Enjoying Poetry 4º ESO Uxía & Olalla

ENJOYING POETRY

Uxía Vázquez López and Olalla Lodeiro Pinedo 4ºES

Table of contents 1. Introduction 2. The poems written by the students 3. Poem 1. Olalla- Love’s Secret by William Blake 2. Uxía- Alone by Edgar Allan Poe 4. Conclusion 5. Present 6. Bibliography

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1. Introduction

We started with poems during the third term. We wrote some acrostics, haikus Dada poems and Calligrams. Even, Raul Vacas who is a writer and a poet from Salamanca came to IES de Fene and we had a Poetry workshop with him.

For all of these things in this term we are going to analyze two poems.

The selected poems are: Love’s Secret by William Blake chosen by Olalla and Alone by Edgar Allan Poe chosen by Uxía. We chose them because we like them and we think that they have too many things to analyze. Also with an idea that Raul Vacas give us we are going to make a packaging to save some of our poems.

We’ll analyze the content, form, syntax, language, imagery and figurative language.

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2. Poems written by students

UxĂ­a-Dada Poem

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UxĂ­a-Haiku

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UxĂ­a-Acrostic

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Olalla - Dada poem

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Olalla - Haiku

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Olalla - Acrostic

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3. Poem 1. Olalla- Love’s Secret by William Blake Never seek to tell thy love, love that never told can be; for the gentle wind does move silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart; trembling, cold, in ghastly fears, Ah! she did depart!

Soon as she was gone from me, a traveler came by, silently, invisibly: he took her with a sigh The title of the poem refers to a feeling. The writer was a romantic poet and one of the characteristic of that age, it’s ideal love. The title is descriptive because the poem is about a love’s secret, which, it doesn’t is unrequited.

Content - Speaker: The speaker is the author. The poem is in first person and the speaker is an omniscient narrator. He referred to himself because the poem is about a love that Blake had, which was an unrequited love. In the poem there aren’t any dates, therefore, we don’t know when it was written.

- Tone: The poem has a mysterious tone at the beginning and a sad tone in the rest of it.

- Tension: The point of tension, in my opinion, is when the speaker’s lover, rejects him. It is an external conflict.

- Context: The poem was writing in the Romanticist age. In that age, to the artists, they liked represent: the ideal love, the solitude, etc...

Form The poem is a quatrain (poem of minor art). With three stanzas and four line each one. The rhyme of the stanzas, it is: ABAB Sintax The author doesn't use the enjambment. The verbs are in active voice, except, one of them. The poem is compound by complete sentences. In the poem, there are punctuation.

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Language The selection of the author’s words is formal.The poem is in past because the verbs, that are used in it, they is in past. Also, because the poem is about one love, that Blake, he had in the past.

Imagery In the poem, the principal image is literal and concrete, because it represents the scary and the sadness. Also there are abstract images as, “For the gentle wind does move”, “Silently, invisibly” or “Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears” Figurative language In the poem there is one personification, the Death is represented as a traveler.

The first time that I read the poem The first time that I read this poem, I felt the scary of the narrator of not know the reaction of his love’s declaration, towards his lover. And besides, the sadness because of that his lover separated of him, either because she rejected him or because, she died. I choose this poem, because when I read it, I liked who the author recreate the feelings.

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b. Uxía- Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been As others were—I have not seen As others saw—I could not bring My passions from a common spring— From the same source I have not taken My sorrow—I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone— And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone— Then—in my childhood—in the dawn Of a most stormy life—was drawn From ev’ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still— From the torrent, or the fountain— From the red cliff of the mountain— From the sun that ’round me roll’d In its autumn tint of gold— From the lightning in the sky As it pass’d me flying by— From the thunder, and the storm— And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view— The title of the poem refers to the writer, he was a romantic writer and in this literary trend the authors liked loneliness. The title gives us a clue of the poem and it is purely descriptive because all the poem is about the solitude of the author when he was young. It isn’t separated in stanzas.

Edgar Allan Poe, the author, has a lot of poems and stories.

Content -Speaker: The speaker is the same author. The author is telling us how his childhood was, for this reason the poem is in the first person. In the poem there aren’t any dates but we know that he wrote it around 1920. ‘Alone’ is related to his childhood, his parents died when he was young and he had problems with the rest of his family.

-Tone: The poem has a stormy and sad tone from the beginning to the end.

-Tension: The point of tension in the poem is in my opinion created when the author starts with the metaphors because he didn’t continue telling us more about his lonely childhood. The conflict is that he was alone when he was young, so it is an internal conflict.

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-Context: The poem was written after the first world war but in this poem, the period doesn’t change its meaning. The literary trend of Edgar Allan Poe during that period of time was romanticism.

What I felt when I read the poem When I read the poem it transmited me loneliness and I thought that the author was special, strange and different and that emotion made me feel compassion. All the metaphors used by Edgar Allan Poe in this poem surprised me very much or verses as ‘From the same source I have not taken my sorrow’, I loved it.

Form It has 22 verses and they rhyme following this scheme: A A B B C C And it continues in the rest of the verses.

Language We know that the poem was in the past because the verbs used are in both past and present perfect tenses besides, he tells about his childhood. Even the author to express the feelings of ‘alone’ used phrases as “I have not been as others were or I have not seen as others saw”.

Syntax in ‘Alone’ the author used enjambment because the lines are broken.

In the poem, there are grammatical pauses, they were created with commas and points. About the verbs, all of them are in the active voice.

Imagery The main image transmitted by the poem is literal and concrete. It is the idea of loneliness, solitude, sadness, peculiarity. The author felt different in his childhood.

Also, there are many secondary abstract images as ‘from the torrent or the fountain, from the red cliff of the mountain, ‘...from the sun that round me roll’d in this autumn tint of gold...’

Figurative language In this poem there are some similes and personifications and there are, also, a repetition of the word from at the beginning of some verses.

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4. Conclusion

We started working with poems with some activities in the English lesson this term. At the beginning I didn't think that we would be able to create acrostics, dada poems, Haikus‌ And in the end we got surprised with the results. In conclusion: We had a nice time, we learnt a lot of things with the project and also learnt how to enjoy poetry.

5. Present

UxĂ­a-Present

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Olalla - Present

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6. Bibliography

Image credits: 1º image: This image was taken from: -http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/school-librarianputs-the-world-straight-on-fake-william-blake-poem-8667575.html [Accessed 2/6/2014] -http://horroris-causa.blogspot.com.es/2011_01_01_archive.html [Accessed 2/6/2014] 2º image: Copyright Uxía Vázquez López- Carlos aguado Pardo 3º image: This image was taken from: -http://www.wikiart.org/en/normanrockwell/attic-memories-1925 4º image: Copyright Uxía Vázquez López 5º image: This image was taken from: - http://desmotivaciones.es/3899347/Los-momentos 6º image: This image was taken from: - http://letrasconalmacuricochile.blogspot.com.es/p/70-razones-para-leer.html 7º image: Copyright Uxía Vázquez López

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