Poetry in Eb

Spring and Fall

 1.  Hopkins’s short lyric shares some elements with the sonnet, but it is a nonce form, invented for this poem only. Hopkins’ idiosyncratic meter, which he dubbed “sprung rhythm,” uses accent marks over certain syllables. What is the dominate meter and line length? What is the rhyme scheme? Describe the poem’s structure.

            Meter-7 and 8 syllables            lines- 15 lines                rhyme scheme- couplets separated by an odd line 9

2.  What is the effect of the frequent use of alliteration in the poem? Combined with assonance and consonance, what mood does this device create?

            The alliteration and the sound devices create a sad mournful mood.  They create a rhythm that makes it feel as if it was meant to be and that there is little to nothing that we as man can do in hindsight.  “ by an by, nor spare a sigh”  “worlds of wanwood”  “heart heard”  It sounds like a eulogy.   

3.  Comment on the effect created by such unusual diction as Goldengrove and unleaving (line 2), fresh (line 4), wanwood and leafmeal (line 8), springs (line 11), and blight (line 14). How do the connotations of these words create the poem’s mood?

            Margaret does not want to leave Goldengrove.  Unleaving is a double negative that throws the reader off.  The language is uncommon, creating a sense of distance.  Death is created through the loss of matter and connections.  Distance = death.  The plant matter (leafmeal) is alluding to Margaret’s death. 

4.  Anaylze the poet’s use of figurative language.  How doe it suggest the theme of the poem?

            The figurative language is showing how there is a season for everything.  Everything is of the earth and will return.  No matter how misshapen man makes something it will return to the earth. 

  

The Oven Bird

1.  Frost’s poem, like Hopkin’s, borrows from the sonnet form.  What is the meter, rhyme scheme, and structure?

            Meter-decameter (one-two-tri-pl-et-tri-pl-et-two –one)

rhyme scheme-aabcbdcdeefgfg

structure-fallows the meter (a)-(a)-(b-c-b)-(d-c-d)-(e)-(e) + an ending quatrain

2.  Paraphrase the three messages of the oven bird, then analyze the meaning of the word fall as it encapsulates the theme of the poem.

            The bird is warning the others of the limitations of their happiness.  All good things come to an end.  The Fall of spring/growth.  The Fall the Season.  The fall of man “But that he knows in singing not to sing”.—allusion to Eden and the tree of knowledge.   

3.  Paraphrase the last four lines of the poem.  How does the oven bird symbolize the human condition?

            Human condition- help those who can’t help themselves.  Experience v. Inexperience.   The bird is experienced and lets the others know through song that Spring does not last.

            He would stop but he knows he must not sing as if happy but to warn the others of their mistake.  The good times will end and then where will the birds be.  What are the birds to do if the end is to come.

            Frost has a pessimistic view on good things.  If they all end what is the point in celebrating or singing.    

The Story We Know

1.  Describe the Villanelle by explicating the stanza pattern and the rhyme scheme.  How many different end rhymes?  Sounds repeated #?  Last stanza use of rhyming words?  How appropriate to poem? 

            The poem is 6 stanzas, 5 tercets, having a rhyme scheme of aba and one final quatrain rhyming abaa.  The author repeats “the story we know” in the ending of multiple stanzas to emphasize its importance.  This is chorus of the poem.  It is the most basic part of the poem or song.

2.  Isolating the B-rhymes give the list.  What is the significance of each of these words. 

            Fine-it is the usual response to the Question: How are You?  In the “Hello”, or greeting between two peoples that makes up life or “all we know.”

            Wine-It is the delicacy added to lunch for the special purpose of emphasizing the relationship between two that just began.  “The way to begin is simple, sane, Hello.”

            Nine-It is symbolic of the end of the relationship, the end of the day. 

            Line- There is no attempt to save the relationship.  No attention paid to the fine print.  The line is the next pick-up, the next “Hello.” 

            Pine-the tall pine is the end in sight.  Combined with the snow and the wintery weather and temperature the mood is cold and dead.  The relationship is dead or coming to its death. 

            Sign-the sign is the inevitable death of the relationship.  It is the struggle to keep it alive even though it is understood that it will ultimately come to an end. 

3.  Incremental repetition adds effect.  What variations in meaning are present in the following groups of repetitions and what is their effect?  Lines

1-same. Hello

            6- sane, Hello

            12- same Hello

            18-end. Hello,

            Hello is the beginning of all relationships.  It all starts with one simple gesture an expression of interest.

3-Good-bye at the end

            9- Good-bye in the end

            15- Good-bye is the end

            19- Good-bye is the only

Good-bye is the end of all conversations.  Just like Hello it is basic and simple, like no and yes. 

            3-every story we know

            9-this is a story we know

            15-every story we know

19-we know, we know

            The repeated phrases may appear the same but behind each one is a different feeling.  Each repetition equals a different stage in a relationship and thus each one is a different type of Hello or Good-bye.  At firat it is a simple gentle hello but then it is a little more complex because a house is built upon it.  Thirdly it turns into a monotonous hello after the pages have turned and time has gone by.  Fourthly it is a complete understanding of the harsh and cruel way in which the world works, the blunt interpretation of Hello, Good-bye.  There is no meat in the middle because all things come to an end, a pessimistic view; no relationships are worth while if the all end.  What’s the point in building a bridge if the wing is going to blow it over?    

Bilingual Sestina

1.   Sestina?

The poem is 6 stanzas of 6 lines and a 3 line ending stanza.  Words are repeated at the end of each line in this pattern, abcdef, faebdc, cfdabe, ecdfad, deacfb, bdfeca.  It ends using all of these repeated words in the last

3 line stanza.

 

2.  What is the effect of personification and allusion?  What is the Spanish counterpart to each?  Sum stanza 1.

The author personifies the English language as “snowy, blonde, blue-eyed, gum chewing”.  She compares the English language to a ditzy blonde who mindlessly chews gum.  The language has no deeper meaning or thought, compassion.  The first stanza says, some things just can’t be said in English like they can in Spanish, camas, nombre.  The accents and use off the palette evoke a deeper meaning in the word.   

 3.    Mood in stanza two?  Language=mood?

The mood in stanza two is one of regret and disparity towards the authors troubled perplexed position.  “the sounds of Spanish wash over me like warm island waters as I say your soothing names.”  “a child again learning the nombres of things you point to in the world before English turned sol, tierra, cielo, luna ti vocabulary words…”  The English language is a antagonist to the author.  It belittles the effects of romance language.  The pause—in the poem creates a negative feeling towards the English vocabulary words that follow. 

4.   Stanzas two and three, difference between names and vocabulary words?  Morivivir illustrated this gap.  The genii metaphor and the nature of language?

Words are only a mere representation of the actual thing that they name.  In no way can a word create the same feeling within the person using it as the actual tangible object that it names or the experience it describes.  Words are frail susceptible parts of language.  Language is frail, limited by its own components, much like the internet and AOL and text messaging.  They all create a false feeling, not the true natural amazingly complex feeling that the morivivir created.  As children this plant was so unique that even morivivir could not describe it.  The “playing dead”, in English, even that name does not do justice to the plant.  It is sheer genius, the creation and sight of this plant, wilting as if it were dead on impact as to survive predation and immediately after returning to “health”.  The “genii in a bottle” is referring to the truth that is hidden behind the language.  No word can rub the lamp or the bottle to get the magical feeling to come out.  Language is limited much like a genii.  Trapped within its own limits.

5.   Stanzas 4+5 speaker involves Gladys and Rosario from her childhood, why?  How is her sensitivity to words inextricably bound to Spanish, her first language?  What is significant about the allusion to Adam, the first man? 

The author refers to her childhood to show how the world is different viewed form both languages.  As a child her innocence is compared to Spanish and as an adult her responsibilities of life are compared to English.  Spanish is playful and deep.  English is monotonous and work oriented, it gets the job done the best and fastest way possible.  Adam was the first uncorrupted man.  She was at first uncorrupted by English and now that the author knows it she cannot forget it.  It is like the sin that Adam committed in the Garden of Eden.  English to the author is sin to Adam.  Like Adam there is a deep desire to fix what went wrong just as man strives for good, the author strives for Spanish her native language.      

Death Be Not Proud

1. Sonnet?  What variations are notable, and what is their effect?

The poem is 14 lines long consisting of three quatrains and one couplet..  Its rhyme scheme is abbaabba cddcee.  The poem is not a standard Shakespearean.  It is not iambic and does not follow any standard rhyme scheme.  Perhaps this is why it is “modern”, unconventional.

2.  Describe Donne’s use of apostrophe and personification.  There enhancement of experience?

     

      Death is created as a person.  It has thoughts and actions.  Death is nothing but an event and yet the author creates a character out of it.  Death is a poor, death shall die.  The apostrophe is death it is not tangible and yet it attacks man and can die.  The author creates a tone using the personification and apostrophe, one of hope and action.  No more sitting around worrying fearing.  No more fear, heroic, against an intangible evil, death.

3.  Paraphrase the quatrains and couplet.

     

      Death don’t be proud,  some call you
      strong and fear worthy, but you aren’t

      For who you kill, you are deceived

      Poor death, you can’t even kill me

      Form rest and sleep, which you claim to be,

      But are obviously much more

      And soon the best men will fall to you

      There bodies sleep, but their souls?

      You are the means of fate, chance, kings, and criminals

      You deliver through poison, war, and sickness

      Drugs and mental confusion can make us sleep

      But better sleep than serve you; what are you gonna do

      One final sleep and we wake eternally

      And death is no more, for we are already dead, and thus you do not exist

To Death

1.      Describe the form and structure of the poem.

The poem is 16 lines of rhyming couplets. 

2.      Which details personify death? Effect?  Speakers attitude towards death?  Request?

“King of Terrors”  — strikes fear into the reader.  Consonance

“The king, the priest, the prophet”    — repetition the magic triplet

“Thy swords, thy racks, thy wheels”—triplet, he is every where acting through any medium

“My business is to die and thine to kill”—-acceptance —fate

Death is this enormous inescapable entity.  It is like god, it has smaller entities that put it in direct contact with its parishioners.  It is thy fate.  Scrooged, the ghost of Christmas future.—that’s what I see     

  

3.      Paraphrase the (1-6) (7-12) (13-16).  FigurativeàLiteral 

Everyone is susceptible to death, even the elite, the priests, the kings, even Jesus, god’s son.  It commands respect. This is why I know I will die.

There are so many deaths that I fear.  Not death but the pain and anguish involved in so many deaths, the unpreparedness of random deaths.  If I can be spared of the toils of death then I am fully ready to be taken.  I realize that man is mortal, without death there is no life.  Take me slowly and peacefully out of this world.  

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