POETRY
JOURNAL: Students will be asked to keep a poetry journal rather than have reading quizzes during the poetry section of this class. .
JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT DUE by 10 March: You will turn in a 14 page journal booklet; please STAPLE the pages together in booklet form! Please number each page of your booklet and include a cover and Table of Contents. Each page should contain both a written response AND visual imagery.
Please avoid heavy binding. You can handwrite the responses (neatly) or type them. If the visual images are from the internet, then they must be in collage form to avoid having to cite each image. You can also create your own images (photography, painting, drawing, etc.). You should not turn in a heavy notebook... just one page for each response bound together in some way.
This is worth 150 points. Here's what should be on each page-- one entry per page, please:
1-6. The syllabus allocates 6 class periods to poetry. Choose at least ONE poem from each day that you are assigned poetry; this will take up 6 separate pages of your journal. On each page, you will need to list the title of the poem, the author, the time period it was written/poetry "genre", at least 3 significant quotes from the poem, the theme/main idea/message of the poem, and a personal response to the poem (i.e., discuss it). You will also need to include visual imagery (i.e. pictures, a collage, drawings, etc.) to represent each poem. Your favorite poem should be part of these 6 entries; tell me why it was your favorite.
7. A journal entry (title, author, 3 quotes, short 3-5 sentence explanation) on a Romantic poem NOT covered in class. You can choose any poem by Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelly, Bryon, or Keats. What makes this poem "romantic" by the literary definition of the term? Include visual imagery to represent the poem.
8. Remember Rimbaud-- he quit writing by age 20. Read a Rimbaud poem not covered in class, and write a response to it (including quotes), and tell how it fits with the "Symbolist" genre. Then, discuss what you think about what Rimbaud accomplished at so young an age. Think about yourself at the age you are now; what do you plan to accomplish by age 20 (if you are past 20 already, then what did you think you would accomplish by that age)? How do you feel about his accomplishments? Don't forget the visuals!
9. ORIGINAL POEM. What is your favorite word? Define it. Why is it your favorite? Now look up a random word in a dictionary and define it. Write a poem that incorporates that word and your favorite word.
10. Short Response: Remember our discussion of "Transcendentalism"? Did you ever consider that all living things are connected? What is something that you do, or can do, in your life to escape this consumer-driven society and reflect upon nature? Would you trade all of your "things" for a more peaceful, more simplistic life? Why or why not? Connect your discussion to a "Transcendentalist" poem... use quotes from the poem in your response. Remember to include which poem you are using and the author, as well as some visuals!
11. Read Frost's "The Road Not Taken". Discuss a specific decision that you've had to make in your life. Talk about what that path led to. Then, imagine you had made a different decision; how would that path have differed? Examine the concept of how each decision we make in our lives can alter our course forever. Include visuals.
12. Remember Frost and "Birches"... what is your "birches" moment? First, talk about that poem a bit. Then, describe something that takes you right back to memories of your childhood. Include visuals.
13. Remember Eliot and "Prufrock"? Imagine he is a real person that you met at a party. If you met Prufrock, who is stuck and "unable to presume", what would you tell him; what advice would you give him? Use quotes from the poem in your response. Visuals.
14. Remember Thomas' poem about his father ("Do not go gently..") and Carver's about his father ("A Photograph")... what do you imagine your father was like at your age? Have you ever bothered to ask, or are you guessing? What is one question you need to ask your father (or closest caregiver) before it is too late? Include a few quotes from either poem in your discussion. Include Visuals.
15. The final 10 points of the journal grade will come from presentation: Do you have a cover? A Table of Contents? Page Numbers? Etc...
This assignment is worth 150 points!
Links to Rimbaud Poems: (Not in your textbook)
“The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!” -Rimbaud
"Vowels": http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Vowels.html
"The Drunken Boat": http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Boat.html
"The Sleeper In the Valley": http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Sleeper.html
My Poetry:
The Answer.
It is found within the bird
On the tree branch, bending;
It is found within the leaf
On the tree branch, bending;
It is found within the bark
On the tree branch, bending.
It is the fine distinction
Between living and life;
The present-moment pause
That rejoices in recognition;
The reconceived irony
Set to the music of the soul.
It is carried swiftly, slowly by
A brisk wisp of air,
A chill-swept bitter mist
That embraces it slightly
As if only for a brief, fleeting moment.
In solace we find the knowledge
That it is also within us, deep-
Deep within the pit of our reflection.
We hear it in the rhythmic tapping of our heart;
We feel it in the invisible touch rumbling across our skin;
We see it in the silent, dark corner of our thoughts…
If only rarely, if only
In a bended moment of realism.
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Beginning Clause.
I found a cause
On the side of the road
It was discarded and waiting, ready
To be picked up by a suspecting emigrant
In search…
I picked up the cause
And went in search of an antiquated clause
That would define its terms
To aptly inept seekers
Prompted for an appeal to emotion
Lackluster with reason,
Content with discontent,
In need of…
I brushed the dirt off of the cause
And recognized its inordinate beauty.
When I was rushed for time, I swept it under my rug-
A safe habitat for this message;
And when the seekers quit seeking,
I ran with the cause.
I tucked it deep down in my throat, where there would be no escape.
It settled in my gut. Several times, in its efforts to be heard, it caused an inconvenient
mechanism that emitted a dark melody from my blood.
In time, I may regurgitate said cause, and leave it by the side of the road, so that some
suspecting vagabond might pick it up and give it a new home.
End Clause.
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Poetry Terms: Metaphor, Simile, Imagery, Personification, Assonance, Alliteration, Stanza, Meter, Onomatopoeia, Rhyme, Rhythm, Sonnet, Ode, Haiku, Prose Poem, Open Form/Free Verse, Pastoral, Meditation, Euphemism, Symbolism, etc...
Poetry Movements: (Not all-- just the ones we are studying!)
19th Century: Mid-1800's-- The ROMANTICS. A group of poets emerged in England beginning with Blake that expressed teh sentiments of Romanticism. Among the group were Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Their poetry was characterized by sensibility, primitivism, love of nature, interest in the past (esp. Medieval), mysticism, individualism, and a reaction to neoclassicism. The Heroic Couplet was abandoned for Blank Verse, the Sonnet, the Spenserian Stanza, and experimental verse forms. Fresh language replaced poetic diction; the rural life was idealized; the wild, irregular, grotesque, unrestrained imagination, human rights, etc. were of interest.
Late 1800's: The SYMBOLISTS: Emerged in France as a poetic movement. Among the most famous of these poets are Baudelaire, Mallarme, Valery, Verlaine, and Arthur Rimbaud. For these poets, human beings were thought to have lived in a "forest of symbols". Its response is immediate, unique, and personal. Teh poet tries to convey personal, immediate responses during fleeting moments. The poetry is sometimes reduced to a "medley of metaphors". The symbols sometimes lack apparent logical relations; what results is poetry characteristically indefinite, like experiences, the conscious effort to use the words for evocative musical effect without much attention to precise meaning. Synaesthesia is common. They were influenced by Poe and influenced many poets to come, including T.S. Eliot (father of Modernist Poetry). The poetry is beautiful and deep, and often very dark.
Victorian: emerges in the mid-late 1800's in England. The ideal of communicating with nature (Romantics) became seen as less plauisible during the Victorian era. Industrialization, poverty, population growth, and mass transportation gave a sense that the world was rapidly changing. Matthew Arnold posed that LIT could help anchor people to their world, the modernization of which would lead to a loss of faith, particularly in religion. However, the belief in the ability of poetry to affect lives remained. Arnold believed that poetry could be serious and elevating. Later the view of "art for art's sake" was born... a dichotomy was created between art and science. The period also included Realists and Naturalists (as well as Symbolists).
The MODERNISTS: The period that emerged with the first World War in 1914, marked by the strenuousness of that experience and by a flowing of talent and experiment. It ended around 1965 when the uncertainty gave way to anger and protest. T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" is the single most important poem of the period in poetry. The literature is marked by a strong and conscious break with tradition and imagination that has its reference within itself; it implies historical discontinuity, alienation, loss, and despair.
THE BEATS: This group of American poets emerged in the 1950's and 60's in romantic rebellion against American culture. Their revolt was expressed through loose structure and slang diction. They opposed establishment values for intellectual freedom often associated with religious ecstasy, visionary states, or the effects of drugs (much like the symbolists). Their ideology included primitivism, orientalism, experimentation, eccentricity, and a reliance on inspiration from modern jazz and earlier visionaries liek Blake and Whitman. Among the leading Beat poets were Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, and Burroughs.
POSTMODERNISTS: contemporary writing (since 1965ish), particularly in reference to the use of highly experimental verse forms. Teh philoso[hical assumption of Modernism are coninued to a heightened sense in postmodernism. However, their also exists a denial of order, a presentation of a highly fragmented universe, and anti-novels and anti-heros become commonplace.
MUSIC: The most popular form of poetry present day! Poetry started out as "music", as early poems were sung to the accompaniment of an instrument called the LYRE. Many otherwise traditional poets, like Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, The Beatles, etc. turned to the outlet of the music industry in order to put food on their tables. Some even publish books of traditional poetry. Some literally write their songs following traditional verse forms and rhyme schemes (like Trent Reznor). A song is just a poem put to a beat!
