Eighth Grade Education - POETRY

[Carol]

Steve (bboyminn) wrote:
> Excellent, thanks to all for the responses. It is nice to find a lot
of public domain poetry on-line, but it is difficult to lay down in
bed before I sleep and read on-line. Still the price is right, so I'm
not complaining. 

Carol responds:

There's nothing like a book, after all, to take to bed with you! A
small volume of Keats would do nicely (and since he only made it to
age twenty-five, his complete poems amount to only about 395
pages--less than that if you skip his attempts at drama.

Steve: 
> I find two passages from "Henry V" very moving. The first is
> the Act 3:Scene 1 - "Once more unto the breach, dear friends,
> once more; or close up the wall with our English dead. ...."
> 
> Also, from the same play, the "St. Crispan's Day' speech -
<snip> 
> You can find YouTube videos with Kenneth Branagh (Prof. Lockhart in
HP) reading both speeches; very moving.

Carol responds:
Or better still, rent the whole film from Blockbuster and see Branagh
wooing Emma Thompson as a French princess who didn't speak any
English. The play isn't historically accurate, but it's not as far off
the mark as Richard III. BTW, Branagh and Thompson appear together in
another Shakespeare play, a comedy called "Much Ado about Nothing"
(which also has an oddly cast Keanu Reeves). And Branagh also recites
Shakespeare, IIRC, in "Shackleton."

Steve: 
> Carol, if you read to "Ode to a Nightingale" to 15 year olds and
they listened, that must mean you are very good at reading poetry. 

Carol:
Thanks. I think it had something to do with being much younger then (I
was 29 but looked closer to 25) and being able to develop a rapport
with them that would be impossible now, when all they would see is an
"old lady." But, yes, I knew how to read it in a way that would hold
their attention--then.

Steve: 
> And that brings me to my previous point. If you can't hear the
poetry in natural language, then, likely, you can't hear it at all.
That is, if it is read in short disconnected phrases in a ridged
staccato rhythm, then no one is going to get it, because it is not
going to make sense.

Carol responds:
Yes and no. It depends on the poem. If it has end-stopped lines,
you're meant to hear the rhythm and the sound effects (as in "the
Raven"). 

Steve: 
> Consider this line from "Ode to a Nightingale" as it is written in
verse -
> 
> "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
> My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, ..."
> 
> Read as I was taught by my many English teacher to read it,
> it is two disconnected phrases -
> 
> "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains"

Carol:
my HEART aches AND a DROWS y NUMB ness FILLS my SENSE--well, not that
obvious! ;-)
> 
> And 
> 
> "My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, ..."
> 
> If you stick rigidly to the rhythm, metre, and stanzas, it is very
disjointed. What does "My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.." mean?
> 
> But if restructure, it has a more natural flow -
> 
> ""My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though
> of hemlock I had drunk, ..."
> 
> I think that is the key to good oral poetry, being able to break
away from the rigidness of form, and breaking into the more natural
and real flow of spoken language. 

Carol responds:

Well, yes. In the case of "Ode to a Nightingale," which is written in
iambic pentameter (the most natural meter for English) with enjambed
lines (the sentence doesn't end where the line does in most cases),
you're right. You want the natural rhythm of the words themselves,
with natural emphasis, which approximates iambic pentameter, with
pauses at the caesuras (conveniently indicated by commas), so it
sounds almost but not quite like prose. The mind will sense the sound
effects, especially if the poem is read out loud, without their being
overemphasized. And, of course, the word order is different from that
of prose. And I don't think we'd speak in prose of numbness *paining*
our senses. It's an oxymoron. And yet the two lines function perfectly
in the poem. It sounds much more effective than "My heart aches and I
feel a drowsy numbness that hurts my sense(s) as if I'd drunk
hemlock," the same idea expressed in prose.

Steve: 
> Taking it a step above natural language, is to really understand
what is being said, and being able to convey the mood of the verse to
those listening. To have a dramatic inflection that really conveys the
message accurately. This is the difference between hearing verse read,
and hearing it performed. <snip>

Carol responds:
Exactly. The reader needs to be familiar with the poem--its meaning,
its imagery, its symbolism, its sound effects--to read it effectively
(which is probably why I probably did a better job with that
particular poem than I might have done with something by, say, T. S.
Eliot. It also helps, of course, to love the poem.

Steve:
> Another good poem is "Old Matthew" by W. Wordsworth. It is about a
young boy and an old man who are friends. The poem start under a tree
from which a spring flows. 
<snip>
> And, "We Are Seven" by William Wordsworth.

Carol:
Yes. The ironic contrast between the narrator's perspective and the
child's in "We Are Seven" is highly effective. I'm glad to see that
you like the Romantics. We owe a great debt to Wordsworth, who argued
that everyday subjects were suitable topics for poems. He also
rejected what he called "poetic diction" and argued that poems could
or should be written in "natural language." (Not all his
contemporaries or successors agreed with him, of course!)

Steve: 
> As a last and final note, Dan Radcliffe was asked what his most
favorite word and least favorite words were. "Verdurous", meaning lush
and green, was his favorite, and he acknowledge that it came from
Keats "Ode to a Nightingale" -
> 
> "Already with thee! tender is the night, 
> And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
> Cluster'd 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."

> So, my underlying point, and this probably just applies to my small
town upbringing, is that my teachers relied more on form than
function, and years of despising poetry were the result. 

Carol responds:
I like that story and couldn't bring myself to snip the verse. "Haply"
you're cured of the damage that your teachers did now, at least I hope
so. Keats, Wordsworth, and Shakespeare! Who can argue with those choices?

Carol, now wondering what Dan Radcliffe's least favorite word was and why