Imagery
11055For this discussion, please read the following poems: “Dover Beach,” “Daystar,” “Those Winter Sundays,” “Harlem Dancer,” and “Second Coming.”
Respond to one of the following sets of questions. Refer to specific passages from the stories in your response.
What senses does the imagery in Claude McKay’s “Harlem Dancer” appeal to, and in what broader categories might we classify different images in the poem (e.g., natural or artificial imagery, serene or aggressive/violent imagery)? How does the arrangement of imagery contribute to the tone, effect, or apparent meaning of the poem?
What imagery do you notice in Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”? To what different senses does the imagery appeal? Why does the speaker in the poem seem to focus particularly on the sound of the waves? What does that sound seem to signify or suggest (see line 14)? What does the speaker seem to be saying in the last stanza?
What imagery do you notice in the different stanzas of “Those Winter Sundays,” and to what senses do the images appeal? How would the effect of particular stanza change if you replaced its concrete language with abstract language—that is, language which did not appeal to the senses?
In Rita Dove’s “Daystar,” identify some of the images in the poem. What does imagery, including the order and frequency of images, help to convey about the experience of the mother?
What tone does the imagery of “Second Coming” set in different sections of the poem? What is the effect of the absence of sensory details in certain lines? What is the relationship between the more abstract and more concrete sections of the poem?
In a 2015 The Paris Review article titled “No Slouch,” Nick Tabor describes “The Second Coming” as “the most thoroughly pillaged piece of literature in English.” Fragments of Yeats’ poem can be found in everything from newspaper headlines and blog titles to novels and memoirs (e.g., Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem and Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel Things Fall Apart). Consider what poetic quality or qualities of certain lines of the poem—beyond their literal meaning—contribute to the popular citation of them. For instance, what is lost if we replace key phrases in the poem with approximations like “moving toward Bethlehem” and, instead of “things fall apart,” “order turns into disorder”?
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