what is poetry?

Information/Experience The Eagle –He clasps the crag with crooked hands; –Close to the sun in lonely lands, –Ringed with the azure world, he stands. –The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; –He watches from his mountain walls –And like a thunderbolt he falls. Alfred Lord Tennyson

It can broaden our experience--make us acquainted with a range of experience we might have had no contact with It can deepen our experience--make us look at daily life in more detail, more feeling. It shouldn’t be confused with morality or moral lessons, nor should we always expect it to be beautiful.

Look at p Geary Hobson –Are all parts of it beautiful? –Does it relate a moral?

Poetry builds a relationship You’ve got to have a poet and a reader, an invested, interested reader for poetry to work, to enhance experience. Sometimes poetry isn’t easy. So, you’ve got to work at it, give yourself over to it, experiment with it, be playful.

Poetry as multi-dimensional language Involves the reader’s intelligence senses emotions imagination

See p William Carlos Williams –Spring and All How does it engage your intellect? How does it engage your senses? How does it engage your emotions? How does it engage your imagination?

Dramatic Situation Who is the speaker? Who does the speaker address? What is the context? -- Response Papers Donne Coleridge Harjo

To His Coy Mistress, p. 638 My Last Duchess, p. 684 Who speaks? To whom? On what occasion?