week 3: Assignment 02/06/2017
Ashford 4: - Week 3 - Instructor Guidance
ENG125 WEEK 3 GUIDANCE
Poetry
"Poetry is the language of understanding the world."
- James Meetze, poet and professor of English at Ashford University
This week's overview
First of all, let’s dispel the idea that poetry is ‘hard’ or difficult to understand; I’m sure not all of you feel this way, but I imagine some of you might. Poetic language is language of human expression. As a human being, you express yourself; thus, poetry is your language! As Clugston writes in 8.1 of your text, “[w]e are all poets” to a certain extent simply by engaging in poetic expression. Poets are engaged with the world and approach it mindfully, with awareness and expression.
Please keep this question is mind as you complete the following reading assignments for this week:
Chapters 8,9, 10, and 11 of Journey Into Literature
Be sure to take notes as you read as this will help you complete this week's discussion posts.
Strategies for this week's assignments
Firstly, students often find poetry intimidating and difficult, therefore, they enter into Week 3 dreading the task ahead. If you think you are "no good" at poetry or do not know where to start, the video below will give you a wonderful starting point as you enter into Week 3.
You have two Discussion forums this week that require your participation:
Discussion 1: Poetry and performance. In this discussion, you'll have the opportunity to choose from two poems. You'll read the poem and then listen to a performance of it. I strongly encourage you to read and listen once for pleasure. Then, read and listen a second and/or third time more carefully. Take notes on your observations.
Discussion 2: Writer's workshop. You'll post your working thesis and a body paragraph from your literary analysis draft along with your responses to several specific questions. You will also have the opportunity to offer feedback to your classmates.
You also have a written assignment which is a draft of your final paper. You must choose one of the options in the list of literary prompts. Be sure to look at the sample literary analysis for a clear model of a strong assignment. Note that the sample paper is the final version. For your draft, you are to write two and a half pages (approximately 600 words).
Again, your discussion posts all have minimum word counts as well, so I suggest you craft your responses in a Word document beforehand. Be sure you have addressed all elements of the prompt, have a post free of errors, and have met the minimum word requirement BEFORE submitting online.
Intellectual elaboration
Poetry is one of the oldest forms of literature. It is stylized, contains formal patterns and yet offers a variety of rhyme, imagery, content and lengths. Many readers dislike reading poetry because they believe it’s too hard and they won’t understand it. However, a lot of poetry is not only quite readable, but contains a lot of content in a short and pithy format.
The oldest form of poem is the epic poem, many of them translated from ancient Greek. The word “epic” comes from the Greek word, “epikos,” which means “narrative,” “word,” or “poem.” It narrates in a long form the heroic exploits of super heroes and includes such characters as Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas, Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon), who travel great distances, go to battle and establish cities. The elements found in epic poems include:
Fantastic adventures
Amazing deeds
Distant and exotic locales
A polyphonic rhyme scheme and exalted language that uses a wide range of literary devices
A theme that features large-scale human problems and issues, like war, love, sacrifice, revenge, jealousy and death
One of the most famous epic poems is the Aeneid, a Latin-based poem. It tells the story of Aeneas, who survives the battle of Troy and sets sail to find a new land. In the end, after many battles with monsters and other humans, Aeneas lands in Italy and becomes the ancestor of the Romans.
Epic poems also contain a wide variety of literary devices. Those devices include beginning the story “in medis res,” or in the middle of the action, and a pronouncement that explains the central conflict in the story. Other literary devices include (taken from Cummings 2011):
The invocation of the muse, in which a writer requests divine help in composing his work.
Telling a story with which readers or listeners are already familiar; they know the characters, the plot, and the outcome. Most of the great writers of the ancient world–as well as many great writers in later times, including Shakespeare– frequently told stories already known to the public. Thus, in such stories, there were no unexpected plot twists, no surprise endings. If this sounds strange to you, the modern reader and theatergoer, consider that many of the most popular motion pictures today are about stories already known to the public. Examples are The Passion of the Christ, Titanic, The Ten Commandments, Troy, Spartacus, Pearl Harbor, and Gettysburg
Beginning the story in the middle, a literary convention known by its Latin term in media res (in the middle of things). Such a convention allows a writer to begin his story at an exciting part, then flash back to fill the reader in on details leading up to that exciting part.
Announcing or introducing a list of characters who play a major role in the story. They may speak at some length about how to resolve a problem (as the followers of Satan do early in Paradise Lost).
Conflict in the celestial realm. Divine beings fight and scheme against one another in the epics of Homer and Vergil, and they do so in Paradise Lost on a grand scale, with Satan and his forces opposing God and his forces.
Use of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is a figure of speech in which a character in a story fails to see or understand what is obvious to the audience. Dramatic irony appears frequently in the plays of the ancient Greeks. For example, in Oedipux Rex, by Sophocles, dramatic irony occurs when Oedipus fails to realize what the audience knows–that he married his own mother. In Paradise Lost, dramatic irony occurs when Adam and Eve happily go about daily life in the Garden of Eden unaware that they will succumb to the devil's temptation and suffer the loss of Paradise. Dramatic irony also occurs when Satan and his followers fail to understand that it is impossible ultimately to thwart or circumvent divine will and justice.
To see a list of the top 20 epic poems, click this link: 20 Epic Poems
In contemporary poetry, the epic poem is not seen as much, though the modern forms of this kind of poetry still exists. However, some modern poets seek simplicity of form and make poetry easy to read. Here is an example from Ted Kooser, who writes of small, ordinary events, giving them “epic” significance:
“Flying at Night”
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death, snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care. All night, the cities, like shimmering novas, tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his
In this poem, you don’t find super heroes, fabulous deeds, gory battles and tragic defeats, or even marvelous journeys. However, you do see a huge scale of human events compressed in 8 short lines. It shows how the poem can compress so much into so few words. The poem attempts to capture beauty and truth in its most basic yet complex form.
Helpful links for this week's assignments
Writing Standards for Students at Ashford University
Ashford Writing Center Thesis Generator
References:
Cummings, Michael. “Literary Terms Including Figures of Speech.” Retrieved 15 August 2011. http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/xLitTerms.html
Images:
"Poetry." Google Images. https://www.google.com/search?q=poetry&biw. Retrieved: 7 November 2015.
"Week 3." Google Images. https://www.google.com/search?q=week+3&biw. Retrieved: 7 November 2015.
Video:
"Poetry Tips for Beginners." Lizzy and Her Books. (January 2015). https://youtu.be/HLRLWnxyKko. Retrieved: 7 November 2015.
