Unit Four Readings

Johnson, English 101-021

Fall 2007

Unit Four Readings:

A conveniently packaged packet

This packet contains all of the readings, examples, and extras that you’ll need for Unit Four. Please bring this packet to class with you everyday.

Table of Contents

Tips for Analyzing and Interpreting Creative Writing 2

“Tying the Knot” by Webster 3

“A Smart Cookie,” from The House on Mango Street by Cisneros 4

“The Monkeyrope,” from Moby-Dick by Melville 5

“The Raven” by Poe 6-8

“This is Just to Say” by Williams 9

“This is Just to Say” by Gambino 9

“Claire de Lune” by Verlaine, plus two translations 10

“Summer Pantoum” by Wegener 11

“One Art” by Bishop 12

Basho’s Frog Haiku with translations 13

“Oratio Moderna” by Paquin 14

“Linguistic Play” by Johnson 15

Extras 16

Tips for Analyzing and Interpreting Creative Writing

The purpose of academic writing (like textbooks, peer-reviewed journal articles, and most of the essays done for this class) is different than creative writing (poetry, fiction, and others). Think about this: a textbook’s purpose is to clearly inform and accurately represent information. Compare your Calculus textbook to The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss, which entertains, pokes fun at language, creates imaginary characters that do impossible things, and leaves the reader with specific impressions.

Since the nature of academic and creative writing usually differ in purpose, genre, and audience, the standards of evaluating and interpreting the writing will be different too. I’ve devised a few guidelines (or tips) for how to analyze and interpret creative writing:

Reading

·  Read the piece at least twice: once for general impressions and once for understanding. At least one of those readings should be done aloud.

·  Mark and annotate the piece. Use stars, question marks, underlines, checkmarks, boxes, circles, or mini-summaries in the margins to interact with the text.

·  What not to do: torture or murder the text for a confession. Remember, creative writing is creative and not always straightforward or confessional.

Analyzing

·  Record your initial reactions to a piece after reading it: confusion, surprise, anger, apathy, happiness, etc. Trust your first impressions.

·  Look for patterns:

* Organizational or structural elements

* Language

* Sound (rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, etc)

* Word choice

* Diction (formal, easy-going, vague, energetic, etc)

* Tone (serious, playful, mysterious, neutral, etc)

* Connotations (plays on the dictionary definition of words to suggest alternate

meanings or appeal to emotions)

* Imagery (images, sensory details)

* Symbolism

* Simile (comparison using like or as, implies connection)

* Metaphor (equates the compared items, extended/central)

·  Try paraphrasing to test your comprehension of the text.

Interpreting

·  Consider the genre. What do you know about this genre? What are the conventions? How does the writer conform/ break conventions, and what is the rhetorical effect? Answering these questions may lead to a deeper understanding of the writer’s purpose and desired audience.

·  What connections can you make from the literal text to the metaphorical meaning?

·  How do all the individual parts contribute to the overall experience of the piece?

·  What can you learn from this piece of writing? What is worth studying and using?

Key Ideas

Tying the Knot (1992)

Kerri Webster

I think we married

at the hospital in Elko

off that suicidal stretch

of highway. I twisted on tissue

paper as a nurse cut my dress from blood

and gravel, snipped sticky purple

flowers like a child clips

paper dolls. She scoured dirt from skin

as my grip leeched your hand

and I buried my face in your thigh.

Always, you promised,

near carried me

into room eleven of the sanitized

Ramada; stripped me in lamplight

the hundredth time, now shy

not to bump gauzed thighs

or hips striped yellow

with anesthetic cream beneath

a paper gown.

Come morning

we ignored the sheet’s salty

red, cautious like the resurrected

on a new earth where skin

knitted scars like mountain chains

and you counted and kissed each pale

pink rise, in full light

read each fleshy birth like braille.

This poem was the first place winner in the Grace Jordan Poetry Contest for 1992.

“A Smart Cookie,” from The House on Mango Street (1984)

Sandra Cisneros

I could’ve been somebody, you know? my mother says and sighs. She has lived in this city her whole life. She can speak two languages. She can sing an opera. She knows how to fix a T.V. But she doesn’t know which subway train to take to get downtown. I hold her hand very tight while we wait for the right train to arrive.

She used to draw when she had time. Now she draws with a needle and thread, little knotted rosebuds, tulips made of silk thread. Someday she would like to go to the ballet. Someday she would like to see a play. She borrows opera records from the public library and sings with velvety lungs powerful as morning glories.

Today while cooking oatmeal she is Madame Butterfly until she sighs and points the wooden spoon at me. I could’ve been somebody, you know? Esperanza, you go to school. Study hard. That Madame Butterfly was a fool. She stirs the oatmeal. Look at my comadres. She means Izaura whose husband left and Yolanda whose husband is dead. Got to take care all your own, she says shaking her head.

Then out of nowhere:

Shame is a bad thing, you know. It keeps you down. You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn’t have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains.

Yup, she says disgusted, stirring again. I was a smart cookie then.

Key Ideas

from “The Monkeyrope,” from Moby-Dick (1851)

Herman Melville (however, liberally edited by me for this exercise)

In the tumultuous business of cutting in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done every-where. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole ? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him.

It was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard- scrabble scramble upon the dead

whale’s back. From the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist.

It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down to his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed.

So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you nap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life.

I have hinted that I would often jerk poor Queequeg from between the whale and the ship—where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant rolling and swaying of both. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the night, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before pent blood which began to flow from the carcase—the rabid creatures swarmed round it like bees in a beehive.

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them aside with his foundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.

Well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea—what matters it, after all? are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.

Key Ideas

The Raven (1845)

Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore–

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door–

Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;–vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow–sorrow for the lost Lenore–

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore–

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me–filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

“‘Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door–

Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;

This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you”–here I opened wide the door–

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”–

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my sour within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping something louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is and this mystery explore–

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;–

‘Tis the wind and nothing more.

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore.

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he,

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door–

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door–

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then the ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore–

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning–little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door–

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if its soul in that one word he did outpour

Nothing farther then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered–

Till I scarcely more than muttered: “Other friends have flown before–