Shape Poem #2

 "The Mouse's Tale" by Lewis Carroll (an excerpt from Alice in Wonderland)

"Mine is a long and a sad tale!" said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.

"It is a long tail, certainly," said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; "but why do you call it sad?" And she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was something like this:—

 Fury said to a mouse,
                 That he met in the
                        house, 'Let us
                           both go to law:
                            I will prosecute
                          you.-- Come, I'll
                         take no denial;
                       We must have
                     a trial: For
                   really this
                 morning I've
               nothing to do.'
                   Said the mouse
                         to the cur,
                           'Such a trial,
                              dear Sir, With
                                  no jury or
                                judge, would
                               be wasting
                           our breath.'
                        'I'll be
                   judge, I'll
                 be jury,'
               Said cunning
             old Fury:
                'I'll try
                  the whole
                    cause, and
                        condemn
                            you
                              to
                               death.'

"You are not attending!" said the Mouse to Alice, severely. "What are you thinking of?"

"I beg your pardon," said Alice very humbly, "you had got to the fifth bend, I think?"

"I had not!" cried the Mouse sharply and very angrily.

"A knot!" said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. "Oh, let me help to undo it!"

"I shall do nothing of the sort, said the Mouse, getting up and walking away. "You insult me by talking such nonsense!"

This poem, which is an excerpt from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, bases its humor nearly entirely on the confusion of trope that exists around the poem itself. Alice's confusion that the "tale" the mouse speaks of is actually his literal "tail" is the basis of the irony in this poem. As the mouse tells Alice his sad tale, she believes he is discussing his tail and observes it as he tells her his story. This explains the shape of the noted tale, which is meant to look like a mouse tail. The "Fury" of which the mouse speaks may be the forces that always seem to be acting against him,  as mice are so small. No matter what he does, it seems as though there are always forces larger and swifter than he who do not listen to his side of the story. Alice again confuses "not" with "knot," and believes that the mouse needs assistance with his knotted tail when he actually is criticizing her for not paying close enough attention to his sorrows.

Shape Poem #1

"Easter Wings" by George Herbert

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
   Though foolishly he lost the same,
      Decaying more and more,
        Till he became
           Most poore:
           With  thee
        Oh let me rise
   As larks, harmoniously,
  And sing this day  thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My  tender  age  in  sorrow   did   beginne:
   And still with sicknesses and shame
      Thou  didst  so  punish  sinne,
         That  I  became
           Most thinne.
           With  thee
        Let me combine
      And feel this day thy victorie:
   For,  if  I  imp  my  wing  on  thine
Affliction shall  advance the  flight in  me.

Sestina Poem #2

"Sestina" by Elizabeth Bishop
September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Sestina Poem #1- COMMENT!

"To The Indifferent Women" by Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman (comment on this one!)

You who are happy in a thousand homes,

Or overworked therein, to a dumb peace;

Whose souls are wholly centered in the life

Of that small group you personally love;

Who told you that you need not know or care

About the sin and sorrow of the world?

Do you believe the sorrow of the world

Does not concern you in your little homes? —

That you are licensed to avoid the care

And toil for human progress, human peace,

And the enlargement of our power of love

Until it covers every field of life?

The one first duty of all human life

Is to promote the progress of the world

In righteousness, in wisdom, truth and love;

And you ignore it, hidden in your homes,

Content to keep them in uncertain peace,

Content to leave all else without your care.

Yet you are mothers! And a mother's care

Is the first step toward friendly human life.

Life where all nations in untroubled peace

Unite to raise the standard of the world

And make the happiness we seek in homes

Spread everywhere in strong and fruitful love.

You are content to keep that mighty love

In its first steps forever; the crude care

Of animals for mate and young and homes,

Instead of pouring it abroad in life,

Its mighty current feeding all the world

Till every human child can grow in peace.

You cannot keep your small domestic peace

Your little pool of undeveloped love,

While the neglected, starved, unmothered world

Struggles and fights for lack of mother's care,

And its tempestuous, bitter, broken life

Beats in upon you in your selfish homes.

We all may have our homes in joy and peace

When woman's life, in its rich power of love

Is joined with man's to care for all the world.

 

ANALYSIS: Though this poem was written by a woman who lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s, its message can still be considered significant today. Gilman, who has been considered one of the United State's earliest feminists, clearly has an emotional connection to the poem's subject, being a woman growing up in a society that generally supressed female initiatives. In this sestina, she criticizes women for passively agreeing to accept the label presented to them as women and to ignore all the problems of the world that women could very well be involved in solving. Her emphasis of what it means to be a mother I thought to be very interesting, as she is able to take away values that make a woman a mother and apply them to the world and its needs. The world needs "a mother's care," thus a woman's attention may be even more valuable than the care that men have to offer it.

As a sestina is highly organized, authors who write sestinas must carefully choose the words that end the lines of their poems, as these words will be repeated in each stanza. I find it interesting that Gilman chose the words "home," "peace," "life," "love," "care," and "world." She uses these words (that act as a sort of anaphora themselves) to emphasize a woman's ability to shape a world in need of peace with the life, love, and care she obtains from maintaining a home.

I also found it interesting that the some of the cacaphonic words I highlighted appear at then end of the poem where she tries to make herself sound the most aggressive. These harsh-sounding words are easily associated with the criticism she displays.

Finally, much of this sestina is highly enjambed. Because of these continuing sentences that sometimes last for an entire stanza, the reader gets the impression that she has a great deal to say about the subject, that she means what she says, and that she is firm in standing beside her beliefs.

SHAPE

Shape poems (also called concrete poems) are written or typed out out to form a visual shape significant to the poem's meaning or message. A shape poem can also emphasize certain rhyming patterns.

SESTINAS

A sestina is a six-stanza poem with each stanza containing six lines. There is also a tarcet at the end of the poem; a smaller, three-line stanza. These poems are highly structured and organized, as each ending word of each of the six lines in the first stanza reappear in the following order as the ending words of following stanzas:
Stanza 1: 123456
Stanza 2: 615343
Stanza 3: 364125
Stanza 4: 532614
Stanza 5: 451362
Stanza 6: 246531

Literary Devices

HIGHLIGHTED LITERARY DEVICES ARE THOSE DISCUSSED IN ANALYSES!
caesura- a pause in a line of poetry, usually indicated by "//"
enjambment- the breaking/separation of clauses or sentences by the creation of new lines. In other words, a single sentence of poetry that takes up multiple lines.
litotes- understatements affirmed by stating the opposite
conceit- the comparison (via metaphor or simile) of two drastically unlike things
apostrophe- addressing an object as if alive or present
euphony- a collection of sounds and syllables that flow well together
cacophony- a collection of harsh, clashing sounds. Usually a bad combination of bad consonants (such as the word "Jabberwocky," the title of a poem by Lewis Carroll)
scansion- symbols that identify a long or short syllable
figurative language- a broad term describing literary comparisons (metaphor, simile, imagery, alliteration, personification, etc.)
metonymy- a type of TROPE (see below), that includes correspondence.
trope- a word or phrase that is replaced by another word or phrase that yields similar understanding.
anaphora- a repetition of a word or phrase to emphasize a point
euphemism- replacing a potentially offensive word or phrase with a less offensive one
elision- the deletion of a syllable or letter in a word when speaking to make the sound of the word flow better. More EUPHONY
envoi- a stanza concluding a poem that directly adresses the person/object that is the subject of the poem.
allusion- a reference to an event, person, place, etc. in a poem to which the reader is expected to be familiar.