REMEMBER, Paper #3 is due next Thursday by 5pm [no class!] See the assignment sheet two posts down--and be sure to read it before you start the paper, to make sure you remember what you're being asked to respond to.
For Tuesday, read the following poems:
* McKay, "The Tropics in New York," p.49
* Lazarus, "The New Colossus," p.50
* Bronte, "Home," pp.50-51
* Dunbar, "Anchored," p.52
* Rossetti, "Up-Hill," pp.55-56
* de la Mare, "The Listeners," pp.56-57
* Dickinson, "The Chariot," p.58-58
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: The poem, "The New Colossus" was written to accompany a pedestal on the Statue of Liberty, and refers literally to the Statue itself, which was one of the first things glimpsed by immigrants coming to the New World. What metaphors or imagery does she use in this poem to help translate the experience of America for the immigrant? What does she want them to 'see' America as (besides a statue, of course!).
Q2: The last three poems are explicitly about the experience of death, and what this might mean to the world of the living. How do they try to translate something of the experience for the reader (discuss at least one of them). Do you find it consoling/hopeful, or dark/pessimistic?
Q3: "Anchored" is another poem by the famous poet, Paul Dunbar, who also wrote "Sympathy" and "Ships That Pass in the Night." How does this poem also share something of the same theme as those poems? What separates the speaker from the "sweeter life afar"?
Q4: Who are "The Listeners" in the poem of the same name? At first it seems like they're the invisible spirits of the house, who ignore the Traveler's knocking. Yet could the Traveler be the one who is dead? Any clues in the poem and the metaphors themselves?
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