The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Sam Cimino

Mr. Hamilton

AP Literature 6^th hour

20 November 2014

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Biography on Alfred, Lord Tennyson: More than any other Victorian writer, Tennyson has seemed the embodiment of his age, both to his contemporaries and to modern readers. In his own day he was said to be—with Queen Victoria and Gladstone—one of the three most famous living persons, a reputation no other poet writing in English has ever had. As official poetic spokesman for the reign of Victoria, he felt called upon to celebrate a quickly changing industrial and mercantile world with which he felt little in common, for his deepest sympathies were called forth by an unaltered rural England; the conflict between what he thought of as his duty to society and his allegiance to the eternal beauty of nature seems peculiarly Victorian. Even his most severe critics have always recognized his lyric gift for sound and cadence, a gift probably unequaled in the history of English poetry, but one so absolute that it has sometimes been mistaken for mere facility.

Form- meter and structure (rhyme/stanza): Before we analyze any poems, let us first discuss its history. In the Western world, we can thank the ancient Greeks for systematizing an understanding of meter and providing a vocabulary (including the words rhythm and meter) that enables us to discuss the art of poetry. Meter comes from a Greek word meaning “measure”: What we measure in the English language are the patterns of stressed (or accented) syllables that occur naturally when we speak, and, just as when we measure length, the unit we use in measuring poetry is the foot. Most traditional poetry in English uses the accentual-syllabic form of meter- meaning that its rhythmic pattern is based on both a set number of syllables per line and a regular pattern of accents in each line. Not all poems have a regular metrical pattern, and not all metered poems follow only one pattern throughout. But like everyday speech, the language of poetry always has some accents (as in this italic emphasis on “some”), and poets arrange that rhythm for effect. Thus in nonmetrical as well as metrical poetry, a reader should “listen” for patterns of stress. In Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” we can see that these things hold true:

 

Half a league half a league,

 Half a league onward,

 All in the valley of Death

 Rode the six hundred:

 'Forward, the Light Brigade!

 Charge for the guns' he said:

 Into the valley of Death

 Rode the six hundred.

 

 'Forward, the Light Brigade!'

 Was there a man dismay'd ?

 Not tho' the soldier knew

 Some one had blunder'd:

 Theirs not to make reply,

 Theirs not to reason why,

 Theirs but to do & die,

 Into the valley of Death

 Rode the six hundred.

 

 Cannon to right of them,

 Cannon to left of them,

 Cannon in front of them

 Volley'd & thunder'd;

 Storm'd at with shot and shell,

 Boldly they rode and well,

 Into the jaws of Death,

 Into the mouth of Hell

 Rode the six hundred.

 

 Flash'd all their sabres bare,

 Flash'd as they turn'd in air

 Sabring the gunners there,

 Charging an army while

 All the world wonder'd:

 Plunged in the battery-smoke

 Right thro' the line they broke;

 Cossack & Russian

 Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,

 Shatter'd & sunder'd.

 Then they rode back, but not

 Not the six hundred.

 

 Cannon to right of them,

 Cannon to left of them,

 Cannon behind them

 Volley'd and thunder'd;

 Storm'd at with shot and shell,

 While horse & hero fell,

 They that had fought so well

 Came thro' the jaws of Death,

 Back from the mouth of Hell,

 All that was left of them,

 Left of six hundred.

 

 When can their glory fade?

 O the wild charge they made!

 All the world wonder'd.

 Honour the charge they made!

 Honour the Light Brigade,

 Noble six hundred!

Analysis: This poem was written to memorialize a suicidal charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Battle of Balaclava (Ukraine) in the Crimean War (1854-56). 247 men of the 637 in the charge were killed or wounded. Britain entered the war, which was fought by Russia against Turkey, Britain and France, because Russia sought to control the Dardanelles. Russian control of the Dardanelles threatened British sea routes. Many in the west best know of this war today because of Florence Nightingale, who trained and led nurses aiding the wounded during the war in a manner innovative for those times. The War was also noteworthy as an early example of the work of modern war correspondents (http://www.nationalcenter.org/ChargeoftheLightBrigade.html#sthash.raAcEqdQ.dpuf). Anyways back to the poem itself, in six irregular stanzas, Tennyson describes the movement of the troops down the long valley at Balaklava. Sitting on the ridge at the end of this depression are batteries of Russian artillery, whose fusillade decimated the cavalrymen as they approached. In stanza 1, the commander’s directive to “Charge for the guns” vividly captures the reckless abandon that would lead to disastrous consequences. The reaction of the troops is captured in the second stanza.

Next, as in many odes, the stanza pattern of “The Charge of the Light Brigade” is irregular. An eight-line opening stanza gives way to two stanzas of nine lines, in which the poet sets the stage for the charge and describes the entry into the valley. The central action of the battle and its aftermath is described in two longer stanzas, of twelve and eleven lines, respectively. The final stanza, only six lines, serves as an epitaph honoring the brave men who sacrificed themselves in serving their country. The rhyme scheme, too, is irregular. In some stanzas, only two or three lines are rhymed. In others, Tennyson inserts a number of couplets and triplets.

I have always loved this poem since I first heard it in the movie The Blind Side, it inspires courage in the face of death and I admire the soldiers who fought in this losing battle with valor and honor.

Wedding Ring by Denise Levertov

Sam Cimino

Mr. Hamilton

AP Literature 6^th hour

18 November 2014

Wedding-Ring by Denise Levertov

Biography on Denise Levertov: During the course of a prolific career, Denise Levertov created a highly regarded body of poetry that reflects her beliefs as an artist and a humanist. Her work embraces a wide variety of genres and themes, including nature lyrics, love poems, protest poetry, and poetry inspired by her faith in God. "Dignity, reverence, and strength are words that come to mind as one gropes to characterize . . . one of America's most respected poets," wrote Amy Gerstler in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Gerstler added that a "reader poking her nose into any Levertov book at random finds herself in the presence of a clear uncluttered voice—a voice committed to acute observation and engagement with the earthly, in all its attendant beauty, mystery and pain."

Metaphor- Simile, Analogy, Symbol: Being visual does not just mean describing; telling us facts; indicating shapes, colors, and specific details; and giving up precise discrimination through exacting verbs, nouns, adverbs, and adjectives. Often the vividness of the picture in our minds depends on comparisons made through figures of speech. What are we trying to imagine is pictured in terms of something else familiar to us, and we are asked to think of one thing as if it were something else. Many such comparisons, in which something is pictured or figured forth in terms of something already familiar to us, are taken for granted in daily life. Things we can’t see or that aren’t familiar to us are imaged as things we things we already know. When the comparison is implicit, describing something as if it were something else, it is called a metaphor. Pictures, even when they are mental pictures or imagined visions, may be both denotative and connotative, just as individual words are: They may clarify and make precise, and they may evoke a range of feelings. We can see evidence of this in Denise Levertov’s “Wedding-Ring”:

My wedding-ring lies in a basket

 

as if at the bottom of a well.

 

Nothing will come to fish it back up

 

and onto my finger again.

 

                                      It lies

 

among keys to abandoned houses,

 

nails waiting to be needed and hammered

 

into some wall,

 

telephone numbers with no names attached,

 

idle paperclips.

 

                      It can’t be given away

 

for fear of bringing ill-luck

 

                      It can’t be sold

 

for the marriage was good in its own

 

time, though that time is gone.

 

                      Could some artificer

 

beat into it bright stones, transform it

 

into a dazzling circlet no one could take

 

for solemn betrothal or to make promises

 

living will not let them keep? Change it

 

into a simple gift I could give in friendship?

 

Analysis: There is more to wedding-ring than just receiving or given it on a wedding day. Denise Levertov’s uses figure of speech and literary devices to depict the symbolism of a wedding-ring showing the tone of sadness and the pain at an end of a relationship. Wedding-ring symbolizes commitment, which can also be viewed as burden depending on the perspective of whoever owns the ring. Figure of speech can be used to convey feelings or give magnitude or perception of an idea. Simile was used in the poem “wedding–ring” likening the bottom of a basket to the bottom of a well. This indicates how far away the woman wanted the ring to be kept, this mimics the idea of out of sight is out of mind. According to the poet- Denise Levertov-biography, she divorced around 1974 and this poem “wedding- ring” was written in 1978, this can be termed as a reflection of what was happening in her life.

Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds

Sam Cimino

Mr. Hamilton

AP Literature 6^th hour

13 November 2014

Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds

Biography on Sharon Olds: Sharon Olds is one of contemporary poetry’s leading voices. Winner of several prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award, Olds is known for writing intensely personal, emotionally scathing poetry which graphically depicts family life as well as global political events. “Sharon Olds is enormously self-aware,” wrote David Leavitt in the Voice Literary Supplement. “Her poetry is remarkable for its candor, its eroticism, and its power to move.” Olds’s candor has led to both high praise and condemnation. Her work is often built out of intimate details concerning her children, her fraught relationship with her parents and, most controversially, her sex life. Critic Helen Vendler publically disparaged Olds’s work as self-indulgent, sensationalist and even pornographic. However, Olds has just as many supporters who praise her poetry for its sensitive portrayal of emotional states, as well as its bold depiction of “unpoetic” life events. Discussing Olds in Poetry, Lisel Mueller noted: “By far the greater number of her poems are believable and touching, and their intensity does not interfere with craftsmanship. Listening to Olds, we hear a proud, urgent, human voice.” And the poet Billy Collins has called her “a poet of sex and the psyche,” adding that “Sharon Olds is infamous for her subject matter alone…but her closer readers know her as a poet of constant linguistic surprise.”

Language- Diction and Description: Fiction and Drama depend on language just as poetry does, but in a poem almost everything comes down to the particular meanings and implications, as well as sound and shape of individual words. When we read stories and plays, we generally focus our attention on character and plot and although words determine how we imagine those characters and how we respond to what happens to them, we are not as likely to pause over any one word as we may need to when reading a poem. Because poems are often short, much depends on every word in them. Sometimes, as though they were distilled prose, poems contain only the essential words. They say just barely enough to communicate in the most basic way, using elemental signs- each of which is chosen for exactly the right shade of meaning or feeling or both. But elemental does not necessarily mean simple, and these signs may be very rich in their meanings and complex in their effects. The poet’s word choice- the diction of a poem- determines not only meaning but just about every effect the poem produces. In Sharon Olds’s poem “Sex Without Love,” we can see how this is true:

How do they do it, the ones who make love

without love? Beautiful as dancers,

gliding over each other like ice-skaters

over the ice, fingers hooked

inside each other's bodies, faces

red as steak, wine, wet as the

children at birth whose mothers are going to

give them away. How do they come to the

come to the come to the God come to the

still waters, and not love

the one who came there with them, light

rising slowly as steam off their joined

skin? These are the true religious,

the purists, the pros, the ones who will not

accept a false Messiah, love the

priest instead of the God. They do not

mistake the lover for their own pleasure,

they are like great runners: they know they are alone

with the road surface, the cold, the wind,

the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-

vascular health--just factors, like the partner

in the bed, and not the truth, which is the

single body alone in the universe

against its own best time.

Analysis: This poem spoke to me because a lot of times in society today people are out of touch. The people described in this poem are out of touch with their family, their lovers, and themselves. Unlike other poems whose lines consist of complex imagery, symbolism, and other forms of fugitive speech in order to paint a picture for the reader to interpret, Olds does the opposite and presents a clear and detailed view with the use of irony, enabling a single point to come across. The elements that are compared with the idea of sex without love are usually seen as beautiful circumstances, but due to word choice and structure these elements quickly turn into a disturbing scene within the walls of the poem. The ironic forms of the images provide an understated disapproving tone to the lines. As the poem beings, Olds uses a series of objects that seem perfectly normal to the eye, such as the ice skaters, new born babies, and runners, unfortunately these images mean more than a glamour shot. Olds begins to answer her own question with a well-constructed metaphor; "Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice skaters, over ice," the use of the ice skater feels simplistic and also carries the feeling that the act is approved of. However, looking deeper, ice skaters are just performers performing an act that must be faked in order to signal happiness and beauty. The dance is also performed on the ice implying that the act of sex without love is cold and impersonal. I wish that things were different and the world would be filled with genuine love again, but until the cold frost that binds true love is lifted there can be no summer love, and there shall be sex without love.

To A Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan

Sam Cimino

Mr. Hamilton

AP Literature 6^th hour

12 November 2014

To A Daughter Leaving Home by Linda Pastan

Biography on Linda Pastan: Poet Linda Pastan was raised in New York City but has lived for most of her life in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. In her senior year at Radcliffe College, Pastan won the Mademoiselle Poetry prize (Sylvia Plath was the runner-up). Immediately following graduation, however, she decided to give up writing poetry in order to concentrate on raising her family. After ten years at home, her husband urged her to return to poetry. Since the early 1970s, Pastan has produced quiet lyrics that focus on themes like marriage, parenting, and grief. She is interested in the anxieties that exist under the surface of everyday life.

Context- situation and setting: In order to identify the situation of a poem you have to begin to ask yourself questions like, “Who is speaking? To whom is the speaker speaking? Is there an auditor in the poem, or simply an audience outside of it? Is anyone else present or referred to in the poem? What is happening? Why is this event or communication occurring, and why is it significant?” As soon as you zoom in on answers to such questions about persons and actions, you also encounter questions about the place and time. In other words, situation entails setting.

Not all poems have an identifiable situation or setting, just as not all poems have a speaker who is entirely distinct from the author. Poems that simply present a series of thoughts and feelings directly, in a reflective way, may not present anything resembling a scene with action and dialogue. But many poems depend crucially on a sense of place, a sense of time, and an understanding of human interaction in scenes that resemble those in plays or films. And questions about these matters will often lead you to define not only the “facts” but also the feelings central to the design a poem has on its readers. In this poem, “To a Daughter Leaving Home”, we see Linda Pastan demonstrating that technique:

When I taught you

 

at eight to ride

 

a bicycle, loping along

 

beside you

 

as you wobbled away

 

on two round wheels,

 

my own mouth rounding

 

in surprise when you pulled

 

ahead down the curved

 

path of the park,

 

I kept waiting

 

for the thud

 

of your crash as I

 

sprinted to catch up,

 

while you grew

 

smaller, more breakable

 

with distance,

 

pumping, pumping

 

for your life, screaming

 

with laughter,

 

the hair flapping

 

behind you like a

 

handkerchief waving

 

goodbye.

 Analysis: In connection with "To a daughter leaving home" we can discern that, perhaps, it's a metaphor to all daughters which suggests that it applies to all mothers that sense of nostalgia.

The poet cleverly takes the concept of a bike experience, as a whole life experience. The situation is the experience that all mothers go through when it is time to let go and let their children be independent. The setting in this poem is a metaphor for life. The bike serves as a method of transportation not only through the path in the park, but a path in life. It is a path we all know and follow. When we are young we are completely dependent upon our parents for our needs, as we grow up our parents teach us the necessary skills to be self-sufficient. That does not mean that they still do not want to give you a helping hand along the way as seen in the line “I kept waiting for the thud of your crash as I sprinted to catch up”, but we become more adventurous and daring and we strive to make a name for ourselves in this world. Our parents are always there to pick us up when we fall down, that is the great thing about having a loving relationship with your parents, they are your biggest fans and will do anything they can to help you succeed. The speaker brings into context the span of a child and parent relationship from youth to young adulthood. She touches on how hard it is to let go of our children, but in the end how rewarding it is to see them excel and see their “hair flapping behind you like a handkerchief waving goodbye”. That goodbye is not only a goodbye to the mother, but a goodbye to childhood.

 

A Certain Lady by Dorothy Parker

Sam Cimino

Mr. Hamilton

AP Literature 6^th hour

7 November 2014

A Certain Lady by Dorothy Parker

Biography on Dorothy Parker: Dorothy Parker’s biting wit made her a legend, but it also masked her lonely struggle with depression. A member of the Algonquin Round Table group of writers, she wrote criticism for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and later the New Yorker. During the 1930s Parker moved to Hollywood, where she worked on such films as A Star Is Born, for which she won an Academy Award.

The Speaker: Poems are personal. The thoughts and feelings they express belong to a specific person, and however general or universal their sentiments seem to be, poems come to us as the expression of an individual human voice. That voice is often the voice of the poet, but not always. Poets sometimes create “characters” just as writers of fiction or drama do – people who speak for them only indirectly. A character may, in fact, be very different from the poet, just as a character in a play or story is not necessarily the author, and that person, the speaker of the poem, may express ideas or feelings very different from the poet’s own. In the following poem, “A Certain Lady” by Dorothy Parker, we do not get a full sense of the speaker until well into the poem:

Oh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,

And drink your rushing words with eager lips,

And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,

And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.

When you rehearse your list of loves to me,

Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.

And you laugh back, nor can you ever see

The thousand little deaths my heart has died.

And you believe, so well I know my part,

That I am gay as morning, light as snow,

And all the straining things within my heart

You'll never know.

 

Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,

And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, --

Of ladies delicately indiscreet,

Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.

And you are pleased with me, and strive anew

To sing me sagas of your late delights.

Thus do you want me -- marveling, gay, and true,

Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.

And when, in search of novelty, you stray,

Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go ....

And what goes on, my love, while you're away,

You'll never know.

Analysis: I believe that we can infer that the speaker in this poem is a woman. This woman is a symbol for many woman who are in tumultuous relationships with men that behave like dogs. This poem touches on the multitude of emotions that a woman goes through while she listens to the man she loves talk about his exploits with other women.

Men are blind. They are oblivious to the body language or the subtle hints that women leave for them. Dorothy Parker touches on this fact in this poem. Despite his inability to see her love and unwillingness to stay with any one woman, the lady is still in love with him. This can be seen from the last few lines where she wishes she could kiss him goodbye, even as he goes in search for other women.

Furthermore, the woman comes across as helpless as she tries to convey her feelings towards the man she loves. She tries everything to lure him into loving her again but she is fighting a losing battle, because the love is unrequited. He is in love with the chase and therefore the man is unable to see it, or maybe he refuses to see it. He is happy being a player, and is also content with driving the knife deeper into the wound of the speaker’s heart by telling the tale of his infidelity. He has failed in finding true love because he cannot recognize love even if it literally stares him in the eyes and that is the icing on the cake of this tragic “love” story.

Alzheimer's by Kelly Cherry

Sam Cimino

Mr. Hamilton

AP Literature 6^th hour

4 November 2014

Alzheimer’s by Kelly Cherry

Biography on Kelly Cherry: Kelly Cherry was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and grew up in Ithaca, New York, and Chesterfield County, Virginia. She did graduate work in philosophy at the University of Virginia and earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Cherry was the daughter of violinists, and her early exposure to music has had a profound effect on her work, which ranges in genre from poetry to novels to short fiction to memoir to criticism. Here we see a demonstration of her criticism of the mind numbing disease otherwise known as “Alzheimer’s”.

He stands at the door, a crazy old man

 Back from the hospital, his mind rattling

 like the suitcase, swinging from his hand,

 That contains shaving cream, a piggy bank,

 A book he sometimes pretends to read,

 His clothes. On the brick wall beside him

 Roses and columbine slug it out for space, claw the mortar.

 The sun is shining, as it does late in the afternoon

 in England, after rain.

 Sun hardens the house, reifies it,

 Strikes the iron grillwork like a smithy

 and sparks fly off, burning in the bushes--

 the rosebushes--

 While the white wood trim defines solidity in space.

 This is his house. He remembers it as his,

 Remembers the walkway he built between the front room

 and the garage, the rhododendron he planted in back,

 the car he used to drive. He remembers himself,

 A younger man, in a tweed hat, a man who loved

 Music. There is no time for that now. No time for music,

 The peculiar screeching of strings, the luxurious

 Fiddling with emotion.

 Other things have become more urgent.

 Other matters are now of greater import, have more

 Consequence, must be attended to. The first

 Thing he must do, now that he is home, is decide who

 This woman is, this old, white-haired woman

 Standing here in the doorway,

 Welcoming him in.

 

Analysis:

Poems express anger or outrage just effectively as love or sadness, and good poems can be written about a plethora of things. What a poem says involves its theme. How a poem makes that statement involves its tone (the poem’s attitude or being toward the theme). Interestingly enough, “tone” is a term borrowed from acoustic and music, which is one of the area’s Kelly draws inspiration form – and it refers to a speaker’s intended effect. Tone is closely related to style and diction is an effect of the speaker’s expressions as if showing a real person’s feelings, manner, and attitude or relationship to a listener and to the particular subject or situation.

There comes a time when we wall get old. The lucky ones are able to retain and cherish the memories of years gone by. However, sometimes when we get old our great minds begin to wither away and along with our minds becoming less sharp, we lose our memories of our youth. In this poem, “Alzheimer’s”, Kelly Cherry describes a memory from her experience with her experience with her elderly father who suffers with the disease. She gives us a glimpse into the frustration and pain felt by those affected by Alzheimer’s, not necessarily just the person who has it but also the people who love them.

As this poem goes on we see how Cherry’s attitude shifts from bitterness to sadness and sympathy. Phrases like “a crazy old man” and “a book he sometimes pretends to read” indicates a subtle bitterness towards her father and his illness. She has a somewhat satirical tone to start off the poem, and those phrases show us that. She continues to take us through his experience coming home from his latest trip to the hospital by telling us about how he walks into his house. She says “This is his house, and he remembers it as his…” she then goes into the various details of the house, “the walkway he built in the front room and the garage, the rhododendron he planted in back, the car he used to drive.” In the next few lines she tells about her father recalling the days of his youth and how he used to love music, but he doesn’t love it anymore not because he doesn’t want to, but because he physically can’t. She then changes to a sad and almost sympathetic tone when, she talks about the heart-breaking moment when he walks through the door and has to “decide who this woman is, this old, white-haired woman standing here in the doorway, welcoming him in.” That woman is his wife.

That one sentence was worth a thousand words. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease because it not only effects the person diagnosed with it, but the people who love them too. Cherry’s shift form a satirical tone to a sympathetic tone shows the turmoil that those affected by the disease go through every day. It’s kind of ironic to me how they say that as you age you gain wisdom, but here we see that that is not always the case. We must cherish all of our memories and live in every moment because you never know when you will lose them.