Poems for further study
Jabberwocky 1871
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh, Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What happens in this poem? Does it have any meaning?
- Not all of the words used in this poem appear in dictionaries. In Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice that “ ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy.’ ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active.’ You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.” Are there any other portmanteau words in the poem?
- Which words in the poem sound especially meaningful, even if they are devoid of any denotative meanings?
Connection to Another Selection
- Compare Carroll’s strategies for creating sound and meaning with those used by John Updike in “Player Piano.”
The Trains 1984
Signed by Franz Paul Stangl, Commandant,
there is in Berlin a document,
an order of transmittal from Treblinka:
248 freight cars of clothing,
400,000 gold watches,
25 freight cars of women’s hair.
Some clothing was kept, some pulped for paper.
The finest watches were never melted down.
All the women’s hair was used for mattresses, or dolls.
Would these words like to use some of that same paper?
One of those watches may pulse in your own wrist.
Does someone you know collect dolls, or sleep on human hair?
He is dead at last, Commandant Stangl of Treblinka,
but the camp’s three syllables still sound like freight cars
straining around a curve, Treblinka,
Treblinka. Clothing, time in gold watches,
women’s hair for mattresses and dolls’ heads.
Treblinka. The trains from Treblinka.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. How does the sound of the word Treblinka inform your understanding of the poem?
- Why does the place name of Treblinka continue to resonate over time? To learn more about Treblinka, search the Web, perhaps starting at ushmm.org, the site of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
- Why do you suppose Heyen uses the word in instead of on in line 11?
- Why is sound so important for establishing the tone of this poem? In what sense do “the camp’s three syllables still sound like freight cars” (line 14)?
- CRITICAL STRATEGIES. Read the section on reader-response strategies in Chapter 42, “Critical Strategies for Reading.” How does this poem make you feel? Why?
Break, Break, Break 1842
Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman’s boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. The poem was written as an elegy following the death of Tennyson’s friend, the poet Robert Hallum. Based on this context, what feelings does the poem evoke?
- Which of the sound qualities of poetic language we have described can you find here? What is their effect?
- Are the end rhymes at the end of alternating lines masculine or feminine as we describe those terms above? How does this type of rhyme intensify the feelings you associate with the poem?
- What sound qualities of an ocean are evident in the words and rhythm of this poem?
Song 1633
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,1
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
If thou be’st borne to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear
Nowhere
Lives a woman true, and fair.
If thou findst one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet —
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two or three.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What is the speaker’s tone in this poem? What is his view of a woman’s love? What does the speaker’s use of hyperbole reveal about his emotional state?
- Do you think Donne wants the speaker’s argument to be taken seriously? Is there any humor in the poem?
- Most of these lines end with masculine rhymes. What other kinds of rhymes are used for end rhymes?
Dew 1996
As neatly as peas
in their green canoe,
as discretely as beads
strung in a row,
sit drops of dew
along a blade of grass.
But unattached and
subject to their weight,
they slip if they accumulate.
Down the green tongue
out of the morning sun
into the general damp,
they’re gone.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. How does reading the poem aloud affect your understanding of Ryan’s use of rhyme to create a particular tone?
- Explain whether the images in the poem are simply descriptive or are presented as a means of producing a theme. What is the role of the title?
The Ice-Cream Truck 2009
From blocks away the music floats
to my enchanted ears.
It builds. It’s here! And then it fades —
and I explode in tears.
I kick the TV set, and scream,
sobbing to extort her,
while Mom stares at One Life to Live,
and won’t give me a quarter.
I pause, change tactics, snatch a coin
from the bottom of her purse,
then race to catch the ice-cream truck,
ignoring Mama’s curse.
I stop the truck, I start to choose —
then see I won’t be eating.
I stare down at a goddamn dime,
and trudge home to my beating.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Describe the tone of each stanza. How do the rhymes serve to establish the tone?
- Characterize the speaker. How do you reconcile what is said in the first stanza with the description in the final stanza?
- This poem appeared in a collection by Hudgins titled Shut Up, You’re Fine: Poems for Very, Very Bad Children. How does that context affect your reading of it?
- CREATIVE RESPONSE. Add a four-line stanza in Hudgins’s style that rhymes and concludes back at home.
The Pitcher 1953
His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.
The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.
Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Explain how each pair of lines in this poem works together to describe the pitcher’s art.
- Consider how the poem itself works the way a good pitcher does. Which lines illustrate what they describe?
- Comment on the effects of the poem’s rhymes. How are the final two lines different in their rhyme from the previous lines? How does sound echo sense in lines 9–10?
- Write an essay that examines “The Pitcher” as an extended metaphor for talking about poetry. How well does the poem characterize strategies for writing poetry as well as pitching?
- Write an essay that develops an extended comparison between writing or reading poetry and playing or watching another sport.
Connection to Another Selection
- Write an essay comparing “The Pitcher” with another work by Francis, “Catch.” One poem defines poetry implicitly; the other defines it explicitly. Which poem do you prefer? Why?
The Word Plum 1968
The word plum is delicious
pout and push, luxury of
self-love, and savoring murmur
full in the mouth and falling
like fruit
taut skin
pierced, bitten, provoked into
juice, and tart flesh
question
and reply, lip and tongue
of pleasure.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What is the effect of the repetitions of the alliteration and assonance throughout the poem? How does it contribute to the poem’s meaning?
- Which sounds in the poem are like the sounds one makes while eating a plum?
- Discuss the title. Explain whether you think this poem is more about the word plum or about the plum itself. Can the two be separated in the poem?
The Bell Rope 2005
In Sunday school the boy who learned a psalm
by heart would get to sound the steeple bell
and send its tolling through the sabbath calm
to call the saved and not-so-saved as well.
For lack of practice all the lines are lost —
something about how angels’ hands would bear
me up to God — but on one Pentecost
they won me passage up the steeple stair.
I leapt and grabbed the rope up high to ride
it down, I touched the floor, the rope went slack,
the bell was silent. Then, beatified,
I rose, uplifted as the rope pulled back.
I leapt and fell again; again it took
me up, but still the bell withheld its word —
until at last the church foundation shook
in bass approval, felt as much as heard,
and after I let go the bell tolled long
and loud as if repaying me for each
unanswered pull with heaven-rending song
a year of Sunday school could never teach
and that these forty years can not obscure.
Some nights when sleep won’t come I think of how
just once there came an answer, clear and sure.
If I could find that rope I’d grasp it now.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Describe the rhyme scheme and then read the poem aloud. How does Wakefield manage to avoid making this heavily rhymed poem sound clichéd or sing-songy?
- Comment on the appropriateness of Wakefield’s choice of diction and how it relates to the poem’s images.
- Explain how sound becomes, in a sense, the theme of the poem.
Connection to Another Selection
- Compare the images and themes of “The Bell Rope” with those in Robert Frost’s “Birches.”
Unsuspecting ca. 1929
There is a natty kind of mind
That slicks its thoughts,
Culls its oughts,
Trims its views,
Prunes its trues,
And never suspects it is a rind.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What sort of person do you think is described by the speaker?
- Comment on the poem’s diction and use of rhyme. Which word (or words) do you think are the most crucial for determining the poem’s central idea?
Connection to Another Selection
- Discuss the tone and themes in “Unsuspecting” and in Emily Dickinson’s “The Soul Selects Her Own Society.”
Ode to a Nightingale 1819
I
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock1 I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards2 had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness —
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad3 of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
II
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora4 and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song,5 and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,6
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.
III
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies,
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes;
Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.
IV
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,7
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
V
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd8 darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
What hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
VI
Darkling9 I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem become a sod.
VII
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth,10 when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn:
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
VIII
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: — Do I wake or sleep?
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Why does the speaker in this ode want to leave his world for the nightingale’s? What might the nightingale symbolize?
- How does the speaker attempt to escape his world? Is he successful?
- What changes the speaker’s view of death at the end of stanza VI?
- What does the allusion to Ruth (line 66) contribute to the ode’s meaning?
- In which lines is the imagery especially sensuous? How does this effect add to the conflict presented?
- What calls the speaker back to himself at the end of stanza VII and the beginning of stanza VIII?
- Choose a stanza and explain how sound is related to its meaning.
- How regular is the stanza form of this ode?
Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry 1980
Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. Describe the distinction that this poem makes between prose and poetry. How does the poem itself become an example of that distinction?
- Identify the kinds of rhymes Nemerov employs. How do the rhymes in the first and second stanzas differ from each other?
- Comment on the poem’s punctuation. How is it related to theme?
Autumn Landscape 2010
Seeking what I could not name, my vespertine
spirit loitered evenings down leaf-lined
streets. Stray dogs for company, curbs were empty.
Afar dim poles resembled women. The wind pushed me
like an open hand. Flesh frothed in my head.
I reached for stirred shadows in windows aimed for bed.
When did I not strain for touch? I’ve a mind
to eat as many stars and refract their dark expanse.
My sadness brings tears, so many victims.
Close your eyes. Here comes the nightmare.
Considerations for Critical Thinking and Writing
- FIRST RESPONSE. What type of poem do you envision with a title like “Autumn Landscape”? In what ways does this poem depart from your expectations?
- Which of the sound qualities described above are present in the poem? What effects do they have on your understanding of the poem’s meaning or its concerns?
- In addition to sound, what other dimensions of poetry you have studied thus far (such as diction or figurative language) are on display in this poem, and how do they function?
Connection to Another Selection
- Another poem with the word autumn in the title is John Keats’s “To Autumn.” Compare and contrast the poems: does the season allow you to link them closely, to link them loosely, or to conclude that they are two very different poetic visions with only that word in common?