Select one of the poems in "Thomas and Beulah". How does the poem make you feel? In what ways can you relate to the poem? What has Rita Dove done with imagery, form, theme, rhythm, language, etc. to make this poem work? Any lines that particularly strike you as interesting or powerful? Think about poetic technique: enjambment, caesura, metaphor, simile, alliteration, assonance, consonance, linebreaking, stanzaic form, apostrophe, onomatopeaia, etc.
Begin working on Poetry Cycle assignment:
Similar to Thomas and Beulah, consider some characters in your own life, imagined characters, or actual historical characters. Imagine the significant chronological dates in their lilves--high points and low points. consider how to construct a series of 8-10 (preferably more) poems that tell a story (narrative poetry) and explore these key moments and occasions.
- a. Your poetry cycle should consist of 8-10 poems
- b. Your poetry cycle should be accompanied by a chronology to support the key dates and occasions you chose to write about.
- c. At least two of the poems should explore the same event from two different perspectives or viewpoints (like "Courtship" in Thomas and Beulah). These poems can have the same title.
- d. Place one poem per page, single-spaced, 12 point type in a clean font and be sure to title each poem. you may want to title the entire cycle as well. Use italics for dialogue, songs, memories, etc as you observe in Rita Dove's work. Experiment with different stanzaic forms and poetic styles.
- e. Poems can, of course, be narrative or lyric, but remember that the overall cycle is a narrative and must tell a story of a life or lives although we only see "fragments" or moments/snapshots of those lives.
Moving Through Color
personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jpellegr/articles/dovearticle.html
I (Danielle) had read Under the Viaduct, 1932. It explains how one of a higher class, hence "black suit", committed suicide as shown when stated, "He could smell the worms stirring in their holes" and "...all across the North Hill Viaduct tires slithered to a halt."
ReplyDeleteLedibel Rivera
ReplyDeleteThe poem I chose is The Zeppelin factory because it tells a story and it describes how Lem’s death is haunting Thomas with every death he witnesses. The poem makes me feel sad because it describes a tragic event that Thomas unfortunately had to witness. It bothers me to know that Thomas had to be a witness to this incident because the poem describes how it haunted him afterwards and how he is disturbed and haunted by death. Rita Doves poetry includes imagery, theme, and form to show how important it is to read these poems like a narrative and experience them together in order to understand the events of her Grandparents life. One of the lines that strict me as so interesting and powerful is “Thomas at night in the vacant lot: Here I am , intact and faint-hearted….Big Boy I know you’re in there.” The reason why this line is so powerful is because it describes how the death at the Zeppelin factory reminded him of the death of his friend Lem. Many of the other poems such as Nothing Down describes how certain events reminded him of Lem, such as the blue Chandler that his wife picked.
Possibly the poem that spoke to me the most would have been “Refrain”. It discussed how even though Thomas was in a physical state of happiness (he was married, had a kid, a good car, etc.) but he was in a mental state of torment: After Lem, his best friend, died, he was more than convinced that Lem had become Death ⎯ as long as his memories and guilt of Lem stayed with him, Death will follow in tow. I thought this due to the final quatrain about the raccoon, which stated “…And the bandit gaze of the old raccoon.” The raccoon, to me, was a symbol of Lem (Death) and how his “bandit gaze” would never leave Thomas.
ReplyDeletethe poem "Courtship" made me think about my own life, and about the boys that try to talk to me. I in a since act like beulah. I don't pay them any type of attention, because most of the time they're corny and they don't have anything going for themselves. Rita Dove uses enjambment to isolate the most important facts, the things she wants to shine a light on. Also the imagery of the poem allows the reader to see what life was like back then. My favorite line was, "But she won't set a foot on this turtledove Nash, it wasn't proper." It reminded me of what I would do.
ReplyDeleteNothing Down - this poem took me the longest to understand and I felt most connected to it since I put more energy into it.
ReplyDeleteI felt that I understood Thomas' wanting to live his nightmare. When his wife told him "Don't tell me this ain't what you hoped for" I concluded that Thomas did know that he was heading for trouble. He kept punishing himself with the reminder of Lem's death which seems straining to his quality of life but it was a part of his reality. I know what it's like to look for misery because it's what you know best.
I thought the title should have been "You and Your South" since Thomas troubles began on his journey away from the South.
The Chandler, being the beautiful blue flower incarnate, was just part of a fantasy of Lem that would never come true.
Nothing Down was the poem I felt I could identify most with, once it was broken down to me.
the poem that spoke to me was "refrain" because it has a rhythm , and so much imagery , and i feel that it's happening at this moment thats how good the description is . It shows alot . My favorite line in the poem is "and the bandit gaze of the old raccoon"
ReplyDeleteThe poem "Variation on Pain" used a lot of imagery. She incorporated all of the senses, well except for smell and taste. The significance of this poem in this cycle was to show how Thomas coped with the death of his friend Lem. The piercing of Thomas' ears was suppose to represent the pain he endured from his friend passing; him trying to move on from the past. In this poem Dove uses a different stanzaic form. In the first and last stanza she uses three lines but the second and third stanza has six lines.
ReplyDeleteThe Event:
ReplyDeleteThis poem really shocked me in the end, "a stinking circle of rags, the half-shell mandolin. Where the wheel turned the water..." This anecdote is very creepy. The reader can visualize Lem's body: soulless in the water, while Thomas stands on the deck. Without a doubt Rita Dove uses diction to describe to the reader how Lem died. "Stinking circles", "gently shirred", these word choices are very powerful sense of imagery.
The poem "Variation on Pain" was interesting and the way Rita Dove wrote it surprisingly intrigued me. I admired the previous poem "The Event", which made "Variation on Pain" even more intriguing to me. I loved diction in this poem, the way she said the "two strings one pierced cry." He pierced his ears with a mandolin string to experience pain that he felt from his friend's death.
ReplyDeleteI loved the end of Courtship. The way it looks is beautiful; "His heart fluttering shut/then slowly opening." The words in that passage fit together so nicely, so visually euphonic. I fell in love with it.
ReplyDelete"To Bed", it has a lot of imagery and you can see what's actually going on in the play in your mind. "Courtship", makes you think about life in general. You can imagine how life was in this time period and just feel the way they feel. Rita Dove shows great imagination in both poems and those are the two that really caught my attention.
ReplyDeletethe poem I chose is "courtship", because, it is very descriptive on how Tomas felt, about Beula and It describes the characteristics of both of the characters. Rita Dove uses characteristics to help us understand the emotions and events that took place in her grand parents lives. I can relate to this poem because, many times when people get married or propose, they have second guesses of the choices that they make and how those choices may impact their lives.
ReplyDeleteThe poem that I chose was " Variation on Guilt" this poem makes me feel sad when i read it because he was unappreciative to the baby girl that was just brought in this world. He wanted to have a baby boy, but he had a girl so he felt that he should not having feeling toward her. This poem uses vivid imagery such as, " The doors fly apart-no, he wouldn't run away." The stanzaic form of this poem is that in the first stanza there are 5 lines the second 4 lines, third 6 lines, forth 4 lines and the last 4 lines. This poem showed that Thomas did not have a heart for his baby just because the baby was a girl. This shows that in some ways Thomas was immature, in small ways.
ReplyDeleteRita Dove’s poem Courtship, carries out an immense amount of imaginary in it. I really liked how she began the poem with a bit of dialogue from Thomas. Dove goes into detail about the clothing on both Thomas and Beula, and their clothing conveys an image of their body language. We can sense the amount of flirtation between them, especially when she says “ His wrist flicks for the pleats all in a row, sighing…” There is also a certain rhythm to the poem, and it kind of sets a tone in my head for the image its creating. On the last verse of the poem, I like how it ends with a personification of his heart.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite was Nothing Down. I felt that the stanzaic form really helped mix the narrative feel that an artist strives for in a poetic cycle with the poem itself.This is mainly apparent in the mixing of his childhood dreaming and reality, and how it occasionally seems to intertwine.
ReplyDeleteRita Dove’s poem, Variation on Guilt is very successful at getting the idea of extreme disappointment in Thomas across to the reader. The enjambment does this especially well. The line that says “he looks down,” is cut off and then continued in a new stanza that reads, “the row of faces coddled in anxious pride.” This is a good way to make the reader wonder what he is looking down at. And the fact that he is looking at people who are anxious combined with the suspense of what he is looking down at makes the reader realize that this is a tense situation. Also, the fact that he is looking at people who have, “pride,” excludes him from that group showing that he is not prideful about the situation.
ReplyDeleteUnder the Viaduct of the homeless under a new bridge. " The luck of the mighty had tumbled," this chronicles the transformation of the wealthy, to poor and homeless of the depression. Thomas's car is taken away and he is walking home for the car has been taken away.
ReplyDeleteThe has short sentences surrounding a long sentence that trails off, as Thomas is taken away with his despondency at never having had a a son, to walk through this situation with, go teach him from the experience. The diction of the poem with words such as "gray" "loosened pavement"and "worms" cast it as melancholy, parallel the feelings of the depression.
The poem that spoke to me most of all of them is Aurora Borealis. To be completely honest I don't really understand what she is talking about but i love the way it is written. I think she is talking about people who are looking for so much more than what they have, and I'm not talking about like physical things but mental and emotional things.I love the last line she uses. This whole chapter makes me wonder about Thomas. Who is this guy? I love her metaphors in this play, I can really picture what she is saying but i can also see the metaphor that i think it stands for. SHe is a good yet confusing writier
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