Elegy Or Ode

Elegy or Ode

Rough Draft Due:______

Final Draft Due:______

Points:______

Assignment: Write either an elegy or an ode of 80-150 words. This structure of this poem is entirely up to you, however, you must make use of structure, space, line-breaks, and stanzas in a poetic and artistic manner. The poem must contain concrete language, imagery, and avoid “telling” the reader how or what to feel. Additionally, the poem must include a “flash-back”. The time frame of the poem must touch on the present and refer to the past. You must make these references clear and the “flashback” must sustain for the length of a “stanza” (say roughly 4 lines or 25- ish words) at a minimum.

Elegy: An elegy is a poem of lament or grave meditation. An elegy mourns a loss. The loss may be personal: the death of a close friend or important person; or touch upon more esoteric subjects such as the loss of a love for nature in modern attitudes; or mourn the general plight of humanity, such as the inevitability of human weakness. An elegy is not an obituary: focus on feelings of loss and sadness, not how wonderful the “departed” thing was when it was around.

Ode: An ode is a poem of praise and admiration. In an ode the poet typically looks at one aspect of a particular thing and offers variations on admiration in each stanza. The most basic way to do this is to choose something and write a stanza appealing to each of the senses.

Elegy for Jane (My student, thrown by a horse) -Theodore Roethke

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils; And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile; And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her, If only I could nudge you from this And she balanced in the delight of her thought, sleep, My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon. A wren, happy, tail into the wind, Over this damp grave I speak the Her song trembling the twigs and small branches. words of my love: The shade sang with her; I, with no rights in this matter, The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing, Neither father nor lover. And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth, Even a father could not find her: Scraping her cheek against straw, Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here, Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow. The sides of wet stones cannot console me, Nor the moss, wound with the last light.