Introduction to Poetry: A Reader
Four Authors
Matsuo Basho - 1644 - 1694; Japanese author, champion of the haiku.
Emily Dickinson - 1830 - 1886; American poet and recluse; all of her works published posthumously (after her death).
Gerard Manley Hopkins - 1844 - 1889; British poet, a member of the Oxford Movement (Anglican converts to Roman Catholicism), champion of sprung rhythm, an organic method of poetic meter that seeks to capture the natural cadences of speech.
Robert Frost - 1874 - 1963; American modern poet, a ‘conservative rebel’ who wrote in traditional poetic forms, usually about nature, while most other modern poets were experimenting with new forms and untraditional subjects.
Introductory Readings--Romantic and Realistic Love
“A Red, Red Rose”
BY ROBERT BURNS
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
“How Do I Love Thee?” (Sonnet 43)
BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
How do Browning and Burns approach love in different ways?
from About Fifty Haiku
BY MATSUO BASHO
None is travelling
Here along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
The first day of the year:
thoughts come - and there is loneliness;
the autumn dusk is here.
An old pond
A frog jumps in -
Splash!
Old dark sleepy pool . . .
quick unexpected
frog
Goes plop! Watersplash!
Lightening -
Heron's cry
Stabs the darkness
Clouds come from time to time -
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.
In the cicada's cry
There's no sign that can foretell
How soon it must die.
Poverty's child -
he starts to grind the rice,
and gazes at the moon.
Won't you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.
Black cloudbank broken
scatters in the
night ... Now see
Moon-lighted mountains!
Seek on high bare trails
sky-reflecting
violets...
Mountain-top jewels
Now in sad autumn
as I take my
darkening path . . .
A solitary bird
No oil to read by . . .
I am off to bed
but ah! . . .
My moonlit pillow
This snowy morning
that black crow
I hate so much . . .
But he's beautiful!
If there were fragrance
these heavy snow-
flakes settling . . .
Lilies on the rocks
See: surviving suns
visit the ancestral
grave . . .
Bearded, with bent canes
Death-song:
Fever-felled half-way,
my dreams arose
To march again . . .
Into a hollow land
“God's Grandeur”
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” - (314)
BY EMILY DICKINSON
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
“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.
Choose one of the following poems to independently analyze in an essay.
“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - (591)”
BY EMILY DICKINSON
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -
The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -
I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -
With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -
“Mother to Son”
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
“As Kingfishers Catch Fire (34)”
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
“The Tyger”
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
No comments:
Post a Comment