Tuesday we dug a little deeper into poetry, focusing on voice, tone, and style including line breaks and line length. Terms we discussed included types of line breaks (end-stop, grammatical, and enjambment), types of poetry (narrative, lyric, didactic, dramatic monologue), alliteration, and assonance. Below are links to the poems we looked at and listened to.
We looked at a few more of Charles Bukowski's poems. Perhaps someone would like to present on him and his work. Above is a picture of him from Wikipedia.
Harry Dean Stanton reads "Bluebird":
The print version is here together with another poem of his, "The Great Escape":
Here is Bukowski himself reading "The Secret of My Endurance":
The print version is here:
We also looked at and listened to Beat poet Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California." His picture is above.
For contrast, we added Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour." His picture is above.
Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" exemplifies the classic dramatic monologue:
Below is a picture of Browning with his wife, fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning as portrayed by Frederic March and Norma Shearer. The Brownings had a celebrated courtship and marriage as he helped her elope from her parents' house to Italy.
Here is a link to a video of Li-Young Lee reading from his poems:
Finally! Theodore Roethke reads "My Papa's Waltz":
You may prefer Frank McCourt's version without the music and distracting images:
Yusef Komenyakaa reads "Facing It."
If you were not in class, or if you would like to examine yet another poem, here are the questions we went over in class.
Choose one of the poems we haven’t discussed. How does the poet draw on voice in this poem? What is his/her figurative presence in the poem? What is his/her authorial presence? How does the poet use tone (emotion/irony)? How does he/she use style? How does the poet use plot, character, or setting? Is this poem a good poem? Why? Why not?
Tuesday's poems also include Marge Piercy's "Barbie Doll," Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz," and Yusef Komenyakaa's "Facing It." Ms. Piercy's picture is below:
Thursday we focused on the sonnet but also examining the villanelle and the sestina. Did you know that there are two types of sonnets (Petrarchan and Shakespearean)? And that the villanelle was once a type of French song? And that the sestina does not rhyme!
It seems like we watched quite a few clips in class that night.
Let's start with Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun":
On to his Sonnet 29, starting with Rufus Wainwright's musical version:
Here is the site where we listened to Petrarch's Sonnet 90 in its original Italian:
Now let's listen to Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina":
Here is her villanelle "One Art":
Next is "In the Waiting Room," one of her later poems.
This is not Richard Thompson's "Sumer is Icumen in," but it will have to do!
The lyrics are below:
Ah...someone has posted Thompson's "King Henry":
Here are links about the format of the sonnet, the villanelle, and the sestina.
Other poems that will be on the final will be Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" and Helene Johnson's "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem."
6 comments:
Thank you, this will help a lot since I was not able to attend class on tuesday
Good!
Is that the same Frank McCourt reading "My Papa's Waltz" that wrote Angela's Ashes?
yes :)
Very cool. Angela's Ashes is one of my favorites.
:)
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