Okay ladies, good morning from Palestine, Gaza,
the Islamic University of Gaza. We continue our
English poetry course at the Islamic University
English department. Next week is the midterms, so
let's do some kind of review, but before we do
that, I want to go again, just very quickly
preview the two poems we discussed last time.
Remember, when you approach a poem, you have to do
it strategically and systematically. You could use
whatever approach, whatever system,
whatever approach, whatever you like. But at the
end of the day, you need to give me some kind of
comprehensive reading of the poem. I personally
like to start with the little things, so I can
build a case, build a pattern out of the things
that the poets give us. There's always this
question of authorial intention, whether the
author intended something or not. We don't care
about this, because the poem, language, poetry,
literature, they're bigger than us. They're more
pervasive than us, than even the writers. And
there's this theory that suggests that once the
author, once somebody publishes a text, it no
longer becomes his or hers, because this person,
this author, writer, turns into a reader. So don't
try to seek what the author originally intended.
So sometimes we deal with a poem and try to see
what we get from it. And because this is
sometimes done with different approaches. For example,
the reader response theories would suggest that
there are as many meanings or interpretations to a
text as there are readers. This is good. I always
encourage you to give me your opinion to see how
things are said or done. But in order to make a
balance, we try to look at the text itself. And
this is the most significant thing to me. This is
how I like to do things. This is how I like to
appreciate literature, studying the structures,
studying the forms, studying the language, the
word order, which could be called the close
reading approach where you try to see the beauty
of how words can do magic, how changing the word
order, how changing or replacing one word with
another can create a fascinating metaphor or
a particular sound pattern or anything like we
studied many times. That's why I know
some of you would hate it when I just say, why is
this stressed? Why isn't this stressed? Why is
there a perfect rhyme, not a perfect rhyme? In my
opinion, this is a more beautiful approach. It
helps you to appreciate language and literature.
It helps you dive deeper and deeper into the language
itself. Because I believe that there are only a
handful of themes out there.
Romanticism, mainly it's about what? Anti-
authoritarian, anti-establishment, nature,
poetry. Isn't that it? Childhood, right? Right?
Innocence. Countryside. Impact of nature on us. So
if you study a hundred poems by William
Wordsworth, and at the end of the day, all you
look for is nature, nature, nature, nature, isn't
that repetitive and boring? But look at how he
does different things sometimes to get to the same
theme, the same objective. And I mentioned this
last time, if poets believed that it's all about
the theme, they could have stopped writing poetry
centuries ago. Because why would I write a new
poem if there is another love poem that exists
already? Why wouldn't I borrow the poem? And
that's it, that's fine. Everyone is different.
Everyone is amazing in his or her own way.
And I quoted someone who told a critic, I have so
many ideas, I want to write poetry. Because we
think, we do this sometimes, wow, I'm reading
these books, you know, listening to these speeches
or talks or TEDx or whatever, and then like, you
feel that you're inspired because you have so many
ideas.
And then the man said, poetry, my friend, is made
with words, not with ideas. And I connected this
with even Coleridge's definition of poetry, that
poetry is the best words in the best order. So
there is always this deliberate, conscious attempt
to choose the word that is
most suitable for its context. For
example, with John Donne, remember before John
Donne, during John Donne's time, the classical and
Augustan poets, they were speaking about lofty
subject matter and used lofty, elevated, highly
sophisticated diction. This has to be balanced.
Now when John Donne wrote differently, used
different language, a different conversational tone
and everything, he was accused in many books, if you
open the books you will see them describing
John Donne's language as vulgar. And I don't think
John Donne's language is vulgar. It's just that
people were not used to using this language in
this particular way. It doesn't make it, it
doesn't mean it's not poetic, doesn't mean it's
wrong, but for them it was the wrong language
because when you talk about God, how would you
talk about God and say like what he did, for
example, "Batter my heart, three-personed God, ravish
me" and these phrases and giving orders to God or
"Death be not proud." You see, he "spit in my face,"
Jews, with one of the sonnets. This is vulgar for
so many, but for Donne, this is the most
suitable language. This is the best of words.
Unlike Trump, of course, who claims to have the best words,
who claims to have the best words. So when you
look at this poem, we try to make sense of the
form, of the shape. We say this is a short poem of
four stanzas. We count the lines, so try to see if
he is creating a perfect structure or not. And then
in poetry, we always have this. So one, two,
three, four, five, six, right? Six lines, six
lines, six lines, six lines. We examine the rhyme
scheme and we realize that stanza one, stanza two,
and stanza four have perfect rhyme schemes. The
same regular, perfect rhyme scheme except for
stanza number three. Here we take a note
because there could be something significant. If there is any
imperfection, or a stanza that has, or a line that
has an extra syllable or two extra syllables, it is
usually something the poet is trying to draw our
attention to. Like he's telling us, slow down
here, I'm sending you a message. Of course, people
who don't study poetry will not pay attention to
these things. That's why it makes you special,
makes you different. That's why I always say this,
those who study English literature and English
poetry become the best translators and the best
writers and the best journalists because you
understand these tiny differences that people
never pay attention to. You just say, Wait a minute,
some time ago a student came to me and said, I met
a student from another university and I discussed
with her, we spoke about poetry, she's studying
poetry, I'm studying poetry, and she was amazed at
how we do things and how beautifully different we
are. And I hope this is going to make a huge
impact on you. So like I remember we said the
themes, for example, we understand that this is a
Romantic text, we understand even if we don't
know in the final exam you will have an unseen
extract from a poem you didn't study, unless you
really read a lot of poetry and you come across it.
And it's your job to try to tell whether this is
probably Romantic or Metaphysical or 20th-century
or war poetry or Shakespearean from the sensibility,
the features, the form, you know? So if you study
this poem, this is a pure nature poem, right? Is
he saying at the end of the day, for example, and
these daffodils look like your cheeks when you eat
pizza? He's not using this whole scene just as
some kind of decoration to make a point, etc.
He's writing this about nature, inspired by nature,
to nature. And we've seen at the end how he
submitted himself totally to nature. Okay.
Now, we paid attention to little things that I
consider to be huge, like a poet could not but be
in awe of nature, and the ending line where we have a stress on
a word that normally shouldn't be stressed, and we
connected this with the theme of the poem. If you
were to read it with, "and dances with the daffodils."
"and dances with the daffodils" in this stressed
way, indicating the emphasis of this word being
the key issue in the whole, being the theme of the
poem. This is about oneness, melting in nature,
becoming one with, I don't know if adopting is the right
word, but submitting yourself to nature, allowing
yourself to be controlled and overwhelmed by
nature, not the other way around.
Now, and then I spoke a little bit about this.
Fascinating poem. Remember the first thing that we
look at, it's a short poem, and then we count the
lines, 14 lines. Some of you might be
surprised because, wait a minute, didn't some of
you say the best definition for poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
recollected in tranquility? Probably it still is.
And now, when we realize that this is a sonnet,
and then we examine it and we understand that this
is a Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet with an A, B, B, A,
A, B, B, A, C, D, C, D, C, D rhyme scheme. If you
count the syllables and you realize that they're
all 10 syllables, five feet each, except maybe
this one. Unless, remember we said, "and all bright
and glittering in the smokeless air." If you, I'm
not sure if the original manuscript, if it just
removes the, you know, sometimes the apostrophe
instead of one syllable here, the apostrophe, the
schwa. So if you could still say, "all bright and 195 00:11:45,
Sad, that probably he's like at home, like,
Okay. But so this could be, this could apply here.
He's, he's at home asleep, hungry, thinking of
something in a vacant or impulsive mood. And then he
remembered this experience on the bridge early in
the morning and then, wow. Actually, he denies that,
because the word "recollected" means that it's being
studied, it's being thought of, and it's being
organized. So maybe the spontaneous overflow of
feelings is when he actually looked at it. Then he
recollected it, and studied it, and organized it.
Recollected, okay, if you take "recollected" as
such, possible. But "recollected" doesn't
necessarily, doesn't only mean this. The first
thing that comes to mind is "recalled," remembered.
He could have said, "and I would be studying it."
I'm not denying this. There's no such, I know like
great poets always do this. That's why free verse
sometimes, you know, poetry, blank verse,
sometimes you could write something and you never
touch it and it's the perfect text. If you want to
write a sonnet, you sometimes take the hammer and
do some, you know, hammering here or there in
order to just make it smoother, or not, to indicate
something. Okay. Let me first discuss the meaning
of poetry. Like, this word's definition was my
least favorite because I did not really believe in
all the spontaneous overflow of thoughts and
feelings. But at the same time, I remember, like,
I tried to compare this with Arabic. And I
remember in Arabic, we have something, I do not
remember the term, but like when poets used to
stand in front of each other and start, like,
mocking each other and satirizing. But many people
still do this. Yes, but they write the poetry on
the spot and it is spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings and it is very highly
structured. So I think that in Arabic it's like a
more, like, I don't know, maybe because it's an
older language and it's more structured than
English. English is more of a modern language, so
I don't think that it applies to these. That's
also possible if you are a poet. I'm sure some of
you have started writing more and more poetry recently.
And that's why it's the best thing to understand
poetry is to write it. Try to write a sonnet. Give
it a try. Tell yourself, okay, next inspiration,
next revelation, I'm writing a sonnet. I'm sure
it's not going to be easy, but it's not going to
be impossible at the same time. If you write it,
you'll end up, and we're not native speakers,
we're not Shakespeare, we're not Wordsworth. There
is a possibility that he just wrote it and he did
nothing. Many people feel this, that the music is
there, there is harmony, and some people would
say, no, there is no harmony. Like when you, it's
just try to read the poem for yourself aloud. If
you look at Shakespeare's sonnets, they mostly
flow. You know? They mostly flow. Try to sing it
alone. They mostly flow. John Donne, for example,
they don't usually flow. Because with John Donne,
he, you know, plays with the meter a lot. Not just
like, for example, with, we said, "Shall I compare
thee to a summer's day?" That were more lovely and
more temperate? Rough winds do shake the darling
buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short
a date. Like, it flows. But with John Donne,
sometimes you have to slow down, even with the
romantics, despite the simplicity of structure,
sometimes it doesn't flow as it used to because
they have more freedom nowadays. They have this
intention to break the rules. So I'm not saying
that it doesn't totally, but again, it attracts
our attention. So why are you choosing, that's the
question I'm raising. Why are you using the form
of a sonnet? Could this be connected with the fact
that he is in London? You know, the sonnet being,
sorry to use this term, being restrictive, in a way
it doesn't allow you to say everything, it
controls you. And London controlling everybody's
life, even the tiny little, you know, like things
you do. There are so many rules, there are so many
regulations in London, and that's why he chose
this perfect form, the sonnet, to mirror this kind
of relationship between man and poetry and man and
the city and man and London. Okay? And at the same
time, you could also be surprised by the fact that
this man is praising London. The meme I posted the
other day, last night, about this man saying,
you know, "My heart with pleasure fills and dances
with the daffodils." The daffodils are everything.
I love them. They're the most perfect thing I have
ever seen. And then he is saying, "the city now
does like a garment, wear the beauty of the
morning, silent, bare, and still, so touching in its
majesty." Why on earth is this man praising the
city? We said romantic literature, this is a core
feature of Romanticism. It's in its essence, an
anti-city portrait.
A kind of poetry that hates the city, that
considers the city to be the source of corruption,
the source of depersonalization, the source of
fragmentation, whatever you call it. So go back,
that's why a return to nature is a major Romantic
feature. Let's go back to nature, to Mother
Nature. And by the way, the name "Romantic," at that
time, they didn't call themselves the Romantic
poets or Romantics. Later critics did this. And
the term at that time, the term "Romantic" was used
to refer to medieval times. To medieval times, a
time when there was less, there was basically no
industrial revolution, no factories, no steam
engine, no engines, no pollution, at least
compared to that time. Pollution, corruption,
people were basically, of course, man was never
good. But compared to those times, it was a lot
better in the past. And this, I guess, why he
jumps over Shakespeare and picks a form that is
also as old as those, you know, medieval times.
At times described as, I don't know, like when man
was not in control of nature like he is now,
destroying nature at that time. And this also
could be connected with the fact that he's using
these words, "doth." If he said "does," it's the same
thing. It's going to be the same thing meter-wise,
rhythm-wise. But he opts for "doth." And then
the same thing with the river Glym. It's
"glides," if you add this, it takes an extra
syllable here. Glym. So river Glym. He goes
back. I'm sure some of you are familiar with
William Blake's "London." When he expresses his
anger that everything is chartered, everything is
in chains, in manacles. Man is controlling and
regulating everything, there's no freedom,
everything, even whatever is suffocating, being
polluted and being controlled. So he's again
jumping to the past, and that's why again the
beauty of how to understand this, and these are
the kind of questions I want to ask you in the
exam. Why is he using "doth" instead of "does"? Why
does he use the Middle English form of the word
"glides"? Using "glides." Is that significant?
Remember we said in a way also poetry, if it is
the best of words in the best order, this is a
process of making choices, what
word to choose, what word not to choose. If you
are a beginner, it begins as artificial. You try
to make the best impact.
But when you are a professional like Wordsworth,
things naturally flow, of course, and will be more
spontaneous compared to others. So we realize at
the end that this is a poem written in London from
a particular place, the bridge. There's a distance
between him and the people, and probably the
London Bridge here wasn't as high as we can
imagine, but still it's in a high position. And
even the timing here, at dawn, sunrise, the
beauty, even here he's saying the beauty of the
morning. Silent and bare, everything is silent and
bare. So we realize that he's not praising London
as London as such, he's actually praising a
people-less London. No people, there's no
reference, there's no mention of people. Even when
they use the word "asleep," it doesn't refer to
people. The very houses, and "very" here is for
emphasis. The houses themselves are asleep.
There's a personification here. How peaceful this
is.
Therefore, that's why I would take "lie" as a pun.
To lie, to sit, or to sleep. He's lying. Let
sleeping dogs lie. Or, not to tell the truth. So this
silent, beautiful, majestic scenery is a lie.
Because in a minute, in five minutes, in ten
minutes, in thirty minutes, it's all going to be
again smoke and smog and noise and shouting and
street vendors and these things and then there's
no peace, there's no quiet, there's no calm any
longer. But what I find disturbing is the last
line: "Dear God, the very houses seem asleep." This
is not real because "seem asleep," even "asleep," it's
just a short time. And here it's a garment,
something that you wear and you can shed, you take
off, you change.
And all the might and all that mighty heart, not
sure exactly what he means by the mighty heart. Is
it the machine? The heart? The heart of England?
The city itself? The city, the idea of the city?
The factories? The heart of the beast? The 411 00:24:49,690
manufacturing, the factories became dominant.
That's correct. That's correct. Yeah, I agree.
Is this a sonnet?
Fourteen lines, Petrarchan, the octave, the
sextet, it is a sonnet. But he changed, like John
Donne, he changed. Remember we said there are
many of you probably didn't see this. There are so
many similarities between the metaphysicals and
the Romantics. John Donne changed that; this is a
sonnet. The sonnet, the class; John Donne freed
the sonnet. He broke the chains around the sonnet
and everybody else started to take the sonnet the
way they liked. So thank you, John Donne.
But remember the imperfect rhyme here. This could
also be part of the fact that this is still, even
though the word "majesty" is not majestic; it's not
perfect. It's not, you know, perfect; it's not
complete. So there's still this tension that this
imperfect rhyme creates, the tension that creates
a conflict that could tell us that this is all
just a sham. It's just temporary; it's not going
to live forever. This is not, but with nature,
it's all the time. That's why I say, "For oft when
on my couch I lie," the present simple, every time
I lie. But here, it's not the same; different. So
yeah, I agree; he's not present. There's a whole
genre of poetry called "city poetry." You could do
some research on this in the future. City poetry,
how poets tackle the city in different ways. And the
most fascinating thing about this is when you
compare between outsiders, like Wordsworth; he
wasn't a Londoner; he was an outsider, and William
Blake, who was a Londoner, who lived in London.
In London, if I can recall, he said, "I wandered
through each street," or something like this. He was
in the streets, chartered streets, exactly; in the
streets, feeling and sensing the pain, the woes,
the cries, the babies, the harlots, the soldiers,
the blood; feeling it and touching it and sensing
it. But this man, he is himself; he's just up
above. He goes to London and sees beauty. Many
people will be revolted by this. Come on! At the
time, London... like there was a lot of pain, a lot of
suffering, hunger, and diseases, and people were
dying. This is one reason why the younger
generation of the Romantics hated, in many ways,
to some extent, hated Wordsworth, accusing him of
being an escapist, instead of coming face to face
with
the problems, the trouble, the pain, the suffering;
it's just running away. Some people call them tree
huggers, just making fun of them. Tree-huggers;
they just want to hug trees, and then all their
pains just go away. Are you poor? Just come see
these daffodils, and you'll be fine. Do you have
exams? You want to cope with that stress?
Come to nature. This could help. I'm not being
condescending here; this could help. And people
who would... I would defend Wordsworth saying that
this is a revolution in poetry, because
politically speaking, the British government was
really shaking, because there was a rebellion, a
revolution in America, a revolution in France, and
they were like, "Oh my God! Oh my God!" By the way,
you could read... there are so many later
declassified reports, because the English
intelligence was spying on Wordsworth and
Coleridge because they thought that those people
were planning a revolution. And they were, but not
like the revolution, the political revolution.
They were doing a revolution in poetry, in
language, in thinking, and in sensibility, which is
fascinating in itself, which paved the way. And
when you compare this to Chile... Chile is a...
Che Guevara, right? He was a man of actions; he
wanted to topple the government. You are many;
they are few.
Read "The Anarchy." There was a
massacre in Manchester, and read the "Ode to the
West Wind" and even "Ozymandias," mocking
authority. You know? Which one? Yeah, I too, but
some people, again, for this; again, the thing
that makes you love Shelley, many people say, "Hmm,
he's too political. I don't like poetry to be too
political." So there's always somebody who would
hate something about your writing or somebody's
writing. Yeah, yeah, right. Byron; you should, you
should read something by Byron. Byron was
deliberately attacking, openly attacking, even
naming Coleridge and Wordsworth in his poetry, not
just alluding to them, calling them, making fun of
them. Okay, if you have questions here, just say
something very briefly, and we'll just do the
review for the whole course. I think what
happens between Blake and Wordsworth is the same
thing that's happening here in Gaza; like some
people show you some good pictures and some
fascinating pictures of Gaza, and you look at them
you say, like, "Okay, this is Paris. Okay, so okay, let
me get this straight. Well, let's agree on this:
Wordsworth is Instagram of Gaza, and William Blake
is Twitter of Gaza. Okay, so with Instagram, it's like
it's always beautiful; it's always cheesy, and you
know... Really? The funny thing is that when we see
those people who give that flowery image, we call
them Romantics in Arabic. Yes, exactly. We say
that they are... "Don't romanticize pain; don't
romanticize occupation; don't romanticize
suffering." Right? We do this. The thing is that
both of them, or these both sides, or both parties
want to serve their own good. Their own? Yes,
their own good. Okay. And maybe like Wordsworth,
when he wrote his poetry, he wanted to serve his
own part of the book, the narrative palace that
they wrote. And for maybe like—being self
expression. He doesn't care about the society; he
just cares about himself. Exactly. That's a huge
thing to say. I'm not going to get into this
because there's a lot of things to unravel here.
Okay? So anything you want to say about
Wordsworth? Okay, so do you have questions for the
course, exams, anything quickly before we see last
year's midterm exam?
What do you think?
I tend usually not to take sides, so I raise
issues, raise questions for you to think and to
adopt whatever opinion you like. I don't want to
put you in a corner and tell you this is what you
need to do, although you know teachers sometimes
shouldn't be believed.
So yeah, "out did the sparkling waves in glee."
Continuous? No, it's continuous "as the stars that
shine." That's the only one that has an extra
syllable, yeah?
In these cases, remember, it's either one
syllable, one vowel sound is not pronounced as we
pronounce it these days, or there is, again, a
deliberate attempt to tell us that something is
more, extra; something doesn't conform with the
rules here. So this "continuous," because he's
reaching to the stars; that's a possibility.
Possible, yeah. Like with "glittering" here.
possible, but I, again, I'm honest with you; I could
say the same thing about each line, any line. Okay,
more questions about the course? Do you have
questions, any poem, any text, any poet, any idea?
Okay, we have a question here from Noha. Excuse
me? Could you just please...? Yeah. The question that
we raised like minutes ago, when we said like about
spontaneous overthrow; I think this corresponds
with our controversial question of "Is a poet made
or born?" Thank you very much. That's very, very
significant, important. I think of this all the
time. Are poets born or made?
Are you just born a poet? And you realize at one
point that, "Oh, I'm a poet. I can write poetry."
Or do you have to study, to learn, to go to
university, to attend classes? Of course,
everybody is going to say "both." But what is it? Is
it more of this or more of that? Yeah, please. I
think that some people are born with a talent, and
if they get more skillful with studying, their
coaching will be the best. Some people can learn
writing poetry through skill, but they won't be as
good as the talented. It's more patience than having
talent. If you have the patience to read more, to
develop yourself, you'll do great things. Is it
like patience or attitude? Like, you know, I
always quote Monica Geller: "You are a poet, and you
know it." So this is an attitude. Like, "I think I
can be a poet." I think I can be a poet. In Arabic,
in our culture, there is an Arab poet called
Nabigha. I'm not sure which one of them. There are
three Nabighas. Nabigha Al-Jaadī or something. No,
I got this totally wrong. Somebody called, a man
who kept writing poetry for like 40 years, and it
was all, it sucked all. And then at one point he
became a poet all of a sudden, and then he said
لازال يهدي حتى
قال شعران He kept writing trash until all of a
sudden he started writing poetry. So yeah, practice,
patience, practice, patience; but significantly, an
attitude. Look at the fascinating concrete poems
you wrote; all you need is just a push; there's a
bonus mark if you write this, and all of a sudden
you all turn into poets, right? So you could add
this to the list: patience, attitude, passion,
practice, and marks, or linen, yeah? Sorry?
Thank you very much. Good writers are originally 634 00:3
rules. And you have to follow them, the rules of
decorum; you have to be well-read in Latin, in
Greek, in ancient literatures, so you can, you
know what's going on and you know what to do in
your poetry. And always people who learn, who work
hard to get to become readers, writers, good
writers and good poets, they will not be happy
with naturals. And the same thing is, again, if you
talk about football, Messi and Ronaldo, many
people say Messi is a natural. He's a talent. But
Ronaldo worked very, very, very, very hard to be
the world footballer he is now.
Okay, more, more questions. More questions. I want
to conclude something that both of us, if you take
this way or take this way, you will succeed at the
end. This is the point. Exactly. That's why I say
everybody is a poet. There is a poet asleep
inside. Keep feeding him or her pizza, and you will
have a lot of poetry at the end of the day.
Because if you don't, again, if you think that, I
know someone who said, "I will never ever be able
to drive a car. It would be tough." So this
attitude is significant. Like how I believe that
some people are born really clever, and some
people work really hard at school. So we would
find the clever person would study on the exam
night, and he would get a full mark, while the
other would be studying the whole semester to get
that full mark. So some people are natural. Some
people work hard, and both deserve respect. And
another thing, speaking about rhyme schemes and
the meter, I don't know if you were the one who
said it, or I read it somewhere, but it says that
a poet has the music in his head, so he basically
doesn't even have to think of the meter. Some
poets just have the music; they write it based on
how they read the poem. Again, this is a question
I'm not interested in whether he worked to tweak
the poem for the rhyme scheme, or it just
naturally came this way. What I care about is that
we have it this way now. And you can, by the way,
if you are interested in this, you will find so
many poets' writing the manuscripts. You'll find
first drafts, and second drafts, and third drafts of
the same poem. And I know many people who are
interested, who do a lot of research on this. Like
with Tamim al-Barghouti, for example, you will
find that the poem sometimes he recites here or
there. He would add a couple of lines here. He
would change a word there. He would change
something there. So people try to compare early
editions with late editions, and why the change is
taking place. And is this related to how somebody
wants to work to improve the poem, you know, see the
point, like when you change the rhyme scheme or
something. Is this you improving the poem? Does it
change it? Doesn't make it better? Does it? But again,
we don't—we—when I never said that this is a good
poem and this is a bad poem, yeah, because there are
millions of poems in English literature, and we're
studying only like 30 of them, so naturally we pick
And that's also bad in a way because we choose the
canonical texts, the canonical writers, and
sometimes other writers remain ignored. Something
else.
Something else. Something else. Please. I think
yeah.
Some people believe that modernism started with
William Blake or with the Lyrical Ballads or the
preface to the Lyrical Ballads. I do believe, and I
have evidence for this, that our friend Joan Dunn
is the pioneer in modernism. It was he who
started this whole movement of changing the way,
not only just the way, everything about pottery.
The sensibility, the themes, the forms, the
structures, the rules. The man toppled everything,
brought pottery down to earth, to us, to the
masses. Pottery is for all, for the 99%, not for
the one percent, the elite.
Please. Doctor, we studied the schools and jump
from school to another school. Do the poets, or
where they know each other as one school, follow?
Sometimes, yes. There is this small circle. Poets,
not every poet liked others. And many things
written about this. There's a book called, a
beautiful book called *Poets on Poets*. What poets
said about other poets. And there's Harold Bloom,
who just passed away two weeks ago, wrote this book
about *The Anxiety of Influence*. Like poets, all
poets influence each other. That's why
intertextuality is everywhere. Sometimes even when
you don't want to be influenced, you get
influenced. It creates this anxiety.
So sometimes, yes, they did know each other. They
would, like the Romantics, Wordsworth and
Coleridge were best friends. Shelley, Byron, and
Keats, and what's that other guy? Shelley, Byron,
Keats, and Shelley, and even Mary Shelley, like they
were friends; they would meet regularly, and even
with *Frankenstein*, the novel, it came as a kind of
context, a challenge, "Let's write something."
So yeah, more or less.
We're talking about a time when women were not
believed to be as intellectual as men were, when
women were not considered to be poets. Like, you
could write prose; you could write your own
diaries, but you couldn't write poetry because you're
not a man; you're not—like this was still
implanted in the mentalities of women. Her text is
really beautiful. In many ways, it's very vivid,
it's very—this entry. But Wordsworth, sorry, what
erases her altogether; he kicks her out of his
poem. She's no longer there. Some people would
accuse him of being anti-feminist. Again, imagine
yourself, if it was a dead body they saw; he's not
going to go to the police and say, "Hey, I saw a
dead body; I was wondering." He would say, "My
sister saw a dead body, and I was there." Imagine
yourself finding a treasure or winning the
lottery, you and your brother scratching something,
and then he goes to your mom and says, "Mom, I won
the lottery," or "Mom, I found this treasure," or
something. It would be—it is frustrating. Again,
some people say, sorry? Yeah, possible. It's just
selfishness. He felt that he is more superior than
her. So why bring her in the text? Why, you know?
Some people would say, "Because he loves nature
more." And again, I'm trying to imagine this
scenario where, again, she's complaining to her
mom, saying, "Mom, he even looked, had a peek at my
own diaries, and he got inspired by this," because
we don't know what inspired him. Was it this? No,
it's nothing against you, Dorothy. It's just I
love the daffodils more. That's even worse, yeah?
That's even worse. But again, many believe that
this is just an issue of solitude that is a core
Romantic issue. The issue of solitude and
imagination and individuality requires—head out of
the text. If you want to study, to take this as an
anti-feminist, it's up to you. I don't—I wouldn't
say no. But if you want to trace whether he is
anti-feminist or not, you need to look at other
texts, what he does with them. Okay, one more
before we see last year's questions.
Please. Who also used that reform of the UN? The
Romantics and people later on. With the Romantics
and the Modernist movement, 20th century.
Yeah, yeah. He's a Metaphysical.
Okay, last year's exam had two main questions.
Will be in a way similar to this year's exam. You
will be asked to comment, to write three or two
paragraphs to contextualize. I am not going to
give you the extract from the poem and just leave
it open to you. I want to give you the topic
sentence, the issue. Like this question with
Shakespeare: "Uses the rigid form of the sonnet to
control the uncontrollable." Look at this. And I'm
giving you this; focus on this. At least 80, 70%
of your answer will be focused on the text given.
This is significant to me. Okay? So you could say,
for example, this—the lines given is the couplet
of Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's
day?" This couplet rhymes perfectly, and each has
ten syllables, five feet. This reflects the
rigidity, the strict structure that the sonnet
follows. See their organization, or something. Now,
in these lines, Shakespeare is saying, "I'm going
to live forever," because previously in the lines
above, he was kind of complaining that life is not
good to him or to anyone. Because every fear from
fear sometimes declines. And he wants to control
this, to control his own destiny, to take things
in his own hands by writing poetry. So life that
is being uncontrollable is being controlled in a
couple of lines by Shakespeare here. It's being
squeezed into a space of ten syllables, two lines,
perfect rhyme scheme. This could indicate
Shakespeare's attempt to seek immortality. This is
controlling his own destiny, his own life. He
determined what will happen to him, not life—that
destroys the darling buds of man. Did he succeed?
Definitely. He's bigger than life now, Shakespeare.
And you can't ask Harold Bloom about that. If you
look here, "though you make up to kill me, lead not
to that self-murder added. B and sacrilege, three
sins in killing three." What is a metaphysical
conceit, and how does Donne use it in this, in his
argument? Again, with special focus on this. A
Is stressed like this and unstressed. It's
the main verb stressed. It says anything you add to
the verb is unstressed: articles, determiners,
functional words, you call them in linguistics,
are unstressed. So the only part that emphasizes this
unity with nature is where we say "with," right? So
and dances with the daffodils, and dances with the
daffodils. Number
one is the opposite: stressed, unstressed, stressed,
unstressed, stressed, unstressed. And number two,
which syllable is this? One, two, three, four,
stress, syllable number four. One, two, three,
four, stressed. One, two, three, four, not
stressed. One, two, three, four, stressed. One,
two, three, four, stressed. So we exclude this and
we try to make sense of this. It turns out to be
which one?
Yeah.
It's "and."
The lion says "and dances with the daffodil." It's
D. and "done," unstressed, stressed. "Says" with
unstressed, stressed. "The," "the," unstressed, stressed.
who deals according to Virginia Woolf,
Unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed,
unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed,
unstressed, stressed,
unstressed, unstressed, unstressed, unstressed,
unstressed,
unstressed, unstressed, unstressed, unstressed,
unstressed. Empowers women, presents women as
dependent on men, perplexes the minds of women,
presents women as silent, meek, and submissive. The
fact that the sick rose could have various
interpretations indicates Blake's belief in
the individual over the collective, the collective
over the individual; an anti-romantic philosophy that
states a duty to control public thought.
It is. In "A poet could not but be gay," words were
shifts from "I" to "a poet" because he was referring
to his sister Dorothy, trying to avoid naming his
sister. Three
afraid
people will say he is gay; he doesn't want to come
out of the closet. Criticizing neoclassical poets
Sorry? What's that?
I don't
think he meant his sister.
Both believe that a poem's
content or theme should create its form or
structure. Shakespeare and Donne, the neoclassicists
and the romantics, the romantics and the
metaphysicals, Donne and Marvell, Donne
and the romantics. The repetition of the same or
similar sounds in two or more words, usually in
the ending syllables of lines in poems and songs.
What's the key word in the question? Ending, ending
rhyme.
The literary device in Wyatt's sonnet, "Fainting I
follow, I leave off therefore," is in the opening
couplet of "The Bait." John Donne subverts
mainstream artistic traditions by employing parody,
alternating rhyme, apostrophe, meter variations.
The official institution of poetry attacked John
Donne and rejected his poetry. In literature, this
phenomenon is described as feminism,
intertextuality, a literary movement, or framing.
At least in these cases, if you're not sure, try
to eliminate one or two answers and try just to
think about them. To condemn Zionist alien rule
over Jerusalem in his masterpiece, *Fil Quds* in
Jerusalem, Tamim al-Barghouti invokes old Arabic
traditions of gallantry and chivalry in the second
stanza, openly calls for armed struggle, begins
with a classical poetic form, and shifts to
a loose poetic form, shifts from a loose poetic form to a
classical one. And that's it. Good
question, please. Stressed
that
no, with... oh no, I'm talking about "with"—that is not
stressed. Okay, any questions? If you want to stay
behind for questions, please do. Thank you very much
and see you in two weeks. Do your best for the
exams.