English 12 Poetry Unit

“A poem...begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a

reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion
finds the thought and the thought finds the words.”
- Robert Frost

Unit Overview
During our study of poetry, we will be:
● Writing our own poetry, and sharing it with our classmates
● Reading a variety of poems in class (you are encouraged to read more!)
● Writing about how poems work, in expository form
● Looking at ideas in poems, and how they might appear in other texts
● Working on our essay writing skills
● Learning many terms related to the study of poetry, most of which will be defined in your literary terms, and
poetry terms handouts

Last night
By Jalalud’din Rumi

Last night
I begged the Wise One to tell me
the secret of the world.
Gently, gently he whispered,
“Be quiet,
the secret cannot be spoken,
it is wrapped in silence”.
Lyric Poems
Questions for discussion:
Getting Pregnant
by Lorna Crozier1 1. Which lines struck you on your first reading?
Why?
You can’t get pregnant
If it’s your first time.
2. When you read the poem in your mind, or
You can’t get pregnant perhaps aloud, which words did you imagine
if you do it standing up, stressed, or emphasized? If you change that
if you don’t French kiss, stress, or emphasis, how does it change the
if you pretend meaning of the poem?
you won’t let him
but just can’t stop.
3. Nothing in a poem is unintentional. So,
You can’t get pregnant looking back at the trail of clues the poet has
if you go to the bathroom left us, who do you imagine is the speaker? Be
right after, specific in your estimation.
if you ride a horse
bareback, if you jump
up and down on one leg, 4. There are many strange details mentioned in
if you lie in the snow this poem. Why do you think the poet has put
till your bum feels numb, them there? What effect are they hoping to
if you do it in the shower, achieve, or create?
if you eat garlic,
if you wear a girdle,
if it’s only your second time. 5. What is the speaker’s tone (attitude), towards
You can’t get pregnant what they’re discussing? What lines, phrases,
or words support your assertion?
if he keeps his socks on,
if he’s captain of the football team,
if he says he loves you, 6. Aside from repetition, how has the poet
if he comes quickly, manipulated, or played with language here?
if you don’t come at all, Where do you see some clever word-work?
if it’s only your third time. Some suggestion words to look up in your
literary terms package: ​imagery​,
You can’t get pregnant juxtaposition​, ​apostrophe
if he tells you
you won’t.

1
​Lorna Crozier is a Canadian poet who holds the Head Chair
in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria. She
has authored fifteen books and was named an Officer of the
Order of Canada in 2011
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 1
the mother
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the most highly regarded,
get, influential, and widely read poets of 20th-century American
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, poetry. She was the first Black author to win the Pulitzer
The singers and workers that never handled the air. Prize, and the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress,
and the poet laureate of the State of Illinois.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
Questions for discussion:
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
1. What lines or phrases strike you, on first
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious reading?
sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
2. Who do you imagine is speaking, in this
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my poem? Why?
dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
3. What is the speaker’s tone towards their
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck topic? What lines, phrases, or words support
And your lives from your unfinished reach, your assertion?
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your
marriages, aches, 4. The poet has used ​line breaks​ to create
and your deaths, unusual ​emphasis​ on certain words. How does
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, that emphasis shift the meaning?
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not
deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?— 5. How has the poet manipulated, or played with
Since anyhow you are dead. language here? Where do you see some clever
Or rather, or instead, word-work? You might want to look up the
You were never made. terms: ​alliteration​, ​onomatopoeia​, ​repetition​,
But that too, I am afraid, juxtaposition​, ​imagery​, ​apostrophe​.
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be
said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
6. Most poems feature some sort of shift, or
Believe me, I loved you all. change in meaning or perspective, usually
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I towards their end. Is there such a shift here in
loved you this poem? What is it
All.

E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 2

fugue2
Suji Kwock Kim

Out of albumen and blood, out of amniotic brine, Questions for discussion:
placental sea-swell, trough, salt-spume and foam, 1. What lines or phrases strike you, on first
reading?
you came to us infinitely far, little traveler, from the other world—
skull-keel and heel-hull socketed to pelvic cradle,
2. Who do you imagine is speaking, in this
rib-rigging, bowsprit-spine, driftwood-bone, poem? Why?
the ship of you scudding wave after wave of what-might-never-have-been.

Memory, stay faithful to this moment, which will never return:

may I never forget when we first saw you, there on the other side, 3. What is the speaker’s ​tone​ towards their
topic? What lines, phrases or words
still fish-gilled, water-lunged, support your interpretation?
your eelgrass-hair and seahorse-skeleton floating in the sonogram screen

like a ghost from tomorrow,

moth-breath quicksilver in snowy pixels, fists in sleep-twitch, 4. The poet has used ​line breaks​ to create
unusual emphasis on certain words. How
not yet alive but not not, does that emphasis shift the meaning?
you who were and were not,

a thunder of bloodbeats sutured in green jags on the ultrasound machine

like hooves galloping from eternity to time,
5. How has the poet manipulated, or played
feet kicking bone-creel and womb-wall, with language here? Where do you see
while we waited, never to waken in that world again, some clever word-work? You’ll want to
look up the terms ​onomatopoeia​, ​simile​,
the world without the shadow of your death, alliteration​, ​apostrophe​, ​imagery​ and
with no you or not-you, no is or was or might-have-been or never-were. extended metaphor​.

May I never forget when we first saw you in your afterlife

which was life,
6. Most poems feature some sort of shift, or
soaked otter-pelt and swan-down crowning, change in meaning or perspective, usually
face cauled in blood and mucus-mud, eyes soldered shut, towards their end. Is there such a shift
here in this poem? What is it?
wet birth-cord rooting you from one world to the next,
you who might not have lived, might never have been born, like all the
others,

as we looked at every pock and crook of your skull, 7. Why do you think the poet chose the title,
every clotted hair, seal-slick on your blue-black scalp, “fugue” for this poem? How does it suit
the content?
every lash, every nail, every pore, every breath,
with so much wonder that wonder is not the word—

2
A fugue is a musical genre that is structured using a repeating musical motif. You can view a performance of Bach’s fugue in G minor (BWV
578) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZd2q3BYPwI
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 3
Refugees 1. The speaker makes several
references to things outside the
By Brian Bilston
poem (​allusions​). What are they?
How do they enrich our
They have no need of our help
understanding of the text?
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers 2. The writer repeats some lines.
With bombs up their sleeves What kind of effect does this
Cut-throats and thieves repetition​ have on us as readers?
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot 3. What are some particularly
Share our food powerful ​images​, or words in the
Share our homes poem, that you notice?
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us 4. How does the ​speaker’s​ t​ one
A place should only belong to those who are born there change when reading bottom to
Do not be so stupid to think that top?
The world can be looked at another way

(now read from bottom to top)

E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 4

Front Door
By Imtiaz Dharker

Wherever I have lived,

walking out of the front door
every morning
means crossing over
to a foreign country.
One language inside the house,
another out.
The food and clothes
and customs change.
The fingers on my hand turn
into forks.
I call it adaptation
when my tongue switches
from one grammar to another,
but the truth is I’m addicted now,
high on the rush
of daily displacement,
speeding to a different time zone,
heading into altered weather,
landing as another person.
Don’t think I haven’t noticed
you’re on the same trip too.

1. Who do you imagine is speaking, in this poem? Why?

2. A poem leaves us a series of clues to the speaker’s identity. What are the clues you notice here? What sort of
picture do you paint in your mind?

3. The speaker describes two very different realities they deal with. What sort of figurative language do you
notice at play in this poem?

4. Most poems feature some sort of shift, or change in meaning or perspective, usually towards their end. Is
there such a shift here in this poem? What is it

E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 5

Minority A page doesn’t fight back.
by Imtiaz Dharker And, who knows, these lines
may scratch their way
I was born a foreigner. into your head –
I carried on from there through all the chatter of community,
to become a foreigner everywhere family, clattering spoons,
I went, even in the place children being fed –
planted with my relatives, immigrate into your bed,
six-foot tubers3 sprouting roots, squat in your home,
their fingers and faces pushing up and in a corner, eat your bread,
new shoots of maize4 and sugar cane.
until, one day, you meet
All kinds of places and groups the stranger sidling down your street,
of people who have an admirable realise you know the face
history would, almost certainly, simplified to bone,
distance themselves from me. look into its outcast11 eyes
and recognise it as your own.
I don’t fit,
like a clumsily-translated poem; For discussion:
1. What lines cling to you? Trip you up? Entice
like food cooked in milk of coconut you? Why do you think that is?
where you expected ghee5 or cream,
the unexpected aftertaste 2. There is so much sensory imagery in this
of cardamom6 or neem7. poem. Which lines are particularly powerful
for you here? Are some senses more
There’s always that point where important in different places?
the language flips
into an unfamiliar taste; 3. What word play do you notice in this poem?
where words tumble over Consider ​juxtaposition, pun, mixed
a cunning tripwire8 on the tongue; metaphor, simile, imagery, onomatopoeia​.
where the frame slips,
the reception of an image 4. It’s easy to imagine the speaker of a poem
not quite tuned, ghost-outlined, being the poet themselves, but often it isn’t.
that signals, in their midst, What clues are there to this person’s identity?
an alien9.
5. With your group / partner, go through each
And so I scratch, scratch stanza and label the topics you think each
through the night, at this stanza is addressing.
growing scab on black on white.
Everyone has the right 6. What is the speaker’s ​tone​ towards the topics
to infiltrate10 a piece of paper. they address?

7. What do you think is the poem’s big message?

3
Tubers: plants that grow underground (look in that last stanza)
4
Maize: corn
5
Ghee: clarified butter
6
Cardamon: a spice
7
Neem: an herb used for cooking, as well as for medicinal
purposes
8
Tripwire: a wire used to trip people; often a defensive trap
used in times of war
9
Alien: something not native to a place. 11
Outcast: ​a person who has been rejected by society or a
10
Infiltrate: to enter or gain access to social group.
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 6
Home ​by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless go home blacks
home is the mouth of a shark refugees
you only run for the border dirty immigrants
when you see the whole city running as well asylum seekers
your neighbors running faster than you sucking our country dry
breath bloody in their throats niggers with their hands out
the boy you went to school with they smell strange
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory savage
is holding a gun bigger than his body messed up their country and now they want
you only leave home to mess ours up
when home won’t let you stay. how do the words
no one leaves home unless home chases you the dirty looks
fire under feet roll off your backs
hot blood in your belly maybe because the blow is softer
it’s not something you ever thought of doing than a limb torn off
until the blade burnt threats into or the words are more tender
your neck than fourteen men between
and even then you carried the anthem under your legs
your breath or the insults are easier
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets to swallow
sobbing as each mouthful of paper than rubble
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. than bone
you have to understand, than your child body
that no one puts their children in a boat in pieces.
unless the water is safer than the land i want to go home,
no one burns their palms but home is the mouth of a shark
under trains home is the barrel of the gun
beneath carriages and no one would leave home
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a unless home chased you to the shore
truck unless home told you
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled to quicken your legs
means something more than journey. leave your clothes behind
no one crawls under fences crawl through the desert
no one wants to be beaten wade through the oceans
pitied drown
no one chooses refugee camps save
or strip searches where your be hunger
body is left aching beg
or prison, forget pride
because prison is safer your survival is more important
than a city of fire no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in
and one prison guard your ear
in the night saying-
is better than a truckload leave,
of men who look like your father run away from me now
no one could take it i dont know what i’ve become
no one could stomach it but i know that anywhere
no one skin would be tough enough is safer than here
the

E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 7

Name: ___________________________________ Block: _______ Feb 14, 2019

Poems for Valentine’s Day

Valentine Crowfight
by Carol Ann Duffy by Katherena Vermette

Not a red rose or a satin heart. have you ever seen a crowfight?
from down here
I give you an onion. it looks like a dance
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. a courtship
It promises light how they swoop
like the careful undressing of love. and curve around
each other
Here.
It will blind you with tears you’d think it was love
like a lover.
It will make your reflection but their claws are out
a wobbling photo of grief. their cries fierce
they sweep
I am trying to be truthful. and curl
take turns
Not a cute card or a kissogram. chase each other
I give you an onion. across the sky
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips, it almost looks like us
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

For reading and discussion of all three poems:

1. Who is the speaker, and what is their tone?

2. What is the rhetorical purpose, or category of this poem?

3. Where has the poet played with their language?​ (or, where do you see literary techniques used - consider
both those related to meaning, and sound)

4. What is the primary literary device, or technique the poet has used to develop the poem? ​(think about which
literary device is used most often)

E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 8

I Am Offering this Poem
By Jimmy Santiago Baca

I am offering this poem to you,

since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,

I love you,

I have nothing else to give you,

so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,

I love you,

Keep it, treasure this as you would

if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions,
and let you warm yourself by this fire,
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe

I love you,

It’s all I have to give,

and all anyone needs to live,
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,

I love you.

E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 9

Narrative Poetry
Little Red-Cap
by Carol Ann Duffy (from ​The World’s Wife​)
At childhood’s end, the houses petered out 1 1. Review your notes on
into playing fields, the factory, allotments feminist literary critique.
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan, 2. What does your assigned
till you came at last to the edge of the woods. 5 stanza infer has
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the wolf. happened?

He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out loud 3. How does the writer use
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy paw, language craft to create
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big ears effect? (where do you see
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth! 10 allusions, metaphors,
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted me, similes, imagery, etc.)
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and bought me a drink,
4. This narrative poem is a
my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry. retelling of Little Red
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the woods, Riding hood. How does
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny place 15 the writer use language
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake, craft (see above),
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red from my blazer characterization, and plot
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues. I lost both shoes changes to reveal her
feminist perspective in
but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware. Lesson one that night,
your stanza?
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love poem. 20
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for Carol Ann Duffy ​is a Scottish poet and
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? playwright. She is Professor of
Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws Contemporary Poetry at Manchester
and went in search of a living bird – white dove – Metropolitan University, and was
appointed Britain's Poet Laureate in May
2009. She is the first woman, the first
which flew, straight, from my hands to his hope mouth. 25 Scot, and the first openly LGBT person to
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed, he said, hold the position.
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood. 30

But then I was young – and it took ten years

in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in, year out, 35
season after season, same rhyme, same reason. I took an axe

to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to a salmon

to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw
the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. 40
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers, singing, all alone.

E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 10

Circe
by Carol Ann Duffy (from ​The World’s Wife)​
I’m fond, nereids and nymphs, unlike some, of the pig,
Of the tusker, the snout, the boar and the swine.
One way or another, all pigs have been mine –
Under my thumb, the bristling, salty skin of their backs,
In my nostrils here, their yobby12, porky colognes.
I’m familiar with hogs and runts, their percussion of oinks
At dusk, at the creaky gate of the sty,
Tasting the sweaty, spicy air, the moon
Like a lemon popped in the mouth of the sky.
But I want to begin with a recipe from abroad.
which uses the cheek – and the tongue in cheek
at that. Lay two pig’s cheeks, with the tongue,
in a dish, and strew it well over with salt
and cloves. Remember the skills of the tongue –
to lick, to lap, to loosen, lubricate, to lie
in the soft pouch of the face – and how each pig’s face
was uniquely itself, as many handsome as plain,
the cowardly face, the brave, the comical, noble,
sly or wise, the cruel, the kind, but all of them,
nymphs, with those piggy eyes. Season with mace.
Well-cleaned pig’s ears should be blanched, singed, tossed
in a pot, boiled, kept hot, scraped, served, garnished
with thyme. Look at that simmering lug13, at that ear,
did it listen, ever, to you, to your prayers and rhymes,
to the chimes of your voices, singing and clear? Mash
the potatoes, nymph, open the beer. Now to the brains,
to the trotters, shoulders, chops, to the sweetmeats slipped
from the slit, bulging, vulnerable bag of the balls.
When the heart of a pig has hardened, dice it small.
Dice it small. I, too once knelt on this shining shore
watching the tall ships sail from the burning sun
like myths; slipped off my dress to wade,
breast-deep, in the sea, waving and calling;
as three black ships sighed in the shallow waves.
Of course, I was younger then. And hoping for men. Now,
let us baste that sizzling pig on the spit once again.
12
Yobby: a colloquial term meaning loud, or obnoxious
13
Lug: a colloquial term meaning an ear
About The Odyssey
In ​The Odyssey,​ Circe is described as a witch
who lives in a mansion in the middle of a
densely wooded island. Part of Odysseus’
crew discovers her home, and are struck by
the tame lions and wolves that surround it.
She invites them in to eat, and after they do
so, transforms them into swine. When
Odysseus receives word, he runs to their aid,
meeting Hermes, a demi-god, on the way.
Hermes tells Odysseus how to defeat Circe,
and that she will try to seduce him, and that
he is to act with caution. Odysseus follows
Herme’s advice, and is successful. He and his
men remain (as humans) on the island for one
year, feasting and drinking wine.
Discussion Questions:
1. Take note of the images the writer
creates, and the imagery she uses.
Consider why she has described
things in this way.
2. What, or who, do the pigs represent?
3. What double meanings might there
be to the following lines or words:
a. “a recipe from a abroad”
b. “tongue in cheek”
c. to have “cheek”
d. mace
Discuss the multiple meanings and
significance of each.
4. The poet uses a number of lists to
create emphasis. Why does she
emphasize these things? What effect
does it create? (see lines 2, 15,
18-19, 22, 27-28)
5. How would you characterize the
mood of Circe, the speaker?
6. What is the speaker’s ultimate
message to the reader?
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 11
Siren Song
by Margaret Atwood
This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:
the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls
the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.
I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song
is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique
at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.
1. What does the title allude to?
2. Who is the speaker in the poem? To whom are
they speaking? What can we infer about their
characteristics?
3. What is the “bird suit”? What play on words is
at work with this term?
4. What are we to infer has happened to the
listener in the poem?
5. Why has the poet put line breaks where she
has?
6. Why does she use the 1st person voice? Would
2nd or 3rd person work? Why, or why not?
Margaret Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic,
essayist, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the
Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for
Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five
times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor
General's Award several times, winning twice. In 2001, she
was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. She is also a
founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary
organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing
community.​ ​Among innumerable contributions to Canadian
literature, she was a founding trustee of the Griffin Poetry
Prize.
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 12
Penelope In the Greek epic poem ​The
by Carol Ann Duffy (from ​The World’s Wife)​ Odyssey​, Penelope, Odysseus’
wife, has waited twenty years
At first, I looked along the road for her husband’s return. In the
hoping to see him saunter home interim, her son has grown to
among the olive trees, manhood, and over a hundred
a whistle for the dog suitors have arrived at her
who mourned him with his warm head on my knees. home, vying for her hand. To
Six months of this stall them, she says she will
choose one to marry when she
and then I noticed that whole days had passed
completes her tapestry.
without my noticing. However, at night, she unpicks
I sorted cloth and scissors, needle, thread, the day’s work. In Homer’s story,
she waits faithfully, and lovingly
thinking to amuse myself, for her husband. Carol Ann
but found a lifetime’s industry instead. Duffy’s retelling through the
I sewed a girl voice of Penelope suggests a
under a single star — cross-stitch, silver silk - different tone and perspective
than the original story.
running after childhood’s bouncing ball.
I chose between three greens for the grass;
1. The writer uses several
a smoky pink, a shadow’s grey different kinds of
to show a snapdragon gargling a bee. imagery in this poem,
I threaded walnut brown for a tree, to tell a story. What
kinds can you find?
my thimble like an acorn
pushing up through umber soil. 2. How does the speaker’s
Beneath the shade attitude change from
I wrapped a maiden in a deep embrace the first, to the second
with heroism’s boy stanza? How is she
and lost myself completely feeling in the last
stanza? What lines
in a wild embroidery of love, lust, loss, lessons learnt;
suggest those feelings?
then watched him sail away
into the loose gold stitching of the sun. 3. This poem is full of little
symbols, such as the
And when the others came to take his place, acorn, the sun, and the
disturb my peace, moon. What might they
I played for time. represent?
I wore a widow’s face, kept my head down,
did my work by day, at night unpicked it. 4. How would you
I knew which hour of the dark the moon characterize the tone of
the speaker in the last
would start to fray,
stanza?
I stitched it.
Grey threads and brown 5. Why does the speaker
use scarlet thread for
pursued my needle’s leaping fish her needle, at the very
to form a river that would never reach the sea. end of the poem?
I tricked it. I was picking out the smile of a woman at the centre
of this world, self-contained, absorbed, content,
most certainly not waiting,
when I heard a far-too-late familiar tread outside the door.
I licked my scarlet thread
and aimed it surely at the middle of the needle’s eye once more.

E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 13

Dramatic Monologue

Ulysses
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king, 1. Use the footnotes, please. As
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,14 well, note any unfamiliar
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole15 words here (there will be
Unequal laws unto a savage race, several!) for discussion with
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. 5 your group, along with any
questions you have, as you
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink read this poem. Remember,
Life to the lees16: all times I have enjoy’d read until you hit the
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those punctuation - not just the end
That lov’d me, and alone; on shore, and when of the line!
17 ​
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades​ 10
Vex’d the dim sea. I am become a name; 2. The poem “Ulysses” is spoken
For always roaming with a hungry heart by Odysseus, some time after
Much have I seen and known: cities of men his return home. How is he
And manners, climates, councils, governments, feeling in the first stanza?
Myself not least, but honor’d of them all; 15 How is this different from the
And drunk delight of battle with my peers, very end?
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. 3. Describe the speaker’s tone as
I am a part of all that I have met; it shifts through the poem.
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ What words or phrases help
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades 20 create it?
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 4. There are many places where
To rust unburnish’d18, not to shine in use! the speaker lists things. What
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life pil’d on life does he list? Why? What kind
Were all too little, and of one to me 25 of effect does this have on us
Little remains: but every hour is sav’d as readers?
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were 5. Look and see where the poet
For some three suns to store and hoard myself, has juxtaposed images - put
And this gray spirit yearning in desire 30 two different things together.
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Why?
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
6. What other language craft
have you noticed with this
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
poem?
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-lov’d of me, discerning to fulfil 35 Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson​, (6
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was Poet
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland
Subdue them to the useful and the good. during much of Queen Victoria's reign and
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere still remains a popular British poet.
Of common duties, decent not to fail 40

14
Barren crags: infertile rocks (describing the landscape)
15
mete and dole: measure and give out, as in meting out the law
16
Lees: ​the sediment of wine in the barrel..
17
Hyades: star cluster, believed by the ancient Greeks / Romans to influence weather
18
Unburnished: not polished
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 14
 In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, 45
Souls’ that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and oppos’d
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil; 50
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep 55
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 60
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles19, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ 65
We are not now that strength which in old days
Mov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 70

19
Achilles - Greek hero of the Trojan war
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 15
Elegy and Extended Metaphor

O Captain! My Captain!
By Walt Whitman20

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
The arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! My Captain!
Discussion questions:
1. An elegy is a lament, or mournful song for the dead.
2. Who is the speaker? Who is the captain?
3. Is the voyage referred to literal, or an extended metaphor? Answer with details to support your
interpretation.
4. Consider the poet’s use of rhyme scheme, meter, and sound devices to create effect & meaning.

Ode to the West Wind

Discussion questions:
1. What is said about, or to, the wind, in each section?
2. What language is used to describe the wind? What is the significance of the descriptions? What might they
allude to or connotate?
3. What is the tone of the speaker in each section? Note specific clues to the speaker’s tone.

20
Walt Whitman​ (1819-1892) ​was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A ​humanist​, he was a part of the transition between
transcendentalism​ and ​realism​, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon,
​ His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection ​Leaves of Grass​, which was
often called the father of ​free verse​.[1]​
described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 16
 Ode to the West Wind
By Percy Bysshe Shelley21
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aëry surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
21
Percy Shelley ​(1792-1822)​ ​was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric, as well as ​epic​,
poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but
recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death.
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
E. Tarbuck, English 12, 2018-2019 Page 17