Tuesday, April 5

Tuesday 4/5 ~ Do you have sonnet sickness?

EQ: Can you analyze a sonnet using its structure?
EQ: Which confused words do you need help on?

WARM-UP
  • Confused words: Loose vs. Lose...again, just in case you are considering a tatoo.


MEMORIZATION (quiz block day but available during flex on Wednesday)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

POETRY

Review
  • Define a sonnet.
  • What is the difference between Italian and British? 
  • Who perfected the Italian? the British?
  • What is the organizational shift in the middle called? 
  • Go over Journal 23 (Here is the poem again below:)
"When I Consider How My Light is Spent" by John Milton
When I consider how my light is spent,
   Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
   And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
   My true account, lest He returning chide;
   “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
   Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best
   Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
   And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
   They also serve who only stand and wait.”


Journal 24
Directions: Work with your group to work the journal questions with your assigned poem. Be ready to present your sonnet analysis to the class tomorrow.

1) Is this sonnet an Italian or British style sonnet?
2) What poetic devices are present (name at least five) and how do they affect the speed and rhythm of the poem?
3) Where is the turn and what is the conceptual relationship shown by the structure?


Remember

BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Remember me when I am gone away,
         Gone far away into the silent land;
         When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
         You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
         Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
         And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
         For if the darkness and corruption leave
         A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
         Than that you should remember and be sad.

Group 2

Music Box

BY JORGE LUIS BORGES
TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY TONY BARNSTONE
Music of Japan. Parsimoniously
from the water clock the drops unfold
in lazy honey or ethereal gold
that over time reiterates a weave
eternal, fragile, enigmatic, bright.
I fear that every one will be the last.
They are a yesterday come from the past.
But from what shrine, from what mountain’s slight
garden, what vigils by an unknown sea,
and from what modest melancholy, from
what lost and rediscovered afternoon
do they arrive at their far future: me?
Who knows? No matter. When I hear it play
I am. I want to be. I bleed away.

Group 3

Never Again Would Birds' Song be the Same

BY Robert frost
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the day long voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

Group 4

Sonnet 130: My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
   And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
   As any she belied with false compare.

Group 5 

Holy Sonnets: Death, Be Not Proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Group 6

To the Poet Before Battle

BY IVOR GURNEY
Now, youth, the hour of thy dread passion comes;
Thy lovely things must all be laid away;
And thou, as others, must face the riven day
Unstirred by rattle of the rolling drums,
Or bugles' strident cry. When mere noise numbs
The sense of being, the sick soul doth sway,
Remember thy great craft's honour, that they may say
Nothing in shame of poets. Then the crumbs
Of praise the little versemen joyed to take
Shall be forgotten; then they must know we are,
For all our skill in words, equal in might
And strong of mettle as those we honoured; make
The name of poet terrible in just war,
And like a crown of honour upon the fight.

Group 7

Sonnet Sickness

BY MR. RENO (Our beloved English teacher from years past)

When I consider sonnets I turn green.
I gag. I heave. Dry heaves, they will not stop
Until I write a quatrain . . . wait! I mean
An octave! (What I've written is mere slop.)
I cannot do this . . . meter? When will't end?!!!
As soon as meter's dial'd I kill the rhyme.
This casualty results when I don't tend
All sheep at once. I'm running out of time . . .
Shakespear'ean hydra! Come at me full force!
My loins I'll gird and stand my ground a man
Who will not shirk from war, nor from the course
will I depart. (my mind has hatched a plan!)
Submission to this yoke (the sonnet's weight)
Now means I've earned the right to graduate. 


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