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Poems for beginners

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ant

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Re: Poems for beginners

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I like John Ciardi's idea that poems should be experienced like a figure skater's performance. Not analyzed like a specimen under glass.
:hmm:
Am I doing that to Poe's poem?

It's the first time I've read it.
I really enjoyed it and need to read through it a few more times.
Last edited by ant on Fri Apr 11, 2014 2:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Poems for beginners

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I wrote this earlier, but quickly deleted it because I wanted to see where you would go with it. Here's my interpretation.

This last stanza shocks us with the revelation that the narrator is actually sleeping with the corpse of his beloved. Throughout the poem the narrator alludes to gods being jealous of the couple's love, so jealous that they took his beloved away. The reader initially takes this as poetic license and hyperbole. Indeed the poem has a pleasing sing-song rhyme-scheme and contains much beautiful imagery. But these last lines force us to reevaluate everything we've heard so far and consider the possibility that these are the musings of a madman. The unreliable narrator is one of Poe's specialties.

This poem appears in John Ciardi's book, HOW DOES A POEM MEAN? Although Ciardi doesn't offer his own interpretation, this poem is grouped with other poems that have a strong lyrical and rhythmic quality. If you read this poem aloud, you will fall into its rhythm quickly. It would almost make a good lullaby if not for its morbid themes.
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Re: Poems for beginners

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ant wrote:
I like John Ciardi's idea that poems should be experienced like a figure skater's performance. Not analyzed like a specimen under glass.
:hmm:
Am I doing that to Poe's poem?

It's the first time I've read it.
I really enjoyed it and need to read through it a few more times.
Ciardi suggests that we read a poem much the same way we would watch a performance. You may not know exactly what's going on at first, but you still follow the action and just enjoy the ride. Don't worry about the meaning at first. It will come to you.

I'm trying to think of poems that force you to rethink everything as the final line (or final stanza) comes. Annabelle Lee may or may not be one of these poems.

Ciardi's essay is here:

http://www.csun.edu/~krowlands/Content/ ... ciardi.pdf
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Re: Poems for beginners

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Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?
by Thomas Hardy

"Ah, are you digging on my grave
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No, yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"

"Then who is digging on my grave?
My nearest dearest kin?"
-- "Ah, no; they sit and think, 'What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death's gin.' "

"But some one digs upon my grave?
My enemy? -- prodding sly?"
-- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie."

"Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say -- since I have not guessed!"
-- "O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog, who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?"

"Ah yes! You dig upon my grave . . .
Why flashed it not on me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
A dog's fidelity!"

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting-place."
-Geo
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Re: Poems for beginners

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geo wrote:I wrote this earlier, but quickly deleted it because I wanted to see where you would go with it. Here's my interpretation.

This last stanza shocks us with the revelation that the narrator is actually sleeping with the corpse of his beloved. Throughout the poem the narrator alludes to gods being jealous of the couple's love, so jealous that they took his beloved away. The reader initially takes this as poetic license and hyperbole. Indeed the poem has a pleasing sing-song rhyme-scheme and contains much beautiful imagery. But these last lines force us to reevaluate everything we've heard so far and consider the possibility that these are the musings of a madman. The unreliable narrator is one of Poe's specialties.

This poem appears in John Ciardi's book, HOW DOES A POEM MEAN? Although Ciardi doesn't offer his own interpretation, this poem is grouped with other poems that have a strong lyrical and rhythmic quality. If you read this poem aloud, you will fall into its rhythm quickly. It would almost make a good lullaby if not for its morbid themes.
I wanted to suggest necrophilia, but stopped myself at the last minute.
I will need to read the poem out loud this evening when I have some alone time.

I read somewhere that art can be thought of as a reflection of the artist's emotional state.
Might we be able to say the same about poetry?
I am not familiar with Poe's biography.
Might Annabel Lee be a reflection of Poe's emotional state of mind?
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Re: Poems for beginners

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'Performance" I think must mean about the same as "drama," and dramatically the poem does change in those final lines, when as geo says, we suddenly consider a different thesis about the narrator. Up to that point, he's over the top, but in a way that is more or less in keeping with a tradition of idealized romance. The poem plays with our expectations, which do not initially include, as ant said, the narrator as necrophiliac.

One idea about lyric poetry is that there is always a turn, a shift from an initial perspective to a different one, a posing of a problem and an answer, something like that. In "Annabel Lee," maybe we think the turn comes with the death of the lady, but we find out that's not it at the very end of the poem.

This thread is a good idea, geo. I sometimes feel modern poetry got lost somewhere. When you say poetry for beginners, you're talking about the poetry written before the dawn of the age of difficulty, which T. S. Eliot is said to have ushered in. The audience for poetry then changed as well, from the common reader to the in-the-know or academic reader with a taste for obscurity and nuance and willing to indulge a poet who spoke in his own private terms. Most of the poetry of the Nineteenth Century or earlier is not difficult, and when it seems to be, as in Shakespeare or John Donne, the difficulty is from verbal intricacy or unfamiliar diction rather than idiosyncracy of thought, as in modern poetry.

How's that for gross generalization. I'd be remiss not to note that some modern poets didn't abandon the general reader, people like Billy Collins and Mary Oliver.
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Re: Poems for beginners

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geo wrote:Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?
by Thomas Hardy

"Ah, are you digging on my grave
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No, yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,
'That I should not be true.'"

"Then who is digging on my grave?
My nearest dearest kin?"
-- "Ah, no; they sit and think, 'What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
Her spirit from Death's gin.' "

"But some one digs upon my grave?
My enemy? -- prodding sly?"
-- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie."

"Then, who is digging on my grave?
Say -- since I have not guessed!"
-- "O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog, who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
Have not disturbed your rest?"

"Ah yes! You dig upon my grave . . .
Why flashed it not on me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
A dog's fidelity!"

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave
To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
It was your resting-place."
This is in the same mold as "Annabel Lee," isn't it, with a distinct punchline at the end, very satisfying and basic, and accessible once you sort out who is doing the speaking. I wonder in passing how many of these "speaking from the grave" poems exist? Not to use this thread as tit for tat, but I'd like to put in a poem in by Hardy's contemporary and fellow depressive, A. E. Housman.

Is my team ploughing..."
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

'Is my team ploughing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?'

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plough.

'Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?'

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

'Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?'

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

'Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?'

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man's sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.
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Re: Poems for beginners

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Housman's poem is the perfect companion to Hardy's. Both are good access points into the world of poetry because they are fairly easy to grasp and to enjoy. Both of these rhyme and both tell a story of sorts which probably adds to their appeal.

I’m a latecomer to poetry myself so I can relate to Chris O’Connor’s recent comment that it’s hard to engage with a lot of poetry. You can easily encounter a poem and not get it so that it just seems like random words on the page. That was a major block for me as well for many years. I remember a Victorian Lit class I took in college many years ago, and being just baffled by the works of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. So it’s not just new poetry versus old. Poems that rhyme offer at least one access point that free verse does not. So older poems might be a good place to start on a journey where the goal is to become better acquainted with poetry.

But there’s some modern poetry that would be good as well. You mention Billy Collins, who wrote a poem about smoking that I really can relate to. I’ll trot out Kay Ryan’s poem “Doubt” at some point too.

I taught an English class a few years ago which included an introduction to poetry, and I was completely up front to my students about my poetry blind spot. I still don’t know much about rhyme scheme and patterns of stress and all that:

an iamb goes: ti-tum
a trochee goes tum-ti
a spondee goes tum! tum!


One of the poems we encountered in that class was “Suburban” by John Ciardi (I’ll post that poem at some point). More importantly, I did some research and found an out-of-print book by Ciardi called “How Does A Poem Mean.” And so I’ve been reading through this book for almost two years now, coming very close to the end of it. I’m still baffled my much of it, but perhaps more able to take in and enjoy the performance of a poem.

DWill, I hope you and a few other BT regulars who are much more versed than I am will sort of take over this thread. Until that happens, it’s sort of the blind leading the blind.
-Geo
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Re: Poems for beginners

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I just like the idea of beginners, to tell you the truth, and would hope to be a beginner always in areas such as poetry and philosophy, even science.

I'm not much into the technical detail of versification. I taught English for a time, but I didn't find that subject to be one I enjoyed getting across to students. Didn't like grammar or spelling, either, for that matter. Didn't teach for that long, wonder why.

I bet that Victorian lit class wouldn't seem so hard for you now. Poems that are difficult for me are ones that are scared to death to make any statement, because that would be too obvious and unsophisticated. No, more likely I suppose is that I just don't get it and am not motivated to get it. For example, Wallace Stevens' famous poem "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."


I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
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Re: Poems for beginners

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"13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."
wow, i loved that, cheers.

http://www.whats-your-sign.com/raven-symbolism.html
The raven is symbolic of mind, thought and wisdom according to Norse legend, as their god Odin was accompanied by two ravens: Hugin who represented the power of thought and active search for information. The other raven, Mugin represented the mind, and its ability to intuit meaning rather than hunting for it. Odin would send these two ravens out each day to soar across the lands. At day's end, they would return to Odin and speak to him of all they had spied upon and learned on their journeys.
Dr. Carl Jung deemed raven symbolism to represent the shadow self, or the dark side of the psyche. I very much like this. Why? Because by acknowledging this dark side, we can effectively communicate with both halves of ourselves. This offers liberating balance, and facilitates tremendous wisdom (something the raven would be very pleased with).

In other words, through the consistent unveiling of inner depths, and the positive/active utilization of inner impulses the esoteric secrets become exposed to the light of our own consciousness. This is at the crux of what the raven speaks to me.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
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