1

Poetry Around the World Unit PlanObjectives:Core Standards

RI.1.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

RI.1.2 and RL.1.2 Determine a central idea or theme of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

RI.2.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).

Target StandardsRL2.6 Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature. RI.2.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purposeTexts:“How to Eat a Poem” “Ars Poetica” “The Fish” “The Road Not Taken” “Nothing Gold Can Stay” “Fire and Ice” “Thoughts on a Still Night” Stopping By a Woods on a Snowy Evening” “Metaphors” assortment of Haikus “What Was Told, That” “we real cool” “Still I Rise” Langston Hughes assortment “Hope is a Thing with Feather” and other Dickinson poems, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” and other Wordsworth Poems, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and other Eliot poems, “Annabelle Lee” and other Poe poems, “Learning” Villanelle- “Do Not Go Gentle,” Cinquain- “To Helen,” Sonnets- “Sonnet 130,” Pantoum- “Parent’s Pantoum,” and Sestina- “Sestina Altaforte” “Ode to a Grecian Urn” “Ode to Aphrodite” Goals/ Objectives: Students will read a variety of texts from all over the world learning about diverse perspectives. Students will discuss variations in writing from country to country. Students will focus on analyzing theme and using textual evidence to support their claims.

2

Students will work on refining their vocabulary. Students will analyze how author’s draw on older material in contemporary poetry.

Final Assessment: Students will complete a Poetry Around the World research assignment where they will research a given country to find popular poets in that country.

Immokalee High School Lesson PlansInstructor: Haley Campbell Course: English 2 and Intensive Reading Unit: Poetry Unit

Week 1Monday:English 2Objectives:RI.1.2 and RL.1.2 Determine a central idea or theme of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

Instructional Activities:Students will listen to a brief lecture about Poetry. Students will take notes about poetry in their ISN to use for reference later. Students will then begin the unit by reading “How To Eat a Poem.” Students will have a discussion about how people should go about reading poetry, according to the poem.

Homework:Students should read “Ars Poetica” by Archibald Macleish and write a short response about what poetry should be.

Materials:“How to Eat a Poem”

Intensive ReadingObjectives:RL1.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly and inferentially.

Instructional Activities:

3

Students will read “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Students will then draw a picture of the fish using textual evidence from the poem. Students will share their drawings with the class by adding them to the Poetry Slam Wall.

Materials:“The Fish” and Poetry Slam Wall

Tuesday: English 2Objectives:RI.1.2 and RL.1.2 Determine a central idea or theme of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

Instructional Activities:Students will read “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost. Students will analyze the poem and decide the ultimate meaning of the poem. Students will then find or draw a picture that accurately represents the poem.

Materials:“The Road Not Taken”

Intensive ReadingObjectives:RL1.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly and inferentially.

Instructional Activities:Students will split into two groups. One group will have “Fire and Ice” and one group will have “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” Students will read and analyze the poem. Students will then draw a representation of the poem. Students will then partner up with someone who had a different poem and teach each other the meaning of the poem.

Homework:Students will read Li Bai’s “Thoughts on a Still Night” and Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” and compare and contrast the two poems.

Materials:Laptop Carts, “Fire and Ice,” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay”

4

Wednesday:English 2Objectives:RL1.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly and inferentially.

Instructional Activities:Students will listen to a mini-lecture on rhyme, rhythm, and syllables. To practice syllables and rhythm students will read “Metaphors” by Sylvia Plath. Students will count the syllables and analyze the significance of the number nine in the poem. Materials:Metaphors

Intensive ReadingObjectives:RL2.6 analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

Instructional Activities:Students will read and learn about Haikus. Students will practice counting the syllables. Students will then create Paintstrip Poetry, by creating haikus out of paint samples using the five seven five structure of haikus.

Materials:Paint strips

ThursdayEnglish 2Objectives:RL2.6 analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

Instructional Activities:Students will read “What Was Told, That” by Jalal Al-Din Rumi and discuss the religious allusions in this poem. Students will also have a mini lesson about hymns and songs and how they can be considered poetry.

Materials:What Was Told, That

Intensive Reading

5

Objectives:RI.2.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purposeInstructional Activities:Students will choose one song and make a claim that their song is poetry using, meter, rhythm, rhyme, etc. Students will submit their work at the end of class.

Materials:Laptop Carts

FridayEnglish 2Objectives:RI.2.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purposeInstructional Activities:Students will read “we real cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks and discuss how Brooks uses this poem to talk about issues of race. Students will then read a Maya Angelou Poem “Still I Rise.” Students will finish class by comparing and contrasting Maya Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Materials:We Real Cool, Still I Rise

Homework:Read a collection of Langston Hughes poems and annotate

Intensive ReadingObjectives:RL1.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly and inferentially.

Instructional Activities:Students will visit one of four stations over the following poets: Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allen Poe, T.S. Elliot. Students will analyze and answer questions about each of the poets.

Materials:Station Activities

6

Week 2Monday:English 2Objectives:RL1.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly and inferentially.

Instructional Activities:Students will read Jorge Luis Borges’ “Learning.” Students will then discuss and analyze the meaning of the poem. Students will also talk about Similes and Metaphors and work to find different examples within the poem.

Materials:Learning

Intensive ReadingObjectives:RL2.6 analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

Instructional Activities:Students will listen to a brief mini lesson on form poetry. Students will learn about a variety of different forms, and will then split into five groups. In these groups students will read and answer questions about five different types of form poetry (Villanelle- “Do Not Go Gentle,” Cinquain- “To Helen,” Sonnets- “Sonnet 130,” Pantoum- “Parent’s Pantoum,” and Sestina- “Sestina Altaforte.” Students will then present to the class about their type of form poem and give an example.

Homework:

7

Students should choose one of the forms as their favorite and write a short response explaining why it is their favorite.

Materials:Station Activities

Tuesday: English 2 & Intensive ReadingObjectives:RL2.6 analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

Instructional Activities:Students will read and learn about Odes. Students will read and analyze “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by Keats and “Ode to Aphrodite” by Sappho. Students will practice describing objects to write their own ode. Students will then create an ode to cookies. Students will eat and describe cookies and then share their work with the class.

Materials:Cookies

Wednesday English 2 & Intensive Reading Objectives:RL2.6 analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

Instructional Activities:Students will split into groups. Each group will be given a country. In these groups students will search for three famous poets from that country. Students will then choose three poems to share with the class. Students will need to give a brief bio of the poet and one poem for each of the three poets.

Materials:Country Choices

Materials:ThursdayEnglish 2 & Intensive Reading

8

Objectives:RL2.6 analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

Instructional Activities:Students will continue work in groups. Each group will be given a country. In these groups students will search for three famous poets from that country. Students will then choose three poems to share with the class. Students will need to give a brief bio of the poet and one poem for each of the three poets.

Materials:Country Choices

FridayEnglish 2 Objectives:RL2.6 analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature.

Instructional Activities:Students will have already turned in their posters which will be displayed around the room. Students will then complete a gallery walk of the different countries, answering questions about poetry from around the world.

Materials:Poetry Slam Wall

Intensive ReadingObjectives:RI.1.2 and RL.1.2 Determine a central idea or theme of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

Instructional Activities:Students will choose their favorite poet from all the poems that we have completed. Students will then complete the “Poetry Research Project” for the remainder of the period.

Materials:

9

Poetry Research Project

***** Resources Below

Poetry Around the World Research ProjectPart A: Group AssignmentDirections:All students will be split into groups. Each group will be given a country. In these groups students will search for three famous poets from that country using the following link. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets_by_nationality.html You will then create a poster to represent the following information about your given country. Things to include:A brief biography of three poets from your country:

including, their birthplace, and an interesting fact about them. One poem from EACH poet

Your posters will be displayed around the room for a gallery walk. They need to be neat and nice. The best poster will win a prize.

Part B: Individual Assignment

10

Students will choose their favorite poet from all the poets we have studied. Students will then choose one poem from that author and complete the following assignment.

Step 1: Choose a poem Step 2: Then find one of each of the following:

• A picture to portray the poem AND an explanation using TEXTUAL EVIDENCE for why you chose that picture.

• A reading of the poem (or record yourself reading). • A song that compares to the themes of the poem AND an

explanation for how that song compares to the poem.

Things to keep in mind:• What is a major theme of the poem? • What is the poem about?• What imagery does the poem have?

This assignment should be completed on either a poster or a powerpoint presentation.

How To Eat a Poemby Eve Merriam

Don't be polite.Bite in.Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice thatmay run down your chin.It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoonor plate or napkin or tablecloth.For there is no coreor stemor rindor pitor seedor skinto throw away.

Ars PoeticaBY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

A poem should be palpable and mute   As a globed fruit, 

Dumb 

11

As old medallions to the thumb, 

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— 

A poem should be wordless   As the flight of birds. 

                         *               

A poem should be motionless in time   As the moon climbs, 

Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, 

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   Memory by memory the mind— 

A poem should be motionless in time   As the moon climbs. 

                         *               

A poem should be equal to: Not true. 

For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. 

For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea— 

A poem should not mean   But be. 

What Was Told, ThatJalal al-Din Rumi, 1207 - 1273What was said to the rose that made it open was saidto me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strongand straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever madesugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil inTurkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blushlike a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence inlanguage, that’s happening here.

12

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

Thoughts on a Still Night Li Bai 

Before my bed, the moon is shining bright,I think that it is frost upon the ground.I raise my head and look at the bright moon,I lower my head and think of home. 

Villanelle: Poetic Form

The highly structured villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.Strange as it may seem for a poem with such a rigid rhyme scheme, the villanelle did not start off as a fixed form. During the Renaissance, the villanella and villancico (from the Italian villano, or peasant) were Italian and Spanish dance-songs. French poets who called their poems "villanelle" did not follow any specific schemes, rhymes, or refrains. Rather, the title implied that, like the Italian and Spanish dance-songs, their poems spoke of simple, often pastoral or rustic themes.While some scholars believe that the form as we know it today has been in existence since the sixteenth century, others argue that only one Renaissance poem was ever written in that manner—Jean Passerat’s "Villanelle," or "J’ay perdu ma tourterelle"—and that it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that the villanelle was defined as a fixed form by French poet Théodore de Banville.Regardless of its provenance, the form did not catch on in France, but it has become increasingly popular among poets writing in English. An excellent example of the form is Dylan Thomas’s "Do not go gentle into that good night":        Do not go gentle into that good night,        Old age should burn and rave at close of day;        Rage, rage against the dying of the light.        Though wise men at their end know dark is right,        Because their words had forked no lightning they        Do not go gentle into that good night.        Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright        Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,        Rage, rage against the dying of the light.        Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,        And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,        Do not go gentle into that good night.        Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight        Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,        Rage, rage against the dying of the light.        And you, my father, there on the sad height,        Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.        Do not go gentle into that good night.        Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

13

Contemporary poets have not limited themselves to the pastoral themes originally expressed by the free-form villanelles of the Renaissance, and have loosened the fixed form to allow variations on the refrains. Elizabeth Bishop’s "One Art" is another well-known example; other poets who have penned villanelles include W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde, Seamus Heaney, David Shapiro, and Sylvia Plath.

Cinquain: Poetic Form

The cinquain, also known as a quintain or quintet, is a poem or stanza composed of five lines. Examples of cinquains can be found in many European languages, and the origin of the form dates back to medieval French poetry.The most common cinquains in English follow a rhyme scheme of ababb, abaab or abccb. Sixteenth and seventeenth-century poets such as Sir Philip Sidney, George Herbert,Edmund Waller, and John Donne frequently employed the form, creating numerous variations. Among the many cinquains written by Herbert is "The World," which begins:        Love built a stately house, where Fortune came,        And spinning fancies, she was heard to say        That her fine cobwebs did support the frame,        Whereas they were supported by the same;        But Wisdom quickly swept them all away.Other examples of the form include "To Helen" by Edgar Allen Poe, which begins:        Helen, thy beauty is to me                  Like those Nicean barks of yore,        That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,                  The weary, way-worn wanderer bore                  To his own native shore.Adelaide Crapsey, an early twentieth-century poet, used a form of 22 syllables distributed among the five lines in a 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 pattern, respectively. Her poems share a similarity with the Japanese tanka, another five-line form, in their focus on imagery and the natural world.read examples of cinquains

Sestina: Poetic Form

The sestina is a complex form that achieves its often spectacular effects through intricate repetition. The thirty-nine-line form is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provencal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style.Courtly love often was the theme of the troubadours, and this emphasis continued as the sestina migrated to Italy, where Dante and Petrarch practiced the form with great reverence for Daniel, who, as Petrarch said, was "the first among all others, great master of love."The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:1. ABCDEF2. FAEBDC3. CFDABE

14

4. ECBFAD5. DEACFB6. BDFECA7. (envoi) ECA or ACEThe envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme.Many twentieth-century poets have taken on the form, including Ezra Pound and John Ashbery. In the dramatic monologue "Sestina: Altaforte," Pound, in one of his many responses to his great influence, the Victorian poet Robert Browning, adopts the voice of troubadour-warlord Bertrans de Born. The poem is a tour-de-force in the praises of war as de Born, addressing Papiols, his court minstrel, laments that he "has no life save when the swords clash." This poem is a good example of the possibilities of end-word repetition, where, in expert hands, each recurrence changes in meaning, often very subtly. Note, too, the end-words Pound chose: "peace," "music," "clash," "opposing," "crimson," and "rejoicing." The words, while general enough to lend themselves to multiple meanings, are common enough that they also present Pound with the difficult task of making every instance fresh. Here are the first two stanzas (after a prefatory stanza which sets the scene):        I        Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.        You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!        I have no life save when the swords clash.        But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple,              opposing        And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,        Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

        II        In hot summer have I great rejoicing        When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace,        And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson,        And the fierce thunders roar me their music        And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,        And through all the riven skies God's swords clash.Contrast Pound’s sestina with Ashbery’s "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape," a playful romp involving the cast of the Popeye cartoon world. Ashbery deftly remixes the end-word order to great comic effect (notice the surprise in each use of "scratched") while sketching a disturbing domestic pathos, resulting in a poem both funny and melancholic. The poem, a masterful instance of the sestina, manages to also poke fun at the obsessive form.Other notable sestinas include "Mantis" by Louis Zukofsky, "Sestina" and "A Miracle for Breakfast" by Elizabeth Bishop, "Paysage Moralise" by W.H. Auden, "Toward Autumn" by Marilyn Hacker, and "Sestina: Bob" by Jonah Winter, which employs the pedestrian name Bob for each end-word, to great comic effect. The Web version of the literary magazine McSweeney’s maintains a repository of contemporary sestinas; indeed, the sestina is the only type of poem the site will consider for publication.There have also been several variations of the sestina form, which usually expand or contract the length. Algernon Charles Swinburne’s "The Complaint of Lisa" is a double sestina, in which twelve end-words recur across twelve twelve-line stanzas, culminating in a six-line envoi. To top things off, Swinburne took the unusual step of rhyming the end-words.Marie Ponsot invented the "tritina," a good example of the contraction of the sestina form. Here, three end-words repeat over three three-line stanzas that marvelously compress into a single line envoi, as in her poem "Living Room," where the end-words, "frame," "break," and "cold," bed down in the final line: "Framed, it’s a wind-break. It averts the worst cold."

15

The Sonnet: Poetic Form

From the Italian sonetto, which means "a little sound or song," the sonnet is a popular classical form that has compelled poets for centuries. Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, which employ one of several rhyme schemes and adhere to a tightly structured thematic organization. Two sonnet forms provide the models from which all other sonnets are formed: the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean. 

Petrarchan Sonnet

The first and most common sonnet is the Petrarchan, or Italian. Named after one of its greatest practitioners, the Italian poet Petrarch, the Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two stanzas, the octave (the first eight lines) followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines). The tightly woven rhyme scheme, abba, abba, cdecde or cdcdcd, is suited for the rhyme-rich Italian language, though there are many fine examples in English. Since the Petrarchan presents an argument, observation, question, or some other answerable charge in the octave, a turn, or volta, occurs between the eighth and ninth lines. This turn marks a shift in the direction of the foregoing argument or narrative, turning the sestet into the vehicle for the counterargument, clarification, or whatever answer the octave demands.Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to England in the early sixteenth century. His famed translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, as well as his own sonnets, drew fast attention to the form. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a contemporary of Wyatt’s, whose own translations of Petrarch are considered more faithful to the original though less fine to the ear, modified the Petrarchan, thus establishing the structure that became known as the Shakespearean sonnet. This structure has been noted to lend itself much better to the comparatively rhyme-poor English language.

Shakespearean Sonnet

The second major type of sonnet, the Shakespearean, or English sonnet, follows a different set of rules. Here, three quatrains and a couplet follow this rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The couplet plays a pivotal role, usually arriving in the form of a conclusion, amplification, or even refutation of the previous three stanzas, often creating an epiphanic quality to the end. In Sonnet 130 of William Shakespeare’s epic sonnet cycle, the first twelve lines compare the speaker’s mistress unfavorably with nature’s beauties. But the concluding couplet swerves in a surprising direction:        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.

Sonnet Variations

Though Shakespeare’s sonnets were perhaps the finest examples of the English sonnet, John Milton’s Italian-patterned sonnets (later known as "Miltonic" sonnets) added several important refinements to the form. Milton freed the sonnet from its typical incarnation in a sequence of sonnets, writing the occasional sonnet that often expressed interior, self-directed concerns. He also took liberties with the turn, allowing the octave to run into the sestet as needed. Both of these qualities can be seen in "When I Consider How My Light is Spent."

16

The Spenserian sonnet, invented by sixteenth century English poet Edmund Spenser, cribs its structure from the Shakespearean—three quatrains and a couplet—but employs a series of "couplet links" between quatrains, as revealed in the rhyme scheme: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. The Spenserian sonnet, through the interweaving of the quatrains, implicitly reorganized the Shakespearean sonnet into couplets, reminiscent of the Petrarchan. One reason was to reduce the often excessive final couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet, putting less pressure on it to resolve the foregoing argument, observation, or question.

Sonnet Sequences

There are several types of sonnet groupings, including the sonnet sequence, which is a series of linked sonnets dealing with a unified subject. Examples include Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese and Lady Mary Roth’s The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, published in 1621, the first sonnet sequence by an English woman.Within the sonnet sequence, several formal constraints have been employed by various poets, including the corona (crown) and sonnet redoublé. In the corona, the last line of the initial sonnet acts as the first line of the next, and the ultimate sonnet’s final line repeats the first line of the initial sonnet. La Corona by John Donne is comprised of seven sonnets structured this way. The sonnet redoublé is formed of 15 sonnets, the first 14 forming a perfect corona, followed by the final sonnet, which is comprised of the 14 linking lines in order.

Modern Sonnets

The sonnet has continued to engage the modern poet, many of whom also took up the sonnet sequence, notably Rainer Maria Rilke,  Robert Lowell , and John Berryman. Stretched and teased formally and thematically, today’s sonnet can often only be identified by the ghost imprint that haunts it, recognizable by the presence of 14 lines or even by name only. Recent practitioners of this so-called “American” sonnet include Gerald Stern, Wanda Coleman, Ted Berrigan, and Karen Volkman. Hundreds of modern sonnets, as well as those representing the long history of the form, are collected in the anthology The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English(Penguin Books, 2001), edited by Phillis Levin.

Pantoum: Poetic Form

The pantoum originated in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century as a short folk poem, typically made up of two rhyming couplets that were recited or sung. However, as the pantoum spread, and Western writers altered and adapted the form, the importance of rhyming and brevity diminished. The modern pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.The pantoum was especially popular with French and British writers in the nineteenth-century, including Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, who is credited with introducing the form to European writers. The pantoum gained popularity among contemporary American writers such as Anne Waldman and Donald Justice after John Ashberypublished the form in his 1956 book, Some Trees.A good example of the pantoum is Carolyn Kizer’s "Parent's Pantoum," the first three stanzas of which are excerpted here:        Where did these enormous children come from,        More ladylike than we have ever been?        Some of ours look older than we feel.        How did they appear in their long dresses        More ladylike than we have ever been?        But they moan about their aging more than we do,        In their fragile heels and long black dresses.        They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.

17

        They moan about their aging more than we do,        A somber group—why don't they brighten up?        Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity        They beg us to be dignified like themOne exciting aspect of the pantoum is its subtle shifts in meaning that can occur as repeated phrases are revised with different punctuation and thereby given a new context. Consider Ashbery's poem "Pantoum," and how changing the punctuation in one line can radically alter its meaning and tone: "Why the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying." which, when repeated, becomes, "Why, the court, trapped in a silver storm, is dying!"An incantation is created by a pantoum's interlocking pattern of rhyme and repetition; as lines reverberate between stanzas, they fill the poem with echoes. This intense repetition also slows the poem down, halting its advancement. As Mark Strand and Eavan Boland explained in The Making of a Poem, "the reader takes four steps forward, then two back," making the pantoum a "perfect form for the evocation of a past time."In his book A Poet's Glossary, former Academy Chancellor Edward Hirsch writes, "The Western pantoum adapts a long-standing form of oral Malayan poetry (pantun) that first entered written literature in the fifteenth century. The most basic form of the pantun is a quatrain with an abab rhyme scheme. Each line contains between eight and twelve syllables. Like the ghazal, it is a disjunctive form, since the sentence that makes up the first pair of lines (ab) has no immediate logical or narrative connection with the second pair of lines (ab)."

18

19