I'll hold essays and notes back until Tuesday

Students,

I’ve thought it over and decided to give all essays back Monday, and spend time with suggestions as well. I think I’ll keep them all so that I can note specific examples for you and make the period more worthwhile.

J.D.

“Dover Beach” & “Churchgoing”

We’ve been taking poems two at a time with a comparative essay in mind—each pair thematically linked. How about Matthew Arnold’s poem and Philip Larkin’s poem? Do they reflect the same outlook? What are they “about”? What do you think the tone of each poem is, and how does it influence interpretation?

And since we are listening especially for musical sounds (not all music is “beautiful”) and rhythm, consider those things as well as you answer these questions.

Work is due by Tuesday’s class.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

—Matthew Arnold

Questions

1. Vocabulary: strand (11), girdle (23), darkling (35). Identify the physical locale of the cliffs of Dover and their relation to the French coast; identify the Aegean and Sophocles.

2. As precisely as possible, define the implied scene: What is the speaker’s physical location? Whom is he addressing? What is the time of day and the state of the weather?

3. Discuss the visual and auditory images of the poem and their relation to illusion and reality?

4. The speaker is lamenting the decline of religious faith in his time. Is he himself a believer? Does he see any medicine for the world’s maladies?

5. Discuss in detail the imagery in the last three lines. Are the “armies” figurative or literal? What makes these lines so effective?

6. What term or terms would you choose to describe the overall tone of the poem?

Philip Larkin - Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -

Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

When churches will fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation - marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built

This special shell? For, though I've no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognized, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

1. Vocabulary: Hectoring (14), dubious (28), simples (30), accoutered (53), frowsty (53), blent (56). Large-scale (14) indicates a print size suited to oral reading; an Irish sixpence (17) was a small coin not legal tender in England, the scene of the poem; rood-lofts (41) are architectural features found in many early Christian churches; bibber and randy (42) are figurative, literally meaning “drunkard” and “lustful”; gown-and-bands (44) are ornate robes worn by church officials in religious ceremonies.

2. Like “Dover Beach” (first published in 1867), “Church Going” (1954) is concerned with belief and disbelief. In modern England the landscape is dotted with small churches, often charming in their combination of stone and badly in need of repair, and some are well tended by parishioners who keep them dusted and provide fresh flowers for the diminishing attendance at Sunday services. These churches invariably have by the entrance a book that visitors can sign as a record of their having been there and a collection box with a sign urging them to drop in a few coins for upkeep, repair, or restoration. In small towns and villages the church is often the chief or only building of architectural or historical interest, and tourist visitors may outnumber parishioners. To which of the three categories of churches mentioned here does Larkin’s poem refer?

3. What different denotations does the title contain?

4. IN what activity has the speaker been engaging when he stops to see the church? How is it revealed? Why does he stop? Is he a believer? How involved is he in inspecting this church building?

5. Compare the language used by the speakers in “Dover Beach” and Church Going”. Which speaker is more eloquent? Which is more informal and conversational? Without looking back at the texts, try to assign the following words to one poem or the other: moon-blanched, cycle-clips, darkling, hath, snigger, whiff, drear, brownish, tremulous, glimmering, frowsty, stuff. Then go back and check your success.

6. Define the tone of “Church Going” as precisely as possible. Compare this tone to that of “Dover Beach”.

Websites with good terms definitions

Here are two, both pretty complete—

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072405228/student_view0/complete_glossary.html#

http://gale.cengage.com/free_resources/glossary/

If you are still stumped on any of the terms, ask in class Wednesday. We're going to work at least in part on pattern and rhythm, so scan the intros to the chapters Rhythm & Meter (12) and Pattern (14) and the work will go better.

See you then!

More on "Spinster"

Dear class—I wrote this informal essay a couple of years ago while I was out on medical leave. Looking over your blog entries, I see that a number of you have hit some of the same themes I did. But this is a more comprehensive look, much longer than the typical blog entry.

A few notes: the poem has a rhyme scheme of abcbac that is consistent in each of its five sections. But most of the rhymes are of the “slant” variety (see below). The meter is variable; most prominent is “trimeter”’—three accented feet in a line. But the poet in general indulges in as many beats per line as suits her.

The title, “Spinster,” as many of you note, is a word that in law designates a woman who has not married. In general it signifies a woman who has remained unmarried beyond the “usual age.” We can confidently say that “this particular girl” has set herself on that course.

My take on Sylvia Plath’s “Spinster”

This is, to me, a funny poem about an imperious, rigid girl who decides she prefers a sort of wintry order, as she sees it, to spring and all it traditionally stands for: love, music, “burgeoning” growth of new life (look that word “burgeoning” up, and you’ll see why it’s perfect), renewal, fertility, etc., etc.

Now I’d never read this poem before Mrs. Minor chose it from the newest collection. But the first thing I want to sense about it, besides the experience that it contains or relates, is its tone. So I read it through several times, which even done carefully takes just a few minutes. And I find the tone to be rather mocking. The speaker is not peddling her subject’s philosophy—she’s creating an ironic portrait that somehow gives us and her particular enjoyment.

So how about this “particular girl”? She’s not looking for romance; others are looking for romance from her—a whole string of them is hinted at by “latest suitor.” Suitors are those who go down on one knee to ask for the hand of their adored one. But this “particular” girl (and that word has at least two meanings: one out of a group of girls, or a girl who insists that everything around her must be correct in every detail) finds something disconcerting in the “irregular babel” of birdsong and the leaves’ litter (nice a-litter-ation, eh?). When arrogant humans attempted to construct a “Tower of Babel” to reach the heavens, the Biblical God sent the language of the builders into confusion to thwart their ambition. Maybe this arrogant girl simply fails to understand the birdsong that is the one of the primary languages of spring, as she rejects everything about the season that she doesn’t understand or finds disorderly, or is afraid of.

(By the way: I don’t know how she’d feel about the order of this poem, because its rhythm is often irregular; most regular, perhaps, in the section in which “she longed for winter then!” There’s a rhyme pattern, but the rhymes are often of the type known as “slant”, or inexact rhymes: “wits” & “idiots” is an example of that; so is “weather” and “either” in the last section. But we haven’t gotten to pattern yet.)

Going through the poem a few times more, I notice that our girl is a queenly sort of person on “a ceremonious April walk” who “judged petals in disarray” and compares the season of spring to a slob (“sloven”). She’s afraid of the unpredictability of spring, which could unsettle her “five wits” (a very old, even medieval expression covering common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory) and thus reverse her standing in her own royal court from queen to jester (a “vulgar” one who wears “motley”). Such an idiot can “Reel giddy in bedlam spring” and make quite a fool of her/himself.

“Bedlam”, I find, is a word that denotes a scene of mad confusion and comes from the insane asylum in old London known as “Bedlam.” The allusions to ancient or medieval things somehow reinforces the image I get of a queen in royal surroundings with courtiers in attendance and a jester, or professional fool, on call at his station at foot of the throne. Within the order of her universe are her five wits, which she keeps in check lest they get out of control—especially imagination and fantasy. Those are too free-flowing and adventurous. And how did I learn about the five wits? I looked the term up until I found what I sort of remembered from my own reading.

That brings me to her suitor. I think suitor is a good word for him, because he’s a wannabe on his way out, and Bedlam might just be the place for the likes of him. He’s the jester, idiot sort. I like Hari’s Raghavan’s idea of a dog, even if he got stuck on the literal notion of one. This guy is sawing the air with romantic enthusiasm as he gestures and talks and bounds along and off the path like a happy dog—doing everything but pee on the bushes before he puts his pair of muddy paws on her shoulders and gives her a couple of doggy licks on her puss. But the particular girl doesn’t appreciate the dog-boy’s Keatsian appreciation of nature and love together in bloom. To her it’s all ”a rank wilderness of fern and flower.”

It’s probably just a coincidence, but I can’t help but picture this particular girl doing what’s known as “playing Hamlet” (she could be an English major, after all, and she does like black!), putting on airs of sophisticated disillusionment while she mutters haughtily to herself:

Fie on’t! ah fie! ‘tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.

Uh uh. Not for her. She’s a sharp-edged perfect snowflake, with a taste for “ice and rock”. That third section is a marvel of hard-edged, astringent words and phrases (Scrupulously austere, frosty discipline, exact—these are words that could give you paper cuts, and wow would those cuts ever smart in that ice-cold air!). And as I said, this one section really stands out for its greater order of rhythm, especially if read aloud after the second, which contains such unruly, rambling lines as “Observed her lover’s gestures unbalance the air” and “Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower.” In fact, section one was pacing along in pretty good order until line four threw everything literally and figuratively off-balance: “Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck”.

She’s shaken by the sheer uncontained fertility of it all. And so she withdraws “neatly” (in what other way could she withdraw?). She’s the sort of princess who enchants herself within her own chosen castle, surrounded by thorns (“barricade of barb and check”) with a moat full of sharks and the drawbridge up at all times (okay, some of this is my imagery, but I think it fits). The adjectives “mutinous” and “insurgent” are appropriate for our queenly girl who will maintain the picturesque (nicely framed, of course) order of her life at all costs, including love. No revolt by an excitable, overly romantic young man could possibly succeed in dethroning this snow queen to bring the unrestricted freedom of love and the rest of that burgeoning stuff into her realm.

As far as symbols go, I think I previously noted what spring often stands for (without losing its identity as a season). That symbol she rejects, and substitutes clean and orderly winder for spring’s rank and gross confusion (thanks, O Prince of Denmark. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. No bird “babel” for you). Winter as a paradigm of order and discipline is more of a personal symbol for our heroine. Others might see winter as symbolic of death and also of disorder—storms and wild weather that could rip a roof off, or send the queen skidding down an icy path. The house of the final section we could take as a metaphor for her chosen isolation from the impetuous and uncontrollable change that spring symbolizes..

The cool thing is that something so compact and brief as this little poem can contain so much in it that magnifies and extends the little black and white symbols on paper that we call words.

All I’m doing is looking at the “how” before I decide (if I ever do such a thing) the “what” of the poem. How did Hari imagine that dog? Well, now I understand a little better, and for me how Sylvia Plath planted the seed that made the dog grow in Hari’s brain makes the poem better and more vivid than it was before.

(By the way, Hari: you really need to see a doctor sometime soon.)

Exploring the connotations and multiple denotations, noting the echoes thrown off by the allusions—these things bring me to greater comprehension. So—believe it or not—I’ve had a lot of fun writing this loose little essay.

J.D.

My Last Duchess

Tone is the big issue with this poem. For your blog comment, concentrate on the questions 2 through 4 and question 6 in Sound & Sense. If you are on the right track with them, you are on the right track with this poem.

With this and with "Spinster", I'm looking in particular to see how well you identify and interpret irony.

Have a wonderful break!

J.D.

My Last Duchess¹

Ferrara²:

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will't please you sit and look at her? I said 5

“Frà Pandolf” by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 10

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not

Her husband's presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps 15

Frà Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps

Over my Lady's wrist too much,” or “Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart — how shall I say? — too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, 25

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace — all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 30

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good! but thanked

Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 35

In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark" — and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,--

E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without 45

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master's known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretence 50

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 55

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Notes

1. The poem as originally published was entitled "I. Italy," the companion piece to "II. France" (later entitled "Count Gismond") under the general title "Italy and France." The dramatic monologue is a byproduct of Browning's research for Sordello, during which he read about Alfonso II d'Este, fifth Duke of Ferrara (1533-1597; ruled 1559-1597), the patron of the writer Tasso.

2. The place is the ducal palace in the Italian city-state of Ferrara; the time is the Renaissance.

Spinster, followed by questions

Here's Sylvia Plath's poem "Spinster" again.

For the blog, read and work this poem. With your comments, engage in a discussion of the overall symbolism of the poem as well as the imagery and figurative language the poet uses.

Just in case, I'm appending the text questions as a sort of guide to analysis. THEY ARE NOT HOMEWORK!!!! Just blog in the good old-fashioned way…

Spinster

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious April walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower.
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then! ——
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock, each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here —— a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley ——
A treason not to be borne. Let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

— Sylvia Plath

The five wits: the five senses; also, sometimes, the five qualities or faculties: common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory.

Questions for study—

1. What are the various meanings of the word “spinster?” How does it work as a title to this poem?

2. Explore the multiple denotations and/or connotations attached to these words: particular, ceremonious, suitor, struck, litter, rank, sloven, austere, motley.

3. Compare the poet’s choice of these words to possible synonyms: racket or turmoil rather than tumult; hubbub rather than babel; flourishing rather than burgeoning; rebellious rather than insurgent; spike rather than barb; disobedient rather than mutinous.

4. What sort of pattern, if any, do you perceive in this poem? Is it as pronounced as in “Pathedy of Manners”? Is it unpredictable or erratic? Is there a rhyme scheme?

5. What, expressed in one or two sentences, is this poem about? What are the various meanings of the word “spinster?” How does it work as a title to this poem?

6. Explore the multiple denotations and/or connotations attached to these words: particular, ceremonious, suitor, struck, litter, rank, sloven, austere, motley.

7. Compare the poet’s choice of these words to possible synonyms: racket or turmoil rather than tumult; hubbub rather than babel; flourishing rather than burgeoning; rebellious rather than insurgent; spike rather than barb; disobedient rather than mutinous.

8. What sort of pattern, if any, do you perceive in this poem? Is it as pronounced as in “Pathedy of Manners”? Is it unpredictable or erratic? Is there a rhyme scheme?

9. What, expressed in one or two sentences, is this poem about?

Assignments for next week: two harvest poems ~ After Apple-Picking; To Autumn

Read the text that opens Chapter 4. It'll reinforce what we went over Friday. Then take the two poems named above (they're within a few pages of each other in the new edition, and they appear in all the other ones, too). Read each poem before you even look at the questions below them.

Good practice in reading poetry:

1. Read the poem more than once — much will come to light with each new reading.

2. Keep a dictionary nearby and use it (also be aware of allusions to mythology, the Bible, Shakespeare, etc.). Remember, as Hamlet does, that words carry more than one meaning.

3. Read to hear the sounds in your mind—every aspect of each word (and its placement) counts in a good poem.

4. Pay careful attention to the way the poem says what it says. Keep track of the subjects of verbs, heed & consider punctuation, antecedents of pronouns, etc.

5. Pay attention to the title, if the poem has one (at times the first line serves to identify a poem, as with all of Emily Dickenson’s work).

6. Practice reading each poem aloud when alone. Or try reading to friends or family. You’ll be surprised to find how many people enjoy the experience.

i. Read naturally, neither too fast nor too slow. You’ll develop a sense for the pace of each work, and for variations in pace.

ii. Observe punctuation within each line, and pause at the end of each line at least a bit. The length of such pauses varies with the context. If there’s a period or comma, a dash or semicolon, the pause will be longer.

iii. Feel, but don’t exaggerate, the rhythm. Tap your foot occasionally as you read to find the prevailing meter. Don’t be slavish about meter—it’s a flexible medium.

7. Paraphrase if you are not clear on meaning. You can’t encompass all that is in a poem with a paraphrase, but you can open the door to greater comprehension.

8. Be on the lookout for shifts in tone. Often they coincide with a new section or stanza.

And here are the poems, in case you wish to print them out and mark on paper what you observe:

After Apple Picking

BY ROBERT FROST

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree

Toward heaven still,

And there's a barrel that I didn't fill

Beside it, and there may be two or three

Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.

But I am done with apple-picking now.

Essence of winter sleep is on the night,

The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.

I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight

I got from looking through a pane of glass

I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough

And held against the world of hoary grass.

It melted, and I let it fall and break.

But I was well

Upon my way to sleep before it fell,

And I could tell

What form my dreaming was about to take.

Magnified apples appear and disappear,

Stem end and blossom end,

And every fleck of russet showing clear.

My instep arch not only keeps the ache,

It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.

And I keep hearing from the cellar bin

The rumbling sound

Of load on load of apples coming in.

For I have had too much

Of apple-picking: I am overtired

Of the great harvest I myself desired.

There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,

Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.

For all

That struck the earth,

No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,

Went surely to the cider-apple heap

As of no worth.

One can see what will trouble

This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.

Were he not gone,

The woodchuck could say whether it's like his

Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,

Or just some human sleep.

To Autumn

by John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.