Mr. Egon Pound
St. Elizabeth Hospital
Washington, D.C.

fellow SUFFERers !! this is a large and impressive
thumps College Eng/ Lit on Table / and OPPressive
text book.

Dont panic. No one expects you to remember all of it. You
will be lucky if you remember the 10 or 20 best poems. in it.

There ARE good things in it, and in 20 or 30 years you may be glad
to have read 'em.

I greatly enjoyed studying under V.M. He used to make us read the
poems before we read comment / and REread 'em.

Unless you or the management
(Miss Dunn) greatly object, that is the
method I shall use with you.

As text book I do NOT think this book is as good as the one you presum
had last year/
namely Hayford
(wire or what the) and Vincent.

If you brought that book nack with you and havent sold it
I strongly recommend you to look at the MAIN features in it.

namely/ Directions writer/
etc. You have the summary / fill it in.

Somebody on Agassiz / Browning / the first part of the
Hazlitt.

so as to get yr feet on something solid before entering this
thick wood, largely obscured by the trees.

My first surprise is Tobin and co/ have included the Wanderer, and
omitted the Seafarer.
generally considered superior to all buy
but one / passage of the Wanderer.
and available in a recognizedly magnificent
translation.

O.K. read 'em the Seafarer/ as they wont have had a lesson
prepared. for Wednesday.

If you have ELECTED this course, you are supposed to LIKE literature
or to prefer it to something else.

whatever else we do, I shall try to read you one good poem
in every meeting, whether it be 2 lines or longer.

The introduction tells you the Romans invaded britain, then some barbarians, Pope Gregory sent Augustine over to convert the inhabitants

dont confuse this Augustine with an earlier " Saint " who lived in Africa.

Gregory as a practical hint, told Aug/ to feed 'em first and
try religion when they were enjoying a feeling of having been fed.

p. 15 Seafarer.

O.K. read 'em the seafarer/ and then the Dream of the Rood.

that will damn near fill the hour ???

IF you read 'em the decent stuff in CLASS they will at least hear it
ONCE/ and neither you nor they will be pestered

AND it is well known
that fools assign more reading than ANY class is ever ass enough
to do.

I refused p.g. exam at U.Penn, cause I had NOT read Shx/
and wd/ have been IDiotic to pretend to having studied elizabethan
literature, drama without HAVING read Shx/

lot of bunk that studs/ DO
actually go thru all the stuff assigned.

ROOD/ cross/ no doubt some people do have visions /
that the christians and monks went in for it.

no reason to doubt that Caedmon or whoever wrote
this def dream actually had it.

it is translated into simple language, which is a blessing.

it doesn't prove anything but that tyhe author had got filled up w
with Xtn writings.

The most famous record of a vision in Europe is Dante's
Divine Comedy.

ANGLO SAXON, the best linguist I know found it harder to learn
than french or latin /

you are mercifully provided with clear prose translation.

But some of the Beowulf is magnificent as sound.

I do not know whether one of my friends ever actually proved that
music of the Aillte (pronounced Ó Ail *cheh*) which the
Kennedy Frasers found still being sung in the hebrides was the
original Beowulf music / he was convinced that it was sung
to something very like that.

Joyce called him Alfred Lawn-Tennis on/ but no need to go 100% ash can.

To
he is unduly out of fashion because of his genteel approach. but wdn't
sink into a Tinker trans/ as the Beowulf.

Nothing to worry about / 40 pages of the KIND of thing they
had to read AT THAT TIME.

AND TO SUM UP

I repeat that this book is not as good as the freshman book, they are
both to be taken as exhibits,

as if you went to a picture gallery.

The freshman book was full of vulgarity and cheap reputations, BUT
it contained some remarkably vital matter /

it was the job of the
student to FIND it,
to decide what he she likes, to pick out
the real stuff.

This book is made by men who took what they were given. they did not
dislike good poetry

but they did not venture and take risks like whoosis
and Vincent.

It is an exhibit of some very fine poetry, and a lot that is there
because it has BEEN there in text books. they hadn't the nerve to throw it
out.

It is up to you to hunt round and find out what is still alive.
some of it IS still alive.

The rest you are to take from historic angle /
the kind of thing people liked when Hamm wHH 's grandfather
was in school. or before then.

The introductions will tell you when. And you can decide whether
it makes you believe in progress.

A great deal of explains why a lot
of people BUY cheap magazines instead of books written a couple of
hundred years ago.

BUT some of it is better than the magazines, which you
quite properly throw away and forget.

Some of it you will be glad to remember in 40 years
time iHH.

English II--Final Exam

Spring Semester, 1958

Instructor: Spann

I. Identify the following men by placing each in the period which he lived and listing at least one poem written by each.

Example

T. S. Eliot--20th Century--"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

1. Alexander Pope--

2. Thomas Hardy

3. Lord Byron--

4. Robert Browning--

5. Dante Gabriel Rossetti--

II. Write a brief summary on <u>ONE</u> of the following poems:

A. "The Rape of the Lock"

B. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

III. Robert Browning makes use of the dramatic monologue. Discuss this as a technique for poetry using one of his poems as an example.

IV. Explain the difference between symbolism and imagism.

V. Discuss Eliot's use of imagery in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."