Steps for Appreciating, Understanding, and Analyzing Poetry English IV AP 2019-2020 Dr. Vendler, a Harvard professor, suggests a series of questions that students might ask about a poem as they read. The following steps for exploring poetry are an abridged and modified version of “Exploring a Poem—Chapter 4,” Helen Vendler—Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology ​ 1. Antecedent Scenario—What has been happening before the poem starts? What has disturbed the status quo and set the ​ poem in motion? (This may not be applicable to all poems, but it is helpful to consider.) Remember, we don’t want to assume ​ the poet is the speaker/personal of the poem. So we are considering this scenario from the speaker’s perspective. 2. A Division into Structural Parts—Because small units are more easily handled than big ones, and because the process of a ​ poem, even one as short as a sonnet, can’t be addressed all at once with a single global question like “What’s going on here?” we divide the poem into pieces. Notice the poet’s use of stanza, end stops, caesuras, or enjambment to determine where there are breaks in ideas. Basically, we need to figure out the “paragraph” organization. 3. The Climax—In lyric poems, the various parts tend to cluster around a moment of special significance—which its attendant ​ parts lead up to, lead away from, help to clarify, and so on. The climax usually manifests itself by such things as greater intensity of tone, an especially significant metaphor, a change in rhythm, or a change in person (P.O.V. or speaker) 4. Tone—Read the poem aloud now as if it were your own utterance. This activity will help you to distinguish the various tones ​ of voice it exhibits and to name them. Use the structural parts that you identified to help you make note of tone shifts. 5. Speech Act—When we classify poems by their speech acts, we draw attention to their manner of expression more than to ​ their content. I can apologize for any number of things—my tardiness, or my mistakes, or my clothing—but in each of these cases my speech act (whatever its content) is an apology. Similarly, I can protest about time, or death, or love—but in every case, my speech act is a protest. Since the language of most poems can be thought of as a series of utterances by a speaker, the poem expects you to track the person’s successive speech acts, just as you might do in life when you might say, “First, she criticized me, then she apologized, then she explained why she was upset, and finally she asked if we could still be friends.” A poem’s speech acts need to be followed and identified in the same way. This is how can come to understand the meaning of the poem. Use the structural parts to identify multiple speech acts. Listed below you will find a list of various speech acts (this is not an exhaustive list, but it just meant to give you some ideas). ACKNOWLEDGING EXCLAMATION PRAYER ADMISSION EXHORTATION – conveying QUESTION APOLOGY urgent advice REBUTTAL APOSTROPHE GENERALIZATION REMINISCENCE BANISHING IMPRECATION – a spoken curse REQUEST BOAST INVOCATION – a form of prayer RHETORICAL QUESTION CELEBRATION invoking God’s presence SCORNING – open contempt or CLAIM LAMENT disdain COMMAND NARRATION SELF-BLAME DEFINITION OATH VOW DIALOGUE PLEA 6. Images or Sensory Words—Linked words (referring especially to the senses of sight and hearing) help to structure many ​ poems. These words can be all of one sort (a collection of names of different flowers, for instance in Milton’s “Lycidas”) or they can be of different sorts: that is, a series of specific nouns like “flood,” “earthquake,” “fire,” and “shipwreck” can all help to construct the single abstract category “catastrophe.” There are systematic ways in which the concrete words that some refer to as “images” may be assembled, too: they may be arranged in parallel, or in contrast, or in a ranked hierarchy. What has the poet’s imagination invented that is striking, or memorable, or beautiful? 7. Meaning—How do all of these elements work together to create meaning in the poem? What greater implications does the ​ poet want us to reflect on about society or about ourselves? Poetry Packet One Art by Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master though it may look like (​Write​ it!) like disaster. Storm Warnings by Adrienne Rich The glass has been falling all the afternoon, And knowing better than the instrument What winds are walking overhead, what zone Of grey unrest is moving across the land, I leave the book upon a pillowed chair And walk from window to closed window, watching Boughs strain against the sky And think again, as often when the air Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting, How with a single purpose time has traveled By secret currents of the undiscerned Into this polar realm. Weather abroad And weather in the heart alike come on Regardless of prediction. Between foreseeing and averting change Lies all the mastery of elements Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter. Time in the hand is not control of time, Nor shattered fragments of an instrument A proof against the wind; the wind will rise, We can only close the shutters. I draw the curtains as the sky goes black And set a match to candles sheathed in glass Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine Of weather through the unsealed aperture. This is our sole defense against the season; These are the things we have learned to do Who live in troubled regions. The Century Quilt by Marilyn Nelson Waniek My sister and I were in love with Meema’s Indian blanket. We fell asleep under army green issued to Daddy by Supply. When Meema came to live with us she brought her medicines, her cane, and the blanket I found on my sister’s bed the last time I visited her. I remembered how I’d planned to inherit that blanket, how we used to wrap ourselves at play in its folds and be chieftains and princesses. Now I’ve found a quilt I’d like to die under; Six Van Dyke brown squares, two white ones, and one square the yellowbrown of Mama’s cheeks. Each square holds a sweet gum leaf whose fingers I imagine would caress me into the silence. I think I’d have good dreams for a hundred years under this quilt, as Meema must have, under her blanket, dreamed she was a girl again in Kentucky among her yellow sisters, their grandfather’s white family nodding at them when they met. When their father came home from his store they cranked up the pianola and all of the beautiful sisters giggled and danced. She must have dreamed about Mama when the dancing was over: a lanky girl trailing after her father through his Oklahoma field. Perhaps under this quilt I’d dream of myself, of my childhood of miracles, of my father’s burnt umber pride, my mother’s ochre gentleness. Within the dream of myself perhaps I’d meet my son or my other child, as yet unconceived. I’d call it The Century Quilt, after its pattern of leaves. John Donne Poetry - Personal Symbols and Conceits The Flea by John Donne Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Thou know’st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do. Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, nay more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is; Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met, And cloistered in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that, self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it sucked from thee? Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now; ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be: Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me, Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee. SONNETS Sonnet Notes Here: Death be not proud by John Donne (Holy Sonnets) Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.