Introduction
Poetry gives us knowledge. It is a knowledge of ourlves in relation to the world of experience, and to that world considered, not statistically, but in terms of human purpos and values. Experience considered in terms of human purpos and values is dramatic—dramatic in that it is concrete, in that it involves a process, and in that it embodies the human effort to arrive—through conflict—at meaning.
Becau poetry—like all the arts—involves this kind of experiential knowledge, we miss the value of poetry if we think of its characteristic knowledge as consisting of “messages,” statements, snippets of doctrine. The knowledge that poetry yields is available to us only if we submit ourlves to the massive, and subtle, impact of the poem as a whole. We have access to this special kind of knowledge only by participating in the drama of the poem, apprehending the form of the poem. What in this context do we mean by form? To create a form is to find a way to contemplate, and perhaps to comprehend, our human urgencies. Form is the recognition of fate made joyful, becau made comprehensible.
Becau the special knowledge that poetry gives reaches us only through form, we believe that the study of poetry should be inductive and concrete. We believe that one should obrve as carefully as p
ossible the elements of poetry—the human events, the images, the rhythms, the statements; and then that he should surrender as fully as possible to the impact of the whole, recognizing that the whole is greater than, and different from, the parts.
Form, of cour, does not exist in a vacuum. It is not an abstraction, in thinking of form we should keep in mind the following matters that relate to its context:
1.Poems are written by human beings and the form of a poem is an individual’s attempt
to deal with a specific problem, poetic and personal.
2.Poems come out of a historical moment, and since they are written in language, the
form is tied to a whole cultural context.
3.Poems are read by human beings, which means that the reader, unlike a robot, must
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be able to recognize the dramatic implications of the form.
Reading Poetry Responsively
Perhaps the best way to begin reading poetry responsively is not to allow yourlf to be intimidated by it. Come to it, initially at least, the way you might listen to a song on the radio. You probably listen to a song veral times before you hear it all, before you have a n of how it works, where it is going, and how it gets there. You don’t worry about analyzing a song when you listen to it, even though after repeated experiences with it you know and anticipate a favorite part and know, on some level, why it works for you. Give yourlf a chance to respond to poetry. The hardest work has already been done by the poet, so all you need to do at the start is listen for the pleasure produced by the poet’s arrangement of words.
Try reading the following poem aloud. Read it aloud before you read it silently. You may stumble once or twice, but you’ll make n of it if you pay attention to its punctuation and don’t stop at the end of every line where there is no punctuation. The title gives you an initial n of what the poem is about.
The Secretary Chant
Marge Piercy
My hips are a desk.
From my ears hang
chains of paper clips.
Rubber bands form my hair.
My breasts are wells of mimeograph ink.
My feet bear casters.
Buzz. Click.
ipcomMy head is a badly organized file.
四级分数怎么算My head is a switchboard
where crosd lines crackle.
Press my fingers
and in my eyes appear
credit and debit.
Zing. Tinkle.
My navel is a reject button.
From my mouth issue canceled reams.
Swollen, heavy, rectangular
I am about to be delivered
of a baby
Xerox machine.
File me under W
becau I wonce
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a woman.
What is your respon to this cretary’s chant? The point is simple enough—she feels dehumanized by her office functions—but the pleasures are manifold. Piercy makes the speaker’s voice sound mechanical by using short bursts of sound and by having her make repetitive, flat,
matter-of-fact statements (“My breasts . . . . My feet . . . My head . . . My navel”). The poem makes a rious statement about how such women are reduced to functionaries. The point is made, however, with humor since we are asked to visualize the misappropriation of the cretary’s body—her identity—as it is transformed into little more than a piece of office equipment, which ems to be breaking down in the final lines, when we learn that she “wonce / was / a woman.” Is there the slightest hint of something subversive in this misspelling of “wonce”? Maybe so, but the humor is clear enough, particularly if you try to make a drawing of what this dehumanized cretary has become.
The next poem creates a different kind of mood. Think about the title, “Tho Winter Sundays,” before you begin reading the poem. What associations do you have with winter Sundays? What emotions does the phra evoke in you?
Tho Winter Sundays星期天早晨
Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would ri and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that hou.
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Does the poem match the feelings you have about winter Sundays? Either way your respon can be uful in reading the poem. For most of us Sundays are days at home; they might be cozy and pleasant experiences or they might be dull and depressing. Whatever they are, Sundays are more evocative than, say, Tuesdays. Hayden us that respon to call forth a n of misd opportunity in the poem. The person who reflects on tho winter Sundays didn’t know until much later how much he had to thank his father for “love’s austere and lonely offices.” This is a poem about a cold past and a prent reverence for his father—elements brought together by the phra “Winter Sundays.” His father? You may have noticed that the poem doesn’t u a masculine pronoun; hence the voice could be a woman’s. does the x of the voice make any difference to your reading? Would it make any difference about which details are included or what language is ud?
What is more important about your initial readings of a poem is that you ask questions. If you read responsively, you’ll find yourlf asking all kinds of questions about the words, descriptions, sounds, and structures of a poem. The specifics of tho questions will be generated by the particular poem. We don’t, for example, ask how humor is achieved in “Tho Winter Sundays” becau there is none, but it is worth asking what kind of tone is established by the description of “the chronic angers of that hou.”
Now, read the following poem veral times and note your respon at different points in the poem. Then write down a half dozen or so questions about what produces your respon to the poem. To answer questions, it’s best to know first what the questions are.
Dog’s Death
John Updike
She must have been kicked unen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To u the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
Ant to win, wetting there, the words, “Good dog! Good dog!”
We thought her shy malai was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclod a rupture in her liver.
As we tead her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.
Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And nt to school, she crawled beneath the youngest’s bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet’s, on my lap, she tried
To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.底薪
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.
Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and bad dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left here. Good dog.
Here’s a simple question to get started with your own questions: what would its effect have been if Updike had titled the poem “Good Dog” instead of “Dog’s Death”?
写情书1. Robert Frost: “The Road Not Taken”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,筋饼怎么做又软又好吃
Becau it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
How old is the speaker in the poem?
This poem intrigues readers becau it is at once so simple and so deeply resonant. Recalling a walk in the woods, the speaker describes how he came to a fork in the road, which forced him to choo one path over another. Though “sorry” that he “could not travel both,” he made a choice after carefully weighing his two options. This, esntially, is what happens in the poem; there is no other action. However, the incident is charged with symbolic significance by the speaker’s reflections on the necessity and conquences of his decision.
The final stanza indicates that the choice concerns more than simply walking down a road, for the speaker says that choosing the “less traveled” path has affected his entire life—that “that has made all the difference.” Frost draws on a familiar enough metaphor when he compares life to a journey, but he is also calling attention to a less commonly noted problem: despite our expectations, aspirations, appetites, hopes, and desires, we can’t have it all. Making one choice precludes another. It is impossible to determine what particular decision the speaker refers to: perhaps he had to choo a college, a career, a spou; perhaps he was confronted with mutually exclusive ideas, beliefs, or values. There is no way to know becau Frost wily creates a symbolic choice and implicitly invites us to supply our own circumstances.
The speaker’s reflections about his choice are as central to an understanding of the poem as the choice itlf; indeed, they may be more central. He describes the road taken as “having
perhaps the better claim, / Becau it was grassy and wanted wear”; he prefers the “less traveled” path. This ems to be an expression of individualism, which would account for “the difference” his choice made in his life. But Frost complicates matters by having the speaker also acknowledge that there was no significant difference between the two roads; one was “just as fair” as the other; each was “worn . . . really about the same”; and “both that morning equally lay / In leaves no steps had tro
dden black.”
The speaker imagines that in the future, “ages and ages hence,” he will recount his choice with “a sign” that will satisfactorily explain the cour of his life, but Frost ems to be having a little fun here by showing us how the speaker will embellish his past decision to make it appear more dramatic. What we hear is someone trying to convince himlf that the choice he made significantly changed his life. When he recalls what happened in the “yellow wood,” a color that gives a glow to that irretrievable moment when his life emed to be on verge of a momentous change, he appears more concerned with the path he did not choo than with the one he took. Frost shrewdly titles the poem to suggest the speaker’s n of loss at not being able to “travel both” roads. When the speaker’s reflections about his choice are examined, the poem reveals his nostalgia instead of affirming his decision to travel a lf-reliant path in life.
The rhymed stanzas of “The Road Not Taken” follow a pattern established in the first five lines (abaab). This rhyme scheme reflects, perhaps, the speaker’s efforts to shape his life into a pleasing and coherent form. The natural speech rhythms Frost us allow him to integrate the rhymes unobtrusively, but there is a slight shift in lines 19 and 20, when the speaker asrts lf-consciously that the “less traveled” road—which we already know to be basically the same as the other road—“m
ade all the difference.” Unlike all the other rhymes in the poem, “difference” does not rhyme precily with “hence.” The emphasis that must be placed on “differ ence” to make it rhyme perfectly with “hence” may suggest that the speaker is trying just a little too hard to pattern his life on his earlier choice in the woods.
2. The Secretary’s Chant
This poem provides an opportunity to discuss point of view in poetry. The cretary’s view of herlf mirrors the way she is treated. She has become a variety of objects, a list of uful items becau she is looked at as an object by people around her. Her attitude toward herlf is framed by other people’s perceptions of her, although we must assume that she is aware of her ability to write satire. We get an inkling of her “real” lf in the last three lines; the misspelled “wonce” mocks misperceptions of her intellect, while “woman” indicates that there is much more to be learned about the speaker.
Writing assignment: Discuss the metaphors in this poem. What assumptions about women and cretaries do the metaphors satirize?
3. Tho Winter Sundays
