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Introduction to the course
What is Poetry?
WHAT IS POETRY
People too often assume they're at fault if they don't appreciate a poem. I think they should trust their own instincts. When you find a poet whose style you like, read everything he or she has written. It's really not important to like all poetry, but it's important to start to trust your taste in it and enjoy it.
Sounds in poetry
G. M. Hopkins
“The Windhover”:
I caught this morning
morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin,
dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level
underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon
the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off,
off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps
smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My
heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the
achieve of, the mastery of the thing!”
Border
Line
by Langston Hughes
I used to wonder
About living and dying–
I think the difference lies
Between tears and crying.
I used to wonder
About here and there–
I think the distance
Is nowhere.
Timing and time in poetry
“That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
“WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN’D ASTRONOMER” BY WALT WHITMAN
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Rhyme and Rhythm
Free verse
Who is speaking?
Poetic forms 1
'The New Colossus' by Emma Lazarus.
'Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'
“Sonnet 73
That time of year thou may’st in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do
hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the
cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet
birds sang.”
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in
rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d
by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love
more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere
long.”
"Time does not bring relief..."
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Time
does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who
told me time would ease me of my pain!
I
miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I
want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The
old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And
last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But
last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped
on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
There
are a hundred places where I fear
To
go,--so with his memory they brim!
And
entering with relief some quiet place
Where
never fell his foot or shone his face
I
say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And
so stand stricken, so remembering him!