Poetry

1) Define poetry in ONE sentence – Poetry is…

-Literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.

2) What do you believe determines what is a poem & what is not a poem?

- I believe that a poem is a type of literature that normally rhymes and expresses feelings towards something special or an occurrence that happened. A poem can be used to calm someone down from stress or cheer someone up. For example, pomes can also express feelings especially if it is used to win someone's heart over. I believe that it is difficult to tell what it a poem and what is not a poem because poems can be short, long, rhyme, not rhyme, and so on.

3) Visit www.Poets.org – review several poet biographies & their poems. Select 2 poets that are of interest to you. Summarize their biographies (one paragraph for each) and select one poem for each poet to share with the class. Post the poem or a link to the poem on your blog. How are these poems an example of what poetry is to you? Explain.

-Langston Hughes- James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature. Hughes, who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whiteman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties.

-Robert Frost- Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent. In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, ans Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.

Poems

Dream Variations

By Langston Hughes

To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun, To whirl and to dance Till the white day is done. Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, Dark like me-- That is my dream! To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! Whirl! Whirl! Till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening . . . A tall, slim tree . . . Night coming tenderly Black like me.

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15610

A Solider

by Robert Frost
He is that fallen lance that lies as hurled, That lies unlifted now, come dew, come rust, But still lies pointed as it ploughed the dust. If we who sight along it round the world, See nothing worthy to have been its mark, It is because like men we look too near, Forgetting that as fitted to the sphere, Our missiles always make too short an arc. They fall, they rip the grass, they intersect The curve of earth, and striking, break their own; They make us cringe for metal-point on stone. But this we know, the obstacle that checked And tripped the body, shot the spirit on Further than target ever showed or shone.
http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/A_Soldier