"TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK" by William Stafford

TRAVELING THROUGH THE DARK

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;

around our group I could hear the wildnerness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

—William Stafford

"WHAT WORK IS"; By Philip Levine

WHAT WORK IS

By Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is--if you're
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision

until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.

You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it's someone else's brother,
narrower across the shoulders than

yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,

the sad refusal to give in to

rain, to the hours wasted waiting,

to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, "No,
we're not hiring today," for any

reason he wants.  You love your brother
now suddenly you can hardly stand

the love flooding you for your brother,
who's not beside you or behind or
ahead because he's home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift

at Cadillac so he can get up

before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,

the worst music ever invented.

How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You've never
done something so simple, so obvious,

not because you're too young or too dumb,
not because you're jealous or even mean

or incapable of crying in

the presence of another man, no,

just because you don't know what work is.

TERMS TO KEEP IN MIND

TERMS TO KEEP IN MIND

The “I” of the poem is not the poet but someone who knows a great deal about the poet (Bell)

Narrative and lyric poetry

Prosody—rhythm of the human voice

Sound and rhythm

Image—uses concrete specific language (vs. abstract)

Metaphor or simile (like, as)

Tone and diction

Phrases—prepositional, participial

Chunking—syntactic units that drive the rhythm in a poem

Added or coordinated sentences (paratactic)

Subordinated sentences (hypotactic)

Noun style--nominalizations

Verb style—uses strong verbs

Lexicon—words

Plain colloquial rhetoric or conversational speech—one of American's great accomplishments (Bell)

Monosyllabic (Anglo-Saxon) words of one syllable

Polysyllabic (Latinate) words of more than one syllable

Adjectives are subjective, give evidence of the eye, the I of the poet (e.g., Sylvia Plath's poem)

Form (envelope)

Texture—"invisible stitching"

Stanza

Lineation—lines, linearity

Stress—rhetorical, accentual, or lexical (covered later)

Incantation or repetition

Parallel structure—adds stability

Tension—in a long sentence or in short choppy phrases (but all tension can equal no tension)

1st person singular, simple present tense—gives poem immediacy and strength

Alliteration—assonance and consonance

Sibilance

Rhyme—internal, end, or slant

Enjambment—line runs over (creating an orphaned line)

Caesura—mid-line break; punctuation creates a pause or stop

Anaphora—repeated word or phrase often at the beginning of a line

Kenning—creating a new word, "whistle-clean"

Volta or turn in a poem

Human body—a natural measure

Order and disorder, strain and tension, compression and elaboration— balancing opposites

"I strive for a transparency of surface," Kunitz tells us, "but I should be disappointed if my work yielded all its substance and tonality at first reading:"

"One thing that poems do," Bell reminds us, "is to give a phrase or sentence or thought more meaning. Or to find out how much more it meant all along." '

Carl Dennis recognizes that "the impulse to modify the tradition...is built into the tradition itself."

"TELL ME A STORY"; By Robert Penn Warren

TELL ME A STORY

By Robert Penn Warren

[A]

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

[B]

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a. story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

REPLY TO A PERSONAL

REPLY TO A PERSONAL

Dear Beautiful Soul,

I do solemnly swear

what you read is what you get.

Spineless as a jellyfish,

I take more shapes than water,

writhe like a python, have

more selves than the Trinity.

With nothing to hold onto

I clench my fists. Almost

down and out, I can't go back

or ahead. Struggling to stand

on my own two feet,

I constantly waver.

Because I refuse to pick up

the pieces of the past,

I can't map out a future.

With no promises to keep,

I don't know what I'm waiting for.

Too stiff-necked to hang my head,

I'm ashamed to hold it up.

When I plop it on a pillow,

I wrestle against myself,

dark angel I can't pin down.

The nightmare I wake up to

is crazier than my dreams.

As for love, it's a wag without a tale.

In an instant of letting go,

Dad and Mom misconceived.

Since they've tucked in their toes,

I've been trying to forgive them.

Dad bequeathed no mansions,

Mom can't intercede from the grave.

My days are strings of words

ending in Gordian knots.

Crooked my lines, my pages

ungathered, and the book

of me is unbound. Want me?

"DRUGSTORE, 1958"; By Albert Goldbarth

DRUGSTORE, 1958

By Albert Goldbarth

"Just walk right in and demand your

money back." The father makes it sound

as obvious as gravity or the seasons: the boy

 has been shortchanged, the merchant

needs to rectify this, and a heaping of manly

insistence won't hurt; he'll wait

in the car while the boy attends to this mission.

But the boy is not so sure; he's ten and

skittery as a blown leaf in the world's winds.

Maybe he counted wrong, maybe his voice will

stick then squeal, maybe fuss should be priced

higher than a dime And how can a dime be

part of a dollar? He looks back at the car. They

aren't even made of the same material.

"Michico Dead"; by Jack Gilbert

Michiko Dead

Jack Gilbert

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm which is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.

"The Writer" poetic analysis

The first half is straightforward. His daughter is writing. He's a writer himself, so he knows what's involved with it--how you pour your heart into it. He hears her stop and start and stop and start. With each stop, he, the whole house (he suggests in that image) thinks she may have hit the wall or, in other words, run out of ideas or what she needed to say and ended up frustrated and sad, as we all are (as you are right this minute because you can't understand the poem) with writer's block. 
Now think of the starling (type of bird). He's telling us about something that happened before, literally. A starling got stuck in the bedroom and couldn't get out. They went in and opened the window (the sash) in hopes that the bird would find his way out. Like birds do, he kept banging against things in a panic trying to escape, and each effort left him banged up, bloody, maybe even dead. Then, finally, because he tried again, he found the window. 
Now put the two stories together. The poet's memory of that bird relates to how he's feeling about his daughter and hearing her typing, stopping, trying again. She's trying to express herself with her writing. She's "hitting the wall" as I said before, like the bird. Every now and then, something is stopping her, and the poet doesn't know if she'll be able to start again--if, like the bird, she'll survive this pause and lapse of thought without the frustration and pain of writer's block--and try again to soar through her writing. (Like the bird who finally takes off and makes it out the window and back into the sky.) 
He wants happiness and all things good for his daughter. He could walk in and tell her writing is not worth the heartache or the bother, but because she is typing so fast, he knows she's passionate about what she's trying to do. Instead of saving her the pain of being frustrated, he admires her for the fact that, like the bird, she keeps trying. He knows she's on her way to finding her own version of soaring through the sky through all these hard efforts, and he wishes that for her. 

"The Writer"; poem by Richard Wilbur"

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back, 
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten.  I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

"The Explosion" Poetic Analysis

Background
Philip Larkin wrote this poem in 1969 after hearing of a mining tragedy in the north of
England. He felt great sympathy for the miners and wanted to write this elegy in their
honour.

Summary
On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the mine where the men worked
The slagheap, the huge pile of dusty, gritty waste generated by mining, seemed to sleep in the
sunshine of the morning.

Note
We know from the title that the poem is about an explosion, now, having read the first
stanza, we know it's an explosion in a coal mine. The repetition of the word 'explosion' in the
first line reinforces the sense of foreboding. The alliteration in the first stanza creates a
gentle, peaceful atmosphere that is at odds with what we know will happen. The repeated 's'
sound is calming and creates a gentle, soothing mood. However, the hint of underlying
danger is created by referring to the slagheap 'sleeping' as if it were a dormant volcano a
drowsy monster. By personifying the pile of coal dust and shale in this way, Larkin adds to
the sense of menace something dangerous is lurking, something is threatening the miners.
The shadows pointing towards the pithead are sinister. This is a very dark image of a sunny
morning; the shadows are perhaps foreshadowing the impending deaths of the miners. The
language of the poem is deliberately casual and informal, 'On the day of the explosion' tells
us of a dramatic event in a deliberately understated way. The event is allowed
to speak for itself; the poet makes no attempt to stir our emotions with strong words. Note
the way the word 'explosion' stands out in the description of a calm, sunny, quiet morning.
There is no other mention of sound; everything is still at this point, even if there is a sense of
dread suggested by the mention of shadows and a sleeping slagheap.

Summary
The men came down the lane in mining boots,
Coughing and swearing and smoking pipes,
Filling the silent morning with noise.

Note
Into this calm, quiet, sunny morning come the miners. They are rough, uneducated men, Aoife O’Driscoll 2008 Page 3

coughing, swearing and ignoring the beauty and silence of the early morning. They have no
idea of their imminent deaths, naturally, but we do and the tension of the poem is mounting
with each stanza.

One of them chased rabbits, he didn't manage to catch them,
He came back with a nest of larks eggs he had found,
He showed them to the others and then put them back safely in the grass.

Note
This is a charming image of one of the young men playfully chasing rabbits and delightedly
showing a nest of eggs to his fellow miners. The details are touching and sweet and the
gentleness and playfulness only make the impending catastrophe more poignant. Although
Larkin is remaining a detached observer in this poem, his sympathy for the miners is clear.
He gives us positive images of them, moving details which bring them to life for us. Note the
use of verbs in this stanza, 'chased', 'lost', 'came', 'showed', 'lodged', all adding the the sense
of movement, of vibrancy and of life. Knowing as we do that this vibrancy, this life will soon
end, we are moved.

Summary
On they walked, bearded men in rough trousers,
Fathers, brothers, several members of the same family, laughing and calling each other by
their nicknames,
Through the tall, open gates to the mine.

Note
The miners pass by, but the word 'passed' is also used to talk of those who have died or
'passed away'. The men belong to a close-knit community, tied together by bonds of family
and friendship. We know this because they are referred to as fathers and brothers and use
nicknames when talking amongst themselves. They pass into the tall gates which may reflect
the gates of heaven or of hell. The gates are 'standing open', almost as if the miners are being
invited to their deaths. They walk through the gates, oblivious.

At noon, the earth shook, cows
Stopped grazing for a second when they sensed it, the sun
Was dimmed as if a scarf was held over it or a heat haze blurred its brightness

Note
The actual explosion is described in a very detached way. There is no mention of the noise,
the pain, the fear, the grief or the horror. Instead, Larkin only tells us that the cows stopped
grazing for a moment when they sensed the vibration and the sun appeared dim. The fact
that the cows continued grazing is proof that life goes on regardless. The sun dimmed
because the dust from the explosion rose into the air and created a haze or smog. It may also
be a reference to the description of Jesus' death in the Bible: the sun darkened when he died,
according to St. Luke. The simple language doesn't take from the emotional impact of the
tragedy, rather, it adds to it. We use our own imaginations to fill the gaps. The miners were
straightforward, simple men and it is only fitting that their deaths should be described in
language they could understand, in language they would find accessible.

Summary
The dead go to heaven to wait for us, they
Are sitting with God in comfort
We will meet them again in heaven

Note
This is a prayer from a funeral service, it may be in italics to emphasise that it is not the
poet's own words being used here but rather a quote from the Bible. It may also be because
Larkin – an agnostic - wants to distance himself slightly from the quote or it may be because
he is highlighting the significance of these words. The quote itself introduces a note of hope
in the midst of despair. The message is a comforting one and brings some solace to the
miners' wives.

Summary
 (These two stanzas run together in meaning so I will treat them as one for the purposes of
the notes.)
It was said that the wives saw these words as plainly as if they were written on the chapel
wall and that they also had a vision of their dead husbands walking towards them,
transfigured into golden images of brightness, larger than life and walking with the sun
glowing behind them, creating a halo of light.
The vision the wives have of their husbands is a glorious one, of men transformed into
heavenly beings, bathed in a golden light and larger than life. The sun, which had been Aoife O’Driscoll 2008 Page 5

dimmed at the moment of their deaths, now shines brighter than ever and surrounds them
with a halo.
One of the men in the vision is holding the eggs. The eggs are unbroken.


Note
There is hope now: the men are born again to a new life in the next world and the tone is
optimistic. It is significant, too, that the poet refers to all the wives as having the vision at the
same time: this strengthens the idea of community which the men shared in the second,
third and fourth stanzas.

This final line is important. The eggs are a symbol of new life, of continuity and of hope for
the future. They are unbroken and they, like the men, have been transformed into something
wonderful, a vision of immortality. Death is not the end.

Theme
The theme of this poem is the triumph of life over death. The men led hard lives and died
horribly yet the main message is one of hope, of a vision of immortality.

Tone
The tone of this poem is detached and impersonal at the start but a clear sense of the poet's
sympathy for the miners emerges as he gives us touching details of their lives. The ending is
optimistic: there is hope for the future.

Features of style
The language in this poem is simple and straightforward, Larkin wanted his poetry to
be accessible to all and deliberately wrote in a way that people could relate to.Even
when the sun itself is dimmed by the explosion, it is 'Scarfed as in a heat-haze', a
simple comparison with no great sense of drama. A scarf is an everyday object; the
poet uses such understated language to great effect. It reinforces the miners' simple
lives and the fact that they were ordinary men doing a difficult job.
The only divergence from this simplistic imagery is the description of the wives'
vision of the men. They are transformed into heavenly beings, larger than life, bathed
in a golden light.
The poem begins quietly, nothing moves until the men appear, they are loud and
active and fill the morning's silence with their talk and their activity.
All is silent and calm again after the explosion.
In the wives' vision, the men are moving again, walking towards them in an echo of
their journey in the earlier part of the poem.
The description of the men in the second, third and fourth stanzas is of larger than
life characters. In the wives' vision, they are actually larger than life; death has not
diminished them.
The eggs are an important symbol of hope, of continuity.
The first five stanzas end with full stops, as if the poet hopes to delay the catastrophe
by slowing down the poem. The pauses add to the sense of tension. The last line
stands alone and in so doing reinforces the hopeful note on which the poem ends.

The Explosion; poem by Philip Larkin

The Explosion

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins
Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun
Scarfed as in a heat-haze dimmed.

The dead go on before us they
Are sitting in God's house in comfort
We shall see them face to face-

plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed-
Gold as on a coin or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them

One showing the eggs unbroken