Dr. Szlyk's Blog for ENGL 190: Study Guide for Final (Spring 2009) -- Poetry

The picture above is William Blake's original published version of "Holy Thursday" in The Songs of Experience. Blake is also known as an artist and printmaker.

We began our poetry unit by reading both versions of William Blake's "Holy Thursday." One was from The Songs of Experience (1794). The other was from The Songs of Innocence (1789). Consider the difference between the way that William Blake portrays these children and that earlier writers like Voltaire and Behn portrayed the poor, servants, and slaves. Romantic writers were more sympathetic to the poor and children. (Rousseau--we are born good but are corrupted by society.)

We also looked at William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" and "Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman." Interestingly, neither were in our anthology. Both poems are from Lyrical Ballads, the 1798 collection of poems by Wordsworth & S.T. Coleridge. Our editors seem to prefer Wordsworth's self-scrutiny to his poems of observation. Note how "Simon Lee" resists narrative yet sounds like a ballad. (Its rhyme scheme is ababcdce.)
Unfortunately, we did not get to Wordsworth's sonnets, but here is a link to John Green's reading of "Westminster Bridge." Note that the sonnet was another form that he helped to revive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz4v9x3PIZc

Below is an 1897 painting of Westminster Bridge by Frederick Marlett Bell-Smith:

Here are some remarks by William Wordsworth on poetry. They are from his preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800, 1802):

"All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."

Poetry "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

"Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply."

A poet "is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind."

"a large portion of the language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good Prose."

Above is a picture of William Wordsworth's home, Dove Cottage, in the Lake District of England. If you scroll to the links below, you may listen to actor Jeremy Irons reading Wordsworth's "Daffodils."

Emphasizing the supernatural rather than ordinary individuals who lived in the country, Wordsworth's friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge took a different approach to poetry in his fragment, "Kubla Khan" and his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." (Coleridge, by the way, lived for a time in Germany.) If you scroll to the links at the bottom, you may listen to Sean Barrett reading from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Blake (1757-1827), Wordsworth (1770-1850), and Coleridge (1772-1834) belong to the first generation of Romantics. These men lived through the French Revolution as adults. With John Keats (1795-1821) and his narrative poem, "The Eve of St. Agnes," we move on to the second generation of the Romantics. Note how Keats handles the supernatural in his narrative. Note how Porphyro takes advantage of Madeleine's belief that she will dream of her husband-to-be on the Eve of St. Agnes.

Below is an image of Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt's painting "The Eve of St. Agnes." By the time Hunt created this painting (1847-1857), Keats' reputation had risen. During his lifetime, critics attacked his work, in part because of his social standing and perhaps their assumptions about his politics. (Keats was an apprentice to a surgeon at a time when doctors' social standing was not as high as it is today. Early nineteenth-century England was conservative politically and culturally, perhaps in response to the upheaval of the French Revolution.)

We then moved on from the British Romantics to some other 19th century poets from Vol. E. We began with Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), a controversial poet and the author of Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). The poem of his that we read (in French and its English translation) was "The Albatross."

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/200

Below is a photo of an albatross.

We also read the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario (1867-1916) 's "Walt Whitman" and "In Autumn,"
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)'s "I heard a Fly buzz," and
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)'s "I Hear America Singing" and "O Captain! My Captain." With these poets (including Baudelaire), modern poetry begins. Latin American critics, in fact, call Dario the father of Modernismo. Emily Dickinson, by the way, published very few poems during her lifetime, and Walt Whitman self published his book, Leaves of Grass. This was not too hard as he was a printer by trade.

Below is a picture of Emily Dickinson's room at home. Can you imagine the fly buzzing? The house where she lived and wrote her poetry is now part of a museum run by Amherst College.

We moved into the 20th century with Ezra Pound (1885-1972) ("A Pact," "In a Station of the Metro," and "The River Merchant's Wife," his translation of a translation of Li Bo's poem). Although Pound knew many other languages and was an instructor of modern languages at Indiana's Wabash College, he did not know Chinese. Although he did not know Chinese, he brought much attention to that culture's poetry and used it to change English-language poetry, making it more stripped-down and focused, exchanging the metronome for the phrase, making it new, to cite his famous command.

With T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), we were able to listen to his recording of the first part of "The Waste Land," an immensely influential and erudite poem in five parts and many languages from Italian and German to the closing Sanskrit. This poem, however, takes place in London, the city where Eliot, an American, had chosen to live. (By the way, Ezra Pound helped edit "The Waste Land.") We also read Eliot's earlier poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which he wrote when he was 22. Does Prufrock ever leave his room?

Here is a link to the recording of Eliot's reading that we listened to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tqK5zQlCDQ

How does Eliot's London compare to Blake's or Wordsworth's?

Below is a picture dating from World War One. It is from the British Postal Museum and Archive's website.

We also looked at two poems by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats (1865-1939): "The Second Coming" (the poem where Chinua Achebe derived the title, Things Fall Apart) and "Easter 1916" (a poem about the aftermath of the Irish declaration of a republic -- Ireland was then a British colony). Both poems were published by 1921, after World War One had ended but before Ireland became independent. Here you may listen to Yeats' reading his poems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FT4_UUa4I

Below is a picture of the General Post Office that served as the Irish rebels' fort in 1916:

Here you may listen to an Irish-American rock band Black 47 play its song "James Connolly." Connolly was one of the leaders of the rebellion. Yeats did not mention him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwEv2YCrSoY

We finished our unit on poetry with the work of Australian aborigine political activist and poet Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal (1920-1993) 's "We Are Going," Laguna/Sioux poet and scholar Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008)'s "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins," Laguna Pueblo poet and novelist Leslie Marmon Silko (1948-)'s "Toe'osh" and "Franz Boas' Visit." Paula Gunn Allen's visitor, by the way, was Abenaki poet Joseph Bruchac. Ironically, the Franz Boas that Leslie Marmon Silko refers to was a pioneering, progressive anthropologist who not only developed scientific method in anthropology but also encouraged his students to be more tolerant to the groups they studied.

Below is a picture of Laguna Pueblo (NM) from 1902: