Tuesday, June 30, 2009

E-Learning- A Poet

Poet: John Keats
John Keats was apprenticed to be an apothecary-surgeon, but never practiced his profession. Why? He dedicated his life to poetry, and chose it over studying medicine. Keats is a name that is a must figure in any list of the greatest English poets.
Keats lost both his parents at a young age. He struggled against the obstacles of his lower-middle class social standing, limited education, early association with the "Cockney School" of poetry, and poor health, as he sought to develop his skills as a poet and advance his poetical theories. Keats also experienced many other setbacks in the early days. Initially his writing and poetry received many bad reviews and his works were frowned upon. However, he persevered and didn’t give up.
Writing some of his finest poetry between 1818 and 1819, Keats mainly worked on "Hyperion," a Miltonic blank-verse epic of the Greek creation myth, and later renaming it to “ The Fall of Hyperion” Unfortunately, he was struck by tuberculosis that same autumn. Under his doctor's orders to seek a warm climate for the winter, Keats went to Rome with his friend, the painter Joseph Severn. Unfortunately, he died at the age of twenty-five..
Keats poems and quotes provide food for the souls of the hopeless romantics everywhere. Though he only lived 25 years, the works he left behind provided him with somewhat of an immortality. Just imagine the wealth of literature that he might have created had he lived longer. Criticized in life, revered in death -- Keats was a true poet. Even his tombstone, with the words "Here lies one whose name was writ in water" is poetic genius.

Thesis : Critics on John Keats work
After his premature death, and well into the nineteenth century, Keats's poetry continued to be disparaged as overly sensitive, sensuous, and simplistic. By the twentieth century, however, his position within the romantic movement have been revalued by critics. Keats continues to draw scholarly, critical, and popular attention. Issues examined by modern critics include Keats's political leanings; his theories regarding poetic imagination and "negative capability"; the rapid development of his poetry and his treatment of women in his poetry.
One issue modern critics have studied is the discrepancy between the initial, often negative, reception of Keats and his poetry and the stellar literary reputation Keats enjoys today. Modern critics focuses their studies on the barrier posed by Keats's social standing, pointing out ways in which his lower-middle-class status affected his work and influenced the negative reviews offered by his former critics. They also maintained that Keats's potential political subversiveness was the reason his poetry was deprecated by contemporary critics and that Keats makes his revulsion for the politics of the day and his desire for social and political progress explicit themes in both his poetry and his letters.
To gain insight into his poetical theories, critics examines Keats's letters to his family and friends and discusses what the letters reveal about Keats's theories of "negative capability," the truth of Imagination, and "soul-making. They reveal his belief that human suffering is a necessary experience in the processes of personality development and soulmaking, and that what the imagination apprehends as beauty must be truth. Crtics noted that Keats poem reflected his imagination and beauty as an aesthetic ideal and beauty remained the focus of the ideal. His mixed emotions about his love life, Fanny Brawne was also portrayed, suggesting a difficult relationship where the male is seen as most vulnerable.
Most modern students and scholars appear to be interested in Keats as an individual and as a poet, noting that to fully appreciate the poetry, one must fully appreciate the man. As one critic argued, Keats must be approached historically, rather than in the strictest literary sense, if analysis of his poetry "is to achieve either precision or comprehensiveness."
Despite the various criticism and views regarding Keats work, his is one of my favourite poets. Keats is such an accomplished and flamboyant poet and a true romantic. I enjoyed reading his poem, written with much creativity and style. His thought-provoking poems gave me much depth and set me thinking line after line. His use of hyperboles and metaphors made his poem come into life. I seem to be transported into his world of poems, and could visualise the beauty of his works.

Poem 1: Addressed To Haydon


High-mindedness, a jealousy for good,
A loving-kindness for the great man's fame,
Dwells here and there with people of no name,
In noisome alley, and in pathless wood:
And where we think the truth least understood,
Oft may be found a "singleness of aim,"
That ought to frighten into hooded shame
A money-mongering, pitiable brood.
How glorious this affection for the cause
Of steadfast genius, toiling gallantly!
What when a stout unbending champion awes
Envy and malice to their native sty?
Unnumbered souls breathe out a still applause,
Proud to behold him in his country's eye.

Poem 2: Hyperion

(An extract as the poem is very long….)
DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung above his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

Poem 3: Lines

UNFELT unheard, unseen,I've left my little queen,
Her languid arms in silver slumber lying
:Ah! through their nestling touch,
Who---who could tell how much
There is for madness---cruel, or complying?
Those faery lids how sleek!Those lips how moist!---they speak,
In ripest quiet, shadows of sweet sounds:
Into my fancy's ear
Melting a burden dear,
How "Love doth know no fulness, nor no bounds."True!---tender monitors!

http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century-criticism/keats-john
www.poemhunter.com

Monday, June 29, 2009

E-Learning: Poem Analysing

Hyperbole [exaggeration] , personification [taking in a human action] , metaphor [create an image in the mind] , similie [using words, like or as or than relating one thing to another] and symbolism [using a representing figure to carry additional meaning]

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Where the sidewalk ends by Shel Silverstein

-ANALYSIS-

Hyperbole:

"sun burns crimson bright" - This emphasises that the sun was hot and bright.

Metaphor:

"Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends."

The poet was painting a sad, gloomy street.

Symbolism

"cool in the peppermint wind"

Peppermint is cooling; the poet is describing the cool, refreshing breeze.

"moon-bird rests from his flight"

The term, moon-bird refers to a night bird resting near the calm sidewalk.

Personification

"walk with a walk that is measured and slow"

It means a person taking his time to walk and reflect/enjoy.

Similie

none. :(