short essay

Response Question Two:

Situation and Setting: The section of today’s analysis deals with What? When? and Where?

Today’s readings, “Daystar,” page 762, “The Beautiful Changes,” page 835, “Summer Storm,” [posted under Poetry link] all deal with situation and setting, as well as word choice.  Please read these poems, and post your analysis of these poems, which must include the situation and setting.

Please note the following, which will help you analyze the poem:

Setting : the scene; the basic backdrop of the story, like the location, the year, the season. These are usually factual and describe the scene where the situation takes place. Examples of setting:

· in a forest

· in a clubhouse

· surrounded by lions

· at a cemetery at night

· Talking with another person, Where? When?  Why?

· Talking to oneself (soliloquy) Where? When?  Why?

·

Situation:  describes what is going on within the setting. It is usually dynamic, telling a story of how characters interact with each other (or with the setting). Examples of situations:

· a man and woman are fighting about whether to discipline their children

· the poet loves a woman very much, but she has recently died, and he feels regret for never telling her of his love

Response Question Two (cont’d)

Language: This section deals with - - Word Choice and Order:

In the poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” page 825, the word choice is extremely important.  Many people read the poem and think that it is a poem about a young boy having a wonderful time dancing with his father.  Others read it as child abuse.  What is your opinion, and what words specifically made you think that way?

RITA DOVE

Daystar

She wanted a little room for thinking:

but she saw diapers steaming on the line,

a doll slumped behind the door.


So she lugged a chair behind the garage

5 to sit out the children’s naps.

Sometimes there were things to watch—

the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,

a floating maple leaf. Other days


she stared until she was assured

10 when she closed her eyes


she’d see only her own vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared

pouting from the top of the stairs.


And just what was mother doing

15 out back with the field mice? Why,

building a palace. Later


that night when Thomas rolled over and

lurched into her, she would open her eyes and think of the place that was hers

20 for an hour—where
she was nothing,


pure nothing, in the middle of the day.

RICHARD WILBUR

The Beautiful Changes

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides

The Queen Anne’s Lace1 lying like lilies


On water; it glides


So from the walker, it turns

5 Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you

Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.2

The beautiful changes as a forest is changed

By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;


As a mantis, arranged

10 On a green leaf, grows


Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves

Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.

Your hands hold roses always in a way that says

They are not only yours; the beautiful changes

15 In such kind ways,


Wishing ever to sunder


Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose

For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

1. Plant sometimes called “wild carrot,” with delicate, fingerlike leaves and at clusters of small white flowers.
2. Alfalfa, a plant resembling clover, with small purple flowers. Lake Lucerne is famed for its deep blue color and picturesque Swiss setting amid limestone mountains.

“Summer Storm” by Dana Gioia

We stood on the rented patio While the party went on inside. You knew the groom from college. I was a friend of the bride.

We hugged the brownstone wall behind us To keep our dress clothes dry And watched the sudden summer storm Floodlit against the sky.

The rain was like a waterfall Of brilliant beaded light, Cool and silent as the stars The storm hid from the night.

To my surprise, you took my arm — A gesture you didn’t explain — And we spoke in whispers, as if we two Might imitate the rain.

Then suddenly the storm receded As swiftly as it came. The doors behind us opened up. The hostess called your name.

I watched you merge into the group, Aloof and yet polite. We didn’t speak another word Except to say goodnight.

Why does that evening’s memory Return with this night’s storm — A party twenty years ago, Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens, What ifs that won’t stay buried, Other cities, other jobs, Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining For places it never went, As if life would be happier Just by being different.

Dana Gioia Interrogations at Noon (2001)

THEODORE ROETHKE

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Such waltzing was not easy.

5 We romped until the pans

Slid from the kitchen shelf;

My mother’s countenance

Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist

10 Was battered on one knuckle;

At every step you missed


My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head

With a palm caked hard by dirt,

15 Then waltzed me off to bed

Still clinging to your shirt.

MARTHA COLLINS

Lies

Anyone can get it wrong, laying low

when she ought to lie, but is it a lie


for her to say she laid him when we know

he wouldn’t lie still long enough to let

5 her do it? A good lay is not a song,


not anymore; a good lie is something


else: lyrics, lines, what if you say dear sister

when you have no sister, what if you say guns

when you saw no guns, though you know

10 they’re there? She laid down her arms; she lay

down, her arms by her sides. If we don’t know,

do we lie if we say? If we don’t say, do we lie

down on the job? To arms! in any case

dear friends. If we must lie, let’s not lie around.