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Introducing Poetry. Robert Frost, E. E. Cummings, and Allen Ginsberg. What does poetry mean to you?.
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Introducing Poetry Robert Frost, E. E. Cummings, and Allen Ginsberg
What does poetry mean to you? What is your familiarity with poetry? Have you read much poetry in the past? What is an example of a poem you liked or disliked? Describe why, exactly, you did or did not enjoy this poem, i.e. what are some elements of the poem that stuck with you, whether positive or negative?
Imagery Imagery is the use of vivid and descriptive language to add depth to the work. Imagery appeals to human senses to deepen the reader's understanding of the work. Powerful forms of imagery engage all of the senses. Below are five types of imagery often employed in literature: • Visual imagery: Pertains to graphics, visual scenes, pictures, or the sense of sight. • Auditory imagery: Pertains to sounds, noises, music, or the sense of hearing. • Olfactory imagery: Pertains to odors, scents, or the sense of smell. • Gustatory imagery: Pertains to flavors or the sense of taste. • Tactile imagery: Pertains to physical textures or the sense of touch.
Personification Personification is a form of figurative language in which something that is not human is given human characteristics. This device is often used in poetry to enhance the meaning and beauty of poems.
Repetition Repetition is a literary device that repeats the same words or phrases to make an idea clearer. There are several types of repetitions commonly used in both prose and poetry. As a rhetorical device, it could be a word, a phrase or a full sentence or a poetical line repeated to emphasize its significance in the entire text.
Iambic Tetrameter • “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is written in iambic tetrameter. • Each verse (save the last) follows an AABA rhyming scheme, with the following verse's A's rhyming with that verse's B, which is a chain rhyme (the linking together of stanzas by carrying a rhyme over from one stanza to the next). Overall, the rhyme scheme is AABA-BBCB-CCDC-DDDD.
Listening to Poems Aloud • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nie5dGD6OQA • While you’re listening, jot down some notes about what you’re hearing. What do you notice about the rhyme? What are some words that are being repeated? What does the poem make you think of, make you feel? What is the tone?
Characteristics of Cummings’ Poetry • As Cummings was also a painter, he brought visual orientation to the placement of poems on the page. Not only did he play with typography and punctuation marks for special effects, but he also created many poems whose full significance can only be understood when seen in their spatial arrangement on the page (which we see in “Buffalo Bill’s defunct.”
Characteristics of Cummings’ Poetry, continued • He was also known for his placing lowercase letters where capitals are expected, and especially for his use of a small “i” for personal reference. The persona he thus created represents someone who stands away from the crowd, unappreciated, without power, yet able to open his heart with song or mock the follies of society and denounce the pretensions of authority.
Inspired by the Cubists • Cubism is a type of art where objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.
Writing Exercise What is it about? What are some of its characteristics? How does the form of the poem on the page affect the poem itself? What is the final “message” that you take away from this poem?
Close Reading • This poem tells us what it's about in the first two lines: ‘Buffalo Bill's/defunct.’ Something that is defunct is dead. This poem, then, is about Buffalo Bill being dead.
Buffalo Bill Cody, continued • Buffalo Bill Cody was a major figure in the American West (one of the major themes of our class). He had many jobs in the Wild West, but became famous when he started a “Wild West” show at the end of the 19th century. In the show, Buffalo Bill and other performers rode horses and showed their marksmanship by shooting clay pigeons in the air. He was seen as full of life and vitality.
Life Represented in Form • Notice the way the poem is spread out on the page. The pattern made by the end of the lines looks kind of like a sideways mountain. It's as if Buffalo Bill's life is laid out: short lines at the beginning for his youth, then the lines that stretch all the way to the right side of the page at the peak of his life, followed by the short lines against the left side of the paper to represent his death. In this way, E.E. Cummings is commenting on how death, in some ways, is like a return to birth.
The Beat Generation • Central elements of Beat culture are: • Rejection of standard American values • The spiritual quest • Exploration of American and Eastern religions • Rejection of materialism • Explicit portrayals of the human condition • Experimentation with psychedelic drugs and sexual liberation • “New bohemian hedonists” celebrating non-conformity and spontaneous creativity
“Howl,” published in 1956 “Howl” is a wild, volcanic, troubled, extravagant, turbulent, boisterous, unbridled outpouring, intermingling gems and flashes of picturesque insight with slag and debris of scoriac matter. It has violence; it has life; it has vitality. In my opinion, it is a one-side neurotic view of life; it has not enough glad, Whitmanian affirmations. –Louis Ginsberg, letter to Allen Ginsberg, May 27, 1956
More on “Howl” “Howl” is the most significant single long poem to be published in this country since World War II, perhaps since [T.S.] Eliot’s Four Quartets . . . “Howl” commits many poetic sins, but it is time. –Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Horn on Howl,” Evergreen Review, Winter 1957
Listening to the Poem Aloud Again, while you’re listening to this poem, jot down some notes about what you’re hearing. What are some of its themes? What are some words that stand out to you? What does the poem make you think of, make you feel? What is the tone? How do you understand the standard American values of the time to be challenged in this poem? Do you think this poem is still “controversial” today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoY9gom50
Poetry, Before and After Take a look again at the notes you wrote at the beginning of class on your thoughts regarding poetry. Have any of those thoughts been changed or challenged in learning a little more about different types of poetry?Why is it important to both read a poem and take note of its form on the page as well as to read it aloud? What is your favorite poem of the three we read and discussed today? Why? Take five minutes to write about your final thoughts, and then hand them in when you’re finished.
Works Cited Information compiled from The Norton Anthology, Introduction to Literature, University of Iowa Custom Shorter 11th Edition, edited by Kelly J Mays; “Howl,” Fifty Years Later, edited by Jason Shinder; E.E. Cummings Selected Poems, edited by Richard S. Kennedy; and various online sources.
