For next Friday/Tuesday: "Home, Rest, and Final Voyages"

NOTE: For TR classes, Thursday's questions are below this one...

Reading/Discussion Questions for

Songs for the Open Road: Part III, "Home, Rest, and Final Voyages"

Read the following poems for Friday:

·       McKay, "The Tropics in New York"

·       Bronte, "Home"

·       Dunbar, "Anchored"

·       Rossetti, "Up-Hill"

·       de la Mare, "The Listeners"

·       Dickinson, "The Chariot"

·       Hopkins, "Heaven-Haven"

·       Shelley, "Ozymandius"

Answer 2 of the 4 questions that follow...

How does McKay's discussion of home differ from Bronte's?  What does the concept of "home" mean to each one?  Is one more literal than the other?  What metaphors does each associate with home?

Compare two of the poems that discuss death as a "final journey": what metaphors translate the experience of travel to death itself?  How obvious is this from the poem?  Which poem do you feel helps you "see" the experience of death more clearly? 

Two of the poems, de la Mare's "The Listeners" and Shelley's "Ozymandias" are more about the journey after death than the journey to it.  What does each poem seem to suggest about life after death?  What kind of "ghosts" do we leave behind?  

How might Dunbar's poem "Anchored" and Hopkins' poem "Heaven-Haven" be almost the same poem, written from a slightly different perspective?  What keeps Dunbar "anchored" from going on his final journey, and why has Hopkins "desired to go," and "asked to be" in a place rather than the place he is in now?  What keeps them both--and perhaps, all of us--from going on a great adventure that beckons us from afar?  

For next Wednesday/Thursday: "Sea, Rail, and Sky"

[NOTE: The questions for Tuesday's class are below this one] 

Next Reading/Discussion Questions for Songs For The Open Road: Part II, "Sea, Rail and Sky"

Read the following poems:

Dickinson, "Exultation is in the Going" (20)

Longfellow, "The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls" (28)

Millay, "Exiled" (22-23) & "Travel" (35)

Sandburg, "From the Shore" (28-29) & "Window" (38)

Dunbar, "Ships That Pass in the Night" (30) & "Sympathy” (35)

Hughes, "Pennsylvania Station" (38)

Magee Jr., “High Flight” (41)

Bevington, “The Journey is Everything” (44)

Answer TWO of the following questions

1. How do one or more of the poems above develop the sea as a metaphor about life, love, death, etc?  Be sure to quote/examine individual lines so we can see what the poet is comparing the sea to (is the sea life, love, adventure, dreams, etc.)?
2. How does one or more of the poems above develop railroads as a metaphor about life, love, death, etc? Be sure to quote/examine individual lines so we can see what the poet is comparing the sea to (is the sea life, love, adventure, dreams, etc.)?
3. How does one or more of the poems develop flying as a metaphor about life, love, death, etc.?  Be sure to quote/examine individual lines so we can see what the poet is comparing the sea to (is the sea life, love, adventure, dreams, etc.)?

For Friday/Tuesday (depending on your class): Songs of the Open Road, pp.1-18

This assignment is for FRIDAY for MWF classes, and TUESDAY for TR classes.

Read the section "Songs for the Open Road" on pages 1-18 and pick out 4-5 poems that particularly capture your attention.  Read these poems (they're all pretty short) more than once.  Then answer the questions that follow based on these poems:

Answer BOTH of the following questions…

1. Discuss how ONE of the poems you chose takes a common metaphor such as "love is magic" or "the body is a machine" and develops it in new and interesting ways.  Remember that a poem takes ideas we all understand (such as common metaphors, cliches, etc.) and twists them around, changing our experience of the world.  

 For example, in Thoreau's poem, "I Was Born Upon Thy Bank, River" (13), he writes that "My blood flows in thy stream," which is a metaphor: it is ultimately saying "memories are like blood," or "tradition is like blood."  In other words, what flows in the river is not literal blood, but his traditions, memories, and family identity.  This helps us understand the final line, where he writes that the river lives forever "at the bottom of my dream."  This means that the river, which is literal, becomes a metaphor: "memories are like rivers."  They flow, they meander, they refresh us, and they are always part of us.  How does your poem do some of the same things? 

2. Choose a SECOND poem and explain how it helps us see 'travel' as a metaphor for something greater?  For example, in Thoreau's poem, you can travel on a river, but the idea of traveling becomes metaphorical: you travel through your memories and your heart's desire on a "river" of dreams.  In other words, the greatest adventures we have in life are internal--the ones we remember or re-create in our minds, which lead to the "rivers" of our souls.  Discuss how your poem does something similar for travel and makes it a larger experience than simply moving from place to place.  

Citing Sources in Paper #2 Handout

Citing Sources in Paper #2 (a refresher in MLA)

The Quotation Sandwich: Introduction + Quotation + Response

As Krakauer explains after his return, “The ordinary pleasures of life at home—eating breakfast with my wife, watching the sun go down over Puget Sound, being able to get up in the middle of the night and walk barefoot to a warm bathroom—generated flashes of joy that bordered on rapture.  But such moments were tempered by the long penumbra cast by Everest, which seemed to recede little with the passing of time” (282)

OR,

Krakauer notes that, despite appreciating the simple things in life again, most of his enjoyment was “tempered by the long penumbra cast by Everest, which seemed to recede little with the passing of time” (282).  Then Respond to this quote—explain what he means by this—what is the “penumbra” that Everest casts on his life?  And does it do the same to others? 

WORKS CITED

For Books:

Krakauer, Jon.  Into Thin Air.  New York: Anchor Books, 1997.  Print. 

For EBSCO Articles:

Peterson, Linda.  “Left For Dead On Mt. Everest.”  Biography 4.12 (2000): 96.  Biography Reference Center.  Web. 2 March 2015. 

For Web +Articles:

Burke, Jason.  “Himalayan storm disaster claims even more victims.”  The Guardian On-Line.  18 October 2014.  < http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2014/oct/18/himalayan-storm-claims-seven-more-victims> Web. 

For Films/TV:

The Wildest Dream.  Dir. Anthony Geffen.  Perf. Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson,

          Alan Rickman.  DVD. Virgil Films, 2011.