G. Thompson
Discuss scansion (Frost, Keats)--this one was for practice. Turn in after discussion--I want to see how everyone did.
Questions about these or about how to scan verse? Did they read the prosody file from Canvas? Or the PowerPoint?
Figuring out the basic meter--if the poem has one--is a starting-point. Note, however, that the interest is in the variations from this; that's where the emphasis is for the poem. Once you figure out the base rhythm, don't force the lines to conform to it, but be attentive to how they actually sound.
Other comments from the prosody handout:
What's the unit--a stanza or the line? Stanzas may be 2 lines (couplets), three (tercets or triplets), four lines (quatrains)--other groups don't necessarily have names.
Pause in the middle of the line is called a caesura--often found in heroic couplets.
End-stopped vs. enjambed lines
The point is to notice the form, just as you might notice whether you are watching a tragedy or a comedy. Noticing things--that's a theme for today. Poets are saying, about objects or events or memories, Look! They are rendering something in language and asking us to attend to that language as well as to the subjects.
Handout at end of class--to be turned in Wed. as informal writing assignment. Note that "ruined" is a two-syllable word.
Discussion of meter and form, continued:
Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays," 814 [559]
Swift, "A Description of the Morning," 770
Wilbur, "Love Calls Us to the Things of this World," 1135 [743]
Wordsworth, "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways," 742 [517]
Parker, "A Certain Lady," 742 [518]
Collins, "Introduction to Poetry," 733 [695]
Alexander, "Ars Poetica #100: I Believe," 730
Moore, "Poetry," 731
Wed. we'll talk about a particular genre, the sonnet.
Set up with group discussions--I was trying to see what all these poems for today have in common. I think I selected them with an eye to a set of variations of form, with a couplet poem (Swift), interlocking quatrains (Parker), ballad meter (Wordsworth), pentameter-like free verse (Wilbur, Hayden), free verse stanzas (Moore), and outright free verse (Collins). But I think in looking back at them, all of them are talking in one way or another about poetry as a means of observing the world--observing it closely, noting its details, sensing the interplay between reality and imagination which is the source of wonder--"imaginary gardens with real toads in them," or the angels which animate the drying clothes in Wilbur's poem.
So I want to ground this part of today's class in that as a theme, the importance of observation. What is the speaker in each poem or group of poems observing? Who is he or she in relation to what is being observed? And what is the importance of telling us as readers about the observation.
Group 1: Hayden and Wordsworth
Group 2: Swift and Parker
Group 3: Alexander and Collins
Group 4: Moore
Group 5: Wilbur