Comments, questions, comparisons for "Dover Beach" & "Churchgoing"

We've been taking poems two at a time lately, each pair thematically linked. How about Arnold's poem and Larkin's poem? Do they reflect the same outlook? What are they "about"? What do you think the tone of each poem is, and how does it influence interpretation?

Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new —

Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for, wondering, too,

When churches will fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation - marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these — for which was built

This special shell? For, though I've no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognized, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

— Philip Larkin

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

—Matthew Arnold

A doggone blog foul-up

Somehow the questions for "Curiosity" and the comment posting went up on last year's blog. I realized that when I saw J-Li's complaint.

Well, we're going to discuss all that stuff anyway tomorrow. I apologize for the screw-up.

J.D.

Hash over your ideas with your fellow poetry aficionados

Here I invite you to discuss questions, ask questions, make comments and exchange ideas with your colleagues. For "Ulysses" especially I think you need to do this—it's a very dense poem that makes of the familiar figure of Ulysses a symbol…of what?

We'll discuss at the top of class and attempt to deepen and broaden your responses.

Questions for "Curiosity"

1. On the surface, this poem is a dissertation on cats. What deeper comments does the speaker make or imply? Of what are cats and dogs—in this poem at least—symbols?
2. In what different senses are the words death, die, and dying here used?
3. Compare and contrast this poem in meaning and manner with “Ulysses.”

Alastair Reid's "Curiosity"

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely

the cat was just unlucky, or else curious

to see what death was like, having no cause

to go on licking paws, or fathering

litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious

is dangerous enough. To distrust

what is always said, what seems,

to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,

leave home, smell rats, have hunches

do not endear cats to those doggy circles

where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches

are the order of things, and where prevails

much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity

will not cause us to die—

only lack of it will.

Never to want to see

the other side of the hill

or that improbable country

where living is an idyll

(although a probable hell)

would kill us all.

Only the curious

have, if they live, a tale

worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,

are changeable, marry too many wives,

desert their children, chill all dinner tables

with tales of their nine lives.

Well, they are lucky. Let them be

nine-lived and contradictory,

curious enough to change, prepared to pay

the cat price, which is to die

and die again and again,

each time with no less pain.

A cat minority of one

is all that can be counted on

to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell

on each return from hell

is this: that dying is what the living do,

that dying is what the loving do,

and that dead dogs are those who do not know

that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

I'll be at school Wednesday

If you leave your essay on "The Broken Heart" at the front desk with Merrilee or on my desk in lower north, I'll pick it up on Wednesday when I'm in to work on the Prowl. Between 11 and about 3 you can find me in N131, the publications room.

A Valediction for all you Valedictorians

Dear class,

Don't forget to read & complete the Sound & Sense questions. They're important to do so you'll get a grip on John Donne's "Valediction forbidding mourning." We'll discuss the poem and the questions in class Tuesday. I hate to be a pest, but I'll be checking to see that you did your work. Then, depending on the course the discussion takes, you can keep your responses to emend, then turn in a final copy on Thursday.

At this point, anything we've studied so far is worth looking at: diction (including connotation & multiple denotations), imagery, figures of speech…plus anything else you think deserves notice.

Poems coming up: Tennyson's "Ulysses," Auden's "The Unknown Citizen," and others I'll list later, when I have my plans in front of me.

Blessings of the Muse Erato* upon you,

JD

*You can see her near center in Mantegna's "Parnassus" above, dancing with her eight sisters.

Keats & his poem

"Those Winter Sundays" & "To Autumn"

Blog prompt: Read/work "Those Winter Sundays". What kind of imagery is central to the poem? How does that imagery work to reveal the theme of the poem—its emotional issues, as Sound & Sense puts it. And it is a help to recognize the speaker's present perspective, as question 4 would ask of you.

And be sure that you are aware of the meaning of the word "offices" as Hayden uses it.

Homework:

(a) To turn in: Answer the questions that accompany "To Autumn" ~ pay particular attention to numbers three and five. Poems that deal with the seasons frequently make metaphorical use of their place in the cycle of life. The times of day likewise often serve as metaphors.

(b) Read sections I-VII in Part 2 of the text: "Writing about poetry"

Sylvia Plath's "Spinster"

Here are the questions for the poem "Spinster." Don't blog them—answer them on your own and bring the work to class Friday.

I know I said I'd try to get the blog up early today, but this is the soonest I was able to clear the time and write up the questions. If you are in the musical and need extra time, e-mail me.

1. What are the various meanings of the word “spinster?” How does it work as a title to this poem?
2. Explore the multiple denotations and/or connotations attached to these words: particular, ceremonious, suitor, struck, litter, rank, sloven, austere, motley.
3. Compare the poet’s choice of these words to possible synonyms: racket or turmoil rather than tumult; hubbub rather than babel; flourishing rather than burgeoning; rebellious rather than insurgent; spike rather than barb; disobedient rather than mutinous.
4. What sort of pattern, if any, do you perceive in this poem? Is it as pronounced as in “Pathedy of Manners”? Is it unpredictable or erratic? Is there a rhyme scheme?
5. What, expressed in one or two sentences, is this poem about?