Answer ONE of the questions for ONE of the poems (from the textbook) in the discussion board below. Your response should be at least 200 words and incorporate some direct quotations from the poem as evidence to support your interpretation. Be sure to use MLA for in-text citations when you summarize, paraphrase, or quote any material that comes from the poem. To prepare for our formal essays, use third-person — no I, me, we, us, you, and so on.
In addition, respond to two peers’ posts in at least 100 words each, contributing to the ongoing conversation. Your response needs to address them by name and add a new idea or ask a question. Simply rephrasing your peers’ posts in a response to it is not going to keep conversation going. Phrases to NOT use: “I agree!” or “I really like this.”
Discussion Questions
Answer ONE of the questions for ONE of the poems. Post your answer to the discussion board.
Read the following poems:
E.E. Cummings’ “in Just-” (p. 540)
E.E. Cummings’ “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (p. 555)
Gwendolyn Brooks “We Real Cool” (p. 551)
Sylvia Plath’s “Morning Song” (p. 517)
Robert Frost’s “Out, Out–” (p. 596)
William Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud” (p. 712)
Robert Browning’s “Meeting at Night” (p. 719)
Walt Whitman’s “Had I the Choice” (p. 609)
Select ONE discussion question from below:
Reread the two poems by E.E. Cummings. Do you believe Cummings chose words primarily for their sound? for their appearance on the page? What other factors might have influenced his choices?
In “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks, what elements of nonstandard English grammar appear in this poem? How does the use of such language affect your attitude toward the speaker? Further, why does the poet begin with “We” on in the first line instead of isolating each complete sentence on its own line? How does this strategy change the poem’s impact?
Sylvia Plath’s life, which ended in suicide, was marked by emotional turbulence and instability. As Anne Stevenson observes in Bitter Fame, her 1988 biography of Plath, in the weeks immediately preceding the composition of “Morning Song” a fit of rage over her husband’s supposed infidelity caused Plath to destroy many of his books and poetic works in progress. Then only a few days later, she suffered a miscarriage. According to Stevenson, “Morning Song” is about sleepless nights and surely reflects Plath’s depression. However, in a 1991 biography, Rough Magic, Paul Alexander says, “Beautiful, simple, touching, ‘Morning Song’ was Plath’s — then– definitive statement of motherhood.” Which biographer’s assessment of the poem makes more sense? Why?
In William Wordsworth’s “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” is the natural world the poem’s true subject, or is it just the setting. Explain.
What general ideas about love are expressed in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee?”
The title of Robert Frost’s “Out, Out–” is an allusion to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, lines 23-28:
Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
How does being familiar with this allusion contribute to our understanding of Frost’s poem?
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