Lesson Plans

Assignment to have been completed: Students should have read “Chapter Eleven – Musical Devices,” pp. 818-826 in Perrine’s Literature, as well as, “God’s Grandeur,” p. 824, answering all four questions following it and “We Real Cool,” p. 827, answering Question 1 following it and.

Objectives:

1. To define alliteration, assonance, consonance, masculine rime, feminine rime, internal rime, end rime, and approximate rime
2. To recognize these musical devices in poetry
3. To explain the effect of these musical devices on meaning

Activities:

• A. Review the concepts of musical language

  • 1. Purpose

    • a. Poets choose their words for their sounds as well as for their meanings.
    • b. Poets use sound to reinforce meaning.

  • 2. Technique

    • a. By choice and arrangement of words

    • b. By the arrangement of accents

      All art consists of repetition and variation, responses to two distinct but related human desires.

  • 3. Function of repetition

    • a. To please the ear
    • b. To emphasize words
    • c. To provide structure

• B. Review the musical elements of repetition

  • 1. Alliteration - the repetition of initial consonant sounds
  • 2. Assonance - the repetition of vowel sounds
  • 3. Consonance - the repetition of final consonant sounds
  • 4. Rhyme - the combination of assonance and consonance in the repetition of the accented vowel sound and all succeeding sounds
    • a. Masculine rhyme - rhyme in which the rime sounds involve only one syllable
    • b. Feminine rhyme - rhyme in which the rime sounds involve two or more syllables
    • c. Internal rhyme - the inclusion of one or more riming words within the line
    • d. End rhyme - placement of riming words at the end of the lines
    • e. Approximate rhymes (slant rhymes) -use of words with any kind of sound similarity, from close to fairly remote
  • 5. Refrain - the patterned repetition of whole words, phrases, lines, or groups of lines

• C. Considerations

  • 1. Repetitions are entirely a matter of sound
  • 2. Alliteration, assonance, consonance, and masculine rime are matters that ordinarily involve only stressed or accented syllables; for only such syllables ordinarily make enough impression on the ear to be significant in the sound pattern of the poem.
  • 3. Devices of sound require that the words be placed closely enough together that the effect can he heard.

• D. Have one of the students read “We Real Cool,” p. 827 aloud. Ask the students the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. In addition to end rhyme, what other musical devices does this poem employ?

    The poem employs alliteration (lurk-late, strike-straight, sing-sin, Jazz-June), consonance (real-cool-school, Lurk-Strike, late-straight, sin-thin-gin, June-soon), and internal rhyme (cool-school, late-straight, sin-gin, June-soon).

  • 2. Try reading this poem with the pronouns at the beginning of the lines instead of at the end. What is lost?

    Moving the pronouns sacrifices the syncopated effect of the rhythm appropriate to the jazz culture of the speakers.

  • 3. English teaches in a certain urban school were once criticized for having their students read this poem: it was said to be immoral. What essential poetic device did the critics misunderstand?

    Te critics who called the poem immoral were oblivious to its dramatic irony (its tone). The poet does not share the opinion of the speakers that they are “real cool,” nor does any moderately good reader, which obviously the critics were not.

• E. Have one of the students read “God’s Grandeur,” pp. 824 aloud. Ask the students the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. What is the theme of this sonnet?

    The theme of the poem might be state in some such words as these:

    The natural world is filled with the beauty and energizing power f its Creator. But men, ignoring God’s authority, thorough their commercial and industrial activities, have despoiled and polluted this beauty and separated themselves from its spiritually regenerating power. Nevertheless, the power is never used up; through God’s love for his world, nature’s beauty is continuously renewed.

  • 2. The image in lines 3-4 possibly refers to olive oil being collected in great vats from crushed olives, but the image is much disputed. Explain the simile in line 2 and the symbols in lines 7-8 and 11-12.

    Lin line 2, the image is of crinkled metallic foil (gold, tin, silver, or lead) begin shaken in the sun and flashing light reflections from each of its multifold creases and faces.

    In lines 7-8, the soil is “bare” because man has pitted it over with his heaps of coal and iron ore and paved it over with streets and walks; and man cannot feel the grass underfoot anyway because his feet are cased in shoes. (We need not assume that Hopkins denounces the wearing of shoes, though he may indeed think it good sometimes to walk barefoot in the grass.) Pavemetn and shoe leather serve the poet here as symbols for man’s separation from nature.

    In lines 11-12, the image of the sun’s light disappearing in the west, only to reappear next morning in the east, is a symbol of the perpetual renewal of nature. And this renewal springs from the love of the Holy Ghost (third member of the Trinity) in His traditional metaphoric embodiment as a dove (symbol of genteelness and tenderness) brooding over the world (as over a nest) with warm breast and bright wings.

  • 3. Explain “reck his rod” (4), “spent” (9), and “bent” (13).

    The word “reck” means “to pay attention to or to give heed to,” and “rod” refers to a staff of authority or power. Therefore, “reck his rod,” which refers to God, means pay attention to or respect to the authority or power of God.

    The word “spent” in this context means “used up” or “exhausted.”

    The word “bent” means both that the earth is curved (as suggested by the preceding image of the sun’s apparent travel around it) and bent out of shape from man’s misuse of it.

  • 4. Identify and connect examples of alliteration, assonance, consonance, and internal rhyme. Do these help to carry the meaning?

    Alliteration is apparent in almost every line, perhaps most brilliantly in the three two-word clusters of line 14 (World broods - warm breast - bright wings”).

    Assonance is especially apparent in line 11 (“last - black,” West - went”) and line 13 “Holy Ghost over”).

    Consonance is prominent in line 1, where each stressed syllable ends with d (“world-charged-grandeur–God).

    In the question in line 4, where nine short monosyllable (all but two of them stressed) are spat out in rapid succession like bullets from a machine gun, there is interval rhyme (men-then), alliteration (now, not, reck-rod), and assonance (not-rod, reck-men-then) except for the initial “Why,” each stressed syllable in these series gets into the act once if not twice.

    In line 5, the triple repetition of a whole phrase (“have trod”) emphasizes the repetitiousness of the action described. In lines 6-7, two sets of internal rhymes (seared-bleared-smeared; wears–shares) combined with three sm- alliterations (smeared-smudge-smell) put such an emphasis on words of disagreeable meaning as to give one a feeling of almost physical revulsion.

• F. Have one of the students read “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” p. 833 aloud. Ask the students the following questions about the poem. You may use the responses in bold italics to help you gauge their answers.

  • 1. Explain the paradoxes in lines 1 and 3.

    The paradox in line 1 may be explained by the fact that, when leaves first bud in the spring, they have a yellow tint, more gold than green, which they lose as the leaves grow larger.

    The paradox in line 3 has been explained as referring to much the same thing: “The earliest leaf unfolds its beauty like a lower,” but it could refer to something different. Some trees and shrubs blossom in the spring before they bear leaves (the plum, for example; also, the redbud and some species of peach and cherry). In botanical language, however, the term “leaf,” in its broadest sense, includes all foliar structures of the higher plants, including the sepals, petals, pistil, and stamens of a flower: all parts of the blossom, technically, are modified leaves. For trees like the plum, therefore, it is literally true that the “early leaf’s a flower.” That it remains so only “an hour” is an overstatement, but the blossoming period of these trees is brief at best; then the flowers drop off and the ordinary leaves begin.

  • 2. Discuss the poem as a series of symbols. What are the symbolic meanings of “gold” in the final line of the poem?

    Frost’s poem lists four things that have an early but brief period of perfect beauty (or happiness): the foliage of tees; plants that blossom before they bear leaves; the course of human history (as story of the Garden of Eden–or other myths of a “golden age”); and a day (which begins with the fresh gold-tinted air at sunrise). It ends with a generalization: “Nothing gold can stay.” But by this time Frost’s examples have assumed the force of symbols: they remind us as well of the year (which begins with spring), of the individual human life (which blooms in youth), and perhaps of love (most blissful in its early stages).

    Frost’s “gold is a symbol of perfection, and his theme is that most things reach their moment of perfection early and retain it briefly. His poem is about the transience of beauty, bliss, youth, spring, and the transport of early love.

  • 3. Discuss the contributions of alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, and other repetitions to the effectiveness of the poem.

    Alliteration: green-gold (1), Her- hardest-hue-hold (2)so-subsides-So-sank-So (4-7).

    Assonance: Her-early (3), only-so (4), leaf, Eden-grief (5-6)

    Consonance: Her-early (3), leaf-leaf-grief (5-6)

    Rhyme: gold-hold (1-2), flower-hour (3-4), leaf-grief (5-6), day-stay (7-8)

Assignment for next class meeting: Read “Chapter 12 – Rhythm and Meter,” 838-853. Do exercise 1 on 852.