsEX: - See Sally Stand by the Sea ShoreONOMATOPOEIA – words that sound like their meaningEX: - WOOOSH! The stars penetrate the earth’s atmosphere.

EXERCISE: Identify each of the figurative devices below:____________Seeing the snowman stand all alone (Richard Wilbur).____________It smells like diapers!____________The cat murmured ‘hello.’____________Crash! The plates fell to the floor. ____________Jenny ran as fast as cheetah____________She has the eyes of a fox____________ I’ve heard that a million times before!

POET BIOGRAPHY

Please use these questions as a guideline:

Where/When he/she was born/died Key events in his/her life How the poet came to be a poet List of major works Analysis of one (1) poem Picture

Length: 1 pageSome potential poets:

Robert Frost W.B. Yeats John Keats Emily Dickinson

William Wordsworth Dylan Thomas T.S. Eliot Edgar Allan Poe

Langston Hughes W.H. Auden Richard Wilbur Seamus Heaney

Writing an Ode

A ode is a poem that tells great or different about an object, person or place and why the writer likes it so much.

Choose a person, place, or thing. Describe it. What is it like? How does it make you feel? Why do you feel this way?

Revise your lines following these steps: Add details to make the reader see, taste, feel, touch, smell your subject Order the remaining lines into their best sequence. Don’t be too repetitive.

ODE TO TOMATOESProvide examples of:

Time:

Place:

Colour:

Touch:

Personification:

HAIKU

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry. It is usually about nature.

Ode To Tomatoes-Pablo Neruda

The street filled with tomatoes, midday, summer, light is halved like a tomato, its juice runs through the streets. In December, unabated, the tomato invades the kitchen, it enters at lunchtime, takes its ease on countertops, among glasses, butter dishes, blue saltcellars. It sheds its own light, benign majesty. Unfortunately, we must murder it: the knife sinks into living flesh, red viscera a cool sun, profound, inexhaustible, populates the salads of Chile...

You write them like this: Line 1: 5 syllablesLine 2: 7 syllablesLine 3: 5 syllables

MAKE YOUR OWN!

LittleStrangeDelicateBrightYellowRedWhiteBlueLostQuiet

ButterflyFlowerMountainLeavesMoonSunFrogLakeCloudSeed

FloatingPlayingDancingGrowingStandingLookingRestingLaughingWalking

OverAgainstUponBehindWithOnUnder Next toAcross

The flowersThe treeThe snowThe waterThe skyThe windThe roadThe hillThe mist

SpringWinterSummerAutumnThe nightMorningAfternoon

Is beginning.Is over.Time.Perfume.Coming.Breeze.Dream.

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

Shakespeare wrote a total of 154 poems, mostly dealing with such themes as love, beauty and nature. Contains 14 lines – 3 quatrains(4 lines) and a couplet(2 lines) Written in iambic pentameter. An iamb is metrical foot in poetry. Example: Aha! (duh-DUH). A pentameter

is five iambs.

My Mistress' Eyes

A My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,B Coral is far more red than her lips red,A If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;B If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.C I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,D But no such roses see I in her cheeks;C And in some perfumes is there more delightD Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.E I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowF That music hath a far more pleasing sound;E I grant I never saw a goddess go;F My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground;G And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare,G As any she belied with false compare.

What does the 1st quatrain describe?

What does the 2nd quatrain describe?

What does the 3rd quatrain describe?

What does the couplet summarize?

What is unusual about these descriptions? Are they typical descriptions of a loved one?

1st quatrain – introduces the theme/topic

2nd quatrain - the theme is shown with an example

3rd quatrain – a conflict or twist

Couplet – summarizes the theme with an image or

message.

My Poetry Anthology Grading RubricStudent Name:

Description Point Value Points Earned

Title page included with necessary information (title, name, period, teacher name) 5

Table of Contents page included with necessary information 5

Anthology contains appropriate examples of six types of poems

Poem type: Animal Poem 5

Poem type: Free Verse 5

Poem type: Sonnet 5

Poem type: Haiku 5

Poem type: Love Poem 5

Poem type: Psalm 5

Poem type: Ode 5

Reflection on your favourite poem(1/2 page) 5

Anthology contains appropriate examples of the following poetic elements:

Alliteration 5

Personification 5

Metaphor 5

Allusion 5

Simile 5

Assonance 5

Onomatopoeia 5

End rhyme 5

Hyperbole 5

The anthology includes a poetic terms page 5

Each poem includes visual representation. 5

Biography of a famous poet 10

Total

Errors (punctuation, grammar, spelling, etc.) 1pt. each

Total – Errors = Grade