Week 5

What is to give light must endure burning. – Victor Frankl

The following free verse poem is by Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse during the American Civil War.  In it he sees beyond the immediate violent conflict between North and South in tender recognition of the "divine" humanity of all involved, and the healing inevitably to come.  Notice the long, verse lines, stretching out from among the shorter and providing an expansive, heightened sense of feeling:

Reconciliation

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
... For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin. We'll look at Whitman's "Song of Myself, which was the first poem in the collection called "Leaves of Grass," an extended description of and tribute to America and a very important proto-modernist piece that has received much attention from poets and scholars.

A White Heron

Welcome back to class.  I hope you are all doing well.  

     Today we pick up where we left off last week, reviewing the poem written about last week ("I Dwell in Possibility") and others and the narrative work of Guy de Maupassant and Alice Munro ("The Found Boat"), and  then  to Charles Bukowski and Sarah Orne Jewett ("The White Heron"), writers from very different eras who yet tell stories about the travails of growing up that in certain respects are similar.  We will discuss the similarities and differences in class, but here I will indicate some of the similarities in theme that I have noted:

• A narrator/protagonist who feels himself in opposition to family and/or others and thus feels isolated or alone and vulnerable to some degree
• A narrator/protagonist who struggles to find and assert himself and in so many ways feel strong
• A narrator/protagonist who discovers where his powers lie and then exercises them
• A narrator/protagonist who considers the consequences of actions, and regards with sympathy and/or antipathy the weak, meek, and humble
• A narrator/protagonist who seeks understanding, even wisdom, through reflection, reading and writing
• A narrator/protagonist who shows awareness of the social mask and who hides certain aspects of his character
• A narrator/protagonist who invites readers to see the challenges of growing up by relating key memories and experiences from that journey

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Next week:   bring something to recite (not by memory) for class, which should be fun, and good practice!  Here is a link to student performance videos:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/theater/hamlet-student-instagram-videos.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Also, Class, for homework, in addition to composing an interpretative essay on a poetry and/or prose piece (#3 see directions below), I want you to consider Follain's  "Music of Spheres" (handout selection).  Write up six questions that the collective situation depicted in the poem implies (the character, setting, action, imagery, point of view, tone) and what answers or, if not "answers," responses might be made to each.  Research the title phrase as part of your study of the poem. You will be awarded points for this work.

Next week additional stories for those who want to read more :  Read the two stories "Misery" and "Joy" by the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov.  What constitutes the misery and joy in each?  What does Chekhov imply about human nature?

 http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/achekhov/bl-achek-misery.htm

http://www.online-literature.com/anton_chekhov/1103/

If we have time next week or the next we will look at autobiographical excerpts by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala Sa), a Native American writer who recorded her memories of Sioux life in South Dakota, including the influence of her mother, the natural world around them, the legends and rituals of her tribe, and her meeting with white missionaries.  In addition, "The Navaho Night Chant," a piece still performed today by the Navaho, offers a look into the way that poetry and chanting come together in a ritual of healing and transformation intended to return its participants to a renewed sense of vitality and wholeness.

                                                      Tintern Abbey (12th Century)

I have also a selection of poems I'd like to address, time permitting.  They will serve to underscore some of the narrative themes in the prose pieces we are reading, and provide review of the theme of the artist's relationship to art itself.   One is "Tintern Abbey," a romantic poem in blank verse by William Wordsworth:  http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/tabbey.html   At the following link you may read background and see in photos the beauty of the abbey:  http://www.castlewales.com/tintern.html  Another is Alfred Lord Tennyson's rhymed narrative (ballad) of "The Lady of Shallot," based on the medieval tales of King Arthur. And yet others:  and John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale."  

Posted below is the description of essay 3, which is due week 6 or 7.  I'd also like you to read  

 "The White Heron" and "The Lady of Shallot," linked in the paragraph above. Be prepared to identify and discuss the symbolism apparent in the story and the poem.

 Essay #3, due week 6: Compose a 600-700 word (minimum length) essay that introduces the text(s) by title and author and proceeds to support a thesis point or claim about the text(s). You may address poetry and/or prose selections. If you have two or more selections, they must be addressed under a comprehensive thesis, the essay unified by the thesis, with each serving to illustrate, develop and support your thesis. Include some description of the formal structure of the poem and/or prose elements, for example, stanza form, line length and rhyme pattern, use of repetition or anaphora, use of narrative structure, setting, plot, character,  conspicuous sound devices, imagery, figurative elements (such as metaphor, simile, symbol, personification).  Remember, narrative always involves the perspective or point of view of the narrator (first person or third person typically, as well as plot, setting, character development, tone or mood, and central thematic concerns. Lyric poems may have little in the way of narrative or story, though they always have a speaker and the speaker provides perspective, along with whatever other voices may be presented in the poem.  Provide support and evidence for your claims in the form of textual summary and direct quotation, formatted in the MLA style, with line citations. Avoid using quotation unnecessarily or dropping quotations in without commentary. Integrate short quotations into the text with quotation marks and slashes to indicate line breaks. Quotations of 4 and more lines should be block formatted. Title your essay (do not use the poetry or prose story title in the essay title unless a subtitle is also present). Double‐space the lines.