Poems
11050To prepare you to participate in this discussion, read the following poems:
“To His Coy Mistress,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “Dulce et Decorum Est,” “My Last Duchess,” and “Barbie Doll.”
Respond to one of the following sets of questions. Refer to specific passages from the stories in your response.
Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” is perhaps the most famous carpe diem poem ever written. Carpe diem means “seize the day”; typically, in such poems, a male speaker attempts to seduce a woman by arguing that they won’t live forever, so they should take their pleasures while they can. The better of such poems, like this one, end up being about the more than just sex: they address the more general question of how to live life in the face of death. The poem is divided into three sections (lines 1-20, 21-32, and 33-46). The tone of each section is a bit different. How would you describe the tone of each section? Identify two or three examples of figurative language in the poem and explain how they contribute to the tone of the section in which they appear.
What sort of irony do you detect at the end of William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper”? What attitude does the poem encourage us to take towards Tom’s dream? Is the ending of the poem happy or disturbing? What sort of reaction does Blake seem to want his reader to have to the poem?
Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is one of the most famous anti-war poems of the twentieth century. How would you describe the speaker’s tone in this poem? Is the tone different in different parts of the poem? What sort of imagery or language does the speaker use to help create this tone? Would you call this a narrative poem or a lyric poem?
In Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” we seem to overhear the speaker speaking to another person before a painting of the speaker’s former wife, now deceased. What can you tell about the character of the speaker, the character of his wife, or the situation that has prompted this conversation? What clues in the poem reveal the answers to any of these questions? Does the speaker seem to reveal things about himself unintentionally, or do you think he is trying to communicate, in a subtle way, something about himself or his former wife to the person he is speaking to?
How would the effect or meaning of “My Last Duchess” be different if a third person, non-participant speaker described the situation and character of the Duke and the Duchess? What is the effect in specific sections of the poem of the speaker’s involvement?
How would you describe the tone in “Barbie Doll”? Does it change over the course of the poem or remain consistent? What details contribute to it? How does Marge Piercy create irony at the end of the poem?
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