Semester 2 and Poetry - Lesson #1

[MrBranchAPLit]

Welcome back to the AP LIt Message Board for Semester 2!!

Over the next 11 weeks or so we will focus our board's efforts on poetry. Each week you will have a brief lesson and a poem, taken from Laurence Perrine's "Sound and Sense" - the definitive text for students of poetry.

Here we go!

Lesson #1 - Post due by midnight on Monday 2/25

It came up in the final, so here is an example of "apostrophe". "Apostrophe" is a type of figurative language (language that is not literal in nature) which "consists in addressing someone absent or dead or something nonhuman as if that person or thing were present and alive and could reply to what is being said...apostrophe (along with personification) are both ways of giving life and immediacy to on'e language" Perrine (65)

A.E. Housman's "To An Athlete Dying Young" uses apostrophe. Read the poem and then answer questions 1-4, which are mostly reviewing things covered in Semester 1.


"To An Athlete Dying Young"
- A.E. Housman

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.


Questions:
1. Identify the apostrophe.

2. Denotation and Connotation: Select any one (significant/important) word from the poem and give its denotative meaning (its dictionary meaning) and give its connotative meaning(s), those meanings that go beyond the dictionary meaning.

3. Select one image from the poem and explain how it appeals to the senses.

4. What would you identify as the tone of the poem? (Remember, the tone is the attitude that the writer/speaker has for her subject, audience, or herself).

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ February 17, 2008 07:38 AM: Message edited by: Mr Branch ]</font>

[montanaro.g]

"To An Athlete Dying Young"
- A.E. Housman

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Questions:

1. Identify the apostrophe.
When trying to identify the apostrophe throughout the poem, I realized that most of the poem contains apostrophe, therefore, I will select the most notorious apostrophe in the poem, which are the first few lines of the poem.

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">2.

Denotation and Connotation: Select any one (significant/important) word from the poem and give its denotative meaning (its dictionary meaning) and give its connotative meaning(s), those meanings that go beyond the dictionary meaning.

Rose
The dictionary definition is a very beautiful plant, but the connotative meaning is the youth of the athlete. The rose is referring to the beauty of a young man's life that withers to fast. Roses are not supposed to wither fast.

3. Select one image from the poem and explain how it appeals to the senses.

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This part of the poem appeals to the auditory sense because the author of the poem, through this imagery describes the excitement of the family and people that surround the athlete. When I read this part, I imagined all the people chanting the athlete, who had just won the race.

4. What would you identify as the tone of the poem? (Remember, the tone is the attitude that the writer/speaker has for her subject, audience, or herself).

The tone of poem is one of admiration, but at the same time of nostalgia in that the author is remembering the young athlete's achievements. As the poem progresses, the tone starts to wither away into one of sadness, since the author is remembering the young athlete, but at the same time, through the author's remembrance of the athlete, the tone is also one of joy and admiration.

<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ February 25, 2008 08:28 PM: Message edited by: montanaro.g ]</font></font>

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ February 25, 2008 08:31 PM: Message edited by: montanaro.g ]</font>

[lucas89a]

1. "Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man." (The whole poem is an apostrophe actually.)
2. Echoes
Denotative: Repetition of a sound
Conotative: In the poem, the word echoes denotes the traces or "footprints" of the subject(s). Obviously present at first but slowly fading away, like an echo.
3. "Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high" I wouldn't really say it is pleasing to the senses but it portrays a nice image of a father carrying his son on the shoulders, cheering and all.
4. The poet seems to remenisce the happy times he had with this person (presumably his kid). The tone seems a bit melancholic/defeated. It talks about unlasting glory, fading away, etc.

[juanmax]

1.) ?Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.? This is only one example of apostrophe in the poem. There are many others.
2.) SHADY. The connotative meaning of the word, according to www.dictionary.com is: abounding in shade; shaded: shady paths. The denotative meaning of the word is deeper. Shady means mysterious and evil in the poem. The shady night does not literally mean a shady night, but a time of confusion and bad.
3.) ?To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home?. This quote portrays how a father carries his son home after a hard race. It pleases the visual senses.
4.) The tone of the poet is of depression and subtle anger. He is angry at the fact that glory lasts very little. All the hard work and sacrifices people make are recognized shortly, but then these vanish.

[rcln]

1. Identify the apostrophe.
The following is one of the many apostrophes which this poem contains:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">2. Denotation and Connotation: Select any one (significant/important) word from the poem and give its denotative meaning (its dictionary meaning) and give its connotative meaning(s), those meanings that go beyond the dictionary meaning.
<u>Laurel</u>
<u>Denotation:</u> Also called bay, sweet bay. a small European evergreen tree, Laurus nobilis, of the laurel family, having dark, glossy green leaves. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/laurel)
<u>Connotation:</u> symbol of victory, glory, and fame; the laurel wreath is compared to the crown of a champion with excellence in his performances.

3. Select one image from the poem and explain how it appeals to the senses.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">From the first two lines, the reader sees complete darkness, where light has forever ceased. The subsequent lines gives the reader a soundless, static ambient, as if time has stopped. As a whole, the stanza illustrates the picture of a dead man.

4. What would you identify as the tone of the poem? (Remember, the tone is the attitude that the writer/speaker has for her subject, audience, or herself).
Personally, I would identify the narrator's tone toward the young athlete as satirical. Housman suggests that famous or important people who die young are the only ones who get to preserve their transitory greatness and celebrity, preventing them from dying away with the pass of time.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ February 26, 2008 07:36 PM: Message edited by: brucelin ]</font>

[cjkb90]

1."THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high."

is one of many, many examples (the whole poem is an apostrophe)

2.denotative field: land used for grazing or growing crops.

connotative field:humble origins

3."Shoulder-high we bring you home"

One can visualize and hear a boy being cheered by a crowd as his dad carries him on his shoulders after he caught a fly ball in a little league. In the same way is the runner praised, temporarily.


4. A tone of melancholy is conspicuous. The author describes a man, perhaps a boy, who achieved glory and made a name for himself amongst others, only to be forgotten shortly after. The best of his life had passed him by, forgotten by all others except for the author and him.

[alberto_dacosta]

1) Examples of apostrophe abound in this poem. We have "the time you won your town the race" in the first verse and, subsequently, "and set you at your threshold down" in the seventh verse. Note that these are mere examples: there are other instances of apostrophe in A.E. Housman's poem.

2) Stiller denotes stagnation or stillness. The word connotates old age and a chronological passage of time, particularly when one considers the word in the context of the verse and in the context of the poem as a whole. In effect, the word connotes the age of the returning champion, given that he returns to a "stiller" town that is still awash in memories of his victory. The word's connotation adds to the poem's central theme of passing time.

3)

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Note how the imagery appeals to the senses: the word shady adds to the impression of blindness produced by the "[shut] eyes", whereas the comparison between silence and cheers serves to illustrate the deafness that comes with age as well. This imagery is profoundly effective, inasmuch as it transmits to the reader the physical conditions associated with old age by likening them to descriptive adjectives like "shady" and "earth", which implies dullness and inflexibility.

4) The predominant tone of the poem is one of remembrance: it is not solely melancholic, given that the protagonist clearly conveys a positive message to his companion. Words like "shady", "wither", and "strengthless" serve to complement the melancholy associated with the process of aging; simultaneously, however, words such as "laurel" imply some degree of glory. Overall, we can state that Housman's poem conveys a positive but resigned message, inasmuch as it concedes that aging will gradually wither one's strength but that the individual can maintain his achievements and his reputation throughout.

[shepner]

Questions:
1. Identify the apostrophe.
The whole poem is an actual apostrophe to a young athlete, but a specific example would be this verse:
?We chaired you through the market-place;?
2. Denotation and Connotation: Select any one (significant/important) word from the poem and give its denotative meaning (its dictionary meaning) and give its connotative meaning(s), those meanings that go beyond the dictionary meaning.
Echoes
Denotative meaning: a sound that repeats itself until it fades away.
Connotative meaning: echoes refers to the sound of cheering, more specifically the momentary glory and honor that these athletes experience. The author warns the athlete that this glory goes away, and one should take advantage.
3. Select one image from the poem and explain how it appeals to the senses.
?And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears?
These verses appeal to the auditory sense, creating a silent moment, but what they actually refer to is the moment after the glory is gone, when there are no more cheers and all that is left is the memory of those times. By silence the author means once the athlete can?t compete anymore.

4. What would you identify as the tone of the poem? (Remember, the tone is the attitude that the writer/speaker has for her subject, audience, or herself).
The tone of this poem is a bit melancholic with a touch of bitter. As if the reader is holding a grudge against all athletes and telling them their honor is short and eventually it?s going to fade.

[mariecburt]

1. Identify the apostrophe.
The whole poem is an apostrophe, because it is addressed to someone who is not present anymore (presumably dead)
"THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high."


2. Denotation and Connotation: Select any one (significant/important) word from the poem and give its denotative meaning (its dictionary meaning) and give its connotative meaning(s), those meanings that go beyond the dictionary meaning.

--DENOTATION: Townsman of a stiller town.
Still- inactive: not in physical motion; "the inertia of an object at rest"
--CONNOTATION: In this poem still does not mean inactive, it means in mourning of death.

3. Select one image from the poem and explain how it appeals to the senses.

And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose
-- I can smell the rose, and I can also see it whithering

4. What would you identify as the tone of the poem? (Remember, the tone is the attitude that the writer/speaker has for her subject, audience, or herself).

I think the tone is very solemn, and in mourning. It is reminiscing about the past and about, I think, a son who has died. He is talking to his son and remembering all the great moments they had together. Very sad poem!

[hcaceres]

1. The apostrophe is found in the following lines:
?And set you at your threshold down, 
Townsman of a stiller town. 

Smart lad, to slip betimes away 
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows 
It withers quicker than the rose.?

In this lines, the author refers to the dead athlete as if he was still living by attributing him actions.


2. Denotation/Connotation:

?Shoulder-High? ? the phrase is defined by the elevation of an object or being above someone?s shoulders. However, in the poem it represents triumph, recognition, and the earnest exuberance felt after victory.


3. ? THE time you won your town the race 
We chaired you through the market-place; 
Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. ?

This lines appeal to the senses in a more visual way, but is very descriptive as well. First, it sets the event in a ?market-place?, which its direct connotation usually involves a lot of people crowded. It makes the readers feel that the athlete was very important to the town. Also, ?man and boy? suggests that he was with his father during the celebration. Again all this descriptions create images of the recognition that empowers the poem with a clear visual representation.

4. The poem mainly transmit a tone of melancholy and longing, as the author seems to pay tribute to the death of the athlete while presenting personal experience that admits his feelings of sadness.