Step 1 - Choose one (1) poem in the 12-page handout:
- NOT the poem you will perform
- NOT the poem you will analyze in the final paper
Step 2 - Choose one (1) specific function of poetry below
that you think can be related to your chosen poem.
Functions of Poetry
A. Historical Functions
• Horace: dulce et utile
• British Romantics: a poet is “a man speaking to other men”
• Postmodern: multiculturalism, open up the literary canon
B. Ekphrasis (Poetry + Other Arts)
• intertext: music, painting, film, photography
• art-influenced poetry & poetry-influenced art
C. Poetry & Context
• how poetry confronts cultural & sociopolitical issues
- identity
- myth
- gender/sexuality
- social class
- nationhood
D. Trends & Practices
• performance poetry
• translation
Step 3 - State the poem's literal dramatic situation
in 1 or 2 sentences; include the ff information:
- persona/speaker
- situation/human experience
- attitude/tone/emotional state of speaker
Step 4 - Discuss the meaning & relevance of the poem
by relating it to the Function of Poetry you chose.
FORMAT: 150-word mini-essay
DEADLINE : May 23, Saturday, 12 noon
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The Old Maid Walking on a City Street’s situation is that a woman has grown old without a husband. The persona is the maid herself or an old friend of the maid for she knew the past decisions and actions of the maid. The poem's tone sounds like the old maid does not have regrets of her past action. The poem was an insult to the female gender. Although the poem was somehow praising the old maid and justifying her actions, giving the title old maid becomes the gender confrontation. Maid is usually associated with something low. Once women become old without a husband, you will be treated as a thing that has a lower value than maids because they’re old. And these treatment are only for women. Men are not disgraced if they get old single in our society.
ReplyDeleteKristofer Benedict Chua Lit14-P
The Old Maid Walking on a City Street’s situation is that a woman has grown old without a husband. The persona is the maid herself or an old friend of the maid because the persona knew the past decisions and actions of the maid. The poem's tone sounds like the old maid does not have regrets of her past action. The poem was an insult to the female gender. Although the poem was somehow praising the old maid and justifying her actions, indicating in the title old maid becomes the gender confrontation. Maids are usually associated with something low. Once women become old without a husband they will be called old maid, they will be treated as a thing that has a lower value than maids because they’re old and more useless. And these are only for women. Men are not disgraced if they get old single in our society.
ReplyDelete-Kristofer Benedict Chua Lit14-P
The poem "querida" by Angela Manalang Gloria presents the picture of a house with a couple of people doing 'things'. The persona in the poem is probably a neighbor or bystander, aware of what is happening within the house because s/he described the scene as a very empty unfulfilled image towards the future of the mistress. It can be seen that a situation of an affair is being presented in the poem by describing the limousine and the brilliant question mark of light amids the dark night. The poem can be seen as an attack to the identity of the querida because she is instantly put in a position where she is seen as an object of pleasure for lonely nights. This image instantly stereotypes these kinds of women who are only used solely for the pleasure their bodies give yet, they have no future to look forward to.
ReplyDelete--Corral, Russel
Section P
Querida, by Angela Manalang Gloria speaks of a mistress and a married man inside a closed home. The persona of the poem is probably a neighbour/ passer-by in front of the house. With clues giving the impression of a rich man (limousine...), we may believe that the querida relies on the man for monetary needs. While it is possible for the man to be the source of conflict (and not the ‘querida’), the society Gloria lives in shows how women were being judged. The fact that the poem was entitled ‘Querida,’ also adds an insult to females because of the connotations being associated with the word. The way the persona speaks show pity towards the querida especially with ‘brimming emptiness’ which may metaphorically signify the relationship of the man and his querida. Since then, women were perceived as a lower gender and this hasn’t changed up to now.
ReplyDeleteHans Yu Lit14-P (147 Words)
“r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” is a poem that takes shape of a leaping grasshopper through a formal visual and verbal patterning of words and letters. E. E. Cummings makes one imagine the effect of leaping grasshoppers. The letters jump around the poem as though they were grasshoppers in a container. The poem deals with how things are defined. The world comes together only when the definition is complete; hence, that is why “grasshopper” only comes at the end. We could also consider this poem as art. As this poem is a kind of art-influenced poetry, he provides utilization of the visual component of poetry to convey his idea. Instead of humanizing the grasshopper by writing its act of leaping directly, he deforms the way words, letters and sentences are written. We spend our life changing ourselves and conforming to different ideals and only when we find who we are, we rearrangingly become ourselves.
ReplyDelete-Ryan Sibbaluca (Section P)
The persona in “The Glass” by Sharon Olds is the caretaker daughter who describes the physical struggle of her father who is dying of cancer. This poem reflects on a loved one through unconventional objects that suggest pain rather than joy and love. When you think of a glass, you think of a mirror that reflects beautiful face, but in this poem, the glass in simply a tumbler filled with mucus. Still, we can see the daughter’s hope and optimism. There is also lightness in this poem. The glass of phlegm didn’t disgust her, instead, she began to see the glass as a center of a solar system around which human activity revolves. The filling and emptying of glass stand for life and coming of death. Even though the object maybe awful for the fact that the daughter is losing her father, she sees it in a beautiful way. The poem shows that life and love can be portrayed in our memories by even the most unattractive things.
ReplyDeleteSarah Candido Lit14 P
Using Horace's definition of poetry dulce et utile, which means sweet and useful, we can analyze the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. The son, which is the persona of the poem, urges his father to fight his impending death, and not simply give into it. Being a villanelle, its structure already gives us entertainment. The repeating lines of "rage, rage againts the dying of the light," and "Do not go gentle into that good night" already has an entertaining tune. This poem also reveals to us that we should fight our death in any way we can. This is important because all of us will die, we cannot erase that but choosing to fight our doom is already an indication that we have already done everything we can to live forever.
ReplyDeleteIvan Zamora P
Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is about a son, the persona, that persuades or pleads for his dying father to fight death. We can see the desperation of the son, since he mentions on the last stanza that it’s okay if the father would curse him as long as he fights death. The son also mentions different kinds of men, from “wise men” to “good men,” even “wild” and “grave men,” who feel “rage” or anger with death. Looking at the poem on the literal level, we can see that the persona is talking to his father. But if we can take the father’s place and read as if the poem is meant for us, we can form a more personal attitude towards the poem. It also discusses the topic of death, which we usually avoid, because, maybe, of the fear of losing someone.
ReplyDelete(149 words)
-Jamie Mae Sim Lit14 P
Parents' Pantoum by Carolyn Kizer, poetry confronting more on social issues of what parents as they grow older feels, relates to conventional human experiences. Starting with "Where did these enormous children come from” shows here the questioning tone of the persona on why is it so fast that their children have grown. "They moan about their aging more than we do." Here, lets us understand how the modern young people sighs more than older people do because they wanted things happening in their life. In the poem, one can see the constant realizations of the parent, like "As they ignore our pleas to brighten up" makes the parents feel devalued by their children. The poem, as seen in society nowadays, shows how children feel that they are more knowledgeable than their parents which makes the parent "feel like children-second childish” and treating parents like “stars” fade. That in some point, “We offspring of our enormous children,” the parents become “offspring” of their own children.
ReplyDelete-CAMILLE T. KOA
SECTION P
One Art is an autobiographical poem by Elizabeth Bishop wherein she expresses her thoughts and feelings of losing somebody. She pretends to be some form of authority in her tone.
ReplyDeleteMore than referring to the act of losing as an art which is mastered or handled with technique, the act of losing is an art because it is viewed to be something admirable on those who are able to do it well. In other art forms, admiration may come in the way we interpret the art work or in the artist’s ability to express himself in various arts. In the poem, the art of losing is admirable in the way Elizabeth is able to write a poem about the one she lost which may have been very emotional for her to recall. The way also she infuses both the art of losing and poetry to express herself is also admirable.
-Izzabella Perez, Sec P
The Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Hammer and Nail” depicts the persona and a friend visiting a dead little girl’s grave, marked by a blue crossbar. It is the friend’s daughter, possibly the persona’s daughter as well (“…our little girl?”) but it’s unlikely (“my friend’s child’s grave…”). The persona and reflects about the situation of people in the ‘free graves’.
ReplyDeleteThe social issue is how the dead from different social classes leave their legacies. The persona speaks of a replica castle of a once powerful man, and a propeller to mark a dead pilot’s grave, meaning only the rich and powerful leave lasting legacies. The poor would not be that remembered, as said, pine trees were once fresh, but the “the needles droop, completely dried by now” and soon vanish (e.g. the Great Wall is remembered for the emperor who thought of it, not the slaves who built it).
-Chester Lorenz Chacon Lit 14 – P (147 words)
In Sharon Olds’ “The Glass”, the persona is a daughter who is narrating the sufferings that her father is experiencing because of cancer. There is a sense of hopelessness in the part of the daughter since the father who stands up for the family is sick, no one will be able to support them anymore.
ReplyDeleteI think the poem explores on the odds of a patriarchal society. In a society being dominated by men, they can do many things that women cannot such as working and making decisions for the family. However, there are frailties that men cannot get away with such as getting sick, and sickness makes them weak just like any other human being. In the poem, we can see how the father’s health is deteriorating that he even can’t stand for himself anymore. Because of this, he now belongs to one of the “weaklings” of the society. (Word Count: 150 words)
- Joan Carla Sy, Lit 14 - P
“Soledad” confronts the issue of social status and religion. It talks about a girl persona (Soledad) who had pre-marital sex with a man from a lower social class. The speaker is someone who knows more about the scandal but has different outlook towards it as compared to the rest of the town. The poem depicts how the townspeople react on a very disturbing event which they considered as “sacrilege”. The girl is described as a well-off person (“carved from pride and glassed in dream”). However, the town condemns her on letting go of her chastity (“dared profane the bread and wine of life”). Soledad, just like each one of us, is expected to conform to the ideals and principles of our community. But unfortunately, she who “found her heaven in the depths of hell” suffered from the denouncement of her society in the end since she failed to do so. :(
ReplyDelete-Romy Robielos II, Lit-14 P (150 words)
"Soledad" talks about a woman of high social class who loved a man of lower class and how this act disgraced her and caused the people in town to condemn her. The persona of this poem is an observer or third party to the situation. The tone in the octet part of the sonnet is questioning the woman’s actions. This slowly changed into an understanding of the woman’s resolve in the sistet part of the sonnet. The human experience, as well as the function of poetry, that this poem explores is that difference in social classes can affect lives of people not just in the experience of love, but also in fairness and equality. People of high social class take pride of what they are and treat those of lower class differently. Those that also mix with people of lower class are also treated as if they’re different and condemned.
ReplyDeleteTan, Ariadne Sharla
Lit14 - P
Word Count: 150
In “Soledad”, the persona is a woman from a rich family who so happened to have fallen in love with a man from a lower class. At that time, it was considered unethical for one to do such a thing which resulted in society shunning her. Because of these events, the poem depicted an angry-sad tone from the persona.
ReplyDeleteThis poem confronts the issue of social class. At that time, status is more important than love. This poem not only shows the difference in social class but t also shows how society conforms to these ideals. In the poem, Soledad suffered a great deal of pain despite finding happiness with a poor man when society didn’t accept her decisions as seen in the last two lines, “The town condemned this girl who loved too well and found her heaven in the depths of hell”.
Reesh Miranda
Lit 14P
Word Count: 144
"The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina" by Miller Williams is about a mother, the persona, who misses her grown-up child. The persona talks about how home will always be in our hearts, a memory that will never fade like other memories do. The persona also shares about their family, how they are and what they are doing at that point in their life. She practically begs her child to come home (using the sixth stanza). The mother's longing for her child made her say that old age will be the only thing to bring her home.
ReplyDeleteThe poem is in the first person point of view, serving the function of "the poet using the poem to speak to other men." If we read the poem, we can feel how it speaks to us, not only by the usage of "you", but the emotion it also brings that sways us. (147 words)
-Dianne Laurice Tan Lit14 P
Jaime An Lim's "The Dead", in a functionalist perspective, is reflective of a universal human culture.
ReplyDeleteThe poem depicts a father (the persona) who is ‘visited’ by his dead son's soul or spirit - technically a ghost. The tone is imminently haunting, accompanied by moderate terror in the end part.
This image only goes to show how we humans view our dead. We all somehow agree on the notion that our dead visit and wander among us. Maybe because we miss them, we refuse to accept separation, and we think that they are ‘lonely’ in the afterlife. But ironically, even if they're our loved ones, and even if we know that these loved ones will do us no harm (like the toddler ghost in the poem), we are terrified by their ‘presence’. Which suggests that we are, in reality, afraid of death - the very idea that we associate with them.
Villejo, Erwin Dee J.
Section P
(150 words)
The poem “Shrinking Lonesome Sestina” by Miller Williams depicts a persona who is a mother longing for her grown up child to go home. As her children grow older, they leave behind their family and start one of their own. The mother who took care of her children feels lonely when her children, especially her one child to whom the poem is addressed to, can’t come home to visit her.
ReplyDeleteThe poem talks about the socio-cultural issue of the emptiness syndrome where parents become lonely once their children build their own lives and live far away from home. The main message which is the sixth stanza, “Time goes too fast. Come home.” clearly shows the mother missing her child and longing to be with him/her because she won’t have that many years left to live. The sad culture of children leaving home is happening everywhere but predominantly in urban areas.
Desiree M. Fadri
Lit 14-P
In the poem “We Real Cool”, Gwendolyn Brooks reveals the identity of seven pool players, presumably young men from the middle class, by simply allowing them to speak with their own slang tongues. Their parents have enough money for their education; however, considering themselves as “cool”, they left school and simply did whatever they wanted to. The constantly repeated “We” at the end of each line depicts a sort of uncertainty regarding their identity. The interesting choice of pronoun connotes a sense of bravado, as they are trying to put a brave front, yet later on, they themselves break this façade, as the line goes, “We / Die soon." People nowadays persistently try to put a brave front to keep up with the world’s fast pace, but in the end, we simply have to accept reality and make the most out of what is left for us.
ReplyDeleteMelissa Manay, 147 words, Lit 14 P
In the poem "Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night," the speaker is the son talking to his father who is nearly about to die. The speaker is encouraging his father to not give up the fight for his life. This poem confronts the identity of dying people. The poem is about how people fight and face the last days of their lives. For some people who are already near their death, they do not bother to fight anymore. They would just lie down and wait for the time to come and the poem does not agree with this type of thinking. The poem suggests that until we are not yet dead, we must continue to make the most of our life. Even at old age or whatever our situation may be, we should fight for the joy that life brings. Life is too good to put to waste, therefore we must rage against the dying of the light.
ReplyDelete-Schevenard Cu, P
“r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” by E.E. Cummings shows a grasshopper made to life by disfigured words. The fact that the poem doesn’t use words to convey ideas makes it unconventional. So naturally, the way to read this poem is by reading it differently. The speaker here is a person observing the grasshopper and tries to capture it’s movements by letters. The grasshopper doesn’t mind being observed and gracefully “posses” in front of the man. Once the grasshopper was caught, he ended the poem by a label: “grasshopper”. Readers are forced to break free from the left to right reading and follow the hopping letters. By using our vision, we see that the words form a grasshopper starting from aThe):| to to. E.E. Cummings insults scholars who can read and understand deep poems and not understand this. Because of the way it’s made, it promotes thinking out of the box. We need to appreciate the small things to fully understand the bigger picture.
ReplyDelete-John Wong, Lit14P
W. H. Auden’s Funeral Blues confronts the inevitable mourning experienced by any person who has lost a loved one. The poet relates such experience to other men by using certain terms as “silence,” “moaning,” “coffin,” and others to generally send out the message that sadness and the symptoms that come with it, as discussed in the poem, are inescapable when death comes. Evidently then, the persona would be someone grieving the death of someone dear and is in a state of mourning and looking for comfort from the people around him. He, thus, expresses his sorrow in a miserable and mournful tone.
ReplyDeleteAs a whole, the poem expresses how important certain elements are such as silence, darkness, and mourning as outlets to cope with a loss. The poem in itself is a means of consolation for people who are experiencing the inevitable tragedy of death.(145 words)
– Ma. Angelica Anne M. Tangco Lit 14 - P
In the poem “Apfel” by Reinhard Dohl, the literal dramatic situation is can be seen from the shape of the poem alone. Given that the poem presents an ordinary apple from the outside but when carefully read one will find out that a worm is hidden in it which is pretty surprising. Persona and the emotion in the poem are quite vague since it just plainly presents an object by means of words. In the poem our identity as a person is placed to the test. Where here we are shown of our mentality to easily judge objects, in our hasty assumption we miss small details that may not be all that small after all. The main point of the poem is to wake us up from our bad habits such as overlooking things. Presented with the meaning of the poem the relevance to us is about our own identity.
ReplyDeleteDaryl Royce M. Tanrena Lit14P words:150
The poem “The Secret Language” tackles about the identity of a native tribe girl who was influenced by colonizers. The persona in the poem is a woman who was separated from her tribe because she was given as a peace-gift by her father to the foreign invaders and her tone is emotional specifically narrating and remembering. The dramatic situation is that the woman is remembering her life back then while she identifies what has happened and changed with her as an effect of the influence of the foreigners; this could also be paralleled to a life of a total stranger in a foreign culture. Filipinos can relate to this poem because we have experienced invasion, culturally and personally as well. This poem reveals that Filipinos don’t really have a true and own identity but instead, an identity that was a result of the influence of our colonizers.
ReplyDeleteJohn Albert M. Bonifacio-Lit Section P 147 words
In E. E. Cummings’ poem “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r”, the persona is maybe a normal person looking at a group of grasshoppers leaping thus the jumbled words and letters in the poem. The persona pays great attention to the grasshoppers as they gather, leap and then land again. This poem is very visual in nature that is why the poet decided to jumble up the words to emphasize the leaping of the grasshoppers. One way of reading this poem is as follows:
ReplyDeleteGrasshopper:
who as we look
upnowgathering into a grasshopper:
the grasshopper leaves!
arriving to become rearrangingly;
Grasshopper.
In this way of reading the poem, it can be seen that this poem can actually be connected to human life experiences. That is, at the start, we don’t know ourselves too much that’s why we go on life and gain experiences until we gain enough experiences and we realize who we truly are.
- John Vincent C. Lorenzo (Lit14 – P) Word count: 150
“Zero Gravity” shows the emotion of the world as it witnesses to the moon landing.
ReplyDeleteThe persona is a witness to one of the greatest human breakthroughs. It doesn’t matter what is the social class of the speaker; at that time, everybody felt the same – amazed.
As seen in the last stanza saying, as well as the synonymously spectacular language used; the persona is in awe, pride, and a sense that the impossible has happened, and is now possible.
That moment was certainly precious. In that moment, time seemed to have stopped, problems seemed to have vanished, as seen in the 5th stanza, although as the stanza progressed, we know that that moment will eventually end and everybody needs to get back to reality.
The moon landing may not be that amazing now; “Zero Gravity” begged to differ.
Just like what Neil Armstrong said : “one giant step for mankind!”
Camilo J. Cordero Jr.
Lit14-P word count:150
"The Secret Language" by Luisa Aguilar- Cariño is about a girl who was sacrificed by her family to save their land, and taken by the colonizers to become their servant. Even years after she was sacrificed, she still recalls her family and what she had to leave, with only memories to look back to.
ReplyDeleteThe Philippines was colonized by the Americans, but the Cordillera region was their main target. In the case of this young girl represented by the persona, the indigenous people in Ifugao had to do what they could to save the land that they still had and all their possessions. This young girl's was given to the colonizers as a "peace-gift."
Along with this colonization issue, we also see the issue of identity. This girl's identity is a Filipino, forcefully colonized into the Americal ways, but, good as she may get, will never be looked upon equally.
Grace Gana
Lit 14 - P
150 words
The Sestina starts its circularity with the word house and she also ended the poem with the word house. The house really means a lot to her because in that house happened every single bond her grandmother and she had. The way the story was “narrated” is just going on round and round. I think this is because the persona tried to fit her and her grandmother’s story in 39 lines, considering how simple, happy and monotonous their life was. The tone is that of fear for loss and loneliness. The identity of grandmothers is shown here through the end words of the lines – with children, with intellectual knowledge she got from life experiences (symbolized by the almanac). The relevance of this poem to the identity of grandmothers is that we acknowledge their whole being with respect. This is shown by the little child crying over her grandmother.
ReplyDelete-Camille Jacinto
Lit14 - P
148 words
Funeral Blues is about someone who has lost a loved one. The persona is very devastated by what has happened that his world totally stopped. Its function confronts with the gender issue. Though poems need not to be autobiographical, the poem still can be said to be a poem of someone who has experienced this event. The writer of the poem is a homosexual so it really is possible for him to fell in love with a man. The persona's friend is so special that he even wants planes to deliver the message that his lover is dead and he wants policemen to wear black. For me this means that he loves the person so much that he needs a lot of people who will give him sympathy. It seems like he has devoted his life to this person because he is implying that he has lost everything. Also, the poem in a way says that when someone has lost a loved one, it doesn't matter if someone else gets hurt, even if everyone flourished.
ReplyDeleteSydneey Dondon
LIT P
175 word