1. Agenda Chapter 9 Practice Poems Multiple Choice Practice
Loveliest of Trees
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Multiple Choice Practice
Homework: Complete poetry homework assigned Tuesday

2. Chapter 9--Meaning and Idea
Perrine’s Structure, Sound, and Sense
Coach Adams--Fall 2006

3. Two types of meaning:
Prose meaning--the literal definition of the printed words; this is like a paraphrase or translation into easier language
Total meaning: the entire experience communicated by the poem.

4. What’s the difference? Compare:
“I think she’s cute!”
versus
“I think she is a mysterious beauty.”
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
--Lord Byron

5. How to find the total meaning:
Identify the idea the poem is trying to convey.
Identify the emotion the poem is trying to express about that idea.

6. A Very Important Point
The quality of a poem is not dependent on the importance of the idea or the reader’s opinion of the emotion--rather, it is dependent upon the craftsmanship the poet uses to tie the two together.
Readers (and art fans and music fans and people who like intelligent stuff) must be willing to entertain ideas with which they disagree.

7. Partner Work
With a partner, go through both poems in the introduction of Chapter 9 and explicate each together.
“Loveliest of Trees”
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
Discuss the contrasts between each poem briefly.

8. Loveliest of Trees Carpe Diem Poem
Expressing the philosophy that life is short and that one should therefore enjoy it fully while one can.
The pleasure proposed in this poem is the enjoyment of beauty, especially of natural beauty, as symbolized by the blossoming cherry tree.

9. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Why does the speaker stop?
Stopping to watch beauty in nature, but has other necessary tasks in life to fulfill.
He wants to fulfill both, but the promises take precedence over enjoyment.

10. Multiple Choice Practice
15 Minutes timed to read and answer questions.
Place in binder!

11. Homework-read for pies not for plums.
Read and answer questions for the following poems. We will go over these on Thursday, and I will take this as a homework grade.
“Design” by Robert Frost
“O sweet spontaneous” by e.e. cummings
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman
“Kentucky, 1833” by Rita Dove