Individual Assignment 2.E

Poem E

A Poison Tree by William Blake

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine.

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Individual Assignment 2.D

Poem D

Crow's Fall

By Ted Hughes

When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.

He decided it glared much too whitely.

He decided to attack it and defeat it.

He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.

He clawed and fluffed his rage up.

He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.

He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked.

At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,

Shadows flattened.

But the sun brightened—

It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.

He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.

"Up there," he managed,

"Where white is black and black is white, I won."

Individual Assignment 2.C

Poem C

THE LETTER

by: Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1906)

 HELD his letter in my hand,

And even while I read

The lightning flashed across the land

The word that he was dead.

 

How strange it seemed! His living voice

Was speaking from the page

Those courteous phrases, tersely choice,

Light-hearted, witty, sage.

 

I wondered what it was that died!

The man himself was here,

His modesty, his scholar's pride,

His soul serene and clear.

 

These neither death nor time shall dim,

Still this sad thing must be--

Henceforth I may not speak to him,

Though he can speak to me!

Individual Assignment 2.B

Poem B

ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

By Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells² for these who die as cattle? 

Only the monstrous anger of the guns. 

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle 

Can patter out³ their hasty orisons.⁴

No mockeries⁵ now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

The shrill, demented⁶ choirs of wailing shells; 

And bugles⁷ calling for them from sad shires.⁸

What candles⁹ may be held to speed them all? 

Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes 

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. 

The pallor¹⁰ of girls' brows shall be their pall; 

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, 

And each slow dusk¹¹ a drawing-down of blinds.¹²




September - October, 1917

Individual Assignment 2.A

Poem A

Peace by Rupert Brooke

the first of his sonnets in the 1914 sequence

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us1 with His hour, 
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, 
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, 
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, 
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, 
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, 
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, 
And all the little emptiness of love!2

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release3 there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save4 this body, lost but breath; 
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there 
But only agony, and that has ending; 
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.

1 matched us - made us suitable to take part in these thrilling times
2 emptiness of love - Brooke was disillusioned with love. He had a stormy relationship with Katherine Cox which led to a nervous breakdown. Other relationships with young women were never lastingly satisfactory.
3 release  -  relief, a sense of freedom
4 save  -  except 
All of Brooke's war sonnets appear in both Out in the Dark and Minds at War. Only Out in the Dark has basic notes.  

Unseen Poetry Group Activity

Activity 1 (Group work)

Instructions

1) Students are to be in their 5 groups. Each group will be assigned one out of the two unseen poems.

2) Identify two poetic devices (with reference to the blogpost on literary techniques) used in the poem.

3) As a group, write a 500 word analysis of how these poetic devices are used to describe the poet’s intention and post it on the class blog.

How to write the 500 word analysis:

For each poetic device identified by your group, give two accompanying explanations of how this device was used to provide meaning to the poem.

Poem A

Pike by Ted Hughes

Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.


Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.


In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds


The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date:
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.


Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: red fry to them-
Suddenly there were two. Finally one


With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-


One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.


A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them-


Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast


But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,


Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly toward me, watching.

Poem B

Published version of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1820


Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
    Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither'd from the lake,
    And no birds sing.
Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
    So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
    And the harvest's done.
I see a lily on thy brow,
    With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
    Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads
    Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
    And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed,
    And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
    A faery's song.
I made a garland for her head,
    And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look'd at me as she did love,
    And made sweet moan.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
    And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
    I love thee true.
She took me to her elfin grot,
    And there she gaz'd and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
    So kiss'd to sleep.
And there we slumber'd on the moss,
    And there I dream'd, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream'd
    On the cold hill side.
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
    Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd--"La belle Dame sans merci
    Hath thee in thrall!"
I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam
    With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
    On the cold hill side.
And this is why I sojourn here
    Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
    And no birds sing.
  

Poetic Devices

Glossary of Poetic Devices 

Alliteration - The repetition of initial consonant sounds. 

Eg: Dew drops dancing down 

Assonance - The repetition of vowel sounds 

·      Long vowel sounds will decrease the energy at that point in the poem and make the mood more serious.

·      Higher vowel sounds will increase the energy and lighten the mood.

Figurative Language- Language used in such a way as to force words out of their literal meanings by emphasizing their connotations to bring new insight and feeling to the subject.

Eg: All the world's a stage

Hyperbole- an exaggeration in the service of truth (an overstatement). 

Eg: Ten thousand thousand fruit to touch.

Imagery - Words or phrases that appeal to any sense or any combination of senses.

Juxtaposition  - is the overlapping or mixing of opposite or different situations, characters, settings, moods, or points of view in order to clarify meaning, purpose, or character, or to heighten certain moods, especially humour, horror, and suspense.

Metaphor - A comparison between two objects with the intent of giving clearer meaning to one of them. Often forms of the "to be" verb are used, such as "is" or "was", to make the comparison.

Eg: The stages of love are like stepping stones to death.

Onomatopoeia - The use of words that imitate sound.

Personification - A figure of speech that endows inanimate objects with human traits or abilities.

Eg: the tree watches him sleep; it has tongues talking aloud

Repetition - the repeating of words, phrases, lines, or stanzas.

Rhyme - The similarity of ending sounds existing between two words.

Simile- A figure of speech in which a comparison is expressed by the specific use of a word or phrase such as: like, as, than, seems, as if

Eg:  like an old-stone savage armed

Symbol - a symbol has two levels of meaning, a literal level and a figurative level. Characters, objects, events and settings can all be symbolic in that they represent something else beyond themselves.

Eg: In Robert Frost's poetry- Rose Pogonias, flowers become a symbol for the beloved, his wife Elinor

Source: http://www.kyrene.org/schools/brisas/sunda/poets/poetry2.htm
               http://www.bestlibrary.org/murrayslit/2009/09/poetic-devices.html