Portfolio 8--Structure

In the following portfolio, there are three real poems and three spoiled versions of them.  The spoiled versions are there to call your attention to desirable features of the structure--the ways the meaning is organized and presented--of the real poems.  Structure includes the order, interest, and emotional impact of the actual happenings in the poem--what Drachler and Terris call "plot." And/or it includes the order and presentation of the thesis of the poem and the evidence, examples, etc. that support that thesis.  And/or it includes the choices of grammatical forms (for instance, tenses, questions versus statements, singular vs. plural) and sentence order in the poem.  Your job is not to say, "the poem has a good plot" or "the real poem uses questions where the spoiled poem uses statements."  You need to be much more specific.  And you should make at least one comment on each poem, and a total of 5 comments.

Example. Suppose I were doing this assignment, and my teacher had handed me the following "spoiled" version of the beginning of Dickinson's "Because I could not stop for Death":

What do these (ghastly) lines help me notice about Dickinson's achievement? First, instead of making a cliched generalization, she writes in the past tense, about something that happened to "I", an individual.  Second, she doesn't just personify death, but gives "him" particular characteristics--he is "kindly" and drives a carriage.  Third, she saves the presence of "immortality" for an apparent afterthought, so that the reader first experiences the eerie aloneness of the speaker and her "kind" host and then sees, in an obscure corner of the carriage perhaps, that they are not entirely alone after all.  Fourth, she enacts our mortal error of thinking that what we "can" and "can't" take time for applies to death--she uses the word "could," instead of "would" or "did."  Fifth, she exploits two ominous puns, one which is perhaps obscure ("kindly" means "naturally" as well as "nicely") and one which even a child knows--"stop" meaning "cease" and "stop" meaning "stop by for."  Finally, she uses the subordinating conjunction "because"--all the stanza happens "because" she couldn't stop.  The spoiled version uses "When," which implies a time relationship but not a causal relationship, and "If," which implies uncertainty.  "Because" is neither limited by time nor subject to uncertainty.

These are the kinds of comments I'd like you to make about the poems below.  Extra credit opportunities: you can earn one point for each 2 extra comments you make, up to 3 extra cred it points.  Or you can earn 2 points per poem for doing your own job of spoiling a poem so as to reveal features of its structure, up to four points.  No extra credit, though, till you've done the actual portfolio!  Also, for a two-point extra credit project, you get two points only if you actually succeed; if you try, but fail, you get one point.

REAL POEMS:

Eight O'clock (A.E. Houseman)

He stood and heard the steeple
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people
It tossed them down.

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;
And then the clock collected in the tower
Its strength, and struck.


The Bird (Edwin Muir)

Adventurous bird walking upon the air,
Like a schoolboy running and loitering, leaping and springing,
Pensively pausing, suddenly changing your mind
To turn at ease on the heel of a wing-tip.  Where
In all the crystalline world was there to find
For your so delicate walking and airy winging
A floor so perfect, so firm and so fair
And where a ceiling and walls so sweetly ringing,
Whenever you sing, to your clear singing?

The wide-winged soul itself can ask no more
Than such a pure, resilient and endless floor
For its strong-pinioned plunging and soar-
ing and upward and upward springing.


Counting the Mad (Donald Justice)

This one was put in a jacket,
This one was sent home,
This one was given bread and meat
But would eat none,
And this one cried No No No No
All day long.

This one looked at the window
As though it were a wall,
This one saw things that were not there,
This one things that were,
And this one cried No No No No
All day long.

This one thought himself a bird,
This one a dog,
And this one thought himself a man
An ordinary man,
And cried and cried No No No No
All day long.


SPOILED POEMS

Not Houseman

In the market-place the people
Heard the church clock in the  steeple
Dropping quarter hours on the town;
His time was running down.

The clock in the church tower
Reached eight o'clock and struck;
Strapped, noosed, reaching his hour,
He counted eight and cursed his luck.

Not Muir

Adventurous bird, you walk upon the air,
And like a boy, you run, stop, leap, and spring,
Pause a while, then change your mind, there
Where you easily turn with a flick of your wing.

The soul is such a wide-winged bird
Seeking a floor that's resilient, endless, and pure,
A floor that's perfect, firm, and fair
For its soaring and plunging and upward springing.
And a ceiling and walls to echo its sweet singing.


Not Justice

This one saw things that were not there,
This one was sent home,
This saw things that were,
This one would not eat
And this one cried No No No No
All day long.

This one was put in a jacket,
This one thought himself a bird,
This one a dog;
This one was given bread and meat
And all day long he cried
No No No No.

All day long
This one thought himself a man
An ordinary man;
No No No No.
And this one looked at the window
As though it were a wall,
And cried and cried.