The Pretty-Good,
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Table of Contents
Rhetorical Analysis 3
[Much madness is divinest sense][1] 4
A Death Scene 5
[I heard a fly buzz when I died] 8
Tone/Attitude Words 9
[The soul selects her own society] 13
America 14
Pioneers! O Pioneers! 15
The Red Wheelbarrow 19
This Is Just to Say 13
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus 21
Richard Cory 22
“Butch” Weldy 23
Lucinda Matlock 24
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota 25
“Teach Us to Number Our Days” 26
Traveling through the Dark 27
The Makers 28
Author Biographies 29
Glossary of Schemes and Tropes 32
Rhetorical Analysis[2]
Classical Rhetoric: “The faculty of finding the available means of persuasion in a given case” (Ars Rhetorica by Aristotle).
Contemporary: “The art of featuring content” (William Covino and David Jolliffe, Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries).
Rhetorical Analysis: The examination of written texts, literary or ordinary, to determine how the author has shaped the content in order to achieve an identifiable purpose for a given audience. Rhetorical analysis commits the intentional and affective fallacies.
Key Terms and Questions in Rhetorical Analysis as Applied to Poetry
• Exigence: What happened that caused the author to write?
• Audience: To whom is a particular poem addressed?
• Purpose: What is the author’s purpose in writing?
• Appeals: What kind of argument is the author building?
• Ethos: What is the poem’s appeal to ethics?
• Pathos: What is the poem’s appeal to emotion? Context
• Logos: What is the poem’s appeal to reason?
• Enthymeme: major premise (principle or rule), minor premise (example), and conclusion.
• Paradigm: A paradigm is a model for whatever set is under consideration. Members of the set are judged in comparison to that model. Consider what follows if Diana Spencer is established as the paradigm of feminine beauty? In poetry, one might ask, What is the paradigm under consideration?
• Scheme: A change in standard word order or pattern. These stylistic features add spice to writing and speaking. And they are commonly thought to be persuasive because they dress up language.[3]
• Trope: The creative use of a word, phrase, or image in a way not intended by standard use.
• Diction &
Syntax: Why has the author chosen particular words and word order?
[Much Madness is divinest sense][4]
by Emily Dickinson
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
To a discerning Eye—
Much Sense—the starkest Madness—
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail—
Assent[5]—and you are sane—
Demur[6]—you're straightway dangerous—
And handled with a Chain—
Essential Questions: What is Dickinson’s observation about the nature of madness and sense? What is her argument? What rhetorical devices support your conclusion about her argument?
A Death Scene from Blackwood’s Magazine
published anonymously in March 1827
As fade the flowers when frowning Winter shrouds
The earth with tempests, and the sky with clouds—
As melt away the snows when Spring comes forth,
And leaves to Frost no empire save the North—
So waned she on the sight, and day by day,
Like evening sun-light stole from us away;
The shade of what she was, when through the grove
And by the lake, she took delight to rove,
A child of Nature, beautiful, yet meek,
Heaven in her eye, and roses on her cheek.
‘Twas evening; scarcely on that lovely face
The silent watcher could sensation trace,
So calm she lay, so statue-like serene,
The slight heave of her breast was seen:
Closed were her eyelids, pallid as the snow,
Ere day-break purples o’er the mountain’s brow,
And through the long dark lashes, sweetly smiled,
As if, in blest repose, to her were given
The calm of pardoned souls, and views of Heaven.
Bright o’er her brow the auburn tresses hung;
And loosely by her side one arm was flung,
The fingers held, what? but the shade[7] of him
Whose melancholy fate has made hers dim;
And in her grasp, with youthful aspect mild,
The pictured lines of her dead young lover smiled,
Smiled as he was wont of yore.
Her opening eyes
Gazed blandly round her with a brief surprise,
As if aroused from thought; and then she said—
“Dear mother, seat thee near me by my bed,
And let the curtain-folds be raised, that I
Once more may look on the grand evening sky,
And o’er yon forests, where, on eves like this,
To roam and list the birds was more than bliss.”
A momentary brightness o’er her face
Filled it with light the melancholy place
As forth she gazed. The mighty sun had set
Beyond the hills, whose peaks were glowing yet;
Blue gleamed the lake; and, with an emerald pride,
Were seen the forests old outstretching wide;
And, on the window-sill a lovely bird,
The redbreast lighted, trilling from his throat
A loud, clear, simple, momentary note,
And sudden disappeared:—then trembling rushed
A light wind o’er the leaves, just heard and hushed,
As twilight stole with silent step serene
And in her azure mantle wrapt the scene.
“It is the last time that my eyes shall see
Clouds on the sky, or leaves upon the tree,”
Exclaimed the dying girl, “—and come night,
They never shall for me disperse in light;
From scenes like these in youth to be or barred,
To happier hearts may seem to savor hard;
Not so to mine; life’s passage may be brief,
And, young in years, the bosom old in grief,
The springs of memory poisoned, and the breast
Estranged to peace, the dwelling of unrest—
This little picture—never let us part,
But place it in my grave-robes, o’er my heart.—
Grieve not for me—th’ unrippled summer sea
Ebbs not more tranquilly--grieve not for me!
Resigned I die, and trust to be forgiven
Through Him who bled that Man might merit Heaven!”
‘Twas past—the strife was over—like a wave
That, melting on the shore it meant to lave
Dissolves away; like music's solemn sound
Mid cloistral roofs reverberating round
Fainter and fainter;—like the latest ray
Caught by the hill-top from expiring day
So fair, so faint she waned; without a sigh
Like dew sipped by the sun, ‘twas hers to die;
And borne on viewless plumes, to nature’s Lord.
From sorrow and from sin her spirit soared.
In tears around her virgin couch they stand,
Kiss the pale brow, and press the chilly hand:
They paused—methought she gently breathed again—
They paused—hung—gazed—and listened—but in vain:
Then found no dimness on the mirror brought
A trace of respiration—she was not!
Essential Questions: How would you describe the tone of “A Death Scene?” Which specific elements of the poem—diction, syntax, lines—characterize the tone?
[I heard a fly buzz when I died]
by Emily Dickinson
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in Air—
Between the Heaves of Storm—
The Eyes around—had wrung them dry
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
Be witnessed—in the Room
I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable—and then it was
There interposed a Fly
With Blue—uncertain—stumbling Buzz—
Between the light—and me—
And then the windows failed—and then
I could not see to see
Essential Questions: How would you describe the tone of “I heard a fly buzz?” Does the tone of the poem shift or change? How is Dickinson’s tone different from that of the anonymous author of “A Death Scene?”
Tone/Attitude Words
Overview: These terms may accurately describe the tone of a piece you’ve read, but use them carefully. You may also find helpful ideas in the definitions and explanations of terms.
• abashed
• abhorring
• acerbic
• accusatory: charging of wrong doing
• admiring
• adoring
• affectionate
• ambiguous
• ambivalent
• angry
• annoyed
• antagonistic
• anxious
• apathetic: indifferent due to lack of energy or concern
• appreciative
• apprehensive
• approving
• awe: solemn wonder
• belligerent
• bemused
• benevolent
• bewildered
• biting
• bitter: exhibiting strong animosity as a result of pain or grief
• blithe
• blunt
• bossy
• brisk
• brusque
• calm
• candid
• callous: unfeeling, insensitive to feelings of others
• casual
• caustic: intense use of sarcasm; stinging, biting
• celebratory
• cheerful
• choleric: hot-tempered, easily angered
• cold
• colloquial
• comforting
• comic
• commanding
• compassionate
• complex
• complicated
• conceited
• conciliatory
• condescension; condescending: a feeling of superiority
• confident
• confused
• contemplative: studying, thinking, reflecting on an issue
• contemptuous: showing or feeling that something is worthless or lacks respect
• contented
• contentious
• conventional: lacking spontaneity, originality, and individuality
• critical: finding fault
• curt
• cynical: questions the basic sincerity and goodness of people
• delightful
• demanding
• depressed\depressing
• derisive
• derogatory
• disdainful: scornful
• didactic: author attempts to educate or instruct the reader
• derisive: ridiculing, mocking
• desolate
• despairing
• desperate
• detached
• diabolic
• difficult
• diffident
• direct
• disappointed
• disliking
• disrespectful
• doubtful
• dreary
• earnest
• earnest: intense, a sincere state of mind
• easy
• ebullient
• ecstatic
• effusive
• elated
• elegiac
• elevated
• eloquent
• embarrassed
• emotional
• empathetic
• encouraging
• enraged
• erudite: learned, polished, scholarly
• eulogistic
• euphoric
• evasive
• excited
• exhilarated
• expectant
• facetious
• factual
• familiar
• fanciful: using the imagination
• fatalistic
• forthright: directly frank without hesitation
• fearful
• fervent
• flippant
• forceful
• foreboding
• forthright
• frantic
• friendly
• frightened
• funny
• furious
• ghoulish
• gleeful
• gloomy: darkness, sadness, rejection
• grand
• grave
• greedy
• grim
• gushy
• happy
• harsh
• haughty: proud and vain to the point of arrogance
• hilarious
• holier-than-thou
• hopeful
• hopeless
• hostile
• humorous
• impartial
• impatient
• incisive
• incredulous
• indifferent
• indignant: marked by anger aroused by injustice
• indirect
• inflammatory
• informal
• insecure
• insistent
• insolent
• interested
• intimate: very familiar
• introspective
• ironic
• irrelevant
• ironic
• irreverent
• jocund
• jovial
• joyful/joyous
• judgmental: authoritative and often having critical opinions
• jovial: happy
• laidback
• laudatory
• learned
• lethargic
• light
• lively
• lofty
• ludicrous
• lugubrious
• lyrical: expressing a poet’s inner feelings; emotional; full of images; song-like
• malicious: purposely hurtful
• matter-of-fact: accepting of conditions; not fanciful or emotional
• meditative
• melancholy
• mirthful
• mischievous
• miserable
• mocking: treating with contempt or ridicule
• modest
• morose: gloomy, sullen, surly, despondent
• motivated
• mournful
• mysterious
• nervous
• nostalgic
• objective: an unbiased view; able to leave personal judgments aside
• obsequious: polite and obedient in order to gain something
• ominous
• optimistic: hopeful, cheerful
• outraged
• outspoken
• paranoid
• passionate
• pathetic
• patronizing: air of condescension
• pedantic
• pensive
• pessimistic: seeing the worst side of things; no hope
• pithy
• placid
• playful
• poignant
• powerful
• pretentious
• proud
• psychotic
• questioning
• quizzical: odd, eccentric, amusing
• reassuring
• reflective: illustrating innermost thoughts and emotions
• relaxed
• resigned
• respectful
• reticent
• reverent: treating a subject with honor and respect
• ribald: offensive in speech or gesture
• ridiculing: slightly contemptuous banter; making fun of
• ridiculous
• risible
• romantic
• sad
• sanguine: optimistic, cheerful
• sarcastic: sneering, caustic
• sardonic: scornfully and bitterly sarcastic
• satiric: ridiculing to show weakness in order to make a point, teach
• scared
• scholarly
• scornful
• self-assured
• self-deprecating
• selfish
• sentimental
• sepulchral
• serene
• serious
• severe
• silly
• simple
• sincere: without deceit or pretense; genuine
• sinister
• skeptical
• sly
• solemn: deeply earnest, tending toward sad reflection
• somber
• speculative
• sprightly
• stern
• stolid
• straightforward
• stressful
• strident
• subdued
• suspenseful
• suspicious
• sympathetic
• tender
• tense
• terse
• thoughtful
• threatening
• timorous
• tragic
• tranquil
• unambiguous
• uncaring
• uncertain
• unconcerned
• understated
• uneasy
• unfriendly
• unhappy
• unsympathetic
• upset
• urgent
• violent
• vitriolic
• whimsical: odd, strange, fantastic; fun
• wistful
• worried
• worshipful
• wry
• zealous
[The Soul selects her own Society]
by Emily Dickinson
The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the Door—
To her divine Majority—
Present no more—
Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—
At her low Gate—
Unmoved—an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat—
I've known her—from an ample nation—
Choose One—
Then—close the Valves of her attention—
Like Stone—
America
by Walt Whitman
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair'd in the adamant of Time.
Essential Question: What does Whitman mean by the line, “Chair’d in the adamant of Time?”
Pioneers! O Pioneers!
by Walt Whitman
Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!
For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein'd,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
(bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
See my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd.
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Life's involv'd and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call-hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!-swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Essential Questions: As we all know, I believe, we live in an image-rich environment these days. We can’t ride in an elevator or pump gas without being bombarded by the images of CNN. We can’t walk down any aisle in Jewel without stepping on advertisement posted on the floor. How good are you at interpreting images? What argument is Williams advocating with the images of “The Red Wheelbarrow?”
This Is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were
in the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet and so cold
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus[8]
By William Carlos Williams
According to Brueghel[9]
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning
Richard Cory
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
“Butch” Weldy
by Edgar Lee Masters
After I got religion and steadied down
They gave me a job in the canning works,
And every morning I had to fill
The tank in the yard with gasoline,
That fed the Blow-fires in the sheds
To heat the soldering irons.
And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it,
Carrying buckets full of the stuff.
One morning, as I stood there pouring,
The air grew still and seemed to heave,
And I shot up as the tank exploded,
And down I came with both legs broken,
And my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.
For someone left a blow-fire going,
And something sucked the flame in the tank.
The Circuit judge said whoever did it
Was a fellow-servant of mine, and so
Old Rhodes’ son didn’t have to pay me.
And I sat on the witness stand as blind
As Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over,
“I didn’t know him at all.”
Lucinda Matlock
by Edgar Lee Masters
I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed—
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life.
Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in
Pine Island, Minnesota
by James Wright
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
Essential Questiosn: So, has James Wright wasted his life, or not? What’s the paradox here?
“Teach Us to Number Our Days”[10]
by Rita Dove
In the old neighborhood, each funeral parlor
is more elaborate than the last.
The alleys smell of cops, pistols bumping their thighs,
each chamber steeled with a slim blue bullet.
Low-rent balconies stacked to the sky.
A boy plays tic-tac-toe on a moon
crossed by TV antennae, dreams
he has swallowed a blue bean.
It takes root in his gut, sprouts
and twines upward, the vines curling
around the sockets and locking them shut.
And this sky, knotting like a dark tie?
The patroller, disinterested, holds all the beans.
August. The mums nod past, each prickly heart on a sleeve.
Traveling through the Dark
by William Stafford
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—
her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,
alive, still, never to be born.
Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;
under the hood purred the steady engine.
I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;
around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—
then pushed her over the edge into the river.
The Makers
by Howard Nemerov
Who can remember back to the first poets,
The greatest ones, greater even than Orpheus?
No one has remembered that far back
Or now considers, among the artifacts
And bones and cantilevered inference
The past is made of, those first and greatest poets,
So lofty and disdainful of renown
They left us not a name to know them by.
They were the ones that in whatever tongue
Worded the world, that were the first to say
Star, water, stone, that said the visible
And made it bring invisibles to view
In wind and time and change, and in the mind
Itself that minded the hitherto idiot world
And spoke the speechless world and sang the towers
Of the city into the astonished sky.
They were the first great listeners, attuned
To interval, relationship, and scale,
The first to say above, beneath, beyond,
Conjurors with love, death, sleep, with bread and wine,
Who having uttered vanished from the world
Leaving no memory but the marvelous
Magical elements, the breathing shapes
And stops of breath we build our Babels of.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American lyrical poet, and an obsessively private writer—only seven of her more than 1800 poems were published during her lifetime.
Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a family well known for educational and political activity. Her father, an orthodox Calvinist, was a lawyer and treasurer of Amherst College who also served in Congress. She was educated at Amherst Academy (1834-47) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (1847-48). Around 1850 Dickinson started to write poems, first in fairly conventional style, but after ten years of practice she began to experiment. From the late 1850s forward, she assembled many of her poems in “fascicles,” which she bound with needle and thread.
After the Civil War, Dickinson restricted her contacts outside Amherst to letters, dressed only in white, and saw few of the visitors who came to meet her. In fact, she spent most of her time in her room. Although she lived a secluded life, her letters reveal knowledge of the writings of John Keats, John Ruskin, and Sir Thomas Browne. Dickinson’s life remains mysterious, despite much speculation about a possible disappointed love affair. Two candidates have been presented: Reverend Charles Wadsworth, with whom she corresponded, and Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, to whom she addressed many poems. After Dickinson’s death in 1886, her sister Lavinia brought out her poems.
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. He began writing poetry while a student at Horace Mann High School, at which time he made the decision to become both a writer and a doctor. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound. Pound became a great influence in Williams’ writing, and in 1913 arranged for the London publication of Williams’ second collection, The Tempers. Returning to Rutherford, where he sustained his medical practice throughout his life, Williams began publishing in small magazines and embarked on a prolific career as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Following Pound, he was one of the principal poets of the Imagist movement, though as time went on, he began to increasingly disagree with the values put forth in the work of Pound and especially Eliot, who he felt were too attached to European culture and traditions. Continuing to experiment with new techniques of meter and lineation, Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh—and singularly American—poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. Williams’ health began to decline after a heart attack in 1948 and a series of strokes, but he continued writing up until his death in New Jersey in 1963.
Walt Whitman wrote poetry that most in his day considered scandalous. Open form, sexual content, and eye for the common and the ugly as well as the extraordinary and the beautiful, sympathy for the poor and the dispossessed—these are just some of the characteristics that made Whitman’s poetry radical and unique. He self-published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 and wrote anonymous reviews that praised the author. He sent a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who immediately recognized Whitman’s talent. In 1862, as the Civil War escalated, Whitman nursed soldiers in Washington hospitals. His writing in this period, including his elegy for Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” constitutes a poetic history of the war. An innovator in diction, line, rhythm, and subject matter, Whitman stands as the father of modern American poetry.[11]
Edwin Arlington Robinson was born on December 22, 1869, in Head Tide, Maine. His family moved to Gardiner, Maine, which, when renamed Tilbury Town, became the backdrop for many of Robinson’s poems. Robinson described his childhood as stark and unhappy; he once wrote in a letter to Amy Lowell that he remembered wondering at the age of six why he had been born. After high school, Robinson spent two years studying at Harvard University as a special student and his first poems were published in the Harvard Advocate.
Robinson’s experiences with poverty and his anti-materialistic views shaped much of his poetry. His work received little attention until President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a magazine article praising it and Robinson. Roosevelt also offered Robinson a sinecure in a U.S. Customs House, a job he held from 1905 to 1910. Robinson dedicated his next work, The Town Down the River (1910), to Roosevelt. For the last twenty-five years of his life, Robinson spent his summers at the MacDowell Colony of artists and musicians in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Robinson never married and led a notoriously solitary lifestyle. He died in New York City on April 6, 1935.
Edgar Lee Masters was born in Garnett, Kansas, on August 23, 1868, but soon after his birth his family moved to Lewistown, Illinois, the town near Springfield where Masters grew up. His youth was marred by his father’s financial struggles with a faltering law practice and reluctance to support his son’s literary interests. Masters attended Knox College for a year but was then forced by the family's finances to withdraw and continue his studies privately. He was admitted to the bar in 1891, and he moved to Chicago in 1892, where he found a job collecting bills for the Edison Company. He gradually built a successful law practice, and for eight years he was the partner of Clarence Darrow.
Masters considered writing a novel about the relationships of people in a small Illinois town. This idea was transformed through a chance acquaintance. Masters had been submitting poems to Marion Reedy, the editor of Reedy’s Mirror in St. Louis. While Reedy didn’t publish these poems, he kept up the correspondence and gave Masters a copy of J. W. Mackail’s Selected Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. After reading these, Masters felt the challenge to adopt the idea for his novel into this form, combining free verse, epitaph, realism, and cynicism to write Spoon River Anthology, a collection of monologues from the dead in an Illinois graveyard. The Spoon River of the title is the name of an actual river in Illinois, but the town combines Lewistown, where Masters grew up, and Petersburg, where his grandparents lived. These poems were serialized in Reedy’s Mirror from 1914-15, and then discovered by Harriet Monroe, the editor of Poetry, who helped Masters issue a complete edition in 1915. Spoon River Anthology was wildly successful, going through several editions rapidly and becoming one of the most popular books of poetry in the history of American literature.
Masters was never to equal the success of Spoon River Anthology. He published 39 more books, including novels, plays, collections of poetry, and biographies of Lindsay, Mark Twain, Whitman, and Lincoln. In 1917, Masters left his family; he and his wife would divorce in 1923. In 1920 Masters gave up his law firm and moved from Chicago to New York City, where he retired to the Chelsea Hotel to write. In 1926 he married Ellen Coyne, thirty years his junior. In his later years, Masters received several awards based on his earlier successes, including a Poetry Society of America Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died March 5, 1953, in a convalescent home in Philadelphia and was buried in Petersburg, Illinois.
Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1952. Her books of poetry include American Smooth (W. W. Norton, 2004); On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Mother Love (1995); Selected Poems (1993); Grace Notes (1989); Thomas and Beulah (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Museum (1983); and The Yellow House on the Corner (1980). She has also published Fifth Sunday (1985), a book of short stories; Through the Ivory Gate (1992), a novel; and The Darker Face of the Earth (1994), a verse drama; and edited The Best American Poetry 2000. Her many honors include the Academy of American Poets's Lavan Younger Poets Award, a Mellon Foundation grant, an NAACP Great American Artist award, Fulbright and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships, and grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She served at Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995. In 2004 she was named Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia and is Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
James Arlington Wright was born in Martins Ferry, Ohio, on December 13, 1927. His father worked for fifty years at a glass factory, and his mother left school at fourteen to work in a laundry; neither attended school beyond the eighth grade. While in high school in 1943, Wright suffered a nervous breakdown and missed a year of school. When he graduated in 1946, a year late, he joined the army and was stationed in Japan during the American occupation. He then attended Kenyon College on the G.I. Bill, and studied under John Crowe Ransom. He graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1952, then married another Martins Ferry native, Liberty Kardules.
James Wright was elected a fellow of The Academy of American Poets in 1971, and the following year his Collected Poems received the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. He died in New York City in 1980.
Glossary of Schemes and Tropes[12]
Schemes:
adnominatio: repetition of a word with a change in letter or sound
alliteration: series of words that begin with the same letter or sound alike
anacoluthon: change in the syntax within a sentence
anadiplosis: repetition of a word at the end of a clause at the beginning of another
anaphora: repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses
anastrophe: inversion of the usual word order for emphasis
anticlimax: arrangement of words in order of decreasing importance
antimetabole: repetition of words in successive clauses, in reverse order
antistrophe: repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive clauses
antithesis: juxtaposition of opposing or contrasting ideas
aphorismus: statement that calls into question the definition of a word
aposiopesis: breaking off or pausing speech for dramatic or emotional effect
apostrophe: directing the attention away from the audience and to a personified abstraction
apposition: placing of two elements side by side, in which the second defines the first
assonance: repetition of vowel sounds, most commonly within a short passage of verse
asteismus: facetious or mocking answer that plays on a word
asyndeton: omission of conjunctions between related clauses
cacophony: juxtaposition of words producing a harsh sound
chiasmus: reversal of grammatical structures in successive clauses
climax: arrangement of words in order of increasing importance
consonance: repetition of consonant sounds, most commonly within a short passage of verse
dystmesis: synonym for tmesis
ellipsis: omission of words
enallage: substitution of forms that are grammatically different, but have the same meaning
enthymeme: informal method of presenting a syllogism
epanalepsis: repetition of the initial word or words of a clause or sentence at the end of the clause or sentence
epistrophe: counterpart of anaphora
euphony: opposite of cacophony, i.e. pleasant sounding
hendiadys: use of two nouns to express an idea when the normal structure would be a noun and a modifier
hendiatris: use of three nouns to express one idea
homographs: words that are identical in spelling but different in origin and meaning
homonyms: words that are identical with each other in pronunciation and spelling, but differing in origin and meaning
homophones: words that are identical with each other in pronunciation and spelling, but differing in origin and meaning
hypallage: changing the order of words so that they are associated with words normally associated with others
hyperbaton: schemes featuring unusual or inverted word order
isocolon: use of parallel structures of the same length in successive clauses
internal rhyme: using two or more rhyming words in the same sentence
kenning: metonymic compound where the terms together form a sort of synecdoche
non sequitur: a statement that bears no relationship to the context preceding
merism: referring to a whole by enumerating some of its parts
paradiastole: repetition of the disjunctive pair "neither" and "nor"
parallelism: use of similar structures in two or more clauses
paraprosdokian: unexpected ending or truncation of a clause
parenthesis: insertion of a clause or sentence in a place where it interrupts the natural flow of the sentence
paroemion: resolute alliteration in which every word in a sentence or phrase begins with the same letter
parrhesia: speaking openly or boldly, or apologizing for doing so (declaring to do so)
perissologia: fault of wordiness
pleonasm: use of superfluous or redundant words
polyptoton: repetition of words derived from the same root
polysyndeton: repetition of conjunctions
pun: when a word or phrase is used in two different senses
sibilance: repetition of letter 's', it is a form of alliteration
spoonerism: jumbling of the letters in words by a funny way
synchysis: interlocked word order
synesis: agreement of words according to the sense, and not the grammatical form
synizesis: pronunciation of two juxtaposed vowels or diphthongs as a single sound
synonymia: use of two or more synonyms in the same clause or sentence
tautology: redundancy due to superfluous qualification; saying the same thing twice
tmesis: division of the elements of a compound word
Tropes:
allegory: extended metaphor in which a story is told to illustrate an important attribute of the subject
allusion: indirect reference to another work of literature or art
anacoenosis: posing a question to an audience, often with the implication that it shares a common interest with the speaker
antanaclasis: form of pun in which a word is repeated in two different senses
anthimeria: substitution of one part of speech for another, often turning a noun into a verb
antiphrasis: word or words used contradictory to their usual meaning, often with irony
antonomasia: substitution of a phrase for a proper name or vice versa
aphorism: tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion, an adage
apophasis: invoking an idea by denying its invocation
aporia: deliberating with oneself, often with the use of rhetorical questions
apostrophe: addressing a thing, an abstraction or a person not present
archaism: use of an obsolete, archaic, word (a word used in anachronistic language, e.g. Shakespeare’s language)
auxesis: form of hyperbole, in which a more important sounding word is used in place of a more descriptive term
catachresis: mixed metaphor (sometimes used by design and sometimes a rhetorical fault)
circumlocution: “talking around” a topic by substituting or adding words, as in euphemism or periphrasis
commiseration: evoking pity in the audience
double negative: grammar error that can be used as an expression and it is the repetition of negative words
epanorthosis: immediate and emphatic self-correction, often following a slip of the tongue
enumeratio: form of amplification in which a subject is divided, detailing parts, causes, effects, or consequences to make a point more forcibly
erotema: synonym for rhetorical question
euphemism: substitution of a less offensive or more agreeable term for another
hermeneia: repetition for the purpose of interpreting what has already been said
hyperbole: use of exaggerated terms for emphasis
hypophora: answering one's own rhetorical question at length
hysteron proteron: reversal of anticipated order of events
innuendo: having a hidden meaning in a sentence that makes sense whether it is detected or not
invocation: apostrophe to a god or muse
irony: use of word in a way that conveys a meaning opposite to its usual meaning
litotes: emphasizing the magnitude of a statement by denying its opposite
malapropism: using a word through confusion with a word that sounds similar
meiosis: use of understatement, usually to diminish the importance of something
metalepsis: referring to something through reference to another thing to which it is remotely related
metaphor: implied comparison of two unlike things
metonymy: substitution of a word to suggest what is really meant
neologism: use of a word or term that has recently been created, or has been in use for a short time; opposite of archaism
onomatopoeia: words that sound like their meaning
oxymoron: using two terms together, that normally contradict each other
parable: extended metaphor told as an anecdote to illustrate or teach a moral lesson
paradox: use of apparently contradictory ideas to point out some underlying truth
paralipsis: drawing attention to something while pretending to pass it over
paronomasia: form of pun, in which words similar in sound but with different meanings are used
periphrasis: substitution of a word or phrase for a proper name
personification and
anthropomorphism: attributing applying human qualities to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena
praeteritio: another word for paralipsis
procatalepsis: refuting anticipated objections as part of the main argument
prolepsis: another word for procatalepsis
proslepsis: an extreme form of paralipsis in which the speaker provides great detail while feigning to pass over a topic
proverb: a succinct or pithy expression of what is commonly observed and believed to be true
rhetorical question: asking a question as a way of asserting something. Or asking a question not for the sake of getting an answer but for asserting something (or as for in a poem for creating a poetic effect)
simile: explicit comparison between two things
syllepsis: form of pun, in which a single word is used to modify two other words, with which it normally would have differing meanings
syncatabasis: condescension, accommodation; adaptation of style to the level of the audience
synecdoche: form of metonymy, in which a part stands for the whole
synesthesia: description of one kind of sense impression by using words that normally describe another
transferred epithet: placing of an adjective with what appears to be the incorrect noun
truism: a self-evident statement
tricolon diminuens: combination of three elements, each decreasing in size
tricolon crescens: combination of three elements, each increasing in size
zeugma: a figure of speech related to syllepsis, but different in that the word used as a modifier is not compatible with one of the two words it modifies
zoomorphism: applying animal characteristics to humans or gods
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[1] Brackets indicate first lines of poems used as titles.
[2] Information for this tutorial comes from Everyday Use: Rhetoric at Work in Reading and Writing by Hephzibah Roskelly and David Jolliffe and the AP Summer Institute in English Language and Composition, DePaul University.
[3] See the Glossary of Schemes and Tropes at the end of the Pretty-Good Anthology.
[4] The brackets indicate that the poem was not titled originally and that the first line serves as the title.
[5] assent: agree; consent
[6] demur: object; protest
[7] shade: a common 19th century cliché for a portrait
[8] The Fall of Icarus: Daedalus and Icarus were an Athenian craftsman and his son. They were exiled in Crete after Daedalus murdered his apprentice whose skill was greater than his master's. When the father and son were imprisoned by the king of Crete, the inventor made wings from feathers and wax so that he and his son could escape by flying away. Despite his father's warnings, Icarus flew too close the sun. The wax in his wings melted and he perished while his father flew to safety.
[9] Luis Brueghel painted “The Fall of Icarus.” (1558)
[10] Psalm 90:12 of the KJV of the Bible contains the line, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
[11] quoted from Modern American Poetry
[12] This glossary is a work in progress. Check my definitions against what you learn in Latin and other classes and provide some contemporary American examples if you want to help out.
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You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you!
Joseph Joubert
(1754-1824)
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
E. Dickinson
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
Rita Dove
The Imagist Movement was a movement favored precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and artifice typical of much Romantic and Victorian poetry.
Poets have to have a sense of humor about themselves. Don’t they?
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