Introduction to the Poem

by Boynton, Robert W.

• ISBN13: 9780867091434
• ISBN10: 0867091436
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-01-01
• Publisher: Greenwood-Heineman

Summary

Bob Boynton and Maynard Mack's intent from the first has been to suggest ways of approaching a poem that will make it more understandable and enjoyable--to introduce students to the art of reading poetry.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(4)
I The Poem as Subject	5	(28)
The Subject of a Poem May Be Anything Whatever	5	(4)
Lines for a Christmas Card	5	(1)
Hilaire Belloc
This Is the Grave of Mike O'Day	5	(1)
Anonymous
Epitaph	6	(1)
Anonymous
Epigram	6	(1)
Alexander Pope
The Gray Squirrel	6	(1)
Humbert Wolfe
On an Ecdysiast	7	(1)
John Ciardi
You Are You	7	(2)
Sandra Boynton
The Subject of a Poem Is Not the Same Thing as Its Theme	9	(6)
Mending Wall	10	(1)
Robert Frost
Cliff Klingenhagen	11	(1)
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Bredon Hill	12	(2)
A. E. Housman
The Big I	14	(1)
John Hall Wheelock
The Meaning of a Poem Is Not the Same Thing as Its Subject or Its Theme	15	(18)
God's Will for You and Me	16	(1)
Anonymous
A Man Who Had Fallen Among Thieves	16	(4)
E. E. Cummings
Delight in Disorder	20	(1)
Robert Herrick
Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter	21	(1)
John Crowe Ransom
A Narrow Fellow in the Grass	22	(1)
Emily Dickinson
The Sea Turtle and the Shark	23	(2)
Melvin B. Tolson
Without Benefit of Declaration	25	(2)
Langston Hughes
Dulce et Decorum Est	27	(1)
Wilfred Owen
plato told him	28	(2)
E. E. Cummings
The Sloth	30	(1)
Theodore Roethke
This Is Just to Say	31	(2)
William Carlos Williams
II The Poem as a Dramatic Situation	33	(48)
Every Poem Has a Speaker	33	(11)
The Man He Killed	34	(2)
Thomas Hardy
There Died a Myriad	36	(1)
Ezra Pound
The Amish	37	(1)
John Updike
Proud Maisie	38	(2)
Sir Walter Scott
Piazza Piece	40	(1)
John Crowe Ransom
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister	41	(3)
Robert Browning
The Speaker of a Poem Speaks from a Personal Situation	44	(14)
A Kind of Good-bye	45	(1)
Theodore Spencer
Porphyria's Lover	46	(2)
Robert Browning
Not Waving but Drowning	48	(1)
Stevie Smith
Ulysses	49	(3)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Edward	52	(2)
Anonymous
La Belle Dame sans Merci	54	(3)
John Keats
Neutral Tones	57	(1)
Thomas Hardy
The Speaker of a Poem Speaks to Some Kind of Audience	58	(7)
To the Rose	58	(1)
Robert Herrick
Song, To Celia	59	(1)
Ben Jonson
Holy Sonnet 14	60	(2)
John Donne
To a Mouse	62	(2)
Robert Burns
I'm Nobody. Who Are You?	64	(1)
Emily Dickinson
Every Poem is Characterized by a Distinctive Tone	65	(16)
from Romeo and Juliet, I, v	66	(1)
William Shakespeare
from In a Gondola	67	(1)
Robert Browning
The Nun	68	(1)
James Henry Leigh Hunt
Apparently with No Surprise	69	(1)
Emily Dickinson
``Out, Out--''	69	(1)
Robert Frost
from Macbeth, V, v	70	(1)
William Shakespeare
Channel Firing	71	(2)
Thomas Hardy
Mr. Flood's Party	73	(3)
Edwin Arlington Robinson
My Papa's Waltz	76	(1)
Theodore Roethke
Damn Her	77	(1)
John Ciardi
Coup de Grace	78	(1)
A. D. Hope
Chorus	79	(2)
John Ciardi
III The Poem as a Pattern of Rhythm and Sound	81	(42)
Rhythm	81	(9)
The Span of Life	87	(1)
Robert Frost
Reflections on Ice-Breaking	88	(1)
Ogden Nash
Eight O'Clock	89	(1)
A. E. Housman
The Soul Selects Her Own Society	90	(1)
Emily Dickinson
Meter	90	(21)
from King Richard II, III, ii	102	(1)
William Shakespeare
from To His Coy Mistress	102	(1)
Andrew Marvell
from Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard	103	(1)
Thomas Gray
from She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways	103	(1)
William Wordsworth
from Antony and Cleopatra, IV, xiv	103	(1)
William Shakespeare
from Satire III	103	(1)
John Donne
from To Autumn	104	(1)
John Keats
from The Wild Swans at Coole	104	(1)
William Butler Yeats
from My Papa's Waltz	104	(1)
Theodore Roethke
from Preludes	104	(5)
T. S. Eliot
Twenty-third Psalm	109	(1)
King James Version
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer	110	(1)
Walt Whitman
from Snake	110	(1)
D. H. Lawrence
Sound	111	(12)
from Lepanto	113	(1)
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
from General William Booth Enters into Heaven	114	(2)
Vachel Lindsay
O Where Are You Going?	116	(4)
W. H. Auden
Velvet Shoes	120	(1)
Elinor Wylie
In Tenebris (I)	121	(2)
Thomas Hardy
IV Devices of Compression: The Poet's Shorthand	123	(43)
Overstatement	123	(11)
In Order To	125	(1)
Kenneth Patchen
Constancy	126	(1)
Sir John Suckling
Sonnet 130	126	(2)
William Shakespeare
Sonnet 18	128	(1)
William Shakespeare
I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed	129	(1)
Emily Dickinson
As I Walked Out One Evening	130	(2)
W. H. Auden
The Scholars	132	(1)
William Butler Yeats
Incident	133	(1)
Countee Cullen
Understatement	134	(4)
Portrait	135	(1)
E. E. Cummings
Losses	136	(2)
Randall Jarrell
Irony and Paradox	138	(13)
Sir Patrick Spence	140	(1)
Anonymous
Ozymandias	141	(2)
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Wood-Pile	143	(1)
Robert Frost
To an Athlete Dying Young	144	(1)
A. E. Housman
Holy Sonnet 10	145	(1)
John Donne
What Are Years?	146	(2)
Marianne Moore
Richard Cory	148	(1)
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Negro	149	(1)
James A. Emanuel
London	150	(1)
William Blake
Comparison	151	(15)
Digging for China	151	(2)
Richard Wilbur
Harlem	153	(3)
Langston Hughes
There Was an Old Man of Dunoon	156	(1)
Anonymous
Epitaph on Newton	156	(1)
Alexander Pope
On His Blindness	157	(1)
John Milton
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer	158	(1)
John Keats
The Kingdom of God	159	(2)
Francis Thompson
Kind of an Ode to Duty	161	(2)
Ogden Nash
Journey of the Magi	163	(3)
T. S. Eliot
V Additional Poems Chronologically Arranged	166	(65)
The Three Ravens	166	(1)
Anonymous
Barbara Allan	167	(2)
Anonymous
Sonnet 94	169	(1)
William Shakespeare
Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind	169	(1)
William Shakespeare
Go and Catch a Falling Star	170	(1)
John Donne
A Hymn to God the Father	171	(1)
John Donne
Still to Be Neat	172	(1)
Ben Jonson
Love	172	(1)
George Herbert
The Pulley	173	(1)
George Herbert
Go, Lovely Rose	174	(1)
Edmund Waller
Why So Pale and Wan	174	(1)
Sir John Suckling
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars	175	(1)
Richard Lovelace
To His Coy Mistress	175	(2)
Andrew Marvell
Ode on Solitude	177	(1)
Alexander Pope
To a Young Heir	178	(1)
Samuel Johnson
The Tiger	179	(1)
William Blake
Mock On, Mock On, Voltaire, Rousseau	180	(1)
William Blake
A Poison Tree	181	(1)
William Blake
And Did Those Feet in Ancient Time	181	(1)
William Blake
My Luve Is Like a Red, Red Rose	182	(1)
Robert Burns
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways	183	(1)
William Wordsworth
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal	183	(1)
William Wordsworth
The World Is Too Much With Us	184	(1)
William Wordsworth
Kubla Khan	185	(2)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
To Autumn	187	(1)
John Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn	188	(2)
John Keats
My Last Duchess	190	(2)
Robert Browning
Dover Beach	192	(1)
Matthew Arnold
I Like to See It Lap the Miles	193	(1)
Emily Dickinson
I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died	194	(1)
Emily Dickinson
After Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes	194	(1)
Emily Dickinson
God's Grandeur	195	(1)
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Spring and Fall	196	(1)
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord	196	(1)
Gerard Manley Hopkins
On Wenlock Edge	197	(1)
A. E. Housman
1887	198	(1)
A.E. Housman
To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing	199	(1)
William Butler Yeats
The Wild Swans at Coole	200	(1)
William Butler Yeats
Vacillation, IV	201	(1)
William Butler Yeats
Acquainted with the Night	201	(1)
Robert Frost
Desert Places	202	(1)
Robert Frost
archy confesses	202	(2)
Don Marquis
Preludes	204	(1)
T. S. Eliot
The End of the World	205	(1)
Archibald MacLeish
Arms and the Boy	206	(1)
Wilfred Owen
Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town	207	(1)
E. E. Cummings
Before Disaster	208	(1)
Yvor Winters
Only the Polished Skeleton	209	(1)
Countee Cullen
The Fury of Aerial Bombardment	209	(1)
Richard Eberhart
New Hampshire, February	210	(1)
Richard Eberhart
Musee des Beaux Arts	211	(1)
W. H. Auden
Conquistador	211	(3)
A. D. Hope
An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum	214	(1)
Stephen Spender
To My Mother	215	(1)
George Barker
Auto Wreck	216	(1)
Karl Shapiro
The Dirty Word	217	(1)
Karl Shapiro
A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London	218	(1)
Dylan Thomas
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night	219	(1)
Dylan Thomas
Which Is My Little Boy	220	(1)
Tennessee Williams
In Westminster Abbey	220	(2)
John Betjeman
Hunchback Girl: She Thinks of Heaven	222	(1)
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Pennycandystore Beyond the El	222	(1)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Boy at the Window	223	(1)
Richard Wilbur
To an American Poet Just Dead	224	(1)
Richard Wilbur
Church Going	225	(2)
Philip Larkin
Unwanted	227	(1)
Edward Field
Underworld	228	(1)
George Garrett
The Colossus	229	(2)
Sylvia Plath
Author and Title Index	231