Lecture 5
Lecture 5 The Narrative and Meditative Impulses The Narrative Poem -
Telling a story event A leads to event B TENSE is important to help pay attention to deepr idea
The Meditative Poem -
Meditating on experiencing TAKES important dream deferred, metaphors give a different take
Stanley Kunitz’s “The Portrait” -
Tells a story of his memory of the events after his father’s suicide Piece of life: endurance of death of father Old man thinking of past suicide Depicts the violence of suicide and its effects and endurance To document letting the father go Enjambment in first line, gives sense of shock Deepest cabinet = metaphore Heart cabinet Contrast long lipped stranger, brave moustache, and deep brown eyes I could hear him I can feel my cheek still burn tactile imagery Last two lines were change in tense The Portrait, double meaning portrait found and poem itself is portrait of the pain
Stewart Cole’s “Eulogy for the Quick” -
Quick something that has life “The Quick and the Dead” Someone passed him and struck him in terms of presence and what he heard, ends where story began All on the move , every now and then catch a glimpse Quick as the living encounter of passing by Enjambment in the first line , enjambments quickly pushing over Outerform vs Innerform. Outerform is more objective, meter, stanzas. Innerform is more subjective form. Attempts to turn what is partial into something that is whole 2 parts composite and fragment
The Miracles of Metaphors -
Proceeds to an identification that is complete
Classifying Poems -
Three different approaches to classifying poems: o Outer and inner forms Outer Form Stanzas and fixed form, what type of stanza is this? Rhyme: What is the rhyming scheme? Metre: What is the metre? What type of line? o Speech act No mater what you can apologize for when you apologize speech act = apology o Content genres
Chidiock Tichborne’s “Tichborne’s Elegy” -
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Last line of each stanza is repeated “And now I live and now my life is done’ o Refrain ‘I’ and ‘My’ used a lot disturbance of what my or I is Inner Form o Poet creates subjectively poem by poem basis Find the fault lines I am alive and I am dead, circling around the idea No enjambment circling or pacing, length of sentences Vendler on Sentences o Length o Figures of Order ANTITHESIS: Contrasting ideas sharpened by the use of opposite or noticeably different features or meanings” o Figures of Thought: PARADOX: An apparently self-contradictory (even absurd) statement which, on closer inspection, is found to contain a truth reconciling the conflicting opposites” I am alive but I am dead = paradox Agency speaker can act as different agents, POV, speaker Can speak in different Tenses In this elegy, iambic pentameter, rhyming scheme of ababcc Anapest in the second line The speech act of this poem is an ELEGY It is questioning, acknowledging and lamenting all at once
Classifying Poems: Content Genres -
Genre = kinds
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Examples of content genres o Love poem o Pastoral (poem spoken by shepherd, loosely, a poem in the countryside) o Aubade (dawn poem in which one of the lovers, usually, is waked by the sun and speaks o Prayer o Nativity or Birth Poems
Thylias Moss’ “One for All the Newborns” -
Expectations of a nativity poem is one of happiness, joy This poem overthrows expectations of that, It talks about how quickly the joy is overcome, it does not mention joy but rather talks of the negative aspects of growing up. That a baby could become an assassin or a thief
Attributes of Ekphrasis -
Ekphrastic poems are vehicles for exploring: o Issues of the truth, value, beauty etc of the wrought and representational o Questions of Audience, of consumption and perception, of censorship and exposure and so on o The work of time, as it is experienced through different forms and mediums, and how its affects are registered on what endures
Elegy -
ELEGY: A work of mourning written in response to the death of a person or persons, or even to the loss of a way of life. Began as a particular metrical form: A line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter
Attributes of Elegy -
Elegies are vehicles for exploring o One of poetry’s essential objects: the irretrievable o The most personal and the most public experience: death o Our paradoxical age in which death is at once sensationalized and concealed, in which, nothing is mourned and everything is elegizable o Freud’s dictum: “We find a place for what we lose”
Telling a story event A leads to event B TENSE is important to help pay attention to deepr idea
The Meditative Poem -
Meditating on experiencing TAKES important dream deferred, metaphors give a different take
Stanley Kunitz’s “The Portrait” -
Tells a story of his memory of the events after his father’s suicide Piece of life: endurance of death of father Old man thinking of past suicide Depicts the violence of suicide and its effects and endurance To document letting the father go Enjambment in first line, gives sense of shock Deepest cabinet = metaphore Heart cabinet Contrast long lipped stranger, brave moustache, and deep brown eyes I could hear him I can feel my cheek still burn tactile imagery Last two lines were change in tense The Portrait, double meaning portrait found and poem itself is portrait of the pain
Stewart Cole’s “Eulogy for the Quick” -
Quick something that has life “The Quick and the Dead” Someone passed him and struck him in terms of presence and what he heard, ends where story began All on the move , every now and then catch a glimpse Quick as the living encounter of passing by Enjambment in the first line , enjambments quickly pushing over Outerform vs Innerform. Outerform is more objective, meter, stanzas. Innerform is more subjective form. Attempts to turn what is partial into something that is whole 2 parts composite and fragment
The Miracles of Metaphors -
Proceeds to an identification that is complete
Classifying Poems -
Three different approaches to classifying poems: o Outer and inner forms Outer Form Stanzas and fixed form, what type of stanza is this? Rhyme: What is the rhyming scheme? Metre: What is the metre? What type of line? o Speech act No mater what you can apologize for when you apologize speech act = apology o Content genres
Chidiock Tichborne’s “Tichborne’s Elegy” -
-
-
Last line of each stanza is repeated “And now I live and now my life is done’ o Refrain ‘I’ and ‘My’ used a lot disturbance of what my or I is Inner Form o Poet creates subjectively poem by poem basis Find the fault lines I am alive and I am dead, circling around the idea No enjambment circling or pacing, length of sentences Vendler on Sentences o Length o Figures of Order ANTITHESIS: Contrasting ideas sharpened by the use of opposite or noticeably different features or meanings” o Figures of Thought: PARADOX: An apparently self-contradictory (even absurd) statement which, on closer inspection, is found to contain a truth reconciling the conflicting opposites” I am alive but I am dead = paradox Agency speaker can act as different agents, POV, speaker Can speak in different Tenses In this elegy, iambic pentameter, rhyming scheme of ababcc Anapest in the second line The speech act of this poem is an ELEGY It is questioning, acknowledging and lamenting all at once
Classifying Poems: Content Genres -
Genre = kinds
-
Examples of content genres o Love poem o Pastoral (poem spoken by shepherd, loosely, a poem in the countryside) o Aubade (dawn poem in which one of the lovers, usually, is waked by the sun and speaks o Prayer o Nativity or Birth Poems
Thylias Moss’ “One for All the Newborns” -
Expectations of a nativity poem is one of happiness, joy This poem overthrows expectations of that, It talks about how quickly the joy is overcome, it does not mention joy but rather talks of the negative aspects of growing up. That a baby could become an assassin or a thief
Attributes of Ekphrasis -
Ekphrastic poems are vehicles for exploring: o Issues of the truth, value, beauty etc of the wrought and representational o Questions of Audience, of consumption and perception, of censorship and exposure and so on o The work of time, as it is experienced through different forms and mediums, and how its affects are registered on what endures
Elegy -
ELEGY: A work of mourning written in response to the death of a person or persons, or even to the loss of a way of life. Began as a particular metrical form: A line of dactylic hexameter, followed by a line of dactylic pentameter
Attributes of Elegy -
Elegies are vehicles for exploring o One of poetry’s essential objects: the irretrievable o The most personal and the most public experience: death o Our paradoxical age in which death is at once sensationalized and concealed, in which, nothing is mourned and everything is elegizable o Freud’s dictum: “We find a place for what we lose”
