Happy Week Off!

"Bronzes"

This poem was published in 1916.  The line about "the Yser" refers to the Yser River in Belgium -- in 1914, Belgium stopped the German advance there by using the river to flood the farmland.  This was a major defeat for Germany and bought the Allied defenses all over Europe a little time to shore up or stabilize their defenses.  It kept the German Army out of France and away from important ports like Dunkirk and Calais, letting the British Army bring in lots of reinforcements and supplies unhindered.  It is considered a turning point in World War One.

Okay, time to read the poem here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  Analyze this poem!  Try to untangle a little bit about why Sandburg might refer to that specific part of the war.

"Accomplished Facts"

I stumbled across this Sandburg poem recently and love how it's a collection of different objects and ideas and people.  It's not exactly a "list poem," but it almost is?  You can read it here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  What do you think the theme or point of this poem is?

2.  Which of the little anecdotes about famous people did you find most interesting?  

3.  What do you think a "bean bazaar" might be?  I have guesses, but I'd like to hear yours.

"Theme in Yellow"

A short and fun poem for the middle of the week.  You can read "Theme in Yellow" right here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  How would you describe the tone of this poem?

2.  If you were to write a poem about something yellow or orange, what would you choose to focus on?

"Chicago"

Today, we'll read one of Carl Sandburg's most famous poems: "Chicago."  This was first published in 1914, so World War One had just begun, but the US wasn't involved yet.  Prohibition hadn't hit yet, but Chicago was already notorious for its gangsters.  But what had originally turned it into a big city were the railroads and slaughterhouses.  After the Civil War, when the West started shipping beef to the hungry East, they would drive their cattle to railheads in Kansas and Nebraska (this is the classic cowboy era of 1865-1885), and the cattle would be shipped by train to Chicago, where they were butchered and packed in refrigerated rail cars and shipped to the East Coast.  

Your Grandpa Roger grew up in the Chicago area.  Your Great-Grandpa Kovaciny once temporarily stole a train there as a boy.  (If you haven't heard this story yet, ask Grandpa Roger next time you talk to him!)

With all of that in your head, read the poem here.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are some of the vivid words Sandburg uses that strike you as especially interesting?

2.  What words does Sandburg use repeatedly?  Why do you think he chooses to repeat those specific words?

3.  Do you think the city of Chicago sounds like a place you'd want to visit or live, based on this poem?  Why or why not?

Introducing Your Final Poetry Project

You may have noticed on the schedule that you have a final project due the last week of class.

That project is a longer analysis of the poem of your choice.  By "longer" I mean it should be about 400 to 500 words.  By "poem of your choice," I mean you should choose a poem by any of the poets we have discussed (or will be discussing) in class -- but it can't be a poem we have already discussed.

When choosing your poem, remember to find one that you think you could talk about for 400 to 500 words.  If you want some suggestions, I can give you some, but you don't have to get my approval of the poem ahead of time.

You will turn in a first draft of your paper on Friday, December 12.  I will give you some feedback on that draft so you can make any necessary revisions, and then you will turn in the final draft of your paper on Friday, December 19.

Any questions?  Ask in the comments!

Introducing Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg
(1878-1967)

Carl Sandburg was born in Illinois in 1878.  He quit school when he was thirteen to drive a milk delivery wagon to help support his family.  He also worked as a hotel porter, a brick layer, and a farm laborer.  He spent a little time at college, but didn't graduate, then got a job as a journalist for the Chicago Daily News.

Sandburg didn't write only poetry.  He also wrote history books, biographies for children and adults, novels, children's books, and film reviews!  He spent most of his life in the Upper Midwest, but eventually retired to North Carolina.

Sandburg joined the military during the Spanish-American War and was stationed in Puerto Rico, but he was never involved in a battle.  In 1908, he married Lillian Steichen, and the couple had three daughters.  Between 1916 and 1920, he published three collections of poetry while also working as a newspaperman.  The second collection, Cornhuskers, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.  He won a Pulitzer for history in 1940 for the latest volume in his children's biography of Abraham Lincoln.  In 1951, he won another Pulitzer for poetry.

In 1945, Carl and Lillian moved to a estate in the mountains of North Carolina that he named Connemara.  He lived there the rest of his life.  He supported the Civil Rights movement and was the first white man to be honored by the NAACP for his writings promoting equality and civil rights, which he began back in 1919.  He died of natural causes in 1967.

I didn't get into Carl Sandburg's poetry until fairly recently.  Oh, I'd read some of his really famous poems, but it wasn't until I visited the museum at his former home in North Carolina in 2007 that I started to really enjoy his work.  He has a lot in common with Robert Frost, so it's not surprising that I like his poetry, I suppose.

"By the Autumn Fire"

This is a lovely poem to end the week on, I think.  You can read "By the Autumn Fire" online here.

Discussion Questions Art Project:

Illustrate this poem somehow!  Draw, sketch, paint, use a computer program (NO AI !!!), make a collage -- whatever floats your creative boat.  You don't have to turn this in until Sunday night, if you need extra time.  Nadia, once you have finished yours, either scan it in and send me the image or send me a photo of it.  I'll share both yours and Sadie's here so you can enjoy each others' visual reactions to this poem.

"For Little Things"

This is my favorite LMM poem.  

"For Little Things"

by L. M. Montgomery

Last night I looked across the hills 

And through an arch of darkling pine 

Low-swung against a limpid west 

I saw a young moon shine. 

And as I gazed there blew a wind, 

Loosed where the sylvan shadows stir, 

Bringing delight to soul and sense 

The breath of dying fir. 

This morn I saw a dancing host 

Of poppies in a garden way, 

And straight my heart was mirth-possessed 

And I was glad as they. 

I heard a song across the sea 

As sweet and faint as echoes are, 

And glimpsed a poignant happiness 

No care of earth might mar. 

Dear God, our life is beautiful 

In every splendid gift it brings, 

But most I thank Thee humbly for 

The joy of little things. 

(Please note: this poem is not in the public domain, however I couldn't find it online in a format that I could simply share a link to, so I am reproducing it here out of a physical book I own.  This is for educational purposes only; I will make no monetary gain from reproducing it in this classroom setting.)

Discussion Questions:

1.  What are some poetic devices does Montgomery use in this poem?

2.  What little things would you include if you were writing a poem like this?

"Genius"

This is a completely different sort of poem than yesterday's!  I believe it may still be under copyright, so you can read "Genius" online here.  (Sorry that it's a page full of ads -- it's the best one I could find.)

Discussion Questions:

1.  What is the tone of this poem?

2.  The ends of this poem don't rhyme.  What makes it a poem anyway?

"The Piper"

The eighth Anne book, Rilla of Ingleside, takes place during WWI.  During the book, one of Anne and Gilbert's sons writes a poem called "The Piper" about the experience of going off to war.  The poem isn't included in Rilla of Ingleside, but Montgomery included it in her final Anne book, The Blythes are Quoted.  Since today is the 107th anniversary of Armistice Day, the day WWI ended, I thought this was a fitting poem for us to read and study today.

"The Piper"

by L. M. Montgomery

 One day the Piper came down the Glen … 

      Sweet and long and low played he! 

The children followed from door to door, 

No matter how those who loved might implore 

      So wiling the song of his melody 

As the song of a woodland rill. 

Some day the Piper will come again 

      To pipe to the sons of the maple tree! 

You and I will follow from door to door, 

Many of us will come back no more … 

      What matter that if Freedom still 

Be the crown of each native hill? 

(Please note: this poem is not in the public domain, however I couldn't find it online in a format that I could simply share a link to, so I am reproducing it here out of my paperback copy of The Blythes are Quoted so we can study it.  This is for educational purposes only; I will make no monetary gain from reproducing it in this classroom setting.)

Discussion Questions:

1. Is this a sad poem or a hopeful poem?

2.  What imagery is Montgomery pulling into this poem to make it more powerful?

Introducing Lucy Maud Montgomery

L. M. Montgomery
(1874-1942)

I know you both know who Lucy Maud Montgomery is, in that you have read books she wrote.  She's most famous for books like Anne of Green Gables, and she did publish twenty novels... but she also published more than 500 short stories AND more than 500 poems.  Her poetry is less-well-known, so I'm excited to explore a bit of it with you.

Maud had a very difficult life.  She was born on Prince Edward Island on November 30, 1874, but her mother died when Maud was only 21 months old.  Maud's father asked his in-laws to raise his baby for him, as he felt he was too overcome with grief to properly care for her.  At first, he continued to live nearby and be part of her life but, when she was seven, he moved almost 3,000 miles away, to what were then called the North-West Territories (now Saskatchewan).

So, Maud grew up being cared for by grandparents who were reportedly austere and undemonstrative.  She had a lonely childhood with few friends, but created extensive imaginary worlds for herself, crowded with imaginary friends (including one named Katie Maurice she would later include in her first Anne book).  Her father remarried when she was in her early teens, but still did not ask his daughter to live with him for several years.  When she was sixteen, she did go live with her father and stepmother for one year, but returned to PEI because she did not get along with her stepmother at all.  However, while she was living with her father, she did have her first publishing success!  Her poem "On Cape LeForce" was published in a Charlottetown newspaper.  

Maud went to college and earned her teaching license in one year instead of the usual two.  She set out to support herself by teaching school, though she did not enjoy it.  And she rejected several proposals of marriage, eventually accepting one from a man she initially liked but later realized was shallow and selfish.  She had a brief romantic fling with another man who, sadly, died of influenza before she could break off her engagement to her fiancé and accept her lover's proposal.  She gave up all hope of marrying for romantic love and moved back in with her grandmother, as her grandfather has recently died.  She lived with her grandmother and cared for her until she died, while also doing a lot of writing and publishing, including publishing the first two Anne books.

When Maud was thirty-seven years old, she married Ewen Macdonald, a Presbyterian minister.  They moved to Ontario, where she wrote her next eleven books.  Ewen was not fond of literature or fiction, and the two did not have a particularly loving marriage.  They did have three sons together; one son was stillborn.  She suffered from what we would probably now diagnose as post-partum depression after the birth of their third son.  She already struggled at times with what we would probably call clinical depression.  Her husband Ewen also suffered from what we now call major depressive disorder, as well as bad health.

In 1918, Maud almost died from the Spanish flu epidemic.  She had often expressed doubts about God and Christianity in her private journals and letters, but surviving that flu seemed to result in revived faith that God did care personally about people, rather than being a remote being who watched impersonally over the world. 

Ewen suffered a nervous breakdown a year later and was never well again.  He believed in the false Calvinist idea of predestination, that only some people are elected to be saved eternally, and he came to believe he and his whole family were not part of those elect and were all doomed to hell.  This worsened Maud's own mental struggles.  Writing remained a refuge for her, as it was a way for her to maintain her mental and emotional equilibrium.  

In 1925, her husband Ewen resigned from his congregation, and he and Maud moved away.  In 1934, Ewen committed himself to a sanitorium to treat his extreme mental struggles.  Maud bought a house near Toronto with money she'd earned from her books and continued to write and publish.  In 1935, King George V made her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, a high honor bestowed in recognition of her literary contributions to society.

Maud was very upset by World War Two breaking out.  World War One had been emotionally and mentally devastating to her, and to think that the horrors of widespread war were happening again was more than she could bear.  In 1942, she was found dead in her bed.  While her official cause of death was coronary thrombosis (a blood clot moving into the heart and stopping it from beating), her family and close friends were pretty sure she had ended her own life by overdosing on some of her medicine.  She was only sixty-seven.

You can see a lot of pieces of her own life that she used to create characters in her books, which I find pretty fascinating.  

"Dust of Snow"

The trouble with Robert Frost is that I love SO MANY of his poems!  It's hard to just pick four to share with you this week.  I finally settled on "Dust of Snow" for the last one because it makes me smile.  You can read it online here.

Discussion Questions:

1. Analyze this poem!  It's short, but I think you can pull some real meaning out of it.

"Christmas Trees"

Yes, I know it's not Christmastime yet.  Shh.  This is a pre-Christmas sort of poem.  And it's actually one I'd never read before!  I love how often Robert Frost tells us stories with his poems, and this one is so homey and cozy I just have to share it.  You can read "Christmas Trees" online here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  Were you surprised by the narrator's decision?  Pleased?  Disappointed?

2.  Why might Frost have subtitled this poem "A Christmas Circular Letter"?

"Acquainted with the Night"

I memorized this Robert Frost poem in college.  I'd thought until then that he pretty much always wrote poems about nature and farming and the joys of rural life.  But he spent most of his life in cities, and he did write about them too -- maybe not as often, but just as interestingly.

You can read "Acquainted with the Night" online here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  What are some words you would use to describe the mood or feeling or tone of this poem?

2.  What words does Frost use to achieve the mood/feeling/tone you just described?

"Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Robert Frost's poetry is not all in the public domain!  And the same goes for the other poets we'll be studying for the rest of the semester.  So I'll be finding legitimate online sources for their poems where you can read them, and then you can come back here and answer questions.

Today's poem is one I memorized when I was in high school.  Why?  For the very obvious reason that it's in The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, which is still one of my top favorite books of all time.  You can read this poem here.

Discussion Questions:

1.  What poetic devices do you notice in this poem?  (It's okay to quote from the poem in your answers -- I just can't share the whole thing here.)

2.  What is the theme or point of this poem, do you think?

Introducing Robert Frost

Robert Frost
(1874-1963)

Robert Frost is one of my top favorite poets.  For a long time he was my absolute favorite, though now he has to kind of share that with a couple others (Langston Hughes and Kenneth Koch, if you are curious).  He was the only poet I studied while in high school that I actually liked while in high school, and I won't deny that part of that was because of the book The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, in which one of his poems gets quoted and is a big part of the book's theme.  But I also liked how accessible his poems were, and how many of them were about rural life.  I lived out in the country until I went to college, and loved being outside, and his poems resonated a lot with me because of that.

Robert Frost and his poetry are often considered synonymous with New England life, but he was actually born in San Francisco, California!  However, his forebears were among the earliest settlers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  When Robert Frost was 11, his father died, and his mother had to borrow money to move the family back to Massachusetts to live with her family.  He grew up there with his sister, and published his first poem in his high school's magazine, as well as being voted Class Poet.  Robert and his future wife, Elinor White, were co-valedictorians for their high school class.

Robert attended college for just a couple of months, then left to get a job and work on his poetry.  He held a variety of jobs over the next few years, like working in a factory, delivering newspapers, and teaching school.  He first sold a poem in 1894, for $15 (almost $600 today), and was so excited about earning money with his poetry that he proposed to his girlfriend Elinor.  She turned him down because she was attending college and wanted to finish her degree before getting married.  Once she graduated, they were married in 1895.  Robert attended Harvard University for two years, but left when they learned Elinor was expecting their second child.  They had six children together, but only two outlived Robert and Elinor.

Robert's grandfather bought a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, for Robert and his young family, and the Frosts settled down there.  Robert worked the farm and wrote poetry, but he couldn't make the farm pay enough to support them, so he took a series of teaching jobs at different New Hampshire schools.  In 1912, the Frosts moved to Great Britain, and Robert made friends with some important poets there, including Ezra Pound.  He published two collections of poetry there, then returned to New Hampshire when World War One started.  He bought a different farm there and really set about his life's work of writing and publishing poetry, teaching English at various colleges, and going on lecture tours.  That farm is now a museum and poetry center.

Over the course of his career, Robert Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry, more than any other American poet has ever been awarded.  He was named the United States Poet Laureate in 1958, and read some of his own poetry at President John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.  He died at the age of 88 in Boston, having outlived his wife and four of their children.  His life held a lot of sadness and loss, but he never lost his appreciation for the beauty in the world around him.  You will notice a lot of both those aspects of his life in his poetry.

Celebrate!

I hope your sixteenth birthday is super sweet and fun!