Tone: The Creation of Attitude in Poetry

• A poet’s choice of words governs the reader’s response

• The poet shapes response through denotation, connotation, seriousness or humor, irony, metaphors . . .

• Of major importance is the poem’ speaker

Tone

Tone and Irony

• Irony– Verbal– Situational– Dramatic

Tone and Satire

• EpigramSir, I admit your general rule

That every poet is a fool;

But you yourself may serve to show it,

That every fool is not a poet.

• She being Brand/-new– e.e. cummings

• she being Brand• -new;and you

know consequently alittle stiff I wascareful of her and (having

• thoroughly oiled the universaljoint tested my gas felt ofher radiator made sure her springs were O.

• K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her• up,slipped the

clutch (and then somehow got into reverse shekicked whatthe hell) nextminute i was back in neutral tried and

• again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my• lev-er Right-

oh and her gears being inA 1 shape passedfrom low throughsecond-in-to-high likegreasedlightning) just as we turned the corner of Divinity

• avenue i touched the accelerator and give• her the juice,good• (it

was the first ride and believe I we washappy to see how nice and acted right up to the last minute coming back down by the PublicGardens I slammed onthe

• internalexpanding&externalcontractingbreaks Bothatonce and

• brought allofher tremB-lingto a:dead.

• stand-;Still)

• 1. How extensive is the verbal irony, the double entendre in this poem?

• 2. Is the tone comic? Sexist? Bawdy?

• "The Planned Child"Sharon Olds

I hated the fact that they had planned me, she had takena cardboard out of his shirt from the laundryas if sliding the backbone up out of his body,and made a chart of the month and puther temperature on it, rising and falling,to know the day to make me - I would haveliked to have been conceived in heat,in haste, by mistake, in love, in sex,not on cardboard, the little x on therising line that did not fall again.

But when a friend was pouring wineand said that I seem to have been a child who had been wanted,I took the wine against my lipsas if my mouth were moving alongthat valved wall in my mother's body, she wasbearing down, and then breathing from the mask, and thenbearing down, pressing me out intothe world that was not enough for her without me in it,not the moon, the sun, Orioncartwheeling across the dark, notthe earth, the sea - none of itwas enough, for her, without me.

• 1. Who is the speaker? What is she like? What is she talking about? Why does she begin the poem talking about something she hated?

• 2. What change of attitudes is described by the poem?

• 3. What attitude is expressed in the concluding global, planetary, solar, and stellar references?

• My Papa’s Waltz• BY THEODORE ROETHKEThe whiskey on

your breath • Could make a small boy dizzy; • But I hung on like death: • Such waltzing was not easy.•

We romped until the pans • Slid from the kitchen shelf; • My mother’s countenance • Could not unfrown itself.•

The hand that held my wrist • Was battered on one knuckle; • At every step you missed• My right ear scraped a buckle.•

You beat time on my head • With a palm caked hard by dirt, • Then waltzed me off to bed • Still clinging to your shirt.

1. What is the tone of the speaker’s opening description of his father? What is the tone on the phrases “like death” and such waltzing?”

2. What is the waltz the speaker describes? What is the tone of his words describing it in lines 5-15?

3. What does the reference to this mother’s countenance contribute to the tone?

4. What does the tone of the physical description of the father contribute t your understanding of the speaker’s attitude toward his childhood experiences as his father’s dancing partner?