SA #10: Duncan

Write a paragraph describing Duncan's style. You may find it helpful to compare his style to O'Hara's, but this is not required.

SA #9: O'Hara

How does Frank O'Hara's style differ from that of Langston Hughes? Be specific.

SA#8: Langston Hughes

“Montage” isn’t a term usually applied to poetry; it’s a film term. A montage is a quick succession of shots that usually indicates compressed time. Here are some examples of montages:

From Disney’s Beauty and the Beast:



From Rocky:



(Funny how filming the learning process always seems to require a montage...)

Hughes calls this collection of poems Montage of a Dream Deferred. Write a paragraph in response to the following question:

How is the assigned selection similar to and different from a cinematic montage?

SA#7: Williams

Consider the poem titled "VIII" (pp. 109-10).

1. Suppose you had to add periods to mark the ends of sentences. Where would you put them?

2. Now that you've identified the first sentence and marked it with a period, paraphrase it. Then list the images that are being introduced as metaphors.

3. How difficult did you find the sentence to paraphrase? What made it difficult or easy to paraphrase?

SA #6: More Moore

Write a paragraph (about 250 words) in the style of "An Octopus." Use as many quotations as you can. List the sources of your quotations at the end.

The topic can be anything you like.

SA #5: Marianne Moore

Based on your readings, write a paragraph describing how Moore's style differs from Eliot's.

SA #4: The Waste Land continued

Choose a passage of 4 to 6 lines from The Waste Land.

1. List as many observations about your passage as you can.

2. From among your observations, choose a few that seem related. Explain how those observations are related to one another. Be specific!

SA #3: The Waste Land

Choose one section of The Waste Land. Summarize it in three sentences or fewer.

Short Assignment #2

Recall that poetic meter plays on the difference between an ideal form and real language’s deviations from that form.

Recall also the indicators of stress in English:

- Multisyllabic words have relatively unambiguous stress patterns (e.g. you can say “PATterns,” but not “patTERNS”).

- You can usually substitute a schwa (the neutral vowel) for an unstressed vowel (e.g. “vowel” is usually pronounced “vowəl”). This is not always the case; for instance, in the word “infinity,” the final y is clearly unstressed, but you cannot substitute a schwa for it.

- Lexical words – words with “meaning,” e.g. nouns, action verbs, adjectives, adverbs – are more likely to be stressed than nonlexical words, e.g. function words like prepositions, helping verbs, conjunctions, and articles. For example, in the sentence “I walked to the room,” “I,” “to,” and “the” are not stressed, but “walked” and “room” are stressed.

Choose ten consecutive lines from “Thanatopsis” and scan them.

1. What is the overall metrical pattern of these lines?

2. Examine the “exceptions” in your ten lines:

    a. List all examples of lines that seem to have too many syllables.

    b. List all examples of lines that seem to have few syllables.

    c. List all examples of feet that do not seem to fit the overall metrical pattern of your selection.

Short Assignment #1

(To hand in)

Choose one poem by Emily Dickinson from the reading packet. Retype it with no line breaks. In each sentence or clause, circle the subject and underline the object. Practice reading it out loud like prose, and be prepared to read it in class.