Sound And Sense

P
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r
in
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AP LIT AND COMP
SOUND
&
SENSE
An Introduction to Poetry
Truth
ion
 P e r c e p t
nts
SOUND
L A N G U A G Ey AE xNp D
erience
A Sensor
Tues/Wed, 3/12 & 13
1&2 Poetry 101
3- Denotation/Connotation
Ms. Knox Teaches
Tu/Wed, 3/19 &
20
4-Imagery
5-Figurative Language 1
6-Figurative Language 2
Th/Fri, 3/21 & 22
“[Poetry] exist[s] to bring us a sense of and a
perception of life, to widen and sharpen our
contacts with existence.” —Perrine
7-Figurative Language 3
8-Allusion
9-Meaning and Idea
Mon, 3/25
Ov e rview
We will spend the next several weeks
immersed in the experience of poetry as
we seek to understand its nature and
variety, its manipulation of language to
influence meaning, some reasonable
means for reading poetic forms with
understanding, and a few primary ideas of
how to evaluate poetry. As a class, we will
cover all the chapters in this book in an
expeditious and fun manner (emphasis on
the F-U-N, fun!) Okay, I’m a word nerd.
In small groups, you will grapple with
assigned chapters, focusing on the
terminology (learn it!) and how it is used
to write and understand poetry (apply it!)
Based on this sublime information and
your exhaustive study of an assigned
poem you will present a lively and
enlightening interpretation of the poem,
via a Keynote presentation. In your
presentation, it will be important for you
nme
g
i
s
s
A
r
Chapte
to not only demonstrate mastery of the
given elements of poetry and your poem,
but also to engage your audience. To help
students make connections with this text
and to understand it’s true meaning, you
will couple to poem with a piece of
published or original art and published or
original music. The connection between
the three pieces should be clearly
explained and should help the class come
to a greater understanding of the original
poem - so don’t just throw pieces in. This
is NOT simply show-and-tell. To receive
the highest marks, you will need to
directly and thoughtfully interact with
your classmates, thoroughly guide them
through the poem with a concerted focus
on the elements from the chapter, as well
as weaving in your other two pieces.
Each day, you must come to class
ready to participate in a college-level
10-Tone
Tu/Wed, 3/26 & 27
11-Musical Devices
Th/Fri, 3/28 & 29
12-Rhythm and Meter
Mon 4/1
13-Sound and Meaning
Tu/Wed, 4/2 & 3
14-Pattern
Th/Fri, 4/4 & 5
15 & 16-Evaluating Poetry (no lesson)
Exam
Res pon s ibi l it ie s & P o e t ry As si g nme nt s
1.
2.
2.
3.
4.
Preparation: Every student will read every chapter including all assigned
poems, whether leading the presentation and discussion or not. Presenters will
carefully and thoroughly annotate, analyze/TP-CASTT the poem, connect it to a
piece of visual art and music, and a present all the information in a Keynote.
Non-presenting students will annotate the assigned poem, keeping in mind
questions 1 - 7,10,11, 12 and 16 on page 31 of Perrine. The original annotation
will be added to during the presentation in a different color ink to show focus
and learning and further your understanding of the poems and elements, so bring
a different pen!
Presentation Structure: The student-taught lessons will include:
a. demonstrate mastery of chapter content through application to poetry
analysis. Focus on the language of the poem and the literary techniques
studied in the assigned chapter to complete a thorough study.
b. interpret the overall tone and theme of the poem, and what each person
should note to remember.
c. use visuals and/or graphics to enhance the important points of the poem,
as well as the visual art and music.
d. engage students in an appropriate and meaningful way (ask for
feedback, call on people, ask students to point out examples of X in the
poem.
Time Limit will be approximately 30 minutes per group. Be succinct, organized
and ready to roll. Know how to turn on the projector and access your keynote.
Evaluation will be based on clarity, obvious content mastery, clear and accurate
understanding and articulation of the poem and it’s meaning, choice of visual art
and music that makes sense and enhances student understanding of the poem,
class engagement. Enthusiasm and preparedness are a must.
Every student audience member must come to class with a positive attitude, a
clear understanding of the chapters, ready to support your classmates and to
learn. All notes will be taken on the poem, itself. No electronics necessary.
The AP Literature course suggests reading from the 16th through 20th centuries. In
making poetry selections, I tried to consider the range of poems offered in the text,
keeping in mind any gaps we may have in our own cannon of study for the year. I
also considered some of the poets most often drawn from for the AP exam, and, of
course, just poems I thought were truly amazing!
Poets whose work frequently appears on the AP exam include: W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop,
William Blake, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Richard Eberhart, Robert Frost, Seamus Heany,
John Keats, Philip Larkin, Archibald Macleish, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Rothke,
William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Wallace Stevens, Alfred Tennyson, Dylan Thomas,
Richard Wilbur, William Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth, John Updike, William Butler
Poems
3- Denotation/Connotation
“On My First Son” by Ben Johnson
4-Imagery
“The Forge” by Seamus Heaney
5-Figurative Language 1
“To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell
6-Figurative Language 2
“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
7-Figurative Language 3“in the inner
city” by Lucille Clifton
8-Allusion
“Abraham to kill him” by Emily Dickinson
9-Meaning and Idea
“The Caged Skylark” by Gerard Manley
Hopkins
10-Tone
“The Flea” by John Donne
11-Musical Devices
“Traveling through the dark” by William
Stafford
Grazing Horses
Kay Ryan
US Poet Laureate, 2008-9
Sometimes the
green pasture
of the mind
tilts abruptly.
The grazing horses
struggle crazily
for purchase
on the frictionless
nearly vertical
surface. Their
furniture-fine
legs buckle
on the incline,
unhorsed by slant
they weren’t designed to clime
and can’t.
12-Rhythm and Meter
“To a Daughter Leaving Home” by Linda
Pastan
13-Sound and Meaning
“Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred
Owen
14-Pattern
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good
Night” by Dylan Thomas
15/16-Evaluating Poetry
“When I have fears that I may cease to
be” and “O Solitude!”
A
final word on Evaluation.
You will receive four grades for this
unit on poetry.
1.
One Presentation of poem,
art, and poetic techniques
(20)
2.
Daily class participation (20)
3.
Final Multiple Choice Exam
(50)
4.
Final Timed Write. (25)
This study will directly impact your
score on the AP Exam. It is fast and
furious, but you will be amazed at how
much you know by the end of the unit!
I hope that is motivation enough to
keep you working hard. This is a
challenging unit!
This is the time to make AP Lit your
top priority.
The exams at the end of the unit will
be rigorous and thorough. The good
news is that you will be more than
prepared if you devote yourself to this
study. When you go on to college, this
unit will prove invaluable, as well.
Feel free to read ahead of the schedule
if you know you will be busy on a
certain day. If you know you will be
absent on a day you teach, you must
arrange for a swap with another
student for that teaching day or earn a
zero on the project. There are no
make-ups for this unit. Excused or no,
we need you here, ESPECIALLY if
you know in advance! So take care of
business!
There is no excuse for not giving this
unit 100%, whether you are
responsible for teaching or learning.
Poetry cannot afford to lose its
fundamentally self-delighting
inventiveness, its joy in being a process
of language as well as a representation of
things in the world.
SEAMUS HEANEY, The Redress of Poetry
Poet Louise Gluck, May 17, 2007
Poems for Study and Explication
On My First Son
by Ben Jonson
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy ;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
Oh, could I lose all father now ! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age !
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry. 10
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
5
The Forge
By Seamus Heaney
All I know is a door into the dark.
Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;
Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,
The unpredictable fantail of sparks
Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.
The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,
Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,
Set there immoveable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
Sometimes, leather-aproned, hairs in his nose,
He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter
Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;
Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick
To beat real iron out, to work the bellows.
5
10
in the inner city
by Lucille Clifton
5
in the inner city
or like we call it
home
we think a lot about uptown
and the silent nights
and the houses straight as
dead men
and the pastel lights
and we hang on to our no place
happy to be alive
and in the inner city
or
like we call it
home
To His Coy Mistress
By Andrew Marvell
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews
My vegatable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate
But at my back I always hear
Times winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chaped power
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
5
10
Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
5
Poems for Study and Explication, cont.
Abraham to kill him –
by Emily Dickinson
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Abraham to kill him –
Was distinctly told
Isaac was an Urchin –
Abraham was old -Not a hesitation –
Abraham complied –
Flattered by Obeisance
Tyranny demurred -Isaac -- to his children
Lived to tell the tale –
Moral -- with a Mastiff
Manners may prevail.
5
10
Traveling through the Dark
by William E. Stafford
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
The Caged Skylark
Gerard Manley Hopkins
AS a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.
Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest
spells,
5
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.
Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.
10
Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.
The Flea
by John Donne
MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
5
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
20
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
25
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
10
15
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car 5
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
10
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; 15
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
To a Daughter Leaving Home
by Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
5
10
15
Poems for Study and Explication, cont.
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.
When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be
by John Keats
20
Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
5
10
5
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
10
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
15
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
5
10
O Solitude!
by John Keats
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,Nature’s observatory - whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, !
5
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, ! 10
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.