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Week One

Introduction to poetry- Billy Collins

Introduction to Poetry is a poem that is more than the sum of its metaphorical parts. Billy Collins wrote it in the hope that it would encourage readers and students to look, listen and react to a poem in subtle imaginative ways, rather than ride roughshod over it.

The title of the poem suggests that this will be a basic, perhaps formal presentation of poetry, where the reader gets to know the poem's fundamentals. May I introduce you to sonnet - 14 lines, terrific rhyme scheme, packed with metaphor and anaphora and has an iambic pentameter to die for.

But, Introduction to Poetry is the poet's way of saying that a poem is a thing of wonder and should be treated in a way that does not cause internal bruising to both poem and reader. In effect, Billy Collins is declaring his love for poetry because, to him, it is a living thing, made of everyday language.

'There's mystery in the ordinary,' according to Collins. This mystery can be experienced by the reader (and the student/poet) if they are willing to approach each poem as if it were a new day in which they're about to be entertained. In this case, by a few metaphors and intriguing imagery.

Reading a poem a day is what Billy Collins wants everyone to do 'so that the poem will be a feature of daily life and not something that's just taught.'

Adam's Curse- William Butler

Addressing his beloved, the speaker remembers sitting with her and “that beautiful mild woman, your close friend” at the end of summer, discussing poetry. He remarked then that a line of poetry may take hours to write, but if it does not seem the thought of a single moment, the poet’s work has been useless. The poet said that it would be better to “scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones / Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather,” for to write poetry is a task harder than these, yet less appreciated by the “bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen” of the world.

The “beautiful mild woman”—whose voice, the speaker notes, is so sweet and low it will cause many men heartache—replied that to be born a woman is to know that one must work at being beautiful, even though that kind of work is not discussed at school. The speaker answered by saying that since the fall of Adam, every fine thing has required “labouring.” He said that there have been lovers who spent time learning “precedents out of beautiful old books,” but now such study seems “an idle trade enough.”

At the mention of love, the speaker recalls, the group grew quiet, watching “the last embers of daylight die.” In the blue-green sky the moon rose, looking worn as a shell “washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell / About the stars and broke in days and years.” The speaker says that he spoke only for the ears of his beloved, that she was beautiful, and that he strove to love her “in the old high way of love.” It had all seemed happy, he says, “and yet we’d grown / As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.”

Form

“Adam’s Curse” is written in heroic couplets, which is a name used to describe rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. Some of the rhymes are full (years/ears) and some are only partial (clergymen/thereupon).

This Is Just To Say- William Carlos William

William Carlos Williams wrote a quick note to his wife one morning, a 'passing gesture', and stuck it on the refrigerator before heading off to work. The note turned out to be a very short poem,This Is Just To Say and became one of his most popular creations when it was published in 1934.

The poem takes about 20 seconds to recite, has no regular rhythm or syllabic count, no rhyme, and lacks any punctuation, other than line-breaks. It is true to the poetic philosophy that Williams championed - away with convention, free the line, write poems about anything, be local, be American, no ideas but in things.

The things in this poem happen to be plums and yes, there's no doubting, all the ideas seem to spring from this delicious, juicy, cool fruit. Perhaps the plums were picked or bought by the person the note is aimed at; perhaps they were going to be shared?

Either way, the speaker is casual, forthright and a little guilty.

Williams wanted his poetry to be rooted in reality, with strong images (he was a keen Imagist) and a local feel. This Is Just To Say is a work of intimate detail; just a few words laid out neatly that hold so much more.

He helped establish a new American street-and-backyard voice in poetry, minimalist, sketchy, in contrast to poets like T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound who preferred the European and Asian traditions.

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Lines: 1 to 4:

“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.”

In the first four lines, the poet informs his readers that he has written some and read much of poetry by different poets. By realms of gold, Keats means the world of poetry and hence of imagination. Keats also tells his readers that the poets who owe their allegiance to Apollo, god of poetry, and who belong to the ‘Western islands,’ have also been read by him. I am not so certain about Keats’ claim here because he is certainly not implying the literal meaning – he is only talking about his poetical imagination and poetry! So, what we get is that the poet John Keats begins his sonnet On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by telling the readers about his readership of poetry and the various poets he has read and many things he knows about the realms of imagination.

Lines: 5 to 8:

“Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:”

In these lines, Keats announces to the readers about his introduction to Homer. He tells that though he knew about Homer and his epics ago, he had a better or the best opportunity to know him and his works only when he read the translations of him by George Chapman. By the appreciative gesture, “speak out loud and bold” Keats certainly hints that the translations by Chapman are better than others he might have read.

Lines: 9 to 14:

“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

These lines from 9 to 14 form the sestet of the Petrarchan sonnet On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats. In these lines, Keats compares himself to a skywatcher who has suddenly found a new planet or the legendary adventurer Cortes who was the first European to find or see the Mexico City.

Summary in one go:

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer is about Keats’ venture into the reading of Chapman’s translations of Homer. He is overly excited about his new-found knowledge and as a poet of experience and occasion, he writes about it as most of the Romantics used to do – express their feelings or moments. Keats thinks that reading of Chapman has given him a distinct treasure and this wonderful wealth has been kept from him until he read Chapman. He compares himself with the overjoyed scientist who finds out about a new planet to see his name immortalised on the pages of history or a sailor (adventurer) who finds out new places for the sections of people.

Analysis:

The poem is one of the finest Petrarchan sonnets ever composed! It follows the rhyme scheme a b b a a b b a – c d c d c d. Without going into the history and usual spying which most of the other scholars do, I have very limited points to make. This is one of the earliest poems Keats had composed and yet it has superior qualities. A usual romantic poem in tone and content, the poem is about the fanciful exploration of a new world – the world of Greek legends and it formed the base of many of the later poems that Keats wrote. However, Keats had wonderfully confused (though scholars hint that it might be a mistake but I don’t take that argument) Cortes with Balboa who was the actual person who first found the Pacific. For Keats, the only religion was beauty and this beauty also peeps through his lines. While composing poems, he reached from places to places like a wild soul and he never cared for the factual correctness because it might mar the effect of imagination; imagination is inherently wild and an uncontrolled beast which can seldom be reined and those who rein it can seldom imagine! On First Looking into Chapman’s Home remains in front of us as an example of the same – imagination at its best! Just be reading Chapman, Keats found himself dip in the mythology of Greeks and he could not come out of it! And this poem is the testimony to this truth about him.

The Tyger - William Blake

Summary

The poem begins with the speaker asking a fearsome tiger what kind of divine being could have created it: “What immortal hand or eye/ Could frame they fearful symmetry?” Each subsequent stanza contains further questions, all of which refine this first one. From what part of the cosmos could the tiger’s fiery eyes have come, and who would have dared to handle that fire? What sort of physical presence, and what kind of dark craftsmanship, would have been required to “twist the sinews” of the tiger’s heart? The speaker wonders how, once that horrible heart “began to beat,” its creator would have had the courage to continue the job. Comparing the creator to a blacksmith, he ponders about the anvil and the furnace that the project would have required and the smith who could have wielded them. And when the job was done, the speaker wonders, how would the creator have felt? “Did he smile his work to see?” Could this possibly be the same being who made the lamb?

Form

The poem is comprised of six quatrains in rhymed couplets. The meter is regular and rhythmic, its hammering beat suggestive of the smithy that is the poem’s central image. The simplicity and neat proportions of the poems form perfectly suit its regular structure, in which a string of questions all contribute to the articulation of a single, central idea.

_The reference to the lamb in the penultimate stanza reminds the reader that a tiger and a lamb have been created by the same God, and raises questions about the implications of this. It also invites a contrast between the perspectives of “experience” and “innocence” represented here and in the poem “The Lamb.” “The Tyger” consists entirely of unanswered questions, and the poet leaves us to awe at the complexity of creation, the sheer magnitude of God’s power, and the inscrutability of divine will. The perspective of experience in this poem involves a sophisticated acknowledgment of what is unexplainable in the universe, presenting evil as the prime example of something that cannot be denied, but will not withstand facile explanation, either. The open awe of “The Tyger” contrasts with the easy confidence, in “The Lamb,” of a child’s innocent faith in a benevolent universe.

The Eagle

Meter- Iambic pentameter, although line 2 and 3 are trochees then it continues to be Iambic

The Mountain

The Sea

The Sky

Form and Meter

Speaker

Setting

Sound Check

What's Up With the Title?

Calling Card

Tough-O-Meter

Brain Snacks

Sex Rating

THEMES

QUOTES

STUDY QUESTIONS

BEST OF THE WEB

HOW TO READ A POEM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SHMOOP PREMIUM

THE EAGLE

Symbol Analysis

The eagle doesn't do a whole heck of a lot in this poem, but that's OK. We're so conditioned to think of eagles as majestic and free that we're willing to forgive this one for a little inactivity until he puts on a show at the end. The eagle is male and may represent some kind of masculine ideal. Its actions are described very modestly by very four subject-verb pairings: "he clasps," "he stands," "he watches," "he falls." Interestingly, all of these behaviors, including falling, are passive. The eagle never breaks a sweat.

Lines 2: These lines practically bop you over the head with alliteration, with the use of hard "c" sounds in the words "clasps," "crag," "crooked," and "close." Also, the eagle's claws are personified as "crooked hands," as if the eagle were a person with a really terrible case of arthritis. For the record, he isn't, and doesn't.

Line 6: The phrase "like a thunderbolt" is a simile that describes the speed and energy of the eagle's flight. The word "falls" is a deliberate understatement. What Tennyson really means is something like "dives."