Starting Poetry!

Last night we began our unit on poetry by looking at mainly formal poetry (dramatic monologue, villanelle, and sonnet) although we did look at Yusef Komunyakaa's "Facing It," a free verse poem.

Here is a link to the snippet of Dante's The Divine Comedy that we looked at.  Unfortunately, the URL does not link to the specific examples.
http://www.divinecomedy.org/divine_comedy.html

You can even listen to the original Italian of Petrarch's Canzionere:
http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html?poem=3

James Mason reads "My Last Duchess" here.  You can also find various lectures explaining Browning's classic poem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZbNrNE9q8g

Sir Anthony Hopkins reads "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIfK809B0Qs

Dylan Thomas himself reads the same poem:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2cgcx-GJTQ

Here is a recording of "the rites for cousin vit":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBa_OmLs4nM

Alan Rickman reads Shakespeare's Sonnet #130: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP06F0yynic

Yusef Komunyakaa reads "Facing It."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90yxqlVrLP8

For our next class, I'd like you to read chapter 14 and the following free verse poems:

Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" is in chapter 13, but here is a link for you:  https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/those-winter-sundays

Here is Philip Levine's "Animals Are Passing From Our Lives":  https://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/levine/animals_are_passing_from_our_lives.php

This is Seamus Heaney's "Digging":
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47555

Elizabeth Bishop's "Crusoe in England" is here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/48287

I'll finish with Mary Ellen Solt's "Forsythia":  http://writing.upenn.edu/library/Solt-Mary-Ellen_Forsythia.html

Here are a few questions for you.

-- What was it like for you to listen to various poems aloud this past week?

-- Which do you prefer--formal poetry or free verse?  Why?

-- What do this week's poem add to your understanding of poetry?  of free verse?

-- Compare and contrast "Crusoe in England" and "My Last Duchess" as dramatic monologues.  Does it matter that "Crusoe in England" is free verse?

-- Choose one of our poems to discuss word choice.

-- Choose one of our poems to discuss imagery.

-- Choose one of our poems to discuss tone.

-- Choose one of our poems to discuss voice.

-- What do you make of Mary Ellen Solt's "Forsythia"?  Is it poetry or is it visual art?

-- What do you make of the ending of "Animals Are Passing from Our Lives"?

-- If you haven't read Robinson Crusoe, does this make a difference to you when you read this poem?

-- How do you feel about the ending of "Digging"?

See you in class!