Poems

In one document, collect your answers to the following questions about your readings in this unit. These questions are split into three categories: literal, interpretive, and applied. Literal questions simply ask you about the most basic elements of a text. You can answer these questions in a sentence or two. Interpretive questions ask you to read between the lines. Interpretation encourages you to explore, discover, and explain what is not directly stated by the text. Thus, you need to use evidence from the text to support your analysis. You should write 1-2 paragraphs on these questions.Applied questions ask you to connect the readings to the world beyond. Using details and evidence from the text, you’ll explain how literature is helping you see the world around you in a new light. You should write 1-2 paragraphs on these questions. Be sure to read each question carefully and answer every part of the question! Please also use at least one quote or example for each interpretive and applied answer.Literal Questions1. At the end of “Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins, what are the students doing to the poem?2. In “Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare, why does the speaker prefer not to compare his mistress to all these beautiful things? 3. In “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, who is the speaker actually speaking to? Interpretive Questions4. In “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe,” Elizabeth Alexander’s speaker makes several metaphorical comparisons to explain what poetry “is” or is not. Choose at least one metaphor that most surprised you and explain why you think it effectively expresses what poetry does, what it can do, or what it is for. 5. Watch this short video about meter in Shakespeare’s sonnets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5lsuyUNu_4). In your own notes, choose a few of your favorite lines from “Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare and measure out the beats of iambic pentameter. The video will explain how to do so. For this question, describe the speaker’s tone in the poem and how the iambic pentameter affects this tone. 6. John Donne’s “Death be Not Proud” relies on a type of figurative language much like metaphor—personification. Personification is when human qualities are attached to something nonhuman or to an abstraction. What does Donne’s speaker gain by personifying death? How might this personification change his (and our) relationship to death? 7. In “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” the speaker refers to death as “that good night.” Why do you think night is such a common metaphor for death? Why do you think the speaker calls death a “good night” even though he is urging his audience to resist it?8. In “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop breaks several “rules” of the villanelle form. A villanelle is supposed to repeat the first and third line of the first stanza alternately at the end of each of the next four stanzas, and then repeat them both (exactly) at the end of the last stanza (take a look at “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” for an example of all these rules in action). Choose two examples where Bishop changes those repeated lines in her villanelle and explain the effect of these changes. What do you think she gains by breaking readers’ expectations of the villanelle form?Applied Questions 9. The two poems in “Section 1” address the fact that most readers’ relationship with poetry is established in a classroom setting. Did you read poems primarily in school? Did your classroom experiences make poetry more or less enjoyable? How do “Introduction to Poetry” and / or “Ars Poetica #100” confirm or complicate that experience? How does either poem help you reimagine what poetry is or what it is for?10. Identify one metaphor or simile that we have not covered in the questions above. Why do you think the poet chose to make this comparison? How does it affect your experience as a reader?How is that experience different from reading about the same topic if it were written in a direct non-fiction form, an essay or report