POETRY CLOSE READING ANALYSIS PAPER:

-Writing Principles to learn:

#25 Opener

#26 Bridge

#29 Embedded Plan and Thesis

# 37 (context),

#38 (condense),

# 39 (connection),

#40-48 (close reading skills)

Close Reading Analysis Paper: this paper strives to develop not only what the poem's message is but how this message is developed through attention to poetic devices and their effects on the poem's message. All analysis writers should ask themselves if there are poetic / literary devices in a poem or prose excerpt that merit analysis. This paper requires close reading by poetic devices in each analysis paragraph.

LINK TO NATURE POEMS

PAPER PROMPTS:

Model Close Reading Poetry Analysis Paper:

Sample Poetry Analysis Paper

The Heron

While the summer's growth kept me

anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river. connotations

where it flowed, faithful to its way, alliteration of "f"

beneath the slope where my household

has taken its laborious stand. connotations

I could not reach it even in dreams.

But one morning at the summer’s end

I remember it again, as though its being

lifts into mind in undeniable flood,

and I carry my boat down through the fog,

over the rocks, and set out. visual imagery

I go easy and silent, and the warblers auditory imagery

appear among the leaves of the willows,

their flight like gold thread

quick in the live tapestry of the leaves. simile

And I go on until I see crouched

on a dead branch sticking out of the water

a heron—so still that I believe

he is a bit of drift hung dead above the water. metaphor

And then I see the articulation of a feather

and living eye, a brilliance I receive. alliteration of "b"

beyond my power to make, as he

receives in his great patience

the river's providence. And then I see connotations

that I am seen. Still, as I keep, assonanace

I might be a tree for all the fear he shows.

Suddenly I know I have passed across tone shift from declarative to awestruck

to a shore where I do not live.

-Wendell Berry

The Heron: Beyond Human Nature

Opener:“We need the tonic of wilderness. We can never have enough of nature.” (Thoreau 231)

Bridge: This quotation by Henry David Thoreau represents the importance of wild nature in a way that connects to Wendell Berry’s poem “The Heron”. Wendell Berry’s poem shows the reader how it is easy to forget the power of a strong connection to nature. Nature allows us to break away from the brutal, mundane hardships of everyday life. Embedded Plan and Thesis: Through describing the heron fishing, the faith the heron has in the river, and the gulf between the human observer and the heron, Wendell Berry’s poem “The Heron” shows us how close observation of a heron can renew our sense of ourselves as part of nature and our capacity for faith.

Topic Sentence: At the beginning of the poem, the life of the speaker seems occupied as he describes what it is like to be a farmer during harvest season. Linking Sentence with Context: At this moment in the poem, the speaker forgets nature completely because he is so focused on his work. Introduction to the Passage: Showing the correlations the speaker has with a busy harvest season in the opening of the poem, Wendell Berry creates a visual of his busy days to describe his forgetfulness of nature. He writes:

While the summer's growth kept me

anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river

where it flowed, faithful to its way,

beneath the slope where my household

has taken its laborious stand.

I could not reach it even in dreams.

But one morning at the summer’s end

I remember it again…

(lines 1-8)-(my italics)

Condense: In the above passage, Wendell Berry explains that the speaker has forgotten where he has truly come from, nature. Nature provides so much good, and the speaker will learn what he has missed out on later in his journey. The speaker is so concentrated on his land, crops, and house that he has become so overwhelmed and preoccupied that he has completely, utterly forgotten about what it means to live. The imagery of the “planted rows” focuses the reader on the work of harvest season. This is representative of the early stages of a busy season that will be consumed and filled by energy, time and stressful weeks. The speaker then states, “I forgot the river where it flowed”. This is a powerful statement that explains the farmer’s feeling of loss and anxiousness. Close read by connotation: His house has taken a “laborious” stand, which has the connotation of heavy, hard work. Co-commentary: Therefore, he is absorbed by all the tasks he has to complete. Close read by hyperbole: When the speaker states that he “could not reach it even in dreams,” this hyperbole underscores his overwhelmed, burned-out self. Connection: But then one morning at the summer's end, after all of his harvesting and effort, he remembers the river once again. This passage puts the reader in a time capsule and moves us from the time of harvest to wanting us to focus on the calm river that “faithfully” flows.

Transitional Topic Sentence: While the beginning of the poem describes the speaker's work and disconnection from the river, the next few lines bring us on his journey that return him to the river. Linking Sentence with Context: It is helpful to look at the moment when the speaker observes a heron fishing. Describing the heron waiting for the river to provide fish for the taking, Berry writes:

And I go on until I see crouched

on a dead branch sticking out of the water

a heron—so still that I believe

he is a bit of drift hung dead above the water.

And then I see the articulation of a feather

and living eye, a brilliance I receive

beyond my power to make, as he

receives in his great patience

the river's providence.

(lines 16-24)

Condense: In this passage, the speaker has started his journey down the river in his canoe. Then out of the blue, he notices a heron so still that it could be driftwood hung dead above the water. Close Reading by connotation: The speaker then sees an “articulation of a feather” and a “living eye”. He’s astonished and surprised beyond his understanding; he doesn’t know what to make out of this situation. The “articulation” of a feather has the connotation of speech, of conveying a message. Focusing on the brilliant color of the heron’s feather communicates the message that nature is startling beautiful when closely observed. Close reading by alliteration: The alliteration of the letter “p” in “power”, “patience”, and “providence” focuses the reader's attention on these words. The “power” and intensity of the heron signify the perfect stillness and brilliance the heron brings. Then the speaker contemplates the “patience” of the heron. The heron is patiently waiting for the “rivers providence” to provide fish for the still and hungry bird. Through the meaning of articulation and the alliteration of “power,” “patience,” and “providence,” we can conclude that there is some sort of spiritual significance in these lines. Connect: The speaker wants what the bird has: the ability to have faith in the world. Wendell Berry assures us that powerful and inspirational moments in nature can renew our capacity for hope and faith.

Transitional topic Sentence: Similar to the way in which we closely observe nature, nature also closely observes us. Linking Sentences with Context: In the final lines of the poem, the speaker notices that he has been seen by the heron. It is instructive to focus on the passage in which the speaker has a realization that humans are a part of nature. Introduction to the passage: Describing his transition to seeing himself as part of a river’s ecosystem, Berry writes:

And then I see

that I am seen...

Suddenly I know I have passed across

to a shore where I do not live.

(lines 24-28)

Condense: In the final lines of the poem, the heron notices him as well. In the passage, both the human and the bird are surprised. The heron rarely sees humans and the humans rarely see nature accurately. Close reading by tone shift: The tone of the poem shifts from declarative and analytical to surprised. Connect: The last lines suggest that we should all experience a moment similar to the speaker’s. We should all have the opportunity to be humbled and awe-inspired by nature and should all “cross” into a world where we feel nothing but apart of nature.

Transition to the thesis: In addition to the tone shifts conveying the surprising realization that humans are a part of nature, the poem also renews our capacity for faith. Reaction to the value of the text and the paper: The lessons that can be learned from this poem are special and inspiring. It makes any individual want to experience something like it. Even though nature surrounds us on a daily basis, we can so easily get caught up in the day to day regime and completely forget about the lessons of the wild. Nature brings us to a different world that each human being should experience. Return to the opener: The peace wild things bring us can’t be valued enough. After all, Henry David Thoreau said it best in seven simple words, “...We can never have enough of nature.”

WRITING ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

POEMS TO CONSIDER FOR THE TEXTUAL ANALYSIS PAPER

AND COMPARE AND CONTRAST PAPER

#1 “The Heron” Wendell Berry

#2 “Mayflies” Richard Wilbur

#3 “The Apple Tree” Wendell Berry

#4 “The Orchard Trees” Richard Wilbur

#5 “A bird came down the walk” Emily Dickinson

#6 “To a Waterfowl” William Cullen Bryant

#7 “The Rhodora” Ralph Emerson

#8 “Each and All” Ralph Emerson

#9 “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer” Walt Whitman

#10 “The Peace of Wild Things” Wendell Berry

#11 “Burning the small dead branches” Gary Snyder

#12 “The Snow Man” Wallace Stevens

#13 “The Sycamore” Wendell Berry

Compare and Contrast Poems:

• 1. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast the Romantic William Cullen Bryant's "To a Waterfowl" with the Modern Wendell Berry's "The Heron."

  2. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast the Romantic Ralph Emerson's "The Rhodora" with Gary Snyder's "Burning the Small Dead Branches".

  3. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast the Romantic Ralph Emerson's "Each and All" with Wendell Berry's "The Apple Tree".

  4. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast the Romantic Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer" with the contemporary Wendell Berry poem "The Peace of Wild Things"

  5. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast the Romantic Ralph Emerson's "The Rhodora" with Gary Snyder's "Burning the Small Dead Branches".

  6. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast Richard Wilbur’s “The Orchard Trees” with Gary Snyder’s “The Snow Man”

  7. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast Emily Dickinson’s “A bird came down the walk” with Wendell Berry’s “The Heron”

  8. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast Wendell Berry’s “The Sycamore” with his “The Peace of Wild Things” :

  9. By addressing at least three poetic devices for each poem, compare and contrast Ralph Emerson’s “The Rhodora” with Richard Wilbur’s “Mayflies”:

The Sycamore - Wendell Berry

In the place that is my own place, whose earth

I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,

a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself. Metaphor: tree---healer

Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,

hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it. visual imagery

There is no year it has flourished in connotation

that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it

that is its death, though its living brims whitely

at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.

Over all its scars has come the seamless white

of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history connotation

healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection

in the warp and bending of its long growth.

It has gathered all accidents into its purpose. paradox

It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.

It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable. connotations

In all the country there is no other like it.

I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling

the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.

I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,

and is fed upon, and is native, and maker. -metaphor: tree ---native and maker

• 1. What does the speaker admire about the sycamore and how does the poem argue that humans would do well to follow the sycamore’s ways?

The Heron

While the summer's growth kept me

anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river

where it flowed, faithful to its way,

beneath the slope where my household

has taken its laborious stand.

I could not reach it even in dreams.

But one morning at the summer’s end

I remember it again, as though its being

lifts into mind in undeniable flood,

and I carry my boat down through the fog,

over the rocks, and set out.

I go easy and silent, and the warblers

appear among the leaves of the willows,

their flight like gold thread

quick in the live tapestry of the leaves.

And I go on until I see crouched

on a dead branch sticking out of the water

a heron—so still that I believe

he is a bit of drift hung dead above the water.

And then I see the articulation of a feather

and living eye, a brilliance I receive

beyond my power to make, as he

receives in his great patience

the river's providence. And then I see

that I am seen. Still, as I keep,

I might be a tree for all the fear he shows.

Suddenly I know I have passed across

to a shore where I do not live.

-Wendell Berry

What is the poem’s message about nature’s intricate design and human ignorance of it?

Mayflies

By Richard Wilbur

In somber forest, when the sun was low, personification

I saw from unseen pools a mist of flies, metaphor

In their quadrillions rise,

And animate a ragged patch of glow, connotations

With sudden glittering - as when a crowd alliteration of the “g” sound

Of stars appear,

Through a brief gap in black and driven cloud

One arc of their great round-dance showing clear. simile

It was no muddled swarm I witnessed, for

In entrechats each fluttering insect there

Rose two steep yards in air,

Then slowly floated down to climb once more,

So that they all composed a manifold

And figured scene,

And seemed the weavers of some cloth of gold,

Or the fine pistons of some bright machine. multi-vehicle metaphor

Watching those lifelong dancers of a day

As night closed in, I felt myself alone

In a life too much my own,

More mortal in my separateness than they - tone shift

Unless, I thought, I had been called to be

Not fly or star

But one whose task is joyfully to see

How fair the fiats of the caller are. alliteration

What is the poem’s message about how the speaker’s role as an observer of nature leads to faith in his self and the world?

#3 The Apple Tree

by Wendell Berry

In the essential prose

of things, the apple tree

stands up, emphatic

among the accidents

of the afternoon, solvent,

not to be denied.

The grass has been cut

down, carefully

to leave the orange

poppies still in bloom;

the tree stands up

in the odor of the grass

drying. The forked

trunk and branches are

also a kind of necessary

prose—shingled with leaves,

pigment and song

imposed on the blunt

lineaments of fact, a foliage

of small birds among them.

The tree lifts itself up

in the garden, the

clutter of its green

leaves halving the light,

stating the unalterable

congruity and form

of its casual growth;

the crimson finches appear

and disappear, singing

among the design.

What is the poem’s message about the often unacknowledged complex intricacy in nature?

Image:

Connotative word:

Alliteration:

Metaphors: "branches shingled with leaves"

"a foliage of small birds"

To a Waterfowl

by William Cullen Bryant

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, visual imagery

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink visual imagery

On the chafed ocean side? visual imagery

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-- alliteration of "p"

The desert and illimitable air,-- connotations

Lone wandering, but not lost. alliteration of "l"

All day thy wings have fann'd

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend

Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven connotations

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

1815

#5 Orchard Trees, January

It's not the case, though some might wish it so

Who from a house watch the blizzard blow

White riot through their branches vague and stark,

That they keep snug beneath their pelted bark.

They take infliction in until it jells

To crystal ice between their frozen cells.

And each of them is inwardly a vault

Of jewels rigorous and free of fault,

Unglimpsed by us until in May it bears

A sudden crop of green-pronged solitaires.

Questions:

What is the poem’s message about the renewal of life in the spring?

-personification of orchard trees

-metaphor of the frozen cells?

-image of emerging leaves in the end?

They take infliction in until it jells

To crystal ice between their frozen cells.

And each of them is inwardly a vault

Of jewels rigorous and free of fault,

The visual image of “from a house (we) watch the blizzard blow / White riot through their branches vague and stark” has carefully selected word choice in “white riot” to describe the blizzard. The connotations of “riot” are violence, chaos, and destruction. These connotations of the visual image are significant because Richard Wilbur wants the reader to focus on the violent, destructive force of the blizzard and winter upon the orchard trees.

Questions:

What is the poem’s message about the often violent thawing in spring? What is the mother wit “truth” about the world that lessens his fear of nature?

-metaphor between a frozen ground and a set mind?

-alliteration of the “f” sound in “frozen-flat”?

-images of “twitching” and “rippling” of the grasses and rocks

-simile “A fact as eerie as a dream”: how is this moment like a dream?

-metaphor in “the freeze was coming out / As when a set mind, blessed by doubt / Relaxes into mother wit / Flower I said will come of it.”

#8 A Bird came down the Walk (328)

by Emily Dickinson

A Bird came down the Walk— personification

He did not know I saw—

He bit an Angleworm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew. personification

From a convenient Grass—

And then hopped sidewise to the Wall. personification

To let a Beetle pass—

He glanced with rapid eyes

That hurried all around—

They looked like frightened Beads, I thought— simile

He stirred his Velvet Head. connotations

Like one in danger, Cautious,

I offered him a Crumb

And he unrolled his feathers

And rowed him softer home—

Than Oars divide the Ocean,

Too silver for a seam—

Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon

Leap, plashless as they swim. metaphor of birdflight / butterfly flight to swimming

QUESTIONS:

How is the poem about the inability of humans to perceive comprehend nature and how this adds to our appreciation of it?

1 How do we know the speaker observes the bird without the bird noticing?

2 Why contrast the human action of strolling down a walk with eating a worm "raw"?

3 How does the second stanza add to the civilized "walking" of the bird by drinking dew from a grass that echoes "glass" and politely stepping aside from the beetle as humans do on a walk for passersby?

4 Is Dickinson pointing out the false human tendency to commit the "pathetic fallacy:-the application of human emotions / manners to natural objects that do not possess them?

5 In the wake of question 4, why emphasize the "I thought"? And why see the bird as frightened and eyes as "beads" and head as "velvet"?

6 Why make the adjective "cautious" refer to both the bird and the speaker? or to the action of offering a crumb "cautiously"?

7 When the bird flies away from the human offering / projections, what is achieved by stating that the bird's flight is "softer" than human oars pulling in the ocean AND "softer" than flight of butterfly wings?

The Rhodora

On being asked, whence is the flower.

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, metaphor

I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,

Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, visual image

To please the desert and the sluggish brook. personification

The purple petals fallen in the pool alliteration

Made the black water with their beauty gay;

Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,

And court the flower that cheapens his array.

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why apostrophe

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, connotation

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for Being; alliteration

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

I never thought to ask; I never knew;

But in my simple ignorance suppose connotation

The self-same power that brought me there, brought you. spondee

Each and All

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;

The heifer that lows in the upland farm,

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;

The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,

Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse, and lists with delight,

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.

All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,

Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even;

He sings the song, but it pleases not now,

For I did not bring home the river and sky; —

He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye.

The delicate shells lay on the shore;

The bubbles of the latest wave

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;

And the bellowing of the savage sea

Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things

Had left their beauty on the shore,

With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

The lover watched his graceful maid,

As 'mid the virgin train she stayed,

Nor knew her beauty's best attire

Was woven still by the snow-white choir.

At last she came to his hermitage,

Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage; —

The gay enchantment was undone,

A gentle wife, but fairy none.

Then I said, "I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth:" —

As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,

Running over the club-moss burrs;

I inhaled the violet's breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground;

Over me soared the eternal sky,

Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard,

The rolling river, the morning bird; —

Beauty through my senses stole;

I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

Question: How does the speaker learn to appreciate how all things in nature are interconnected aesthetically and ecologically?

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, alliteration of "d"

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured anaphora / reetition

with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, connotations

Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, connotations

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, alliteration of "m"

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. alliteration of "s"

Question: How does the speaker value an aesthetic approach to appreciate the stars over a scientific approach to appreciating the stars?

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Question: How does the speaker move from human perspective to nature’s perspective in order to feel free from human concerns?

Burning the Small Dead

Burning the small dead

branches

broke from beneath

thick spreading whitebark pine.

a hundred summers

snowmelt rock and air

hiss in a twisted bough. sierra granite;

Mt. Ritter-

black rock twice as old.

Deneb, Altair

windy fire

--Gary Snyder

Question: How does the speaker expand his perspective with respect to space and time in order to appreciate how all things in nature are interconnected ecologically and temporally (with respect to time)?

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

Question: How does this speaker move away from a human perspective of nature to a more natural perspective that concludes the world is devoid of meaning, emotion, and spirit?

PAPER PROMPTS FOR RICHARD WILBUR POEMS:

Richard Wilbur Poems:

Orchard Trees, January

It's not the case, though some might wish it so

Who from a house watch the blizzard blow

White riot through their branches vague and stark,

That they keep snug beneath their pelted bark.

They take infliction in until it jells

To crystal ice between their frozen cells.

And each of them is inwardly a vault

Of jewels rigorous and free of fault,

Unglimpsed by us until in May it bears

A sudden crop of green-pronged solitaires.

Questions:

How does the poet commit the pathetic fallacy?

What is the metaphor of the frozen cells?

How is the projection onto the orchard trees overcome in the emerging leaves in the end?

How is Wilbur rejecting Stevens's "The Snow Man"?

April 5, 1974

The air was soft, the ground still cold.

In the dull pasture where I strolled

Was something I could not believe.

Dead grass appeared to slide and heave,

Though still too frozen-flat to stir,

And rocks to twitch and all to blur.

What was this rippling of the land?

Was matter getting out of hand

And making free with natural law?

I stopped and blinked, and then I saw

A fact as eerie as a dream.

There was a subtle flood of steam

Moving upon the face of things.

It came from standing pools and springs

And what of snow was still around;

It came of winter's giving ground

So that the freeze was coming out,

As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,

Relaxes into mother-wit.

Flowers, I said, will come of it.

Questions:

What is the metaphor between a frozen ground and a set mind?

How does this connect with "Orchard Trees"?

April 5, 1974

What time of year is it?

Why the alliteration of the “f” sound in “frozen-flat”?

What is the cause of the seeming “twitching” and “rippling” of the grasses and rocks?

What is happening to the ice / snow?

Develop the simile “A fact as eerie as a dream”: how is this moment like a dream?

Develop the tenor and vehicle of the simile “the freeze was coming out / As when a set mind, blessed by doubt / Relaxes into mother wit / Flower I said will come of it.”

What is the doubt implicit about the long winter?

What is the mother wit “truth” about the world that assuages this doubt?

Hamlen Brook

At the alder darkened brink

Where the stream slows to a lucid jet

I lean to the water, dinting its top with sweat,

And see before I can drink,

A startled inchling trout

Of spotted near transparency,

Trawling a shadow solider than he.

He swerves now, darting out

To where in a flicked slew

Of sparks and glittering silt, he weaves

Through stream-bed rocks, disturbing foundered leaves,

And butts then out of view.

Beneath a sliding glass

Crazed by the skimming of a brace

Of burnished dragon-flies across its face,

In which deep cloudlets pass

And a white precipice

Of mirrored birch-trees plunges down

Toward where the azures of the zenith drown.

How shall I drink all this?

Joy's trick is to supply

Dry lips with what can cool and slake,

Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache

Nothing can satisfy.

Questions:

How does this poem capture both Keats's negative capability while acknowledging the limits of postlapsarian consciousness?

“Hamlen Brook”

Why is it significant that the lines are enjambed and two sentences in five sentences? How does form imitate the description of action?

Why are the connotations of “lucid” “sparks” “glittering” “burnished” “azures” important to understanding the speaker’s view of this trout in a stream?

In an answer to how one could drink all of this interconnected beauty, the speaker responds that his thirst is slaked, but he is left with “an ache nothing can satisfy”.

Since you have read “Grasse: The Olive Trees” on a quiz, how does that poem’s focus on out postlapsarian existence (shut off from God) help us understand the line we are left with an “ache noting can satisfy”?

What question does he want answered by his observations?

How does this poem reject the modernist focus in free verse and disillusionment with the world?

Fern-Beds in Hampshire County

Although from them

Steep stands of beech and sugar-maple stem,

Varied with birch, or ash, or basswood trees

Which spring will throng with bees,

While intervening thickets grow complex

With flower, seed, and variance of sex,

And the whole wood conspires, by change of kind,

To break the purchase of the gathering mind,

The ferns are as they were.

Let but a trifling stir

Of air traverse their pools or touchy beds

And some will dip their heads,

Some switch a moment like a scribbling quill

And then be still,

Sporadic as in guarded bays

The rockweed slaps a bit, or sways.

Then let the wind grow bluff, and though

The sea lies far to eastward, far below,

These fluent spines, with whipped pale underside,

Will climb through timber as a smoking tide

Through pier-stakes, beat their sprays about the base

Of every boulder, scale its creviced face

And, wave on wave, like some green infantry,

Storm all the slope as high as eye can see.

Whatever at the heart

Of creatures makes them branch and burst apart,

Or at the core of star or tree may burn

At last to turn

And make an end of time,

These airy plants, tenacious of their prime,

Dwell in the swept recurrence of

An ancient conquest, shaken by first love

As when they answered to the boomed command

That the sea's green rise up and take the land.

-Richard Wilbur

Questions:

1 Develop the simile between ferns in a forest and rockweed in the tidal zone.

2 Recalling "Hamlen Brook," how does the variety of ferns and trees in the forest "break the purchase of the gathering mind" or "leave us dumbstruck with an ache nothing can satisfy"?

3 How are the ferns spreading of seeds "sproadically" like a smoking tide beating sprays through pier stakes?

4 What is the Biblical connection between the sea and the land? How is Wilbur blending Creationism and Intelligent Design and Evolution?

5 What is at the core of star or tree that makes them want to burn or branch apart?

6 Develop the final simile: how is the seed dispersal of ferns compared to God's command to create the land?

A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra

.

Under the bronze crown

Too big for the head of the stone cherub whose feet

A serpent has begun to eat,

Sweet water brims a cockle and braids down

Past smattered mosses, breaks

On the tipped edge of a second shell, and fills

The massive third below. It spills

In threads then from the scalloped rim, and makes

A scrim or summery tent

For a faun-menage and their familiar goose.

Happy in all that ragged, loose

Collapse of water, its effortless descent

And flatteries of spray,

The stocky god upholds the shell with ease,

Watching, about his shaggy knees,

The goatish innocence of his babes at play;

His fauness all the while

Leans forward, slightly, into a clambering mesh

Of water-lights, her sparkling flesh

In a secular ecstasy, her blinded smile

Bent on the sand floor

Of the trefoil pool, where ripple shadows come

And go in swift reticulum

More addling to the eye than wine, and more

Interminable to thought

Than pleasure's ”calculus. Yet since this all

Is pleasure, flash, and waterfall,

Must it not be too simple? Are we not

More intricately expressed

In the plain fountains that Maderna set

Before St. Peter's-the main jet

Struggling aloft until it seems at rest

In the act of rising, until

The very wish of water is reversed,

That heaviness borne up to burst

In a clear, high, cavorting head; to fill

With blaze, and then in gauze

Delays, in a gnatlike shimmering, in a fine.

Illumined version of itself, decline,

And patter on the stones its own applause?

If that is what men are

Or should be, if those water-saints display

The pattern of our arete,

What of these showered fauns in their bizarre,

Spangled and plunging house?

They are at rest in fulness of desire

For what is given they do not tire

Of the smart of the sun, the pleasant water-douse

And riddled pool below,

Reproving our disgust and our ennui

With humble insatiety.

Francis*, perhaps, who lay in sister snow

Before the wealthy gate

Freezing and praising, might have seen in this

No trifle, but a shade of bliss-

That land of tolerable flowers, that state

As near and far as grass

Where eyes become the sunlight, and the hand

Is worthy of water: the dreamt land

Toward which all hungers leap, all pleasures pass.

* St.Francis preached the teaching of the Catholic Church, that the world was created good and beautiful by God but suffers a need for redemption because of the primordial sin of man. He preached to man and beast the universal ability and duty of all creatures to praise God (a common theme in the Psalms) and the duty of men to protect and enjoy nature as both the stewards of God's creation and as creatures ourselves.^[36] On November 29, 1979, Pope John Paul II declared St. Francis to be the Patron of Ecology.^[38] Many of the stories that surround the life of St. Francis say that he had a great love for animals and the environment.^[36]

Perhaps the most famous incident that illustrates the Saint's humility towards nature is recounted in the "Fioretti" ("Little Flowers"), a collection of legends and folklore that sprang up after the Saint's death. It is said that, one day, while Francis was travelling with some companions, they happened upon a place in the road where birds filled the trees on either side. Francis told his companions to "wait for me while I go to preach to my sisters the birds."^[36] The birds surrounded him, intrigued by the power of his voice, and not one of them flew away. He is often portrayed with a bird, typically in his hand...

Then during the World Environment Day 1982, John Paul II said that St. Francis' love and care for creation was a challenge for contemporary Catholics and a reminder "not to behave like dissident predators where nature is concerned, but to assume responsibility for it, taking all care so that everything stays healthy and integrated, so as to offer a welcoming and friendly environment even to those who succeed us." The same Pope wrote on the occasion of the World Day of Peace, January 1, 1990, the saint of Assisi "offers Christians an example of genuine and deep respect for the integrity of creation..." He went on to make the point that St Francis: "As a friend of the poor who was loved by God's creatures, Saint Francis invited all of creation – animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon – to give honor and praise to the Lord. The poor man of Assisi gives us striking witness that when we are at peace with God we are better able to devote ourselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples."^[39]

Pope John Paul II concluded that section of the document with these words, "It is my hope that the inspiration of Saint Francis will help us to keep ever alive a sense of 'fraternity' with all those good and beautiful things which Almighty God has created." (www.wikipedia.com May 19, 2014)

Mayflies

By Richard Wilbur

In somber forest, when the sun was low,

I saw from unseen pools a mist of flies,

In their quadrillions rise,

And animate a ragged patch of glow,

With sudden glittering - as when a crowd

Of stars appear,

Through a brief gap in black and driven cloud

One arc of their great round-dance showing clear.

It was no muddled swarm I witnessed, for

In entrechats each fluttering insect there

Rose two steep yards in air,

Then slowly floated down to climb once more,

So that they all composed a manifold

And figured scene,

And seemed the weavers of some cloth of gold,

Or the fine pistons of some bright machine.

Watching those lifelong dancers of a day

As night closed in, I felt myself alone

In a life too much my own,

More mortal in my separateness than they -

Unless, I thought, I had been called to be

Not fly or star

But one whose task is joyfully to see

How fair the fiats of the caller are.

ZEA

Once their fruit is picked,

The cornstalks lighten, and though

Keeping to their strict

Rows, begin to be

The tall grasses that they are—

Lissom, now, and free

As canes that clatter

In island wind, or plumed reeds

Rocked by lake water.

Soon, if not cut down,

Their ranks grow whistling-dry, and

Blanch to lightest brown,

So that, one day, all

Their ribbonlike, down-arcing

Leaves rise up and fall

In tossed companies,

Like goose wings beating southward

Over the changed trees.

Later, there are days

Full of bare expectancy,

Downcast hues, and haze,

Days of an utter

Calm, in which one white corn-leaf,

Oddly aflutter

Its fabric sheathing

A gaunt stem, can seem to be

The sole thing breathing.

1. Address how Richard Wilbur finds inspiration in the unidentifiable, ineffable energy that animates flora and fauna to define themselves by growing and taking shape in the world. You may also consider the message this has for the reader about his / her life. Consider the poems "Seed Leaves" "Fern Beds in Hampshire County" "April 5, 1974" and "Zea."

2. Consider the following contentio poems: poems that express opposing viewpoints that remain unresolved: "The Aspen and the Stream" and "Two Voices in a Meadow." Clearly articulate the opposing perspectives in these poems and favor one perspective over the other and connect the two perspectives you favor in the the two different poems As Richard Wilbur notes in an interview with Richard Jackson, “Possession (is) an active, more imaginative relation to the world...The poet can be like the Aspen, and the poem can be his exercise in taking possession, by observation and feeling and form, of some part of the world. The poem can help us embrace the world more intensely than we would normally.”. Richard Wilbur in “Richard Wilbur: The Mystery of Things That Are,” Acts of Mind: Conversations With Contemporary Poets, (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979) 141.

3. In many of his poems, Wilbur finds faith in nature's ability to renew itself in "the swept recurrence" of new life. Consider the different articulation of this theme in "Seed Leaves" "April 5, 1974" "Orchard Trees" and "Mayflies."

4. How does the inability to comprehend the interconnected beauty of the trout stream in "Hamlen Brook" and the inability of the olive tree to find nourishment in the wet, fertile landscape of the south of France in "Grasse: The Olive Trees" remind man of his postlapsarian existence (shut off from God, diminished Perception, Reason, Faith, consciousness of mortality)?

5. Connecting the aspen's willingness to embrace the world "at rest in fulness of desire / For what is given" in "The Aspen and the Stream" and the fountain's expression of man's ability to transcend to higher states of awareness and descend and accept "with humble insatiety" the earthly existence of man in "A Baroque Wall Fountain in the Villa Sciarra," develop how the aspen and the fountain are the models for man's ideal state.

6. Connect how an appreciation for the beauty in this world (a title of a book of his poetry is "Things of This World") animates the speakers in "Mayflies" "Zea" and "Seed Leaves" to inuit not only the existence of a soul in the natural objects observed but also in the observer.

7. In response to being called a nature poet, Richard Wilbur states, “I like to write poems about seed leaves, for example, in which there are human qualities and human problems discernible in the description of things or plant. Âs...Much of the time when I am talking about a tree, I’m also talking about people indirectly.”. Richard Wilbur in Conversations With Richard Wilbur, ed. William Butts, (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1990) 217-8. Develop how the implied metaphors of the thing observed and the human self help clarify the goal of self-realization.

Consider "Seed Leaves" "Fern Beds in Hampshire County" "April 5, 1974" "Mayflies" and "Zea."

8. Looking to the poems "Altitudes," "Love Calls Us to the things of this World," and "A Baroque Wall Fountain at the Villa Sciarra," address the "difficult balance" we must strike between the ideal described in theses poems and the actual described in these poems. How does this tension between the two define the human condition.

9. Considering the poems "April 5, 1974" "The Lilacs" and "A Storm in April" address how theses poems convey the message that the world's harshness, pain, and loss are necessary in the production of growth, life, and beauty.

MODEL POETRY ANALYSIS INTRODUCTION AND FIRST BODY PRAGRAPH:

To a Waterfowl

by William Cullen Bryant

Whither, 'midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--

The desert and illimitable air,--

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend

Soon o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,

And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

1815

Hannah Conn

5/21/15

Poetry Analysis Paper

American Poetry

The Romantic to the Modern: A Dramatic Shift in Perspective

Art rarely transcends temporal restrictions. As the world changes, and with it the human race, art forms are constantly being modified and invented. And with the passage of time, many art forms become insignificant or obsolete. Poetry is no exception: though it could be argued that many individual poems are “timeless”, poetry is bound to the ever-shifting poetic styles, concepts, subjects, and mannerisms meant to please a constantly changing population. It is easy to look back on the past few hundred years and see vast differences in poetry. The Romantic poets, who wrote during the Romantic Period, from the late 1700’s through the mid-1800’s, had a specific style and very similar concepts in their poetry, which was influenced by 18th- and 19th-Century life. At the close of the Romantic Era came Modernism. The accepted manners of writing poetry and the conditions that qualified a piece of writing as a poem were deeply ingrained, and it was astonishing how quickly and totally the perceptions of what poetry was changed in such a short period. The Modern poets changed the definition of what poetry was and could be, and pushed the creative boundaries set by the Romantics. They shifted the entire art form in less than 100 years. Today, looking at Romantic poems compared to Modern ones shows the reader how total the metamorphosis of poetry from Romantic to Modern was and emphasizes the rapidity of the psychological evolution of the human race. The reader can clearly see the major differences between Romantic and Modern poetry, particularly the differing perceptions of God, by comparing and contrasting two sets of poems: “To a Waterfowl” by William Cullen Bryant with “Skunk Hour” by Robert Lowell, and “A Noiseless Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman with “Design” by Robert Frost. These Romantic and Modern poems describe natural phenomena to understand the the world and themselves.While Bryant and Whitman, the Romantics, were positively inspired to have faith in a Divine Providence, the Modernists were united by rejection of an optimistic perception of faith and God's will.

“To a Waterfowl”, by William Cullen Bryant, is a Romantic poem in which the speaker develops faith in God's Will through his perceptions of the bird's flight. This poem centers on the discovery of divinity in nature. In the poem, the speaker sees a bird flying across the sky on its migratory path and uses it as a vehicle for his renewed, intense faith in a divine providence. Describing the "power" that guides the waterfowl's migration, Bryant writes:

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,--

The desert and illimitable air,--

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann'd

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere:

Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark night is near.

(lines 13-20)

Looking up at the lone bird in the sky, the speaker analyzes the waterfowl’s flight very closely and connects it to a divine providence that could be guiding its lonesome journey. There are details within the poem that help the reader understand the most noteworthy parts of the poem. The first is the connotation of the word “Power”. The connotations of the word “power” (lowercase p) are strength, mightiness, ability, authority, dominion, mastery, and influence. These connotations all apply to the word “Power”, but capitalizing the P is also significant, as it adds some connotations of God, divinity, holiness, otherworldliness, and sublimity. When the speaker says “Power”, he is literally speaking of a God, and this God who guides him through life is one and the same with the one who guides the waterfowl’s flight. This speaker thinks that the governing force in the world is a singular God who presides over everything and treats it as one, rather than separate beings and deities who each have their own dominion. The idea of having an ever-present spirit watching our every move is reinforced in this poem through Bryant’s alliteration and assonance in the phrase, “lone wandering, but not lost.” The alliteration of the "l" sound in the words “lone” and “lost” links them, and the assonance of the short "a" sound in the similar vowel sounds of “wandering”, “not”, and “lost” links these words as well. These words draw the reader’s attention for a reason: they fit right in with the speaker’s belief that though we may think we are alone and aimless in our lives, we are never really alone or lost: God is always there watching and guiding us, often in ways unnoticed by us. This is the reinforcement of the idea that the same God who guides our own course through life guides the bird’s course through the sky. The sky may seem empty, vast, and a place where it is easy to get lost. However, as lonely and purposeless as it might seem, it is necessary to keep moving forward and retain faith that you will arrive where you need to be with God’s help. Moreover, he alliteration of the "w" sound in “yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land” in the words “weary” and “welcome” gives the reader the impression that there is closure to the bird’s flight. Though the speaker only sees the bird in flight, this alliteration assures the reader that the bird landed safely with God’s aid, exactly where it needed to be. The bird’s flight may have seemed endless, but with God behind it the entire way, it was not tired when it finally landed in the “welcome land”. This poem's affirmation of faith re-emphasizes the speaker’s restored faith in a Power, the idea of which he has arrived at by observing nature.

Close Reading Poetry Analysis Paper:

Sample Poetry Analysis Essay Excerpt

(starters are in bold)

Ode To A Nightingale: Does he wake or sleep?

In John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale,” he asks two fundamental questions:

• 1. Why must life, beauty and joy be so impermanent?

  2. Why are humans burdened with being conscious of their mortality when the immortality of nature surrounds us every moment of our brief lives?

The speaker of “Ode to a Nightingale” is troubled by these questions. Written in 1809 John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” exemplifies the tenets of 19th century Romanticism by showing how the quest for emotional permanence is a failure. In order to better understand the meaning of “Ode to a Nightingale,” the Romantic quest for emotional permanence needs to be defined. Many Romantics wrote poetry to suspend a moment or feeling that they found to be formative. While the poems often succeed in achieving his goal, many Romantics were driven to despair as a result of their inability to sustain moments of heightened awareness in their daily lives. Downtrodden with feelings of insignificance and pettiness, the speaker in “Ode to a Nightingale” endeavors to attain the pure perception of the world that can only be seen through the eyes of a nightingale. He finds it briefly in the angelic song of a nightingale, but the speaker’s grasp of his reverie is soon lost, and he comes crashing back to the reality that is his life. By analyzing the speaker’s envy of the nightingale’s perception of nature, the nightingales song, and the speaker’s desire to transcend into the bird, it becomes apparent that these desires and goals fail. Nevertheless, the speaker resolves to accept the limits of the human condition and his failed quest for emotional permanence.

The life of the speaker is sad and unrewarding; it is replete with personal sorrow and loss and rife with observations of the pain of others, so he desires a non-human existence to escape his present pain. In the opening stanza, he laments, “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,/ Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains…” (line1-3) In these three lines, the speaker has established his poor situation. His “heart aches” and he feels a “drowsy numbness.” With the depressed tone established, the speaker hints at his desires to escape his human limitations. He considers the happiness of the nightingale of the forest and thinks:

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

(lines 7-10).

At this point of the poem, the speaker has heard the nightingale sing. He is sitting in a dark bower as the sun sets. In the above excerpt, the speaker emphasizes that the song of the nightingale comes “easily” to the “happy” nightingale. The metaphor that compares the nightingale to a “dryad,” a sort of woodland fairy, works well because “dryad” has connotations of divine joy and unqualified bliss. This is a stark contrast to the existence of the forlorn speaker. The nightingale sings in “full-throated ease”; unlike the speaker, it has no human concerns but is instead completely free to enjoy its existence, unfettered by being conscious of its mortality. This is important because the speaker’s desire to transcend into the nightingale reveals both his quest for emotional permanence and his dissatisfaction with the limits of human perception.

Adding to his desire for the free existence that the “Dryad” and the other denizens of the natural world enjoy, the speaker then pursues other means of escape from human perception. It is instructive to look closely at the second stanza because it reveals the speaker’s desire for an antidote to the human condition. The speaker pines:

O, for a draught of vintage! That hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green…

O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene…

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

(lines 11-20).

At this moment the speaker is still seated in his ever darkening bower and is listening to the nightingale’s song. According to the second stanza, the speaker wants to become intoxicated or drink of the fountain of the muses to “fade away” from human perception. The exuberant tone in this stanza is a powerful contrast to the depressed tone of the first stanza. The speaker wants to consume the “flora and the country green” like wine. He wants to drink draughts of the “warm South” and absorb the inspiration of the muses with their sacred fountain, the “Hippocrene.” The allusion to the Hippocrene fountain, the fountain of the muses, works because the speaker desires to be as inspired to write poetry as the nightingale is to sing. The speaker wants to ingest the natural world, but he doesn’t want to consume it. He is not greedy, but rather needs to join blissfully with the world and recede into it. The speaker hopes, “That [he] might drink, and leave the world unseen/ And with thee fade away into the forest dim:” (lines 19-20). This second stanza is significant because it establishes two different ways for humans to go beyond unaltered human perception. Although this analysis is primarily concerned with this speaker’s specific desire to see as the nightingale sees, it also develops the larger Romantic concept of using the imagination to “lift the veil of familiarity from the world.”

SAMPLE OUTLINE GUIDE:

I. Title

A. Introduction

1. Opener: #25

2. Bridge: #26

3. Plan and Thesis and Plan: #29

B. First body Paragraph: first four lines?

1. Passage and Cite (#36)

a. context: (#37)

b. condense: (#38)

c. connect by close reading (#40-48)

B. Second body Paragraph: four more lines?

1. Passage and Cite (#36)

a. context: (#37)

b. condense: (#38)

c. connect by close reading (#40-48)

C. Third body Paragraph: final lines?

1. Passage and Cite (#36)

a. context: (#37)

b. condense: (#38)

c. connect by close reading (#40-48)

D. Conclusion:

1. Transition from last paragraph to thesis

2. React to value of text and paper

3. Ender: return to the idea / language of the opener

MODEL OUTLINE:

The Heron

While the summer's growth kept me

anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river

where it flowed, faithful to its way,

beneath the slope where my household

has taken its laborious stand.

I could not reach it even in dreams.

But one morning at the summer’s end

I remember it again, as though its being

lifts into mind in undeniable flood,

and I carry my boat down through the fog,

over the rocks, and set out.

I go easy and silent, and the warblers

appear among the leaves of the willows,

their flight like gold thread

quick in the live tapestry of the leaves.

And I go on until I see crouched

on a dead branch sticking out of the water

a heron—so still that I believe

he is a bit of drift hung dead above the water.

And then I see the articulation of a feather

and living eye, a brilliance I receive

beyond my power to make, as he

receives in his great patience

the river's providence. And then I see

that I am seen. Still, as I keep,

I might be a tree for all the fear he shows.

Suddenly I know I have passed across

to a shore where I do not live.

-Wendell Berry

The Heron

While the summer's growth kept me

anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river

where it flowed, faithful to its way, connotation

beneath the slope where my household

has taken its laborious stand. connotation

I could not reach it even in dreams.

But one morning at the summer’s end

I remember it again, as though its being

lifts into mind in undeniable flood, allusion

and I carry my boat down through the fog, visual imagery

over the rocks, and set out.

I go easy and silent, and the warblers

appear among the leaves of the willows,

their flight like gold thread

quick in the live tapestry of the leaves. simile

And I go on until I see crouched

on a dead branch sticking out of the water

a heron—so still that I believe

he is a bit of drift hung dead above the water.

And then I see the articulation of a feather connotation

and living eye, a brilliance I receive visual imagery

beyond my power to make, as he

receives in his great patience alliteration of "p" in power, patience, providence

the river's providence. And then I see connotation

that I am seen. Still, as I keep, alliteration of "s" in see, seen, still

I might be a tree for all the fear he shows.

Suddenly I know I have passed across tone shift from declarative to astonished

to a shore where I do not live.

-Wendell Berry

MODEL OUTLINE

I. Title: The Human and the Heron

A. Introduction

1. Opener: #25 : "All the junk that goes with being human drops away." -Gary Snyder "Piute Creek

2. Bridge: #26: Gary Snyder claims that a powerful experience in nature allow humans to feel blended with nature, and this is what Wendell Berry does in his poem "The Heron." In this poem, the speaker sees a heron fishing and then sees that he is seen by the heron; he sees that he too is a member of the ecosystem.

3. Plan and Thesis and Plan: #29: By addressing the visual imagery of the farm and the river, the the heron's faith and the speaker's faith, and the appreciative tone at the end of Wendell Berry's "The Heron," this paper will argue that Wendell Berry wants readers to appreciate and value nature by immersing themselves in it.

B. First body Paragraph:

1. Passage and Cite (#36): While the summer's growth kept me

anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river

where it flowed, faithful to its way,

beneath the slope where my household

has taken its laborious stand.

a. context: (#37): opening lines of the poem...life before going to the river

b. condense: (#38): speaker is concerned with his garden and maintaining his house...ignores nature

c. connect by close reading (#40-48) : connotations of laborious are "heavy," "ponderous" "painful" and this makes the ready focus on the heavy presence of his house on his life and on the landscape. In addition, the river is described as "faithful"; faithful has the connotations "reverent," "respectful" and this is in keeping with the river;s respectful following of the flow. It seems as though th speaker wants to move from the heavy presence of his house to the respectful, revernt flow of the river

B. Second body Paragraph:

1. Passage and Cite (#36): And then I see the articulation of a feather connotation

and living eye, a brilliance I receive visual imagery

beyond my power to make, as he

receives in his great patience

the river's providence. And then I see connotation

that I am seen. Still, as I keep, alliteration of "s" in see, seen, still

I might be a tree for all the fear he shows.

a. context: (#37): speaker has canoed down the river...sees a heron...still...fishing

b. condense: (#38): speaker sees the intesnely brilliant eye of the heron watching for minnows

c. connect by close reading (#40-48): alliteration of the "p" sound in "power, patience, providence" focuses the reader's ear upon these words. The "power" present in the perfect stillness and brilliance of the eye and feathers of the heron amazes the speaker. There seems to be a great power behind such intensity. Then the speaker ponders the "patience" of the heron as it waits calmly for the "river's providence," which is a minnow swimming close enough to be eaten. There is a faith implied in the worlds "power" and providence" (God's will); the speaker wants to have the faith in the world that the heron has. The alliteration of the "s" sound in "see, still, seen" also make the reader slow don on these words. The speaker "sees" the heron, is as "still" as the heron and then knows that he is "seen." This makes the reader realize that the human is apart of the ecosystem, apart of the "tapestry" of nature. Berry convinces us that powerful moments in nature can help us sees ourselves as natural.

C. Third body Paragraph: fi

1. Passage and Cite (#36): Suddenly I know I have passed across

to a shore where I do not live.

(lines )

a. context: (#37): final lines of the poem, after learing that the heron sees him

b. condense: (#38): speaker knows that the heron lives in a world humans rarely visit.

c. connect by close reading (#40-48) : the tone in the opening lines of the poem is declarative, matter-of-fact. But in the last two lines, the tone shifts from declarative to astonished. This cues the reader to appreciate the speaker's realization that we should "cross" into a world where nature dominates for it humbles us.

D. Conclusion:

1. Transition from last paragraph to thesis

2. React to value of text and paper

3. Ender: return to the idea / language of the opener

PAPER ABOUT ONE POEM ASSIGNMENT:

How are Wendell Berry's poems about developing the reader's faith in the intricate design of the natural world as awe-inspiring?

-"The Apple Tree"

-"The Sycamore"

"The Peace of Wild Things"

-The Heron"

-"The Silence"

The Apple Tree

The Apple Tree

by Wendell Berry

In the essential prose

of things, the apple tree

stands up, emphatic

among the accidents

of the afternoon, solvent,

not to be denied.

The grass has been cut

down, carefully

to leave the orange

poppies still in bloom;

the tree stands up

in the odor of the grass

drying. The forked

trunk and branches are

also a kind of necessary

prose—shingled with leaves,

pigment and song

imposed on the blunt

lineaments of fact, a foliage

of small birds among them.

The tree lifts itself up

in the garden, the

clutter of its green

leaves halving the light,

stating the unalterable

congruity and form

of its casual growth;

the crimson finches appear

and disappear, singing

among the design.

Message of the poem:

Image:

Connotative word:

Alliteration:

Metaphors: "branches shingled with leaves"

"a foliage of small birds"

The Sycamore - Wendell Berry

Drama Textual Analysis Model Paper :

SAMPLE DRAMA ANALYSIS ESSAY ON HAMLET:

(starter sentences are in bold)

Hamlet’s Transformation

“To be or not to be,” asks Hamlet to himself in a famous soliloquy on suicide, but this essay will answer the question: who does Hamlet become? In the passage above, Hamlet questions if he is moral. This develops the central question both the reader and Hamlet have throughout the play. Hamlet rejects suicide and develops a belief in himself and the world as rewarding as he matures throughout the play. Hamlet is not what one would call “light reading.” Murder, adultery, suicide, and insanity all come in to play in what is probably Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy aside from Romeo and Juliet. Written in 1605 William Shakespeare’s Hamlet exemplifies the tenets of 16th and 17th century English Renaissance by showing how influential man’s faith in God and self are to one’s destiny. In order to better understand the meaning of Hamlet concordia discors needs to be defined. Concordia discors is the English Renaissance belief that what seems to be chaotic is actually following an order unseen and uncontrolled by man. Hamlet learns to believe in the divine order of the world by the end of the play. Through the play Hamlet transforms from a solipsistic, pessimistic, vacillating loner to a confidant man who believes in himself, his reason, his will, and concordia discors.

Hamlet did change through the play. His despair is blatantly obvious during the first threes acts. The strongest example of this is when he contemplates suicide in desperation after meeting with Claudius soon after seeing the ghost for the first time. Hamlet laments:

Oh that this too, too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,

Or that the Everlasting had fixed

His canon ‘gainst (self slaughter)! O God, God

(I, ii, 133-136).

At this point in the play Hamlet has met the ghost and has learned of his father’s murder. Hamlet’s argument here is that he wants to fade into nature by “resolving into a dew” but he knows God has forbidden suicide. This despair is so deep that he actually wants to commit suicide because he believes even death is better than the possibility of continuing life on this earth. Hamlet rejects his suicidal thoughts for fear of punishment in the afterlife and for hope that this life will prove to be more rewarding. This analysis captures the idea that he wants to escape from his human world and fade away into nothingness. He believes that human conscience is a curse because he knows suicide is wrong. He is too solipsistic. My discussion of Hamlet’s suicidal tendencies is in fact addressing the larger matter of morality. Hamlet is developing his moral foundation by rejecting suicide.

After rejecting suicide it seems there is no hope for poor Hamlet. He’s just murdered an innocent man-Polonius-and has been sent to England to be executed at the orders of his uncle/ stepfather. The reader can see that luck has turned back in his favor when in his letter to Horatio Hamlet says:

Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment

gave us chase…They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy…

I am to do a good turn for them.

( IV, vi, 15-17).

When Hamlet writes this letter to Horatio, Hamlet is sailing for England to be killed for his murder of Polonius. This excerpt communicates the message that Hamlet is starting to believe that the world is rewarding since the pirates saved him from death. The jubilant tone of Hamlet’s letter indicates that he’s beginning to find his place in the world. His belief in Concordia discors or the balance of everything in the world so that it all works out for the better also emerges here. The assertion that Hamlet is beginning to believe in himself and the world matters because the theme of the play contends that those who believe in the world and themselves are rewarded. Although this analysis is primarily concerned with Hamlet’s faith in his self and the world, it also develops the larger concept of the need to have faith in powers beyond one’s control and seems to be a call to have faith in God.

Once he realizes that he has a definite purpose in the world, Hamlet’s tentative happiness turns into an almost undeterred jubilation and confidence that the world rewards good and punishes evil. Before his duel to the death with Laertes, Hamlet boasts to Horatio:

Not a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special

providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,

‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be

now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the

readiness is all…

(V, ii, 212-218).

At this point in the play, Hamlet has returned from sea, has learned of Laertes’s desire to kill him, and is talking to Horatio about his future duel with Laertes. In the above excerpt, Hamlet emphasizes the presence of God’s will or “providence” in the world and His guidance of him throughout the play. After the death of Ophelia, his love, Hamlet is almost blindly confident about his certain win over her brother, Laertes, even though Horatio is the more skilled swordsman. Because the pirates saved him from his doom Hamlet knows that God has a larger plan for him. Hamlet believes God will allow him to win the duel. This analysis is significant because it is Hamlet’s confidence in a beneficent God that allows him to have confidence that his actions will be rewarded. Although these claims may seem trivial, they are in fact crucial to understanding Hamlet because Shakespeare wants the reader to journey with Hamlet from solipsism to faith in the world. Although Hamlet fulfills his goal of avenging his father’s death by killing Claudius, Hamlet dies in the process and the reader realizes that the world does reward and punish well.

While Hamlet wonders whether or not to love and whether or not to act in his famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy, Hamlet learns to accept the gains and losses in life as formative to his character and beliefs. We witness Hamlet transform from a solipsistic, pessimistic, vacillating loner to a confident man who has confidence in the world. He embodies the belief that one must accept “buffets and rewards.” By writing about Hamlet’s transformation, I was able to explore the significance of having faith in one’s self, one’s actions and the world. Ultimately, Hamlet is a hopeful play. Hamlet develops faith in himself and the world as rewarding and chooses “to be” and “to act” well. But we also learn along with Hamlet that one must act well consistently and expeditiously.

Works Cited:

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Washington Square Press, 2004

Huss Phil. Online Discussion Web. November 29, 2004.

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