The Definition of Irony In Billy Collins’s poem Introduction to Poetry, he displays his opinion regarding how poetry should be taught versus how it is currently taught. In doing this, Collins contrasts enjoyable metaphors of how a poem should be viewed with savage personification of how students traditionally analyze poetry to develop his true attitude towards teaching poetry. To begin with, Collins uses a variety of positive metaphors to depict how he believes poetry should be interpreted. It is made clear that he sees poetry as art that is to bee felt and enjoyed. Collins believes that poetry should be analyzed through how it makes the reader feel, not through analyzing the literary techniques it uses. This is exemplified as he describes …show more content…
While Collins describes his prefered way of finding the meaning in poetry as a delicate yet enjoyable task, he illustrates the traditional student’s, one of strict reason and calculated analysis, approach as a blunt and gruesome experience. This methodology is first described as tying “the poem to a chair with a rope [to] torture a confession out of it”. By using such extreme personification, Collins goes much further than to simply describe this traditional routine as inadequate. He goes above and beyond this by showing it to be an evil and cruel process that only results in misery. This grisly personification is perpetuated as Collins further criticizes this dysfunctional method of analysis. The poor poetry students using this methodology “begin beating it [the poem in question] with a hose to find out what it really means”. This quote helps to further show the brutal and painstaking process of forcefully extracting the meaning from a poem using the traditional student method. In addition to painful ineffective nature of the aforementioned method of poetic analysis, the quote also shows this approach as disrespectful to the poem itself, as it has the meaning “beaten” out of it. Collins uses savage personification demonstrate the brutal and disrespectful nature of traditional
In Tim Seibles' poem, The Case, he reviews the problematic situations of how white people are naturally born with an unfair privilege. Throughout the poem, he goes into detail about how colored people become uncomfortable when they realize that their skin color is different. Not only does it affect them in an everyday aspect, but also in emotional ways as well. He starts off with stating how white people are beautiful and continues on with how people enjoy their presence. Then he transitions into how people of color actually feel when they encounter a white person. After, he ends with the accusation of the white people in today's world that are still racist and hateful towards people of color.
“Watch your tone young lady” a phrase known all too well to the American culture, whether it be from mom giving her children a lecture or on a television screen being spoken out by an actor. The tone of voice that one uses while speaking plays an extremely significant role in what the spoken words actually mean. Many times one can say one thing and mean another just from placing emphasis on a particular word. With tone of voice plays such a vital role in the meaning of a sentence it becomes clear that poetry, although often times found in books as written work, is meant to be read aloud; this was not all that clear to me until I attended my very first poetry reading. On November 10th Ramapo College welcomed the marvelous poet Mark Doty to its campus. Through Mark Doty’s reading of “House of Beauty” and “Theory of Marriage” it became clear that the use of emphasis and tone are vital characteristics that allows for the poet to challenge poetic traditions and conventions.
In both poems, Collins uses comparative imagery to create a visual representation of readers’ inability to comprehend the essence of literature. In “Marginalia,” Collins compares the readers and their annotations to “fans who cheer from the empty bleachers” (Lines 23-24), illustrating the fans are cheering because they are in the bleachers, not because there is anything to cheer for. Likewise, the “fans who cheer” represent the readers and their enthusiastic annotations towards what they are reading however, “the
“While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the window pane” ("Billy Collins > Quotes"). According to Bruce Weber of the New York Times, Billy Collins, unique to his own “domestic,” “suburban,” or “middle class” point of view, is hailed as “the most popular poet in America” due to high critical acclaim and broad popular appeal that is only matched by Robert Frost . According to John Updike, his poems are “limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides” (“Billy Collins”). In “The History Teacher,” a poem by Billy Collins, Collins uses irony, euphemisms, and understatements to invoke a sense of humor and expose the reader to fallacies of modern teachings as an act of preventing history from repeating itself.
"On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry."The Advanced College Essay. Ed. Don Golini. Boston. McGraw-Hill. 2002. 170-188.
A poem is usually developed by a certain method or a style that the poet uses to help the reader to understand the meaning of the poem. The poem Graded Paper written by the poet Mark Halliday, is about a teacher who is grading a student’s paper and giving feedback on it. In the poem the poet uses different techniques to support and develop the poem. In the poem, the teacher who is grading the paper uses special tone while grading the paper. The teacher is the poem uses a tone of caring and helpful to the student. Although, throughout the poem, the teacher gives negative comments to the student, at the end the teacher gives the student an A-. This is the irony that the poet uses in the poem. Another technique the author uses
New Criticism attracts many readers to its methodologies by enticing them with clearly laid out steps to follow in order to criticize any work of literature. It dismisses the use of all outside sources, asserting that the only way to truly analyze a poem efficiently is to focus purely on the words in the poem. For this interpretation I followed all the steps necessary in order to properly analyze the poem. I came to a consensus on both the tension, and the resolving of it.
Billy Collins, the speaker of Introduction to Poetry, attempts teach the readers by guiding on how to appropriate and analyze poetry. Collins use of personification and imagery, gives the readers a different perspective to interpret and find the significance in poetry. In this particular poem, the speaker does not want the reader to, “tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it,” (Collins 13-14) but the reader should relate to their own personal experiences to the poem and what the author is conveying. Collins believes poetry should be studied in the right way else they lose their beauty.
In any discussion of poetry vs. prose worth it's stanzas, questions regarding such tools as meter, rhyme, and format must come into play. These are, after all, the most obvious distinguishing features of poetry, and they must certainly be key in determining the definition, and in fact nature, of poetry.
Poetry is a creative art form that allows a critical thinking connection between the creator and the audience of each poem. The reader must think critically and in depth about the subject matter and meaning of what each poet is presenting with their body of work. On the other hand, the poet must be able to present their body of work with a unique writing style that encodes a deeper message than what appears on the surface. Most would say that poetry is read for its witty internal messages, but the reader must be able to accurately decipher the message the poet is presenting to fully understand the poet’s allusions. I believe that all poetry is inspired by memorable life events that have been experienced by an individual whether good or bad. If this is true, then much of the subject matter and meaning of poetry can be deciphered by identifying the key elements in each poem such as tones, moods, similes, metaphors, writing styles, and most importantly knowing the facts of the creator’s personal life experiences. In this essay, I will use the identifying techniques listed above to decipher the poem, “Out, Out-” by Robert Frost, to determine if Mr. Frost’s personal experiences with
Both forms of these poems, history and storytelling have a certain degree of fluidity to help determine the meaning from the speaker to the reader. The compositions of these poems show that the poets, Owen and Brooks, did not write for an audience, but rather for an absent reader, by using more imagery and sound elements. But, thanks to the introduction of electronic media, the seven poetic elements are now easier to be “seen” and heard. This allows for the reader or listener to reach the full potential of the poem. Through listening the speaker’s tone, witnessing the time period, hearing the diction, speech and sound elements, the true meaning of the poem is painted for the audience.
By using onomatopoeia, description, and dialogue each poet argues their subject or theme. Although each poet does not write about the same subject or theme they each use the literary device effectively to help support their poem. By using each literary device in different context the poets show the many different styles when writing poetry. Each poet uses the literary devices efficiently to help their overall message in each poem.
Professor Keatings doesn’t follow textbooks or the curriculum, but teaches from his heart. Unlike his conservative colleagues, Keating employs decidedly unorthodox teaching methods and strives to teach more than just his subject matter, which is poetry. His goal is to inspire his students to suck the bone of life to the marrow, to seize the day and to make their lives extraordinary. In Keating's class, you learn passion, courage, romanticism, and, of course poetry. You pass if you avoid conformity and find your own voice, and you fail if you neglect to live life to the fullest. The impact that professor Keatings has on his students is eternal. His spirit will probably always live in his students’ hearts.
Mr. Keating teaches his English class in an unconventional fashion which is reflective of the principles in Emerson’s “Self-reliance”. During the first class, he tells his class to rip out the page that introduces in the English textbook. On this page, the author of the textbook, Dr. Pritchard, says that a poem’s greatness can be measured based upon two criteria: the importance and the perfection of the poem. However, measuring the greatness of a poem using a rubric is ridiculous and as a result, he has the students rip out the page. He wants the students to measure the greatness of poetry based upon their thoughts on the poetry and to trust their feelings. Poems were written to express emotions and passion which people should interpret on their own without a quantitative scale. This reflects Emerson’s principle that people should trust themselves and ...
During the time-period when they authored this essay, the commonly held notion amongst people was that “In order to judge the poet’s performance, we must know what he intended.”, and this notion led to what is termed the ‘Intentional fallacy’. However, Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that the intention, i.e., the design or plan in the author’s mind, of the author is neither available nor desirable for judging the success of a work of literary art. It is not available because the author will most certainly not be beside the reader when he/she reads the text, and not desirable because intention as mentioned already is nothing but the author’s attitude towards his work, the way he felt while writing the text and what made him write that particular piece of writing and these factors might distract the reader from deciphering the meaning from the text. This method of reading a text without any biographical or historical background of either the poem or the poet practiced by the New Critics was known as ‘Closed Reading’. This stemmed from their belief in the autonomy of the text.