Rhyme “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake (1789)

1. Rhyme“The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake (1789) http://youtu.be/JC4Dq2scQDI At the end of the 18th century, Blake wrote two scathing poems that denounce the abominable practice of exploiting very young children as chimney sweepers. In the 1789 poem, from Songs of Innocence, the reader’s sense of horror is heightened by the jarring contrast between the nursery-rhyme structure and the grim subject matter. The perfect rhyme scheme falters as the speaker moves from recounting the loss of his mother and being sold into bondage by his father to describing the solace an “angel” promises little Tom Dacre. An oral reading reveals how rhyme contributes to the devastating argument of this poem in ways that a silent reading cannot.

2. Syntax“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll(1872) http://youtu.be/kLBjOIVIGqY The poem reveals how syntax—the way words are structured to form phrases and sentences—fills our heads with ideas about meaning, even the meaning of nonsense words, as in this from the first stanza, which also serves as the last: “All mimsy were the borogroves, / And the momerathsoutgrabe.” Playing with the syntax of this poem can provide a keener sense of its drama.

3. Intonation“Beat! Beat! Drums!” by Walt Whitman (1860s) http://youtu.be/jw8_mrJmcLA With pounding rhythms and overwhelming images of destruction, Whitman’s famous anti-war poem mimics the fervent speech of a warmonger but leaves the reader nearly chanting in protest of war. In three powerful stanzas, Whitman catalogs the ways in which war obliterates peaceful domesticity, civil society, and even the restfulness of death.

4. Imagery“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot(1915) http://youtu.be/JAO3QTU4PzY As Prufrock, the would-be suitor, contemplates forging a romantic relationship, he is haunted by his inadequacies and retreats to the safety of his intellect, exclaiming, “No! I am no Prince Hamlet, / Nor was meant to be.” The emotional drama unfolds in the vivid imagery of a cityscape, where dingy streets contrast with the playgrounds of the social elite, and moves to the mythical image of a Homeric ocean a safe distance from society, where “human voices wake us and we drown.”

5. Allusion“I Am Waiting” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti(1958) http://youtu.be/2AWybOApZuA The mounting frustration of the speaker, who awaits the coming of a peaceful and just world and “a rebirth of wonder,” is captured, often humorously, in twisted snippets of popular rhetoric. Ferlinghetti weaves biblical, mythological, literary, and historical allusions into a litany against tyranny and cultural hegemony.

6. Sound Devices“Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon (1990) http://youtu.be/WcNtwx9PT-I In this poem, Kenyon captures the conflict between the comfort and the anxiety of death in startling ways. The reassuring pastoral imagery is often undermined by unusual vantage points and disturbing objects, as in the first lines, where sunlight is described from within a darkening barn, “moving / up the bales as the sun moves down.” Kenyon’s use of consonance—the repetition of consonant sounds—and assonance—the repetition of vowel sounds—brings a vivid physicality to the speaker’s conflict. We see this when the comforting flow of “Let the light of late afternoon” is suddenly obstructed by the tongue forming the word “chinks.” The sonic repetition in this poem also reveals the intricate phonemic—referring to the smallest distinct units of sound within words—relationships the poet has so skillfully knitted together through the dominant l and k sounds. This sonic tension, like the fear and relief the speaker finds in the idea of death, are brought to a close in the final line, “comfortless, so let evening come.”