VCCS LitonlineHere are sample answers to the questions from this module's
Preview
contributed by Bernice Reyes, July, 2004
3a. From the “Preview” page: Jot down your definition of love, and then read on.
For me love is like a knife. It can stab the heart or it can carve wonderful images into the soul that always last for a lifetime. Love is supposed to be the most wonderful feeling. It is what one can simulate with a state of euphoria. It should inspire you and give you joy and strength. But sometimes the things that give you all the joy to can also be the source for the most pain your heart can feel.
Love is a painful risk to take but a risk must be taken no matter how scary or painful, for only then you’ll experience the fullness of the humanity that is love. Only love can make you cry and only love knows why. If you’re not ready to take the risk, if you’re not ready to feel the pain, then you’re not ready to fall in love.
3b. How is visualizing important for reading?
When we visualize while reading, we create pictures in our minds. Visualizing helps us to relate images or experiences to text being read. According to Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Jorie Graham, the visualization step is vital in the writing and reading process. “ To read a poem, one must first allow the poem to give rise to a response from the body,” she said. She suggests that the interpretation of a poem begins with the body reaction to it; she feels the best poems are written after the writer discovers what the body is experiencing. It takes Graham, “almost an hour to get her Harvard graduate class to experience a poem instead of immediately translating it,” she pointed out (Wieser).
By associating concrete images in unexpected ways, poetry is able to get closer to abstract concepts like Life, Love and Death, engaging our emotions rather than our intellect. Poetry can do more than just signify, using the limited number of words in our language. Instead it uses language to paint a picture. For example, in Emily Dickinson’s “ The Chariot (Because I could Not Stop For Death)”, the image of death coming from the narrator is conveyed by the image of a thoughtful coachman, rather than a literal description of her death, and the poem is more haunting and effective as a result.
3c. How do poets craft a poem to emphasize their meaning with sounds as artist do with paint?
Many beginning readers mistakenly stop with the idea of the poem, believing they’ve mastered the poem. Advanced readers will grapple with the craft of the poem. Assuming that nothing in the poem is accidental, then everything in the poem is a clue to its complete meaning, including its structure; its rhythm, rhyme, and other sound effect; and its symbolism, if any. Structural clues to a poem’s meaning come from the assumption that, to craft a poem well, poets take advantage of places where emphasis occurs to put important words there, and that variations in the structure yield important clues to meaning.
Structural clues to a poem’s meaning come from the assumption that, to craft a poem well, poets take advantage of places where emphasis occurs to put important words there, and that variations in the structure yield important clues to meaning.
Subtle variations in the structure of a poem emphasize potentially important clues to the theme. For example, in sonnets, every even numbered syllable in the 10-syllable line is supposed to be somewhat louder than the syllable before and after it.
The most obvious way poems make unique sounds and emphasize is through rhyme. Full rhyme, which rhymes the last word of each sentence, has become less frequent in this century, as modern poets find this technique too simple and predictable. However, looser types of half rhymes, matching some of the sounds between words at various places throughout a poem, are still a fundamental component to most modern poetry. Rhythm is another important aspect of a poem’s sound, as in a metered poem.
Poets are very deliberate in choosing each word for its particular effect, so it’s important to know the origins and connotations of the words in a poem, not to mention their literal meaning, too.
3d. Although you will be reading and answering questions about poetry, your goal should be learning how to say things about poetry in writing.
Writing about poetry can be one of the most demanding tasks that many students face in a literature class. Poetry, by its very nature, makes demands on a writer who attempts to analyze it that other forms of literature do not.
In order to write effectively about poetry, one needs a clear idea of what the point of writing about poetry is about. What are the benefits of learning to write analytic essays about poetry? Here are a few suggested reasons:
· To help you learn text based arguments. This sharpens your reasoning skills by forcing you to formulate an interpretation of something someone else has written and to support that interpretation by providing logically valid reasons why someone else who has read the poem should agree with your argument.
· To help you understand what you are reading more fully. Also, writing has a way of helping you see things that you may have otherwise missed simply by causing you to think about how to frame your own analysis.
· To help you enjoy poetry more! When you put together a well-constructed analysis of the poem, you are not only showing that you understand what is there, you are also, contributing to an ongoing conversation about the poem. If your reading is convincing enough, everyone who has read your essay will get a little more out of the poem because of your analysis.
Most importantly, you should realize that a paper that you write about a poem or poems is an argument. Make sure that you have something specific you want to say about the poem that you are discussing. This specific argument that you want to make about the poem is your thesis. You will support this thesis by drawing examples and evidence from the poem itself. In order to make a credible argument about a poem, you will want to analyze how the poem works, like which genre it fits into, what its theme are, and what poetic technique and figure of speech are used.
It is useful to follow some standard conventions when writing about poetry. First, when you analyze a poem, it is best to use present tense rather than past tense for your verb. Second, you will want to make use of numerous quotations from the poem and explain their meaning and their significance to your argument. After all, if you do not quote the poem itself when you are making an argument about it, you damage your credibility. If your teacher asks for outside criticism of the poem as well, you should also cite points made by other critics that are relevant to your argument. A third point to remember is that there are various citation formats for citing both the material you get from the poems themselves and the information you get from other critical sources.
Source Note:
Wieser, Cara. "The Art of Visualizing
Poetry." The Daily Utah Chronicle.
13 Oct. 2003. 5 Aug. 2004
<http://www.utahchronicle.com/news/2003/10/13/News/The-Art.Of.Visualizing.Poetry-526813.shtml>
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