Week 9 WS - 26 and 27 Nov

SOUND PATTERNING IV

VERSE FORMS

(PLUS METRE, RHYTHM AND RHYME)

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

·        Study the handout on Verse Forms (below) and review the one on Rhyme and Sound Repetition (from two weeks ago). 

·        Read the poems below (those by Bishop and Thomas; we’ll skip Keats’s ‘Upon First Looking at Chapmpan’s Homer’) and prepare their rhyme-scheme analysis (aba etc.). Compare the ways in which they employ elements of sound, especially rhyme and sound repetition (assonance, consonance, alliteration).

·        We will also discuss Keats's 'To Autumn' and Hopkins's 'Windhover' from last time, focussing on the same: rhyme & sound repetition.

·        Do the new poems (by Bishop and Thomas) have anything in common in terms of their theme or the emotions/mood they convey? What are the poems telling you?

·        In Bishop, concentrate on how objects represent emotions and experiences and how these associations change throughout the poem. 

ADDITIONAL LINKS AND READING MATERIALS

On villanelle https://poets.org/glossary/villanelle

On Thomas's villanelle (with and audio of the poet reading his poem) https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night

On Bishop's 'Sestina' and DNA structure:
Janine Rogers 'Life Forms: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina” and DNA Structure', Unified Fields: Science and Literary Form (Montreal, London, Ithaca: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014), 66-82.