Meaning & Idea in Poetry

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by Susan Cook1 view·Updated Feb 15, 2021
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  1. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Week six of the course
  2. this week.
  3. Our focus is on discovering meaning and idea in poetry
  4. and how that meaning can be conveyed through the use
  5. of illusions and the tone that is created by the
  6. poet. We're going to begin our notes today with illusions.
  7. So let's start with the definition.
  8. An illusion is a reference to something or someone in
  9. history or previous literary works.
  10. You most likely come across illusions in previous readings, but
  11. we sometimes don't even realize that a reference to something
  12. or someone else is being made, which is why it's
  13. super important when you close read to take a moment
  14. to look up any words, names or phrases you don't
  15. know or aren't that familiar with because it might lead
  16. you to an illuminating discovery regarding the poem's meaning or
  17. underlying theme or message.
  18. Ultimately, illusions are it means of reinforcing the emotion or
  19. the idea of one's own work with the emotion or
  20. ideas of another work or occasion.
  21. Because they make compact, so much meaning and so small
  22. a space Illusions are extremely useful in writing poetry.
  23. Your textbook offers examples of illusions in chapter eight of
  24. your book, with the first being the poem Out Out
  25. by Robert Frost.
  26. The illusion occurs in the title itself and is a
  27. reference to a famous line in Shakespeare's well known play,
  28. Macbeth. In this case, Frost is using the illusion or
  29. reference to help define the theme of his own poem,
  30. which is about uncertainty and unpredictability in life, which can
  31. end accidentally at any moment, as the poem illustrates through
  32. the story of the young boy who loses his life.
  33. The illusion out, out when you look it up references
  34. the passage where Macbeth is informed of his wife's death.
  35. The passage reads out out brief Candle Life's but a
  36. walking shadow, Ah, poor player that struts and frets his
  37. hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
  38. It is a tale told by an idiot full of
  39. sound and fury, signifying nothing.
  40. So as we read frost problem about the young boy
  41. who by all rights shouldn't have died but did due
  42. to an accident, thes words from Macbeth are echoing in
  43. our minds as well, and work to underscore the meaning
  44. of what we are reading in Frost poem.
  45. While illusions could be made of a variety of historical
  46. and literary sources.
  47. There are three big categories that many writers and poets
  48. pull from more so than others.
  49. One is the Bible, particularly the King James version.
  50. Shakespeare is also a big source for illusions and also
  51. mythology, particularly classical Greek mythology.
  52. And Chapter eight of your book gives you several poems
  53. to illustrate each of these categorical types of illusions occurring
  54. in poetry.
  55. Because we analyze each poem and begin to understand its
  56. symbols, word, connotations and illusions, we begin to formulate ideas
  57. about the poem, and these combined ideas allow us to
  58. come to our own understanding what the poem may mean
  59. or the experience it provides for us as we read
  60. it. Some poems do have a central meaning that they
  61. communicate to us, and we can clearly state what that
  62. message or meaning is.
  63. Other poems, however, aren't concerned with creating a message and
  64. instead focus on delivering a description of a place or
  65. a person, or even just an emotional feeling.
  66. So don't feel like you have to force a meaning
  67. out of a polo that literally may not be there.
  68. You have to work with what the poem gives you
  69. and not try to take a meaning and force it
  70. to fit the poem.
  71. A final way that we can tune into the poems,
  72. meanings and ideas that it conveys is by paying attention
  73. to the tone of the poem as we read it
  74. in literature tone is the writers or the speaker's attitude
  75. towards subject the reader or himself or herself?
  76. The emotional coloring or meaning of the work in spoken
  77. language tone is indicated through the inflections of the speaker's
  78. voice. We can know the literal meaning of what someone
  79. is saying, but their tone or inflection lets us know
  80. the subtext of what they're saying.
  81. Are they being sarcastic, ironic, playful, sad, angry, frustrated or
  82. many other available emotions that we can convey through the
  83. sound of our voices In literature?
  84. It's obviously a little harder, because we have to rely
  85. on how the poem is written and constructed to determine
  86. the tone of a poem.
  87. Reading it out loud can definitely help us to pick
  88. up the tone, but we should also pay close attention
  89. to the poems, rhythm, the rhyme, sentence, construction irony, the
  90. imagery did that's described and any patterns that we notice
  91. emerging. It's an end product of all the elements in
  92. a poem.
  93. The tone of a poem may also shift, so we
  94. need to be aware of any emotional shifts in the
  95. poem and what potential factors cause those emotional shifts toe
  96. happen. Well, that's it for the lecture notes for this
  97. week. Your assignment for this week is to read the
  98. poems and be thinking about what poem you might like
  99. to write about for the short response and, ultimately, which
  100. poem you might like to choose to analyze.
  101. For the next essay, I posted the short response to
  102. upload Link for anyone who wants to complete the assignment
  103. and turn it in earlier.
  104. But the due date is not until Sunday, February 28.
  105. So that's it for today.
  106. Happy reading.
  107. Thank you for listening.