Poetry is Powerful"The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse." |
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How to Write about Poetry
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Read the definitions of explication and analysis on pages 5-7 of your Perrine text. As we study poetry, you will need to practice both explication and analysis verbally and in written form. Example essays:
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Poems for StudyCOLLEGE BOARD
PRACTICE |
Sonnets |
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Prompt: Read the poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson carefully. How does Tennyson use literary elements to express the concept of death?
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Crossing the Bar
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. |
Prompt: In the two poems below, Williams and Auden both reflect on similar concerns. Read the poems carefully. Then write an essay in which you compare and contrast the two poems, analyzing the poetic techniques each writer uses to explore suffering.
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Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
by William Carlos Williams According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling near the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning |
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. |