Plane wreck at los gatos poem analysis

221

Unit 3: Reading & Writing About Poetry

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

48

C H A P T E R 4

Writing about Poetry

xperts generally acknowledge poetry as the oldest form of literature, but the “problem of defining it is the problem of defining its extraordinari-

ness,” as one critic observes. The earliest poetry we know is narrative poetry, which reflected the his-

tory, celebrations, beliefs, and mores of ancient peoples in the Egyptian offer- ing lists, utterances, and papyri; in the Greek epics, the Indian Vedas, the Norse sagas, the Hebrew Old Testament, the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, and elsewhere. Robert Graves called these narratives a “dramatic shorthand record.” Cicero believed that the poet performed invaluable service by record- ing the deeds of national heroes and noblemen. What poetry is and what it does are questions that have been debated for centuries.

Matthew Arnold said, “There are two offices of poetry—one to add to one’s store of thoughts and feelings—another to compose and elevate the mind by sustained tone, numerous allusions, and a grand style.” Arnold’s is a late defini- tion of poetry which for centuries had been considered a kind of fiction, wherein stories were told and a “faigning” (feigning) observable. Sir Philip Sidney thought poetry was “distinctive” because it joined philosophy and history, a theory that John Donne also believed. William Wordsworth in his Preface saw the debate about what poetry is as one concerned with the differences between “matter of fact and science.” He was joined in this opinion by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Leigh Hunt. There is for all discussion, however, one monumen- tal difference today between poetry and prose, and it is that prose mimics ordi- nary speech, while poetic language is extraordinary in the selection of words it uses and in its metrical rhythms. A stanza from Donne’s sardonic “Song” (Go and Catch a Falling Star) provides an example of unusual language filled with bite and imagery:

Go and catch a falling star Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,

E

222 ENGL200

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy’s stinging,

And find What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

In this single stanza we find stated divisions between “matter of fact” and sci- ence, and myth and personal observation. (Donne, after a rakish youth, became a clergyman.) Prose, it was believed by the leading Romantic writers, was better suited for scientific exposition than poetry. Thomas Mann insisted that it was “a fruitless and futile mania” for critics to keep probing for differences between the works of prose writers and poets. Ezra Pound agreed, saying that “all essays about ‘poetry’ are usually not only dull but inaccurate” and without value.

Poetry is further distinguished by structure or form and its use of meter, which produces rhythm and rhyme. Conversely, some poetry relies heavily on imagery and very little on rhythm and rhyme. In sum, the now traditional dif- ferences between poetry and prose are these: poetry may be written in meter, but prose is not; poetry may use rhyme, while prose does not; poetry most often uses “a special language,” but, for the most part, prose does not. (Joyce, of course, would be one of several exceptions.)

The major characteristic of poetry as it evolved through the ages has become its ability to distill monumental themes down to their essences. (We rarely today see a poem that fills a book, like The Iliad or The Odyssey.) In a time when Ameri- cans are said to be upset by global politics, the following two poems might be con- sidered not only prophetic, but good examples of the distillation of themes that have always concerned us. The first, “America” by Claude McKay, is in tradi- tional, fourteen-line, iambic pentameter, sonnet form. The second, by e. e. cum- mings, “next to of course god,” is in “open” or “free verse” form. Consider not only the topic, but the differences in structure, language, and tone:

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth! Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength against her hate. Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet as a rebel fronts a kind in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

• • • “next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims; and so forth oh

Chapter 4 Writing about Poetry 49

Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e 223

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

say can you see by the dawn’s early my country ‘tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute.”

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

A single reading of a poem, short or long, is not enough to perceive its meaning, for a poem is somewhat like a mystery to be solved, or a language to be understood. Poetry should be studied line by line. Because of its na- ture to compress or distill, every word in a poem tends to bear more weight than every word in a story or novel. “Sound out” a poem; read it aloud to detect what silent readings may not offer up. Better still, go to poetry read- ings remembering that poems were originally sung and that there are still places in the world where poets and sometimes musical instruments are called singers.

It is important to know when, approximately, a poem was written; as suggested in the fiction section, it is also helpful to know something about the author and his or her life. A poem’s title may also give you a clue as to its theme, and with each reading you’ll discover more about the work and find yourself responding to it. That’s what the poet wants; that’s what any writer wants, because the crucial importance about a poem is that you, the reader, come to feel what the poet wants you to. If this occurs, that means you have penetrated his or her imaginative arena, unlocked the mystery, un- derstood the language.

Poets, being “the athletes of language,” according to Robert Boynton, are forever challenging our ability to keep up with them. They are like drummers in the band called Literature: they set the pace, diminish or aug- ment it with new or different chords, “sound,” images, signals. If we as players somehow lose the beat, we need only “listen” closely to the drum- mer to get back to it. Poetry is not confined to books; folk singers, blues singers, rockers, and rappers are “the poets of everyday,” their lyrics per- haps more current, but certainly linked to the way many people have thought and felt over time.

Your understanding of and sensitivities about popular music may help you with the study of poetry and strengthen the confidence you have in your ability to understand, enjoy, and write about poetry. Like fiction, poetry tells us stories, but they are stories in miniature. The poet leaves it to you to open the work and see his or her world in which you, too, live.

50 Part 2 The Elements of Literature

224 ENGL200

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

THE ELEMENTS OF POETRY

When you have come to feel the importance of a poet and the special qualities of his or her work, you have reached the stage where you should be capable of writing critical essays about that work. However, critical writing requires that you deal with the major elements of poetry, which are detailed in the follow- ing section.

Types of Poetry

Broadly and structurally speaking there are two basic kinds of poetry. The first and by far the more traditional, is the “closed” form, which follows a pat- tern that we may find in a sonnet or villanelle, “heroic” or “blank” verse (verso sciolto). Closed poetry abides by rules of form set down long ago and rarely departs from them. These rules determine the length of each line, and where rhyme and accent are placed. Of course, as poetry evolved, various authors experimented with the traditional forms.

The “open” form, often called “free verse” or vers libre, is considered to be an American-created form as opposed to the closed forms, which are Euro- pean. The open form relies heavily not on rhyme and not necessarily on the traditional metric feet that create rhythm, but on a perhaps more subtle rhythm called “cadence,” and imagery.

Beneath the headings of closed and open are many types of poetry, easily a dozen or even more, which are variations of three major styles in poetry: narrative (treated earlier in this chapter), dramatic monologue, and lyric. Matthew Arnold characterized the monologue as being “The dialogue of the mind with itself.” Believed to be popular only since the Middle Ages, it never- theless is rooted much deeper in the poetic imagination, back to the epics and sagas and papyri, to the Greek plays, which are written in poetry. Everyone knows the beginning of Hamlet’s soliloquy (or monologue)—“To be or not to be,” spoken while Hamlet ponders revenge. The critical situations of charac- ters in all literature have always been the ideal times for them to range about within themselves for solutions. In the following example of dramatic mono- logue, Alfred, Lord Tennyson places “Ulysses” in a very special place located between the allegorical renderings of Dante and the myths related by the Homerian Iliad and Odyssey. In this section, Ulysses from afar contemplates the virtues and perhaps defects in his son:

This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere

Chapter 4 Writing about Poetry 51

Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e 225

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

“Ulysses” is in blank verse—metered in iambic pentameter without rhyme. It is a closed poem.

Lyric poetry is distinguished by the personal posture of the poet—how he or she views the world. The language is strong yet plain and striking. We are made aware of the world around us through the personification of the ele- ments of which it is composed. Yet lyric poetry is controlled through its struc- ture which defines it, too, as closed, as we see in Wordsworth’s “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”:

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would be he of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This city now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did the sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

William Wordsworth became the standard-bearer of lyric poetry (lyric: “fit to be sung with a lyre or harp”), with his 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads (first edition; there were three). By contrast, in the United States Walt Whit- man “said his ‘God be with you’ to the European poets and then parted com- pany with them irrevocably . . . and with his American colleagues, too. He sang no sweet songs, but long, loosely metered chants,” wrote critic Max Herzberg. Leaves of Grass was Whitman’s mark upon the land and mind of America in 1855, and, shortly after, the world.

An example of Whitman’s innovative open poetry is his “Cavalry Cross- ing a Ford,” set during the Civil War:

A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands, They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical

clank, Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink, Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the negligent rest

on the saddles, Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford—while, Scarlet and blue and snowy white, The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.

52 Part 2 The Elements of Literature

226 ENGL200

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

“Calvary Crossing a Ford” contains very long lines and some short lines. Ba- sically, the language is not used to yield thundering interior or metric rhythms. Like a serpent (“serpentine course”), the cavalry winds from one bank of the river to the other. The emphasis is on alliteration, the repetition of consonant or vowel sounds at the beginning of words: “A line in long array”; “emerge . . . opposite . . . others . . . entering . . . flags flutter . . . .”; “Scarlet and blue and snowy white” not only is alliterative, but has a subtle rhythm as well. The intent of this open poem is to create a picture through word images, and a single picture usually captures one event in progress, “narrates” one story that opens on a wider world. In this case that world is the Civil War.

Voice and Tone

Tone is the “voice” or attitude we encounter in a poem. Tone tells us the way the poet feels about you, himself or herself, the world. Gwendolyn Brooks’ diction in “The Bean Eaters” is designed to make us feel a very particular way:

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good. Two have lived their day, But keep on putting on their clothes And putting things away.

And remembering . . . Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that

is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, Tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Describe the tone of “The Bean Eaters.” Note the several images that high- light the condition of these elderly people, and the empathy Brooks expresses. In some ways there is a similarity between the determination of the couple to “keep on” doing things and Ulysses’ pledge “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield” (in the final stanza). In Brooks’ poem, also note the structure with both short and long lines, and rhyme, though it is irregular. Is the poem open, closed, or a combination of both?

Note the differences in tone—attitude—and structure between Brooks’ poem and Cyn. Zarco’s poem:

Asparagus

There’s a washcloth with a picture of asparagus in my bathroom.

Chapter 4 Writing about Poetry 53

Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e 227

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

Did you know that Filipinos were picked to grow asparagus in the West because they were short and built close to the ground?

I’m 5′3″. I don’t use that washcloth anymore.

There is a cleanness and brevity of line in this poem that contains a tone of de- fiance about the past—and the future. It is an open, lyrical poem, but you have to fill in some of the story.

Sound is frequently associated with voice and tone. But the creation of sound in a poem, that is, making you seem to hear sound, is a process of dic- tion. Poets select certain words that we have come to associate with certain sounds. “Splash,” “buzz,” and “hiss,” for example, are commonly associated with water, flying insects, geese, and serpents. The Greek word onomatopoeia simply means naming a thing or action by imitating it vocally. Sound often may be sensed in the way a poem is written, for example in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” before we are actually aware of the sound. But do remember that most poets think about sound because their work traditionally was heard, not read, although there is much poetry written today primarily to be read. The utilization of rhythm, meter, alliteration, assonance, and dissonance (see the glossary on page 159) are crucial in producing sound in a poem.

Imagery and Symbolism

Poetry would not be poetry without imagery (words and phrases that address the senses) and symbolism (words that evoke additional meanings beyond their literal significance). Homer gives us the “rosy-fingered dawn” and the “wine-dark sea,” images that have lingered more than 2,000 years. An image, may be created with one or several related words used to make us feel that we are “living in a poem” through hearing, feeling, tasting, seeing, or smelling.

The Symbolist movement began in France late in the nineteenth century. Its members believed poetry could better express and explore the human psy- che by recreating human consciousness through symbols, which often reflect inexpressible emotions. In the United States, the “Imagists” were the Ameri- can counterparts of the Symbolists.

Sometimes the major image in a poem is indicated by its title, as in Imagist Amy Lowell’s “Taxi”:

When I go away from you The world beats dead Like a slackened drum. I call out for you against the jutted stars And shout into the ridges of the wind. Streets coming fast, One after the other,

54 Part 2 The Elements of Literature

228 ENGL200

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

Wedge you away from me. And the lamps of the city prick my eyes So that I can no longer see your face. Why should I leave you, To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?

All the related images employed here define a situation. What is it, what’s going on? How does the text of the poem fracture the “I” and “you” found in five of the twelve lines? Is this an open or closed poem?

In poetry (and fiction) the function of symbolism is to stand for a state of mind instead of representing a specific object. For example, in everyday life, we know that the green light tells us that we may walk across the street, while the red one advises us not to. The red, white, and blue flag with thirteen stripes and fifty stars is a symbol having many meanings to Americans. If the flag were green with black stripes and red stars it would have very little meaning for most of us because, as Kenneth Burke wrote, “A symbol is the verbal parallel to a pattern of experience,” and our experiences have prepared us not for green, black, and red, but red, white, and blue, the flag that stands for the United States of America.

Some poets take standard symbols and create new ones that have refer- ence to the old, familiar ones. For it is in the nature of poetry to create newer and possibly more accurate symbols for the world we know. The first and final stanzas of Gerald Vizenor’s “Haiku” offer us familiar symbols with un- common meanings:

october sunflowers like rows of defeated soldiers leaning in the frost

october wind garage doors open and close wings of the moth

Although the term “image” calls up something we have seen, in poetic terms we are considering specific, related words that have to do with sensual (the five senses) experiences.

A symbol, on the other hand, stands for something other than what it is.

Simile and Metaphor

A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things from different cate- gories, using signal words such as “like,” “as,” and “seems.” A metaphor also makes a comparison between unlike things but without these signal words.

“Johnson is as tall as Bird” is not a simile, but “Johnson is as tall as a small tree” is, because of the dissimilarity of the references or comparisons. Similes use “like” or “as”—“He ran like the wind.” Metaphors also substitute one thing for another, hence “tree” for “Bird.” Aristotle believed that the ability to find resemblance in disparate things was “the best gift of the poet.”

Chapter 4 Writing about Poetry 55

Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e 229

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

In Maya Angelou’s “To a Husband” we find powerful metaphors in the opening lines:

Your voice at times a fist Tight in your throat

Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms In the room,

Your hand a carved and Skimming boat

Goes down the Nile To point out Pharaoh’s tomb.

Note the absence of “like” in the first and fifth lines of the stanza. Analogy is often associated with simile and metaphor. It presumes a re-

semblance between two things. This example is from Francis Bacon: “Money is like muck, not good unless it’s spread.” Allusion, also to be found in this com- pany, is an indirect reference to some person, place, object, or event within a literary work. Babette Deutsch’s poem, “Disasters of War: Goya at the Mu- seum,” alludes to a famous painting by Francisco y Lucientes Goya (1746–1828) that hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

Diction and Syntax

Diction is the conscious manipulation of language. It has been described as the clothes words wear. But, since words wear out with use and become cliché, for permanence as well as poetic sensibility, diction should suggest rather than state. And the use of symbolism, metaphor, and simile, which in themselves require linguistic knowledge and dexterity, can only be effective through judi- cious diction—the selection and use of poetic language.

Syntax is the way words are organized in order to have meaning; words so formed become sentences and phrases, which in turn can become poems, stories, novels, or plays, or today’s big newspaper story. The word selection or diction in Octavio Paz’s “Engaged” is supported by a syntax that seems decep- tively repetitious:

Stretching out on the grass a boy and a girl. Sucking their oranges, giving kisses like waves exchanging foam.

Stretched out on the beach a boy and a girl. Sucking their limes, giving their kisses like clouds exchanging foam.

Stretched out underground a boy and a girl. Saying nothing, never kissing, giving silence for silence.

The poet has described, with slight differences, places where there are always “stretched out” “a boy and a girl,” who are “giving” their kisses until

56 Part 2 The Elements of Literature

230 ENGL200

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

the final stanza. Then the first and last two lines surprise. We want to say at the end, “Wait a minute,” and reread the poem to absorb that final differ- ence, not so much in the syntax, which led us there, as much as the place that makes the disruption in behavior, tone, and meaning. Note the similes within the syntax.

Meter and Rhythm

In Greek, meter means metron or measure. Most consistently used in closed po- etry (which need not necessarily be “traditional”), meter is the regular recur- rence of a pattern of rhythm or rhythms in lines of poetry; meter is the beat we can relate to just as in music. If you think of the poems you remember best, you might discover that they were rhythmical as well as rhymed. Critic John Mid- dleton Murry wrote: “There is a background of metrical sameness separating us like a curtain from the practical world; there is a richness of rhythmical variation to make the world in which we are, worthy of attention.” Rhythm is formed by the stress (or accent or beat) on certain syllables within what are called “feet” in lines of poetry. Some words are naturally stressed, others naturally not, so an- other function of diction is not only to select the right words to make the point of the poem, but to select the right ones with the right stress or lack thereof. In poetry written in English, the typical metrical feet are iambic (

� ′), trochaic (′

� ),

anapestic ( ��

′), and dactylic (′ ��

). Scansion is the method of analyzing the kind of meter and number of feet used in a poetic line.

Ben Jonson’s “Still to Be Neat,” which follows, is an example of a rhythmi- cal (and rhymed) poem containing precisely four feet in each line but with in- teresting metrical variation. Try “scanning” each line.

Still to be neat, still to be drest, As you were going to a feast; Still to be pou’dred, still perfum’d: Lady, it is to be presum’d, Though arts hid causes are not found All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: Such sweet neglect more taketh me, Than all th’adulteries of art. They strike mine eyes, but not mine heart.

You wonder if Jonson is writing about Art or Woman—or both—here, but it is the striking control of meter that creates the rhythm that in the first place entraps us in the poem long enough to examine its theme.

Theme

As indicated in the section on fiction, theme is the essence of subject, which is more general. In that section, poet Wilfred Owen was contrasted with fiction writers Tolstoy and Hemingway. Here is another poet, perhaps the greatest,

Chapter 4 Writing about Poetry 57

Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e 231

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

William Shakespeare, who within the constraints of the fourteen-line sonnet (number 116), addresses the durability of true love:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no; it is an ever-fixèd mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken: It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Themes in literature provide us with the tools we require for understand- ing a work. But theme is never stated; we arrive at it through action and in- sight when we have worked our way inside a story, novel, or poem.

INTERPRETING POETRY

When we say “work our way inside,” we mean knowing a work of literature as well as we can. Reading and rereading a poem, aloud as well as silently, is one step to interpreting poetry. Another, as in fiction, is to know under what cir- cumstances a poem was written. This, of course, additionally means knowing something about the author, and the more the better since, obviously, poems do not write themselves. Exercising your knowledge of the elements of poetry is a crucial factor in interpretation.

While there can be several interpretations of a work, there are always common elements that writers consider. Decide what kind of poetry is under discussion, dramatic monologue, lyric, or narrative (or a combination of them). Are you writing about closed poetry with its traditional rules, or open poetry which tends to make its own rules? Unlike a story, remember, a poem will render a great theme down to its essences, its most important aspects. Critical analysis requires that, early on in your paper, you state clearly what the theme is. Once you know that, you can then find the elements in the poem to support your opinion that the theme is what you think it is. If you are right, discuss the clues that led you to this conclusion, the words, the images, the lines and their formations.

Should your assignment be to compare two poems, the process is essen- tially the same. For example, given Shelley’s “Ozymandias” and Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” you might arrive at somewhat similar themes that suggest, in sinister fashion, a warning to humankind. Both are set in unworldly locations; both possess an ominous, sometimes eerie tone, yet both are by lyrical poets

58 Part 2 The Elements of Literature

232 ENGL200

Muller−Williams: Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e

II. The Elements of Literature

4. Writing about Poetry © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2005

who use meter, rhythm, and rhyme to convey meaning. The most obvious point of contrast, on the other hand, is in the length of the two poems, the brevity of Shelley’s, and the length and growth of power in Coleridge’s.

Although Coleridge was born twenty years before Shelley, who drowned at 30, both were influenced by Wordsworthian ideals and the philosophies of the Age of Reason, which are other comparisons you can make. Coleridge died at 62, but the lines in his “Kubla Khan” remain, as Rudyard Kipling said, “the most magical in the English language.”

EVALUATING POETRY

If your instinct for liking what is good has served you well, trust it now. That is the starting place for evaluating a poem. A good poem should have mean- ing for you; it should make you think or wonder—and then think and wonder again about its content.

Not all poetry, however, is good, even if it has been published, but it still may be worthy of your consideration. If you examine rhythm or cadence in a closed or open poem, you should be critical of the poet’s ability to maintain the beat; if it has broken down without any plausible reason, perhaps the poet tired of maintaining it, or forgot to. This failure might be one that caused you not to like the poem, though you may not have known the reason why.

If a poem has relied heavily on images you do not understand, or offers no hope whatsoever of being made clear, your evaluation will of course be negative, and rightly so. (Some poets work hard not to be understood.) Other poets, while seemingly accessible, are more subtle with the elements they em- ploy, and you may find their work seductive. A poem with an abundance of metaphors or similes is one with too many images. On the other hand, a poem stingy with these and other elements that poetry requires may offer too little to engage you. Imprecise diction may echo like a wrong note played on a mu- sical instrument, but recall that it was the precision of most of the diction that called your attention to the imprecision in the first place. Look for what bounces best off your own sensibilities, taking note of the advice suggested above. It may be worth knowing that for many poets, a poem remains an un- finished work; he or she will often go back to even an already published work in some cases and change something in it, which he or she believes will make it better. For most of us, good poetry makes us feel a way we cannot always explain other than to say, “good.”

Chapter 4 Writing about Poetry 59

Ways In: Reading and Writing about Literature and Film, 2/e 233

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Spirituals, Blues, Folksongs

Go Down, Moses © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2000

Go Down, Moses1

American Folksong

When Israel was in Egypt’s land: Let my people go,

Oppress’d so hard they could not stand, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, 5 Way down in Egypt land,

Tell ole Pharaoh, Let my people go.

Thus saith the Lord, bold Moses said, Let my people go; 10

If not I’ll smite your first-born dead, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

No more shall they in bondage toil, Let my people go; 15

Let them come out with Egypt’s spoil, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

When Israel out of Egypt came, Let my people go; 20

And left the proud oppressive land, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

O, ’twas a dark and dismal night, Let my people go; 25

When Moses led the Israelites, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

’Twas good old Moses and Aaron, too, Let my people go; 30

’Twas they that led the armies through,

1 “Go Down, Moses” was taken from J. B. T. Marsh, The Story of the Jubilee Singers, revised edition, 1881. By the 1880s, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers were a leading concert attraction, singing spirituals which had been little noticed in the years prior to the Civil War. Hampton Institute, Tuskegee Institute, and other schools soon followed with their own fund-raising groups.

234 ENGL200

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Spirituals, Blues, Folksongs

Go Down, Moses © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2000

Let my people go. Go down, Moses, &c.

The Lord told Moses what to do, Let my people go; 35

To lead the children of Israel through, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

O come along, Moses, you’ll not get lost, Let my people go; 40

Stretch out your rod and come across, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

As Israel stood by the water side, Let my people go; 45

At the command of God it did divide, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

When they had reached the other shore, Let my people go; 50

They sang a song of triumph o’er, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

Pharaoh said he would go across, Let my people go; 55

But Pharaoh and his host were lost, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

O, Moses, the cloud shall cleave the way, Let my people go; 60

A fire by night, a shade by day, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

You’ll not get lost in the wilderness, Let my people go; 65

With a lighted candle in your breast, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

Blues Spirituals, Go Down, Moses 235

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Spirituals, Blues, Folksongs

Go Down, Moses © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2000

Jordan shall stand up like a wall, Let my people go; 70

And the walls of Jericho shall fall, Let my people go;

Go down, Moses, &c.

Your foes shall not before you stand, Let my people go; 75

And you’ll possess fair Canaan’s land, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

’Twas just about in harvest time, Let my people go; 80

When Joshua led his host divine, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

O let us all from bondage flee, Let my people go; 85

And let us all in Christ be free, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

We need not always weep and moan, Let my people go; 90

And wear these slavery chains forlorn, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

This world’s a wilderness of woe, Let my people go; 95

O, let us on to Canaan go, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

What a beautiful morning that will be, Let my people go; 100

When time breaks up in eternity, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

O bretheren, bretheren, you’d better be engaged, Let my people go; 105

For the devil he’s out on a big rampage,

236 ENGL200

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Spirituals, Blues, Folksongs

Go Down, Moses © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2000

Let my people go. Go down, Moses, &c.

The Devil he thought he had me fast, Let my people go; 110

But I thought I’d break his chains at last, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

O take yer shoes from off yer feet, Let my people go; 115

And walk into the golden street, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

I’ll tell you what I likes de best, Let my people go; 120

It is the shouting Methodist, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

I do believe without a doubt, Let my people go; 125

That a Christian has the right to shout, Let my people go.

Go down, Moses, &c.

Blues Spirituals, Go Down, Moses 237

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Robert Bly Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2007

ROBERT BLY

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

It is a cold and snowy night. The main street is deserted. The only things moving are swirls of snow. As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron. There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. Driving around, I will waste more time. 5

1962

Reprinted from Silence in the Snowy Fields by Robert Bly, Wesleyan University Press, 1962, by permis- sion of Robert Bly.

238 ENGL200

The iDeal Reader Anne Bradstreet, ‘‘To My Dear and Loving Husband’’

Reading with Questions for Discussion and Writing

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2001

Anne Bradstreet (1612?–1672) was schooled by her father, who was the steward of the Earlof Lincoln, in the Earl’s extensive library; thus, for her day, she was better schooled than most women. In 1628 she married Simon Bradstreet, who was her father’s assistant. Being Puritans, Anne and Simon, together with her parents, emigrated to the Massachusetts colony in 1630, enduring the hardships of the first years of the Pilgrims in the New World. Despite the difficult living conditions and having eight children, Bradstreet wrote poetry. Her themes were the typical Puritan themes of sin and redemption, but she also wrote on domestic topics, such as her fear of dying in childbirth, and the love for her children and husband. In 1650 she published The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, a collection of her poetry. This was revised and enlarged in 1678 as Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight.

R To My Dear and Loving Husband

Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me, ye women, if you can. I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, 5 Or all the riches that the East doth hold. My love is such that rivers cannot quench, Nor ought1 but love from thee, give recompense. Thy love is such I can no way repay, The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray. 10 Then while we live, in love let’s so persevere2

That when we live no more we may live ever.

1641–1643? 1678

1Anything. 2Pronounced “per séver” in the seventeenth century.

Anne Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband: Reading with Questions for Discussion and Writing 239

The iDeal Reader Anne Bradstreet, ‘‘To My Dear and Loving Husband’’

Reading with Questions for Discussion and Writing

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2001

Questions for Discussion 1. Do you think Bradstreet’s love for her husband is realistic, or overstated? What words

and phrases support your interpretation? 2. What is the meaning of line 8? 3. What is the meaning of the last two lines? How do they relate to the rest of the poem? 4. How might this poem reflect a Puritan world view? 5. What are the images with which Bradstreet compares her love for her husband? 6. What word does Bradstreet repeat? What is the effect of repeating this word? 7. Bradstreet uses apostrophe, the poetic technique of directly addressing the subject of

the poem. How effective is this technique for this poem?

Questions for Reflection and Writing 1. Compare this poem to one or more love poems by other women poets. How are the

poems similar? How do they differ? 2. Find one or two images that you like in this poem and explain why they appeal to you. 3. Do some research into the life and times of Anne Bradstreet. What are some of the

Puritan themes that appear in her poetry? How did she balance her full domestic life with her writing?

240 ENGL200

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Bob Dylan A Hard Rain´s A−Gonna Fall

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2007

BOB DYLAN

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall1

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? Oh, where have you been, my darling young one? I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests 5 I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son? 10 Oh, what did you see, my darling young one? I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’ I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’ 15 I saw a white ladder all covered with water I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall 20

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son? And what did you hear, my darling young one? I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’ Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’ 25 Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’ Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’ Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard 30 And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son? Who did you meet, my darling young one? I met a young child beside a dead pony I met a white man who walked a black dog 35

“A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall” by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc. Copyright re- newed 1991 by Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.

1. This song is from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1962).

Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall 241

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Bob Dylan A Hard Rain´s A−Gonna Fall

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2007

I met a young woman whose body was burning I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow I met one man who was wounded in love I met another man who was wounded with hatred And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard 40 It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son? Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one? I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’ I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest 45 Where the people are many and their hands are all empty Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten 50 Where black is the color, where none is the number And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’ But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’ 55 And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

1962

242 ENGL200

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Bob Dylan The Times They Are A−Changin´

© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2007

BOB DYLAN

The Times They Are A-Changin’1

Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon 5 You’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics 10 Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won’t come again And don’t speak too soon For the wheel’s still in spin 15 And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’ For the loser now will be later to win For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call 20 Don’t stand in the doorway Don’t block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’ 25 It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don’t criticize 30 What you can’t understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly agin’

“The Times They Are A-Changin'” by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1963 by Warner Bros. Inc. Copyright renewed 1991 by Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission.

1. This song is from The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1962).

Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin' 243

Perkins−Perkins: Selections from American Literature

Bob Dylan The Times They Are A−Changin´