Questions on Whitman’s poems
Questions on “Song of Myself”
Recalling:
1. According to Line 1 of Section 1, who is the poet celebrating? Whom do lines 2-3 also include in the celebration?
2. What facts about himself does Whitman reveal in lines 6-9 of section 1?
Interpreting
1. Describe the relationship Whitman sets up with the reader in the first section.
2. Name as many characteristics of Whitman’s “self” as you can. Which characteristics seem the most prominent?
Questions on “Beat! Beat! Drums!”
Recalling
1. What people do the drums and bugles disturb in each of stanzas 1, 2, and 3?
2. what verbs and adjectives are used to describe the sounds of the drums and bugles?
Interpreting
1. Based on the description of the drums and bugles and the effect they have, what do they seem to represent? What does the simile in line 2 imply?
2. Are the people in stanzas 1 and 2 doing anything out of the ordinary? Why is this significant?
3. Why might the people in stanza 3 be praying, beseeching, and so on? What do the drums and bugles do to their prayers and pleas?
4. Explain how rhythm and repetition reinforce the meaning of the poem. In particular, consider the effect of lines 1, 8, and 15.
Extending
What images other than drums and bugles might Whitman have used to make his point?
General writing topics on Whitman
1. Why might Whitman have called his volume of poetry Leaves of Grass?
2. By associating himself with the grass, what does the poet suggest about himself? Summarize Whitman’s attitude toward nature.
3. Why is free verse particularly suited to Whitman’s ideas? How do you think it relates to Whitman’s democratic principles?
Questions on Dickinson’s poems
Questions on “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”
Recalling
1. Where does the “Funeral” take place? Who keeps treading to and fro?
2. What keeps beating? What do the mourners lift?
3. According to stanza 3, what begins to toll after the mourners leave?
4. What breaks, according to stanza 5? What happens then?
Interpreting
1. What is the “Service” in line 6? What is the “Box” in line 9?
2. Whose funeral is the speaker envisioning? What might the last two stanzas be describing?
3. Compare the images beginning in line 12 with the images of the funeral presented in lines 1-11. Which group of images is clearer? Why?
Questions on “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—”
Recalling
1. What does the speaker hear in stanza 1? When does she hear it?
2. According to stanza 2, what are the “Eyes” and “Breaths” doing?
3. According to stanzas 3-4, what interposes between the light and the speaker? What happens then?
Interpreting
1. What is happening to the speaker/ who are the other people in the room?
2. What is unusual about the description of the people in lines 5-6? From whose pint of view are they being described?
3. Why is the fly’s appearance somewhat ironic? What basic message about death is suggested to the poet by the appearance of the fly?
4. What slant rhymes—also called off rhyme, near rhyme, approximate rhyme and imperfect rhyme— occur in “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died”? What effects do they have? How are the slant rhymes related to the meaning of each poem?
Questions on “Because I could not stop for Death—”
Recalling
1. According to stanza 1, why did Death stop for the speaker? What did Death’s carriage hold?
2. What three things did the speaker and Death pass in stanza 3? Where did they pause in stanza 5?
3. According to stanza 6, how much time has passed since the day of Death’s visit? What does that time feel shorter than?
Interpreting
1. Is the speaker in this poem alive or dead? What day is she describing?
2. What do lines 1-2 suggest about human behavior?
3. What might the three things the speaker passed in stanza 3 represent?
4. What is the “House” in the ground in stanza 5? Is this the speaker’s final destination? Explain.
5. Why does the day described seem so long to the speaker?
General writing topics on Dickinson
1. One of Dickinson’s greatest talents was her ability to find universal meanings in everyday events. Why do you think all great literature must be able to do this?
2. The scholar who edited the definitive texts of Dickinson’s poems, Thomas H. Johnson, tells us: “Emily Dickinson loved words ardently. Her feeling about them amounted to veneration and her selection of them was ritualistic.” What evidence do you find to support Johnson’s contention? What unusual or well-chosen words add power to the poems you have read? How does Dickinson’s use of everyday words help make her abstract ideas more concrete?
Comprehensive questions
General writing topics
Comparing Whitman and Dickinson
1. Both Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were poets of great originality and intense emotion. Yet in temperament and life style they were almost exactly opposite. What do Whitman’s and Dickinson’s poems suggest about the sources of poetic inspiration? Where do they suggest the truly imaginative life can be found? What do you think made the poetry of these writers so fresh and original?
Comparing Whitman, Dickinson and Twain
2. Whitman, Dickinson, and Twain all helped develop American literature as a singular expression of American life. How do the styles and subjects of these three writers differ from those of the American authors who preceded them? What do you think makes Whitman, Dickinson, and Twain so distinctly American?
Writing topics on Jack London’s Martin Eden and Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie
1. To some extent, both the title characters are American dream makers and achievers. Please compare and contrast them two from any perspective you like, for example, success, tragedy, morality, love, the meaning of life, etc.
2. To some extent, Martin Eden, Sister Carrie, Richard Cory, Gatsby are American dream makers and achievers. Please compare and contrast them two from any perspective you like, for example, success, tragedy, morality, love, the meaning of life, etc.
Writing topics on The Portrait of a Lady
1. According to the novel, what do you think is James’s view of female independence? What do you think is James’s view of marriage? How about your own understanding on the relationship between female independence and marriage? Are the two issues contradictory or not?
2. Make a contrastive comment on the endings of the two versions of The Portrait of a Lady — the original novel and the movie version.
Questions on Edwin Arlington Robinson
Questions on “Richard Cory”
Recalling
1. Which line in the poem identifies the speaker? Which lines tell you about the economic condition of the speaker?
2. What is Richard Cory “from sole to crown”? What effect does he have when he says “Good Morning”?
3. What, “in fine,” do the people think of Richard Cory (Stanza 3)?
4. What is the “surprise” ending?
Interpreting
1. How are the “we” of the poem different from Richard Cory?
2. What do “crown” (line 3) and “imperially” (line 4) indicate about the speaker’s impression of Richard Cory?
3. What effect does Cory’s final action seem to have on everyone in Tilbury Town? What does Tilbury Town’s reaction to Cory’s life and death suggest about human understanding?
Questions on “Miniver Cheevy”
Recalling
1. For what does Cheevy sigh and mourn in the first five stanzas? What does Cheevy curse in the sixth stanza?
2. What are Cheevy’s feelings about gold, according to the seventh stanza?
3. To what does Cheevy attribute his unhappiness in line 31? What does he keep on doing, according to the last line of the poem?
Interpreting
1. What do lines 9-10 reveal about Cheevy’s character? Lines 17-18? Lines 25-26?
2. Basically, how does Cheevy see himself? How do we see him? What really causes his unhappiness?
General writing topics on Robinson’s “Richard Cory” and “Miniver Cheevy”
1. Could Richard Cory and Miniver Cheevy be found only in a small Maine town at the turn of the century? Explain your answer.
2. Irony is a contrast or a difference between the way things seem and the way they really are. In literature there are three kinds of irony.
Ø Verbal irony occurs when words that appear to be saying one thing are really saying something quite different.
Ø Situational irony occurs when what is expected to happen is not what actually comes to pass.
Ø Dramatic irony occurs when events that mean one thing to the characters mean something quite different to the reader.
Irony is often accompanied by a grim humor. There is an element of dark humor, for example, in the mistaken ideas that the townspeople have of Richard Cory, while Miniver Cheevy is almost comical in his hypocrisy and self-delusion.
Thinking about ironies in “Richard Cory” and “Miniver Cheevy”
1) How is the use of the adjective “calm” in the next-to-last line of “Richard Cory” an example of verbal irony?
2) Explain the situational irony in “Richard Cory”
3) Tell why “Miniver Cheevy” is an example of dramatic irony.
3. Write a brief essay comparing and contrasting “Richard Cory” and “Miniver Cheevy”. Begin with a statement of each poem’s theme. Then show what the characters have in common and how they differ. Conclude by discussing the tone of each poem and the general impression each leaves with the reader.
Questions on Ezra Pound’s poems
Questions on “In a Station of the Metro”
Recalling
1. Where does this poem take place?
2. What two images are juxtaposed, or placed next to each other, in the poem?
Interpreting
1. Does the poet supply you with any information about how you should think or feel about the poem? What does the poem consist of? What makes it “poetic”?
2. Why does the poet use the word apparition rather than appearance? (consider the connotations of apparition.)
3. Ezra Pound’s own comment on “In a Station of the Metro” shows the poet at work:
Three years ago in Paris I got out of a “metro” train at La Condorde, and saw suddenly a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful child’s face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all day to find words for what his had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion. And that evening, as I went home . . . I was still trying and I found, suddenly, the expression. I do not mean that I found words, but here came an equation . . . not in speech, but in little splotches of color . . . . that is to say, my experience in Paris should have gone into paint.
What does Pound mean when he says that an “equation” can be a poetic experience? Do you think “In a Station of the Metro” would have made a good painting? Why or why not?
Questions on “The River-Merchant’s Wife”
Recalling
1. What form does the poem take? Who is writing it?
2. At what age did the river-merchant’s wife marry? What did she stop doing at fifteen, and what did she desire? What happened when the wife was sixteen?
3. What do the monkeys do in line 18? What do the butterflies do in line 25? What does the wife do in line 25?
4. If her husband tells her when he is coming through the narrows of the river Kiang, what will the wife do?
Interpreting
1. How have the wife’s feelings for her husband changed since she married him? How does she feel about her husband’s absence?
2. Is monkeys’ chattering usually described as it is here? What do the negative descriptions of the monkeys and butterflies reflect?
3. Is the tone of this poem sentimental or matter-of-fact? Cite lines to support your answer.
Writing topics on “The River-Merchant’s Wife”
1. Although longer and more narrative than a pure imagist poem, “The River-Merchant’s Wife” uses many of the devices of Imagist poetry. In a brief essay discuss these devices and their relation to the poem’s subject matter. First explain the meaning of the poem. Then consider the poem’s use of
1) Simple, direct language
2) Free verse
3) Sharp images to convey emotions
2. Comparing
How is the attitude of the wife in “The River-Merchant’s Wife” different from the attitude expressed in nineteenth-century Romantic poetry that you have read? Compare this poem to Poe’s “To Helen”.
Questions on T. S. Eliot
Questions on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Recalling
1. According to lines1-14, what are “you and I” going out to “make”? To what do the streets lead? For what does Prufrock say there will be time in line 27? In lines 32-34?
2. According to lines 37-46, what would Prufrock “disturb” if he dared to ask his question? Why “in short” doesn’t Prufrock “force the moment to its crisis” (lines 75-86)? What remark by someone “settling a pillow” would make asking the question not worthwhile (lines 87-98)?