Week 6: Wrapping up Poetry

This Week

For the first half of this week we're looking at two poems by Gerard Manly Hopkins.  Please read "Pied Beauty" (417) and "Spring and Fall" (417) for Monday.

On Wednesday we'll be looking at some poems within a single poetic movement called Imagism.  Please read Ezra Pound's “In a Station in a Metro” (427), and Carl Sandburg's “Fog” (424), and come to class prepared to discuss them.  William Carlos Williams' “The Red Wheelbarrow” (426) is also an imagist poem, so you may wish to re-read that as well since we will briefly revisit it on Wednesday.

On Friday your second essay draft is due and we'll spend the day reading and editing essays.  Remember to bring your essay with a title and your student number, but without a name.  

Journal Activity

Canadian poet Gregory Betts explains Plunderverse in this online article. Betts writes "Plunderverse makes poetry through other people’s words." Here's how it works:

1. Find a poem you wish to plunder. It can be a poem we have studied together but it doesn't have to be. You will probably find that a longer poem is easier to work with.

2. Type up or copy and paste the poem you have chosen, and post it in its whole--credited to the original poet.

3. Make a second copy of the same poem, and take out bits and pieces to make a new poem. Don't rearrange anything, and don't add anything; only take parts out. Remove words, remove whole lines, remove parts of words so that you can use individual letters; it's all fair game. When you're done, you will have a new poem: a Plunderverse poem by you.

Here is an example in my Plunderverse of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias".

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.




Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.


For more inspiration, check out these great plunderverse poems made by Austin Kleon out of street signs.

Looking Ahead to Next Week

Next week is your winter break, so we have no class on Monday or Wednesday.  On Friday the final draft of your second essay is due and we'll start reading short fiction with Chinua Achebe's "Dead Men's Path."