Michael Bailey

Poetry Response/Explication

This poem is related to Heart of Darkness, but it is also one you may use for a poetry response or a poetry explication or both, if you wish.

Answer the questions for the poetry explication.
Respond with your opinions and feelings for the response.

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

1. What is the title an allusion to?
2. When Yeats wrote this poem, Ireland was in the midst of a brutal war with England, and the Western world had just experienced World War I (which they called The Great War or the War to End All Wars). How would these two events inspire Yeats to write these verses?
3. Based on context, what does “gyre” mean?
4. What figure of speech is “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun”?
5. To what does the “rocking cradle” refer?
6. To what does “Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born” refer?
7. What is the tone of this poem? Give at least three examples that support your answer.

Poetry Explication #4

This is Explication #4.  I misnumbered, so #3 will be forthcoming.

Anyway, if you were not here for this on Thursday, here's your chance to make it up.

Use your copy of "Two Suitcases" or the copy below and complete this assignment.

AP Literature

Imagery

Poetry Explication #4

Theme:  An ingredient of a literary work which gives the work unity. The theme provides an answer to the question: What is the work about?  Unlike plot which deals with the action of a work, theme concerns itself with a work's message or contains the general idea of a work. 

When a person describes a story’s theme, the person is describing what can be learned about life and/or people from the story.  Although sometimes theme is called “the moral of the story,” this isn’t accurate because theme and moral are separate entities.

It is important not to mistake the theme for the actual subject of the work; the theme refers to the abstract concept that is made concrete through the images, characterization, and action of the text.

The following themes have been drawn from “Two Suitcases.”  Using the poem and your notes, write a very brief essay in which you explain how the theme is revealed through imagery.  Use specific references.

Please write the theme you use at the top of your paper.

1. When faced with unspeakable horror and unbeatable odds, human beings still manage to find and maintain hope.
2. The human spirit can only take so much abuse then it finally loses hope.
3. When men destroy children, they destroy their own humanity.
4. The unfinished life of a child is the most tragic loss for humanity.

Two Suitcases of Children's Drawings
from Terezin, 1942-1944

by Edward Hirsch

In memory of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis,Vienna 1898 - Auschwitz 1944

1. A Children's Story

Two suitcases sat on a forgotten shelf
collecting dust
and waited to be remembered

But when the locks were unfastened
the drawings spilled over
like a waterfall
and everyone was drenched

2. Artist Unknown

A drawing that looked like the heavens
tilting on one wing

. . .

A yellow star rising over a blue square

. . .

A paper cut-out with brown paint
of a man hanging

. . .

A watercolor on shiny paper
of a girl in pigtails standing with a sword

. . .

Some wavy green lines on wrapping paper

. . .

An unsigned still life with a jelly jar
filled with meadow flowers

. . .

A drawing in red pencil of a candlestick

. . .

A pasted collage on an office form
of a sunny evening in Terezin

3. What Some of the Class Drew

Zuzga drew the saddest elephant in Block 4

. . .

Karel scribbled his name upside down
under a scrawny camel in the desert

. . .

Liana painted her face on a tin plate

. . .

Franta sketched a sleepy ballerina
lifting her leg over a wooden practice bar

She called it Memory of a Dancing Girl

. . .

Petr signed his name in the water
that swirled around the deportation train

. . .

      Sofia crayoned starlight in a dark room

. . .

Frantisek outlined his own hand

. . .

Mir glued an ambulance from the Red Cross
on semiglossy yellow paper

. . .

Elly drew a thick diagonal line
but the line needed a partner
and could not live on the paper alone

. . .

Raja penned an angel with braids
coasting like a hawk over the infirmary

. . .

Olga created Paradise with Forbidden Fruit

. . .

At twelve
Helga was too old for the children's class
and so she illustrated her father's book

God Came to Terezin and Saw that It was Bad

4. Children's Voices Spilled Out

This evening we walked along the street of death
We saw them taking away the dead in a wagon

. . .

Don't forget about me
deserted house in the ghetto

. . .

We made pets out of our fleas

. . .

I couldn't help laughing
when the mustached man with a bald head
checked Mama's head for lice

. . .

My suffering took a number

It got in line

. . .

We listed all the things we couldn't do
like jumping around on our beds at night

We called the game No Skipping

. . .

I dreamt my parents got drunk on wine vinegar
and forgot to have me circumcised

. . .

Somewhere out there in the trees
far away from the barracks
childhood is still waiting for me

. . .

The moon was like a soldier
with a bandaged head

The bandage was soaking wet

. . .

The heaviest wheel rolls across our forehead

. . .

When you cut the veins of the piano
and let the blood flow through the notes
grief had a new name

. . .

Your eyes were as dark as skullcaps

Your forehead was as heavy as the heavens before it rains

. . .

Papa was one of the skeletons
harnessed to a funeral cart
carrying bread to the canteen

. . .

To make me laugh
the man with a long beard
wriggled his eyebrows

. . .

Hunger drained the last grays from his face

. . .

The yellow dandelions flew around our heads
like butterflies

. . .

Butterflies vanished

5. Parables

This is a guard with a stick

This is a stick with a heart

This is a heart with a horseshoe

This is a girl flinging the horseshoe
at a guard

. . .

The boy drew a suitcase on scrap paper

He folded the paper and put it in a suitcase

He left the suitcase open in the rain

. . .

All night the girl looked out the window
until the window disappeared
and there was no girl

. . .

The simple son was pulverized
by the back of a rifle

The wise son forgot to ask

. . .

We disliked the ancient story
of the sacrificial lamb
who wandered into a slaughter yard

and yet no one revised it

. . .

No one in dormitory L410 remembered
if the Talmud was written
in black letters on white fire
or in white letters on black fire

. . .

Some people despise the color green
because it is the offspring
of a mixed marriage
between celestial blue and earthly yellow

. . .

Someone was always shouting at us
in a language we didn't understand

The Tower of  Babel had become a pit

. . .

She painted herself light blue
when she felt like a flute

She painted herself dark blue
when she felt like a cello

She painted herself black and blue
when she was bruised into silence

. . .

He drew a German shepherd inside a cage
and blackened the cage with a crayon

It was sealed shut
but he could hear the dog barking at night

. . .

The passive element of the blue in red
could still make her sad

and the purple light sinking to black
echoed a grief that was scarcely human

. . .

We did not make graven images
we made images from the grave

. . .

Not even the teacher
who studied at the Bauhaus
could draw the face of God

. . .

The Rabbi said that Adonai
hides in the Hebrew alphabet

but we didn't know Hebrew
and we didn't believe him

. . .

Someone wrote in tiny letters in pencil

I don't believe God forgot us

but someone else scrawled in thick letters in pen

I don't believe

God forgot us

6. The Art Teacher

Frau Brandeis said that every object tells a story
if you look hard

She said that art supplies perspective
and engraves memories

She said that childhood is genius

and she praised her teachers who believed
in seven axioms

Force Intensity Form Dimension
Character Composition Color

She believed in mixing pigments
and drawing from nature

She taught exercises in composition
and breathing

She spoke of positive and negative forms
and the rhythm of geometric shapes
and the musical keyboard of color

Often we drew with charcoal
to the colorful sound of her voice

She said that we are like mortar
or stone in a fresh building

She told us to imagine ourselves
as an open window or a rising staircase
or a bamboo tree growing in bursts

She said something about the emancipated line
and the aspirations of the vertical

She praised the illuminating hand

Light absorbed her

. . .

It still seemed natural for her
to pass around pencils and paper

She said
The wisdom lives in the pencil
and the paper remembers everything

. . .

But no one drew pictures anymore
after the materials ran out

and the art teacher
was deported

7. Art Project

Cut 15,000 pieces of paper into dolls
Each piece of paper represents one child

Now start a bonfire
and burn 14,900 of the paper dolls

Keep 100

8. The Angel of Mercy

did not get up

It did not unleash our thirty-thousand wings

. . .

Smoke from the oncoming trains blackened our faces

. . .

Fog invaded the camp

The sky was like a blackboard
clouded with erasures

. . .

The coward moon cowered in the clouds

. . .

The city spires pretended to be asleep

Stars muffled their lights

. . .

The sun at night witnessed everything
from a secret place behind the bridge
but it was too frightened to rise

. . .

All the transports headed East into nothingness

. . .

Brushes forgot themselves

Pencils expired

. . .

Someone stuffed the drawings into two suitcases

. . .

The drawings whispered like secrets in the dark

. . .

The secrets were a children's story

. . .

The story waited patiently to be told

. . .

Two suitcases sat on a forgotten shelf
collecting dust

9. The Injunction

At the end of the story
the locks were fastened again

The new teacher shut the school
and went home

. . .

But the waterfall did not stop
and the magic suitcases could not be closed

. . .

The injunction was scribbled in a child's hand

Whoever looks at these drawings
shall stand under the waterfall
and remember

10. Far Away

Somewhere a blue horse floats
over a sloping roof

and a kite soars away from its string

The Whipping
Robert Hayden

The old woman across the way

     is whipping the boy again

and shouting to the neighborhood

     her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,

     pleads in dusty zinnias,

while she in spite of crippling fat

    pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling

     boy till the stick breaks

in her hand.  His tears are rainy weather

     to woundlike memories:

My head gripped in bony vise

     of knees, the writhing struggle

to wrench free, the blows, the fear

     worse than blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I

     no longer knew or loved . . .

Well, it is over now, it is over,

     and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against

     a tree, exhausted, purged--

avenged in part for lifelong hiding

she has had to bear.

Born Asa Bundy Sheffey in 1913, Robert Hayden was raised in a poor neighborhood in Detroit.  He had an emotionally tumultous childhood and was shuttled between the home of his parents and that of a foster family, who lived next door.  Because of impaired vision, he was unable to participate in sports, but was able to spend his time reading.  In 1932, he graduated from high school and, with the help of a scholarship, attended Detroit City College (later Wayne State University).

Hayden published his first book of poems, Heart Shape in the Dust, in 1940.  He enrolled in a graduate English literature program at the University of Michigan where he studied with W. H. Auden.

Hayden's poetry gained international recognition in the 1960s and he was awarded the grand prize for poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966 for his book Ballad of Remembrance.  In 1976, he became the first black American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (later called the Poet Laureate).  He died in Ann Arbor

In 1976, he became the first black American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (later called the Poet Laureate). He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1980..

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

The assessment on "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" follows:

Poetry Explication #2

 
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
by Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, 
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. 
They do not fear the men beneath the tree; 
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty. 

Aunt Jennifer's fingers fluttering through her wool 
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull. 
The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band 
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand. 

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie 
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by. 
The tigers in the panel that she made 
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

***********************************

Use the poem to answer the following questions.  You may answer the questions on the back of this sheet.  Be sure to support your answers with information from the text.

1. The poem gives clues about Aunt Jennifer's relationship with her husband. Describe their relationship and support your answer with quotes from the poem.
2. The tigers are an obvious symbol, but what do they mean?  What words and phrases does Rich use in order to convey the symbolic meanings of the tigers?  This question seeks your opinion and understanding.  Give it and prove it.
3. What does this poem suggest about the role of women in marriage and in society? 
4. What makes this a “feminist” poem?

Hint:  Aunt Jennifer is sewing needlework of some kind, most likely cross-stitching.  The needles and wool make reference to that.  Ivory needles were used before metal and plastic needles, so it is likely that Aunt Jennifer is from an earlier time, say the late 1800’s or the early 1900’s.

Vocabulary:

prance:  move in a sprightly manner; walk with lively steps

pace: walk back and forth

sleek:  smooth and shiny; well-groomed

topaz:  transparent brown gemstone; yellowish brown color

denizen:  resident

chivalric:  relating to knights and the knight’s code of honor

ordeals:  difficult experience

ivory: material made from elephant’s tusks; creamy white

panel:  flat rectangular piece of wood, here used to frame the needlework.

***************************************************************************************

For an interesting essay about this poem, go to the following link:

http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/aunt.html

Poetry Responses for Black History

This week’s selection is dedicated to the Black poets of America who have made and are making significant contributions to American literature.  Please read the biography that precedes each poem.

Read each of the poems carefully.

Choose one poem and write a thoughtful response to it.  The response is your personal reaction and opinion of the poem.  Think deeply about the poems.  Be honest in your reflections.  This assignment is about engaging poetry and allowing poetry to engage you.

The response should be at least one-half page in length.

This response is due on February 8, 2008.  It is worth 20 points.

*****************************************************

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917 and raised in Chicago. She is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, including Children Coming Home (The David Co., 1991); Blacks (1987); To Disembark (1981); The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems (1986); Riot (1969); In the Mecca (1968); The Bean Eaters (1960); Annie Allen (1949), for which she received the Pulitzer Prize; and A Street in Bronzeville (1945). She also wrote numerous other books including a novel, Maud Martha (1953), and Report from Part One: An Autobiography (1972), and edited Jump Bad: A New Chicago Anthology (1971). In 1968 she was named Poet Laureate for the state of Illinois, and from 1985-86 she was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She also received an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Frost Medal, a National Endowment for the Arts award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lived in Chicago until her death on December 3, 2000.

*****************************************************************

The Mother

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,

The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,

The singers and workers that never handled the air.

You will never neglect or beat

Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.

You will never wind up the sucking-thumb

Or scuttle off ghosts that come.

You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,

Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed

               children.

I have contracted. I have eased

My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.

I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized

Your luck

And your lives from your unfinished reach,

If I stole your births and your names,

Your straight baby tears and your games,

Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,

               and your deaths,

If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,

Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.

Though why should I whine,

Whine that the crime was other than mine?--

Since anyhow you are dead.

Or rather, or instead,

You were never made.

But that too, I am afraid,

Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?

You were born, you had body, you died.

It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.

Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you

All.

3rd, 4th, and 6th Periods began the study of Diction by reading and analyzing "I Wandered Lonely as  Cloud."

This poem is representative of the Romantic period of Literature.  William Wordsworth, the author of the poem, was the Poet Laureate of England from 1843-1850.  A poet laureate is the official title of a well-known poet who is selected by the government to write poetry for specific national events.  The current poet laureate in England is Andrew Motion.

The current US poet laureate is Charles Simic whose poem "The Spoon" was recently featured in the Poetry Responses #1 packet.

5th Period moved ahead and wrestled with "Miniver Cheevy."  We discovered that Miniver was a sad little man who lived in a dream world and refused to face his real life. 

Tomorrow we confront "Delight in Disorder."

What a day!

Okay, this is going to be interesting.

Depending on what class you were in, we discussed the following:

1. Cloverfield
2. Monsters
3. Fish
4. The Collective Unconscious
5. The Dream World
6. Master Fish
7. Master Fisherman
8. Triumph in a boat
9. Diction
10. Daffodils
11. Touchy feely poem
12. Ghosts, vampires, spirits
13. Deja vu
14. dreams of death
15. anima
16. animus
17. archetypes
18. Baptism
19. ambiguity
20. miscellaneous stuff

There you have it.  Today's lessons.  You had to be there.

Poetry Explication

In class today, students completed the following assignment.

If you were not in class on Friday, you will need to complete this.

Poetry Explication

Write a well-developed paragraph of 75-150 words in which you provide as much of the following information as is applicable.  Don’t merely answer the questions in order.  Weave the answers and observations together in a coherent manner.

A.       Identify the title of the poem, the author

B.       Describe the poem’s literal meaning.  What is its subject?  Its theme?

C.       Who is the speaker?  What is the speaker’s point of view?

D.      What is the tone of the poem?

1. What sort of attitude, mood or emotion does it convey?
2. Does the tone shift?  If so, how does it contribute to the theme?
3. Is it happy, sad, humorous, angry, nostalgic, serious, frivolous, sarcastic, ecstatic, grotesque?
4. Is there irony: a discrepancy between what is stated and what is meant, conveyed through a tone of voice or contradiction between words and the matter at hand?

E.    How do the voice and tone contribute to the theme and overall effect of the poem?

The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of its mouth.

He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in

the terrible oxygen

--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly —
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
— It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
— if you could call it a lip —

grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels — until everything

was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Vocabulary for poem:

1. venerable: worthy of respect as a result of great age, wisdom, remarkable achievements, or similar qualities
2. speckled: with a pattern of many small spots or small irregular patches, often of a contrasting color
3. barnacles: a small invertebrate animal with a shell that clings to rocks and ships
4. rosettes: patch of color or a marking resembling the open flower of a rose, especially a cluster of spots on the fur of a leopard
5. entrails: an animal's or person's internal organs
6. peony: a large ornamental shrubby plant. Flowers: large, globe-shaped, red, white, pink. Native to: Europe, Asia, North America.
7. irises: the colored part of the eye that consists of a muscular diaphragm surrounding the pupil and regulates the light entering the eye by expanding and contracting the pupil
8. tarnished: lose shine and become dull because of oxidation or rust, or make something do this
9. isinglass: transparent or translucent gelatin made from the air bladders of various fish, especially the sturgeon. Use: clarifying agent, in adhesives and jellies.
10. sullen: showing bad temper or hostility by a refusal to talk, behave sociably, or cooperate cheerfully
11. crimped: to fold or press the ends or edges of something together
12. bilge: the part of a boat below the water where the sides curve inward to the keel
13. bailer: a bucket, dipper, or other container used for bailing.
14. thwarts: a crosswise seat or transverse member on a rowboat, canoe, or similar small boat
15. oarlocks: a U-shaped pivoting metal rest attached to the side of a boat, in which an oar rests
16. gunnels: the top edge of a boat's sides that forms a ledge around the whole boat above the deck

My Last Duchess

We read "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning today and discovered that the Duke was not happy with his wife's friendliness toward others.

The speaker of the poem was the Duke who was showing off the portrait of his late wife.  He may have had her killed because she smiled at everyone and did not focus exclusively on him.

The Duke lent the poem an arrogant tone as we discovered that he saw people as objects to be possessed and not to be loved.

My Last Duchess
Robert Browning

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
"Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
"Must never hope to reproduce the faint
"Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart how shall I say? too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men good! but thanked
Somehow I know not how as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech which I have not to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
"Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
"Or there exceed the mark" and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and make excuse,
E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of

Innsbruck

cast in bronze for me!

My Last Duchess
  Robert Browning