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.
Faith Armstrong
ReplyDelete1. Emily Dickinson’s poem, There is No Frigate Like a Book, she compares the body to a machine whenever she talks about a frigate taking us lands away. She also makes a comparison between coursers, and pages that carry us. These two comparisons make us think about books in a different way. We do not think about books as frigates, or pages like coursers, but those are two comparisons we understand and we are able to see her point of view through them. She makes the comparisons between the poor taking the traverse of a book because they won’t have to pay a toll. Finally, she talks about the chariot that bears the human soul, in which she is referring to a book.
2. In Gene Zeiger’s poem, Highway, he uses metaphors to show how someone can get so lost in the highway drive. It’s just you and the highway. He talks about the shape of a fish in the clouds or the trees that are as think as eyelashes. He uses all of these comparisons to help us visualize the highway that he sees whenever he drives. He later talks about getting lost in the kindness of the road, and how you can’t the road because of it. Finally, he makes comparisons between the “wings lacing the blue moving sky” to show that you are coming to your senses, and then you’re back to yourself, and you realize that it’s just you, driving your car.
Great responses--esp. on the poem "Highway." We should have talked more about that in class.
DeleteQ1. In the poem Roadways by John Masefield on page 9 and 10, he talks about how the “road calls to me, lures me,” which is a common phrase these days. When people want to travel or go somewhere really bad they might actually “feel” and “hear” the road calling to them. So when he uses this metaphor, we can relate to the wanting to go or follow the road that is leading you to somewhere you want to go.
ReplyDeleteQ2. In Constantine Cavafy’s poem Ithaka, they talk about keeping your spirits and emotions high and you will not run into the “Laistrygonians and the Cyclops, angry Poseidon” Saying that if they keep their values high and always look to the brighter of things nothing bad will harm them or come to them. They also continue by saying “ask that your way be long.” Many people want to take the short cut and never learn the lesson that is associated with the longer way.
Great responses--wish we could have discussed Ithaka in class! I love that poem and you capture the main idea, that we carry our travels within us--making them bad or good based on what we seek/expect.
DeleteRichard Helms
ReplyDelete1.In the poem "The Road Not taken" Frost says "I took the one less traveled by," he uses this to convey that he wanted something that not everyone had done before. Instead he wanted to be apart of something unique. He says that his choice made all the difference as if he thought that if he would have taken the usual beaten path that he would have not come out as changed as he did at the end. Many people think that having a experience that most people do not have will give them something that can be held proudly above their heads.
2. In Chapman's poem "Out Where the West Begins" he describes how as you move more to the west how the people become much more kind along with many other characteristics. It shows how travel cannot only take up to different locations but we can also encounter different people along the way. People that generally sometimes act worse or better usually depending upon the view of the person that is traveling. As we travel we are not just going to see what the golden gate bridge looks like, we want to experience the people of a place and get to know that area at it roots.
Great responses...as you suggest in both responses, travel is about the perspective, and the same experience (or path) can be experienced in hundreds of ways (and poetry helps us see many of them).
DeleteRyan Jolly
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1:
In "somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond" on pg. 5, E. E. Cummings makes a metaphor similar to the body being a machine by comparing the eyes to a rose. The rose opens with the slightest look and closes with suddenly, like it is snowing.
Question 2:
On pg. 1 in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, it is implied that travel can something that we simply feel. We don't necessarily have to experience travel, but we can feel it and still have the experience.
Good responses...though in the case of cummings poem, it would "the body is a garden," perhaps.
Delete1. In the poem To the Not Impossible Him, Millay uses a metaphor that is obscure yet very common to portray the feeling of needing to travel. she says, "how shall I know, unless I go to Cairo or Cathay, Whether or not this blessed spot is blest in every way." She uses the metaphor that most people use at some point of basically saying seeing is believing only she takes it a little deeper saying the only way to know if something is blest or not is to actually physically be there. The truth is being blessed is a feeling and a place cant have feelings, just like people don't have to see something to believe it (a lot of times they don't believe what they just saw).
ReplyDelete2. The road not taken, by Robert Frost, shows the reader that at multiple points in your life you will come to a crossroads where you will have to choose something that will completely change your life for good or bad. He is basically saying that life is not just going from place to place, through the motions if you will, but is instead a series of choice. these choices have consequences and cannot be changed. it also shows that, as Frost states, you will always wonder what it would have been like to take the other "path" instead of the one you did take. the truth is you probably would feel the same longing and basically not see all the great things you have accomplished and seen while on your current path.
Great responses--particularly what you say about the Millay poem; I wish we could have discussed this one in class.
DeleteSavannah Lincoln
ReplyDeleteQ1. From A Rolling Stone, Robert Service
In this poem, he's talking about being a rolling stone. He says, "Carefree to be, as a bird that sings; To go my own sweet way..." Instead of being the normal, everyday "stone," he makes up his mind to just go with the flow. He is going to let life happen, not letting anything bother him as he goes along. He's going to be his own kind of stone, his own kind of person.
Q2. On The World, Francis Quarles
In this poem, Quarles refers to the World as an inn, and a hostess. She takes care of us, for a time. Feeds us, shelters us. If she can give it to us, she does. But after some time, we have to leave, and pay the price for the stay. We have to pass on to whatever may come next, and leave behind everything that's here, everything that we were.
Great responses!
DeleteVictoria Murray
ReplyDelete1. A poem I chose was "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. In this he says, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." This suggests that on this journey of life he decided to be different and choose a path that not many had taken. He said that it has made all the difference. This could suggest that he is happy and this difference is a grand and wonderful change for him, but it could also mean that the difference it made was one he didn't really want or would not have chosen if he had known where this path would take him. I feel this poem is about how you have to be careful which path you take because it could really make a difference in your life and wouldn't you want that change to be a good one?