Sussex Regional High

Grade 8 Visit: May 22, 2009
	Detailed Plan of May 22 Grade 9 School Supply List

A FEW NOTES: This poem requires an understanding of the allusion to Williams' poem. Without knowing anything about "This Is Just To Say" a reader of Dorn's poem is, quite naturally, lost. The fun of this poem comes mainly from the very clinical, distanced tone it achieves--an exaggerated mimicry of the original.	Ed Dorn's parody of Williams' "This Is Just To Say" the hazards of a later era: variation on a theme I would like to thank you for the plums that were in the ice-box, but I'm afraid I just can't do it--in the first place it's not an ice-box, and the plums having come from California are a mix of over-ripe and hard-as-rocks, both undesirable states, no doubt shot through with systemic chemicals. Add to all that the fact that I put them there myself and you have the whole sorry picture.
We looked at this poem as an example of the Shakespearean (or Elizabethan) sonnet. Like all sonnets of this type, "Shall I Compare Thee" is fourteen lines in length; it is organized--in terms of its thought progression-- into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet; it has a rhyme pattern of abab, cdcd, efef, ff; and it is written in iambic pentameter. Also, like most sonnets, it is a love poem.	“Shall I Compare Thee” –William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And Summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd: But thy eternal Summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This poem is central to the way we look at poetry in this course. In "The Snow Man" Stevens explores the difference between knowledge gleaned by sensual perception--objective knowledge-- and subjective knowledge--that knowledge which is coloured by the imagination. It seems that only the empty, passionless snow man is able to "see" things with true objectivity.	"The Snow Man" –Wallace Stevens One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
This poem, like Ed Dorn's parody of "This is Just to Say", depends for its meaning on an allusion. The allusion, here, is to Leonardo da Vinci and his most famous work, the Mona Lisa. By placing "for a woman" on the last line by itself, Baker adds emphasis to Leo's patronising statement. His acerbic comment seems a plausible explanation for Mona's mysterious smile.	"On Mona’s Smile" –Winona Baker I know what brought that expression to her face. During one of her sittings Leo said to her, “You know, Mona you’re very intelligent for a woman.”
	“An Exchange of Gifts”--Alden Nowlan As long as you read this poem I will be writing it. I am writing it here and now Before your eyes, Although you can’t see me. Perhaps you’ll dismiss this As a verbal trick, The joke is you’re wrong; The real trick Is your pretending This is something Fixed and solid External to us both. I tell you better: I will keep on Writing this poem for you Even after I’m dead.
	“You Fit Into Me” –Margaret Atwood you fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye
	“My Poems” -Robert Currie My poems are slim bombs craving explosion their fuses lie dark on the page awaiting your arrival with a light
	“Goliath and David” –Robert Graves (For D. C. T., Killed at Fricourt, March, 1916) YET once an earlier David took Smooth pebbles from the brook: Out between the lines he went To that one-sided tournament, A shepherd boy who stood out fine And young to fight a Philistine Clad all in brazen mail. He swears That he’s killed lions, he’s killed bears, And those that scorn the God of Zion Shall perish so like bear or lion. But … the historian of that fight Had not the heart to tell it right. Striding within javelin range, Goliath marvels at this strange Goodly-faced boy so proud of strength. David’s clear eye measures the length; With hand thrust back, he cramps one knee, Poises a moment thoughtfully, And hurls with a long vengeful swing. The pebble, humming from the sling Like a wild bee, flies a sure line For the forehead of the Philistine; Then … but there comes a brazen clink, And quicker than a man can think Goliath’s shield parries each cast. Clang! clang! and clang! was David’s last. Scorn blazes in the Giant’s eye, Towering unhurt six cubits high. Says foolish David, “Damn your shield! And damn my sling! but I’ll not yield.” He takes his staff of Mamre oak, A knotted shepherd-staff that’s broke The skull of many a wolf and fox Come filching lambs from Jesse’s flocks. Loud laughs Goliath, and that laugh Can scatter chariots like blown chaff To rout; but David, calm and brave, Holds his ground, for God will save. Steel crosses wood, a flash, and oh! Shame for beauty’s overthrow! (God’s eyes are dim, His ears are shut.) One cruel backhand sabre-cut— “I’m hit! I’m killed!” young David cries, Throws blindly forward, chokes … and dies. And look, spike-helmeted, grey, grim, Goliath straddles over him.
	"Dead Man's Dump" –Isaac Rosenberg The plunging limbers over the shattered track Racketed with their rusty freight, Stuck out like many crowns of thorns, And the rusty stakes like sceptres old To stay the flood of brutish men Upon our brothers dear. The wheels lurched over sprawled dead But pained them not, though their bones crunched, Their shut mouths made no moan, They lie there huddled, friend and foeman, Man born of man, and born of woman, And shells go crying over them From night till night and now. Earth has waited for them All the time of their growth Fretting for their decay: Now she has them at last! In the strength of their strength Suspended - stopped and held. What fierce imaginings their dark souls lit Earth! have they gone into you? Somewhere they must have gone, And flung on your hard back Is their souls' sack, Emptied of God-ancestralled essences. Who hurled them out? Who hurled? None saw their spirits' shadow shake the grass, Or stood aside for the half used life to pass Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth, When the swift iron burning bee Drained the wild honey of their youth. What of us, who flung on the shrieking pyre, Walk, our usual thoughts untouched, Our lucky limbs as on ichor fed, Immortal seeming ever? Perhaps when the flames beat loud on us, A fear may choke in our veins And the startled blood may stop. The air is loud with death, The dark air spurts with fire The explosions ceaseless are. Timelessly now, some minutes past, These dead strode time with vigorous life, Till the shrapnel called 'an end!' But not to all. In bleeding pangs Some borne on stretchers dreamed of home, Dear things, war-blotted from their hearts. A man's brains splattered on A stretcher-bearer's face; His shook shoulders slipped their load, But when they bent to look again The drowning soul was sunk too deep For human tenderness. They left this dead with the older dead, Stretched at the crossroads. Burnt black by strange decay, Their sinister faces lie The lid over each eye, The grass and coloured clay More motion have than they, Joined to the great sunk silences. Here is one not long dead; His dark hearing caught our far wheels, And the choked soul stretched weak hands To reach the living word the far wheels said, The blood-dazed intelligence beating for light, Crying through the suspense of the far torturing wheels Swift for the end to break, Or the wheels to break, Cried as the tide of the world broke over his sight. Will they come? Will they ever come? Even as the mixed hoofs of the mules, The quivering-bellied mules, And the rushing wheels all mixed With his tortured upturned sight, So we crashed round the bend, We heard his weak scream, We heard his very last sound, And our wheels grazed his dead face.
	"The Road Not Taken" --Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. "Out, Out - " –Robert Frost The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside him in her apron To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw, As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap - He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all - Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man's work, though a child at heart - He saw all was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off - The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!" So. The hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright. No one believed. They listened to his heart. Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. Copyright © 1962, 1967, 1970 by Leslie Frost Ballantine.
	"Those Winter Sundays" –Robert Hayden Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking, When the rooms were warm, he'd call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love's austere and lonely offices?
click here to view Bruegel's painting of Icarus' fall	“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” –William Carlos Williams According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling near the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings’ wax insignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning "Musee Des Beaux Arts" –W.H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” --W.H. Auden Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good. "My Last Duchess" --Robert Browning That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myselfthey turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 10 And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not Her husband's presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps Over my Lady's wrist too much," or "Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20 For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart -- how shall I say? -- too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace -- all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 30 Or blush, at least. She thanked men, -- good! but thanked Somehow -- I know not how -- as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech -- (which I have not) -- to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark" -- and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40 Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, --E'en then would be some stooping, and I choose Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence 50 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" --John Keats On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer Poem lyrics of On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer by John Keats. Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien. "The Cinnamon Peeler" --Michael Ondaatje If I were a cinnamon peeler I would ride your bed And leave the yellow bark dust On your pillow. Your breasts and shoulders would reek You could never walk through markets without the profession of my fingers floating over you. The blind would stumble certain of whom they approached though you might bathe under rain gutters, monsoon. Here on the upper thigh at this smooth pasture neighbour to you hair or the crease that cuts your back. This ankle. You will be known among strangers as the cinnamon peeler's wife. I could hardly glance at you before marriage never touch you --your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers. I buried my hands in saffron, disguised them over smoking tar, helped the honey gatherers... When we swam once I touched you in the water and our bodies remained free, you could hold me and be blind of smell. you climbed the bank and said this is how you touch other women the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter. And you searched your arms for the missing perfume and knew what good is it to be the lime burner's daughter left with no trace as if not spoken to in the act of love as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar. You touched your belly to my hands in the dry air and said I am the cinnamon Peeler's wife. Smell me. Who is the speaker in this poem? In detail describe his identity (where does he live/not live, what does he do for a living, what kind of person is he, etc.). What evidence is there within the poem of setting? Use examples for support. Explain the relationship between the people in the poem. Use examples. Describe the poem in detail. “Application For A Driving License” –Michael Ondaatje Two birds loved in a flurry of red feathers like a burst cottonball, continuing while I drove over them. I am a good driver, nothing shocks me. Describe the speaker’s tone in this poem (use examples for support). Identify and explain the simile used. Describe the poem’s structure. Rewrite the scene depicted in the poem in prose. Try to maintain the details of the original as well as the speaker’s underlying impression of what he/she witnessed. “Weasel” –Patrick Lane Thin as death, the dark brown weasel slides like smoke through night’s hard silence. The worlds of the small are still. He glides beneath the chicken house. Bird life above him sleeps in feathers as he creeps among the stones, small nose testing every board for opening, a hole small as an eye, a fallen knot, a crack where time has broken through. His sharp teeth chatter. Again and again he quests the darkness below the sleeping birds. A mouse freezes, small mouth caught by silence in the wood. His life is quick. He slips into his hole. Thin as death, the dark brown weasel slides like smoke. His needles worry wood. The night is long. Above him bird blood beats. From the poem, provide one simile that helps to describe the weasel. Find two verbs (action words) that describe the movement of the weasel. Find a line that contains an example of alliteration. (Alliteration is the use of the same consonant sound at the start of words that are close together. For example, “Sing a song of sixpence . . .”). Why might the poet have written that the birds “sleep in feathers” instead of just “sleep”? Is there any difference? Provide a prose summary of the poem. "The Bull Moose" –Alden Nowlan Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain, lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar, stumbling through tamarack swamps, came the bull moose to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture. Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle. They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head like the ritual mask of a blood god, moved to the other end of the field, and waited. The neighbours heard of it, and by afternoon cars lined the road. The children teased him with alder switches and he gazed at them like an old, tolerant collie. The woman asked if he could have escaped from a Fair. The oldest man in the parish remembered seeing a gelded moose yoked with an ox for ploughing. The young men snickered and tried to pour beer down his throat, while their girl friends took their pictures. And the bull moose let them stroke his tick-ravaged flanks, let them pry open his jaws with bottles, let a giggling girl plant a little purple cap of thistles on his head. When the wardens came, everyone agreed it was a shame to shoot anything so shaggy and cuddlesome. He looked like the kind of pet women put to bed with their sons. So they held their fire. But just as the sun dropped in the river the bull moose gathered his strength like a scaffolded king, straightened and lifted his horns so that even the wardens backed away as they raised their rifles. When he roared, people ran to their cars. All the young men leaned on their automobile horns as he toppled. Identify and explain two similes from the poem. Explain the biblical allusion in stanza five. Explain the tone of the poem. At what point might the tone have changed somewhat? "This Is a Photograph of Me" –Margaret Atwood It was taken some time ago. At first it seems to be a smeared print: blurred lines and grey flecks blended with the paper; then, as you scan it, you see in the left-hand corner a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree (balsam or spruce) emerging and, to the right, halfway up what ought to be a gentle slope, a small frame house In the background there is a lake, and beyond that, some low hills. (The photograph was taken the day after I drowned. I am in the lake, in the center of the picture, just under the surface. It is difficult to say where precisely, or to say how large or small I am: the effect of water on light is a distortion but if you look long enough, eventually you will be able to see me.) In your own words describe the scene depicted in the poem. Parentheses have been use twice in this poem. Offer an explanation for each use. Explain how this poem may be a reflection of the speaker’s sense of self-worth. Offer an explanation of the title. Is this really a photograph of the speaker? Explain. "The Vacuum" –Howard Nemerov The house is so quiet now The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet, Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth Grinning into the floor, maybe at my Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth. I've lived this way long enough, But when my old woman died her soul Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can't bear To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust And the woollen mice, and begin to howl Because there is old filth everywhere She used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair. I know now how life is cheap as dirt, And still the hungry, angry heart Hangs on and howls, biting at air. ______________________________________________________ Identify and explain two similes in this poem. _______________ is being compared to ____________ _______________ is being compared to ____________ Identify two examples of personification. Explain which of the following most closely describes the main emotion in this poem: sadness, bitterness, loneliness, or regret. “Five Ways to Kill a Man” –Edwin Brock There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man. You can make him carry a plank of wood to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this properly you require a crowd of people wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one man to hammer the nails home. Or you can take a length of steel, shaped and chased in a traditional way, and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears. But for this you need white horses, English trees, men with bows and arrows, at least two flags, a prince, and a castle to hold your banquet in. Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind allows, blow gas at him. But then you need a mile of mud sliced through with ditches, not to mention black boots, bomb craters, more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs and some round hats made of steel. In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly miles above your victim and dispose of him by pressing one small switch. All you then require is an ocean to separate you, two systems of government, a nation’s scientists, several factories, a psychopath and land that no-one needs for several years. These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

Ed Dorn's parody of Williams' "This Is Just To Say"