Reference no: EM133376841

Question 1: "Digging" (578): a. Why do you think the speaker repeats the title word often in the poem? What other "-ing" (participial) words does he use? Are they related? How does their sound echo their meaning? b. Find instances of consonance and assonance in the poem. How do they work to connect or unify the language? c. How does the speaker relate his work, writing poetry, to his father's and grandfather's work, digging/farming?
Question 2: "Woman's Work" (handout): a. Look at the rhyme scheme here-the exact and slant rhymes. What impact does the rhyme scheme have on your understanding of the poem? b. The speaker remembers her mother and her mother's work. What does she herself practice as "woman's work"? How does this connect to the work of Seamus Heaney in "Digging"?
Question 3: "Sadie and Maud" (handout): a. List the way these two histories are similar and different. What is Sadie's "last so-long"? How does the poet feel about the way Maud lives? b. Describe the poem's rhythm. Is it in a tightly controlled metrical form, or does if sound more like natural speech? Why do you think this is? c. Discuss sound in the final line of the poem. Why do you think Brooks chooses monosyllabic words here? What moral-if any-does Brooks suggest in this poem?
Question 4: "Love is not all" (handout): a. Describe the poem's rhyme scheme. Is it a Petrarchan (abba abba cde cde) or a Shakespearean sonnet (abab cdcd efef gg)? b. Millay uses personification with the line making "friends with death." What does the speaker mean by this phrase? c. What is the speaker debating in this poem? What is her conclusion about it?
Question 5: "When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes" (handout): The sonnet, perhaps the most traditional closed form poem written in English, is a fourteen-line poem with a distinctive rhyme scheme and metrical pattern. The English or Shakespearean sonnet, which consists of fourteen lines divided into three quatrains and a concluding couplet, is written in iambic pentameter and follows the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The Petrarchan sonnet, popularized by the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch, also consists of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, but these lines are divided into an eight-line unit called an octave and a six-line unit (composed of two tercets) called a sestet. The rhyme scheme of the octave is abba abba; the rhyme scheme of the sestet is cde cde. a. Discuss how this poem is structured. Where do you detect changes in thought or tone? b. This poem deals with the opposition between public and private life, the outer trappings of success and the inner sense of satisfaction or reward. If the speaker feels "outcast" and "in disgrace," why should he "scorn to change my state with kings"? What realization at the end of the poem does changes the speaker's mood?
Question 6: "Do not go gentle into that good night" (540): The villanelle, first introduced in France during the Middle Ages, is a nineteen-line poem composed of five tercets and a concluding quatrain; its rhyme scheme is aba aba aba aba aba abaa. Two different lines are systematically repeated in the poem; line 1 appears again in lines 6, 12, and 18, and line 3 reappears as lines 9, 15, and 19. Thus, each tercet concludes with an exact (or close) duplication of either line 1 or 3, and the final quatrain concludes by repeating both line 1 and line 3. a. Who's speaking, and to whom? What does "good night" here signify, or "the dying of the light"? b. Notice that it takes until the final stanza for the poet to address his father directly-making particular instance out of the general case. How does this heighten the tone and deepen the emotion expressed here?
Question 7: "Don't worry, spiders" (handout): a. A haiku compresses words into a very small package and focuses on an image, not an idea. A traditional Japanese haiku is a brief unrhymed poem that presents the essence of some aspect of nature, concentrating a vivid image into three lines. Although in the strictest sense, a haiku consists of seventeen syllables divided into lines of five, seven and five, respectively, not all poets conform to this rigid structure. Does this haiku touch on the cycle of the seasons? How so? b. This poem has been "Englished" and does not have the precise number of syllables contained in the original. Does that make a difference? If not, why? c. The form tends to make the poet speak about the smallest details of everyday life. What kind of tone does that create here?
Question 8: "What Is an Epigram?" (handout): As a literary form, an epigram is a very brief poem that makes a pointed, often sarcastic comment in a surprising twist at the end. a. What is the meaning of this poem? Tone? How does its message suit the form?
Question 9: "News Item" (handout): a. What is the meaning of this poem? What is its tone? b. How is it similar to Coleridge's poem?