Poetry 1

Question 1

What is poetry?

Answer 1

• “Poetry is an disciplined, compact verbal utterance, in some more or less musical mode, dealing w/ aspects of internal or external reality in some meaningful way.” - Buston Rafael
• “Poems provide, in fact, a language for feeling, and one of poetry’s most insistent virtues involves its attempt to express the inexpressible.” - Paul Hunter
• “Poetry can be anything between epic, a story in verse and lyric, a short , subjective, melodious poem,…” - Michael Meyer

Question 2

Andrew Marvell “To his Coy mistress”

Answer 2

(poem look in notes)

• Andrew Marvell lived from 1621-1678 + belonged to the group of Metaphysical Poet, a loosely connected group of English poets of the 17th century
• “To his Coy Mistress” was published posthumously in 1681
• it’s a carpe diem-seize the day poem
• recurring motifs is memento mori - beware of your mortality
• 1. Stanza: men wants to convince a woman, who’s rather shy, to jealed to this romantic advances; ironically states how he would devote centuries to the praise of her beauty
• 2. Stanza: lyrical I talks about how short human life + after death –> nothing can be enjoyed any longer
• 3. Stanza: urges the woman to make the most of the brief time they have together + to finally jealed to his advances
• poem written in iambic pentameter; rhyme scheme = couplets

Question 3

What are Metaphysical Poets?

Answer 3

= their style was characterized by wit + conceits
° “wit” in the 17th century meant “knowledge”, it derives from Saxon witan, to know; in the 17th century –> signified qualities of the mind, attributes of wisdom + intellectual force
° “conceits” is a far-fetched metaphor that connects two very different things or realms; joins dissimilar objects or concepts + is often described as a discordia concord
- by joining dissimilar images, metaphysical poetry, one could say, shows an occult resemblance in things apparently unlikely –> w/ that the poet temporarily reorganizes things, gives the world a new order
- contemporaries denigrated + criticized poetry for its “scholastic quiddities”
- John Dryolen in 1693 accuses the metaphysical poet John Done that “he affects the metaphysics (…) where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love”

Question 4

Eliot and the Metaphysical Poets

Answer 4

• modern American poet T.S. Eliot revualted style of metaphysical poets, bc. they fits his own “impersonal theory of poetry”
• for him metaphysical poetry was superior to romantic poetry bc. it didn’t utter a subjective emotion rather translated a personal experience + feeling into objective images

Question 5

T.S. Eliot “The livelong of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Answer 5

look at notes

Question 6

What defines Villanelle?

Answer 6

1) origin:
- derives from earlier forms established in Italy in the 15th and France in the 16th century that were mostly concerned with the postoval + bucolic life
- etymology - origin of word - reflects this as villanelle goes back to the Italian + Latin words for peasants
- despite these origins, most V. have been written in English were the form has been popular until today

2) Form:
- like the Sonnet , Haiku or Limerick the V. is a fixed verse from or literary puzzle
- consisting of 19 lines:
° five tercets (or triplet)
° and a quatrain
- is marked ny restrictive repetition:
° first + third line of the first tercet are repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza
° while the las stanza include both repeated lines
- highly regulated form:
° aimed at achieving playful artifice, irony + obsessiveness
° third line of first stanza serves as last line of the third + fifth stanza
° rhyme-and-refrain pattern can be schematized as 1b2 ab1 ab2 ab1 ab2 ab12

Question 7

Dylan Thomas “Do not go gentle into that Good Night”

Answer 7

look at notes