What is the relationship between love and selfishness that this poem presents?

Module 2
Be sure to review the Module Response Instructions and Grading Rubric.
Select only ONE of the following.
Select ONE of the following items. Each item may have multiple questions, but keep in mind that you are looking to write 1-2 fluent paragraphs (225-400 words)for this response.
Be sure to follow the rules posted on the handout “Instructions & Grading Rubric for Module Response Questions” found in the Orientation Module. Some key points from this: MLA Heading, Double space, Use a few relevant quotes from the literature to help make your points, do NOT use any outside sources.
Please note that each of these prompts contains multiple questions. You do not necessarily need to answer all of these questions for your response–at least, not specifically and separately. The goal is for you to be able to see the bigger picture with each prompt and to write a fluent paragraph or two paragraphs in one, unified response.
!!(Reminder: Be sure that you begin your response with “Thesis:”and your single sentence thesis.)
Again, select only ONE of the following. (Pick the one you like the most!) Please identify which prompt you are using when you submit your response.
1. Read A. E. Stallings’ “Hades Welcomes his Bride” (p. 771). What can we infer about the action occurring in the poem and the auditor’s (Persephone’s) reactions to what Hades has to say? For example, he asks, “No smile?” (10). Is Hades being a nice guy and doing his best to welcome his new bride–newly kidnapped bride–to her new home or is this all just the show of decorum and he is more gloating that he now owns and controls her? In other words, how malevolent is he being from his own perspective as opposed to hers or even ours?
2. Read “[I celebrate Myself, and sing myself]” (p. 777). In his preface to Leaves of Grass–the book from which this poem is taken–Whitman claims that his poetry defines what American literature should be so that it embodies the spirit of America as he sees it. In this poem, the speaker is portrayed as leaning, loafing at his “ease,” and observing “a spear of summer grass” (5). if the speaker is the author of a new American poetry, what American qualities are suggested in this description? What characteristics–of the speaker, his poetry, and things American–are revealed in the final stanza?
3. Etheridge Knight’s “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane” is, in part, about the relation between Hard Rock and the other prisoners. In the second stanza, Hard Rock is described as a “stallion,” while the other inmates are compared to “indians.” What do you make of these comparisons? Why is the poet borrowing the vocabulary of the wild west here? How would you describe the relationship between Hard Rock and his fellow prisoners, both before and after the lobotomy?
4. Readers of Atwood’s “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” (p. 773) usually assume this narrative on a personal tragedy is autobiographical—that the speaker and Atwood are one in the same. The poem, though, is actually a fictionalized account based on the life of another woman who lived over a 100 years ago. What specific words and details or other elements in the poem help create this powerful and seemingly genuine sense of loss? How does the knowledge that this is NOT Atwood’s personal experience change your reaction or view of the poem, if at all?
5. Read E. E. Cumming’s “[next to of course god america i]” (p. 779). Except for the last line, this poem works very much like a dramatic monologue (see p. 771). What can you discern (figure out) about the the situation in which the quoted words are spoken? about the speaker and his/her audience? What effect is created by the absence of punctuation (and capital letters)? What is the poem’s attitude toward the speaker?
6. Read Sharon Old’s “Sex Without Love” (p. 859). Consider the different understandings of the word “love.” What does the word mean each time it is used? What are the implications? What is the relationship between love and selfishness that this poem presents?
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