The Teaching Problems of English Poetry in the English Departments

By Najat Ismaeel Sayakhan

Teachers often complain that students find poetry difficult and intimidating. Some undergraduate students arrive at university with little or no interest in poetry. They confess that they do not know how to read it and therefore cannot understand or appreciate it. The distinctive features of poetry create some problems for the learner of English language, yet, if taught properly, poetry can be an effective tool in urging students to learn the language.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496983985

Najat Ismaeel Sayakhan

Najat I. Sayakhan was born in Kirkuk in February, 21, 1968. She finished her primary and secondary school in Kirkuk and got her Bachelor Degree in English Language and Literature in the University of Mosul in 1989. She worked as a teacher of English in secondary schools for more than 15 years. She got her MA in English Literature in Sulaimani University in 2007 where she works as a lecturer. She visited USA on the Fulbright visiting Scholars program of 2012 and joined EWU in Washington State.

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© 2014 Najat Ismaeel Sayakhan. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 07/04/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8399-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8398-5 (e)

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Contents

Chapter One The Nature Of Poetry

1.1 A Brief History:

1.2 Poetry Vs. Prose

1.3 The Value Of Poetry:

1.4 The Elements Of Poetry:

1.4.1 Imagery:

1.1.2   Sound Values:

1.4.2.1 Rhyme:

1.4.2.2 Alliteration, Assonance, And Consonance:

1.4.2.3 Onomatopoeia:

1.4.2.4 Refrain:

1.1.3 Rhythm:

1.5 Verse Forms:

1.5.1 Closed Form:

1.5.1.1 Blank Verse:

1.5.1.2. Stanzaic Patterns:

1.5.1.2.2 The Triplet (Tercet):

1.5.1.2.3 Terza Rima:

1.5.1.2.4 The Quatrain:

1.5.1.3 The Sonnet:

1.5.1.4 The Epigram:

1.5.1.5 The Limerick:

1.5.1.6 The Haiku:

1.5.1.7 The Rondeau: (Rondel)

1.5.2 Open Form:

1.6 Types Of Poetry:

1.6.1 Lyrical Poetry:

1.6.1.1 Elegy:

1.6.1.2 Dirge:

1.6.1.3 Epitaph:

1.6.1.4 Panegyric:

1.6.1.5 Madrigals:

1.6.1.6 Ode:

1.6.1.7 Sonnet:

1.6.2 Narrative Poetry:

1.6.2.1 The Epic:

1.6.2.2 Metrical Romance:

1.6.2.3 The Ballad:

1.6.2.4 Allegory:

1.6.3 Dramatic Poetry:

Endnotes To Chapter One

Chapter Two The Language Of Poetry

2. Introduction:

2.1 Figurative Language:

2.1.1. Metaphor:

2.1.2. Simile:

2.1.3. Metonymy And Synecdoche:

2.1.4. Personification And Apostrophe:

2.1.5. Synaesthesia:

2.1.6. Conceit:

2.2 Rhetorical Devices:

2.2.1. Hyperbole And Understatement:

2.2.2. Paradox And Oxymoron:

2.2.3. Climax And Anticlimax:

2.2.4. Rhetorical Question:

2.2.5. Ellipsis:

2.2.6. Parallelism And Antithesis

2.2.7. Irony:

2.3 Ideas In Poetry:

2.3.1. Allegory:

2.3.2. Symbol:

2.3.3. Allusion:

2.3.4. Myths, Legends, And Archetypes:

2.4 Poetic Diction:

2.5 Deviation:

2.6 Foregrounding:

2.7 Ambiguity And Pun:

Chapter Two Endnotes

Chapter Three Poetry Teaching: Methods And Techniques

3. Introduction:

3.1 Reading And Misreading Of Poetry:

3.2 Techniques:

3.2.1 Choral Reading:

3.2.2 Repetition:

3.2.3 Annotation:

3.2.4 Dramatization:

3.2.5 Drawing And Mapping:

3.3 Methods:

3.3.1 Subject – Centered Methods

3.3.1.1 Poetics:

3.3.1.2 Metaphors:

3.3.1.3 Genres:

3.3.1.4 Background:

3.3.2 Teacher – Centered Methods

3.3.2.1 Reading Aloud:

3.3.2.2 Lecturing:

3.3.3 Student-Centered Methods

3.3.3.1 Memorizing:

3.3.3.2 Recitation:

3.3.3.3 The Commonplace Book:

3.3.3.4 Writing Poetry:

3.3.3.5 Writing About Poetry – The Portfolio

3.3.3.6 Comparison And Contrast

Endnotes To Chapter Three

Chapter Four The Questionnaires

4. Introduction:

4.1 Teachers’ Questionnaire:

4.2 Students’ Questionnaire:

4.3 Open Questionnaire And Final Questionnaire:

4.4 Administration Of The Questionnaires:

4.5 Statistical Means:

4.6 Analyses Of The Results Of The Study:

4.6.1 Analysis Of Students’ Questionnaire:

4.6.2 Analysis Of Teachers’ Questionnaire:

Endnotes To Chapter Four

Chapter Five Conclusion

5. Introduction:

5.1 Results:

5.2 Recommendations:

5.3 Suggestions For Further Studies:

Endnotes To Chapter Five

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

Appendix IV

Bibliography

CHAPTER ONE

THE NATURE OF POETRY

1.1 A BRIEF HISTORY:

Poetry has been awarded a dignified status by every civilization in the world. It is as old as history and religion. Both poetry and language are thought to have been associated to rituals in the primitive agricultural societies. It has been used by the most primitive peoples, and cultivated by the most civilized (1). Besides providing people with an immense source of amusement and pleasure, poetry has been also regarded as the core of man’s life and existence. Poetry has been composed, through the ages, by all kinds of people. It flourished in the remotest civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, China, and India. The contributions of these cultures were embodied in epic, lyrical, and dramatic poems. Gilgamesh, the Sumerian epic (C. 3000 B.C.) is the earliest extant work in the oral tradition. It recounts the adventures of the king of that name, and his travels with Enkidu the wild man (2). Next come the Homeric epics, Iliad and Odyssey (C.1000 B.C.), whose heroes are Achilles and Odysseus respectively. The ‘Iliad’ recounts the story of the wars between the Greeks and the Trojans. The ‘Odyssey’ relates the adventures of Odysseus during his return to his island home in Ithaca from the Trojan wars. Outside Europe, there are the great Indian epics the Mahabharata and the Ramayana (A.D.300-500). The pre- Islamic long poems known as the ‘Mu’alaqat’ were recited in a sort of literary competition in Suq – Ukkadh. In the Ka’aba(the cubic temple in Mecca which was kept as the central shrine of Islam after all the religious statues had been removed), there were a number of poems hanged on the walls. Some of these hanged poems were allowed to remain after the Muslim order was established (3). Towards the end of the first millennium the Persian poet Firdowsi composed a national epic, known as the Shah-Nameh, it is considered as the equivalent of the Aeneid.

As far as the history of English poetry is concerned, the period before the Norman conquest, where two important events took place in the history of England, should be mentioned. The first was the invasion of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes who came to England in marauding bands, and the second was the conversion of the English, who were heathen, to Christianity. English poetry in the early Anglo-Saxon period is related to these two great events. The Angles brought the story of Beowulf with them to England in the sixth century. The poem was made after A.D.700 about seventy years after the death of prophet Muhammed (4). Beowulf is considered the oldest poem in English literature. It is a stirring, warlike, violent poem of over three thousand lines, it was set down possibly by a monk, a man of peace, in such a quiet place as a monastery (5). One must imagine this epic as being oral, passed down from one generation to another by word of mouth, and being written long after its composition (6). The poem is set down after the conversion of the English to Christianity, yet it belongs to the pagan life of the Germanic tribes The new worship and the old heroic virtues are together in the poem(7). Caedmon and Cynewulf wrote religious poetry and their names as poets were connected with the Christian tradition. Many anonymous short poems appeared in that period like ‘The Battle of Maldon’, ‘The Dream of the Rood’ and others.

Old English poetry is described as a dark, narrow world, men think of struggle in their fights, they seldom relax: wearing their armors, seen as warriors, prepared to test their courage against fate, romantic love hardly appears at all (8).

After the Norman Conquest very little English literature has survived. The Normans in England wrote a literature which was neither a true English nor a true French. They were cut off from their French culture. The Anglo-Saxons were not skilful in using the language of the conqueror, so Latin – rather than Norman French or Old English – was used as a kind of compromise (9). Songs and histories were written in Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Middle English began from about 1100 to about 1500, Chaucer was the greatest figure of the age. At his lifetime English has been established as the language of law-courts(10). During the last quarter of the fourteenth century Middle English literature produced three great poets who gave the characteristic genres of Middle English the supreme artistic expression. The Sir Gawain and the Green Knight poet produced the best romance of the whole period as well as its best religious poetry. William Langland ‘s Piers Plowman faced the great social and religious issues of his day. Geoffrey Chaucer’s achievement was the greatest of all, while he was entirely rooted in the soil of the Middle Ages.., his art is so fully realized as to carry him out of the Middle Ages and make him one of the two or three greatest poets in England (11). He is modern in that the language he uses is recognizably the language of our time..

The alliterative meter of Old English was used in several other poems of Middle English including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Vision of Piers the Ploughman, Pearl, and Patience, the last two poems are considered as two of the best alliterative poems of the time(12). A lot of anonymous works such as lyrics, ballads, mystery plays and some morality plays like Everyman were probably produced and transmitted orally and very little was, by chance, written down..

Wyatt and Surrey, whose poems were published in 1557, brought the Italian models into English poetry. They translated the fourteen- line Italian form of the sonnet into English. Blank verse became the great measure of English poetic drama, it was used by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, Keats, Tennyson and by other verse dramatists to the present day.

Elizabethan genres or particular literary forms as epic, tragedy, sonnet, verse epistle, epigram, hymn, masque, funeral elegy, and many more were identified. Poems in the satirical mode were placed among the low kinds, plain in matter and style. Poems in the lyric mode were comparatively brief, and usually concerned with praises, love, or celebration of nature or good life. There were dance songs with their rhythms and refrains. Sonnets were the most common among the other genres, they were not all devoted to love, some of them treated religious devotion and a wide variety of topics. There were also poems in the tragic mode, the mythological-erotic mode and heroic mode. The best poetry of the Elizabethan age went into drama, Shakespeare and Marlowe’s plays are good examples.

The early seventeenth century witnessed no work of high literature produced by the puritans except for the works of John Milton and his friend Andrew Marvell. This age is the age of the Metaphysical poets John Donne and his followers (George Herbert, Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, John Cowley), they sought out the strangest images instead of the accepted clichés of comparison, they yoked ideas which no one had yet seen together (13). In the other direction, Ben Jonson and his followers the Cavalier poets (Robert Herrick, John Suckling, Richard Lovelace, Edmund Waller, John Denham) tried to compress and limit their poems which were often love, fanciful, light-hearted poems..

The literature of the period between 1660-1785 can be divided into three periods: the first, which extends to the death of Dryden, is considered as the English Neoclassical or Augustan age because it was strongly influenced by the writers of the reign of the first Roman emperor Augustus Caesar, just before the Christian era. The second, which ends with the death of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift in 1744 and 1745 respectively, brought the literary movement initiated by John Dryden and his generation to its culmination. The third, which ended with the death of Johnson in 1784, was the period in which the old principles were confronted by new ideas which contained within themselves the origins of the Romantic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries..

The literature of the period is that of wit, concerned with civilization and social relationships, it is critical and, to some extent, moral or satiric. The lyric of the Elizabethan age had become in the restoration a minor and graceful mode, lyric poetry declined, and comedy lost its edge. Satire flourished with Pope and Swift as its pioneers.

The first thirty years of the nineteenth century are identified by the emergence of the romantic poets such as William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and others whose work differed from that of their predecessors, they had a deep interest in nature, not as a center of beautiful scenes but as an informing and spiritual influence on life (14).

The literature from 1880 to the present day witnessed great changes, they made it very different from what has been produced before. Some writers put aside the old forms of versification and tried composing verse without following the fixed rules, it is called ‘free verse’. The struggle between faith and science, which was the mark of the preceding period, ended by 1880, for most writers Christianity was no longer an active force; instead of opposing the church, they ignored it(15). The features of the past and the new trends which distinguish the period can be noticed in that time up to the present day..

English poetry of the twentieth century is marked by symbolism. Poets like Rudyard Kipling, Henley, and Walt Whitman followed the imperialist theme in which the language used was a mixture of pure slang and Biblical. Opposite to them were the decadents whose representative was Oscar Wilde, they followed the ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ doctrine. In addition to the decadents there were the pessimists such as Davidson, Dowson, Housman, and Hardy. Mention should be made of the great figure of the age, T. S. Eliot, who has been considered by many recent poets as their leader and symbol..

The twentieth century English poetry is characterized by "plain simplicity, delicate refinement, realism, symbolism, and impressionism (16).

Many of the early poems of Old English (A.D.450-1100) reflect the influence of Christianity, the epic of Beowulf was interpreted as a Christian allegory although it is related to the secular themes of adventure courage and war. In the Middle Ages (A.D. 1100-1500), poems have been written about many other subjects, although the religious themes were the principal. Today, poetry is composed on almost all topics, ranging from, love, sexuality, society, individuality, warfare, government and politics, worship, music, and strong drink, to special and unusual topics like fishing, computers, exotic birds, and car crashes..

1.2 POETRY VS. PROSE

Though poetry attained an eminent position in world culture, it began to face new challenges. Our age is technological, it is the age of electricity, machinery, internet, wireless communication and thus a prosaic age, but poetry keeps its position powerfully, large numbers of poetic collections are sold more than novels despite the fact that it lost its public entertainment value largely because all its narrative territory has been taken over by prose (17) because with the ancient Greeks, poetry had three departments –lyric, dramatic, and epic. These three divisions still exist to the present day, but two of them are no longer –except very occasionally- written in the form of poetry. Lyrical poetry is the only kind of poetry left (18). The epic has become the novel, written in prose. The dramatic poem has become the film or the play and also written in prose (rarely in verse nowadays)..

Poetry and prose, though have a lot in common, show a number of differences. These differences can be illustrated in terms of their shape on the printed page, their use of words, organization, rhythm, imagery, syntax, devices (such as figurative language, rhyme, ambiguity), translation and etymology. The lines of a poem are its hallmark, one can easily distinguish a poem by its appearance on the printed page. It is usually arranged in columns down the page. Sometimes these lines are divided into units called stanzas. The lines of prose are always set in paragraphs, prose is simply any writing where there is no use of line- endings, but each paragraph is divided into lines that will make the page look tidy (usually with a straight margin on each side of the page). When the writer wants to control the way his words are to be read and spoken, he will set them out in lines which represent rhythmic groups of spoken words. Any piece of writing so set out is called verse. Poems are read in a tone and pace different from prose. When we open a book of verse, unconsciously we get ourselves prepared for an experience different from that of reading a page of prose;the difference lies in an experience in the ear; poetry is rhythmically patterned language..

Kennedy and Gioia remind us that Poems state ideas… and sometimes the ideas are invaluable; and yet the most impressive idea in the world will not make a poem, unless its words are selected and arranged with loving art. Some poets take great pain to find the word (19). Poetry depends most on the power of words. The most important words attract the attention of the reader (or listener) especially when they are applied to express rhythm, meter, alliteration, or connotation. The prose writer can replace words by their synonyms without affecting the meaning, but the poet cannot, the synonym would make a change in the required meaning or rhythm of the poem, for instance, in Ogden Nash’s The Turtle:

The turtle lives ’twixt plated decks

Which practically conceal its sex.

I think it clever of the turtle

In such a fix to be so fertile.

If the verse is retold as prose: The turtle lives in a shell that conceals its sex. It is ingenious of the animal, in such a case, to be so prolific, the joke, which is a paradox of animal life to which the poet cleverly draws the attention of the reader, falls flat. Some of the appeal lies in the metric form of the lines. Now if the poem is rewritten with some words changed such as ‘gender’ for ‘sex’, ‘beast’ or’ animal’ for’ turtle’ and ‘plight’ for ‘fix’ it would be found out that the poem misses its music and delight..

Words are used in two different ways. There is the dictionary meaning (what is called the denotation or the lexical meaning) and the associations of the word which has been gained through constant use (the connotations of the word). For instance, the word ‘mother’ has a dictionary meaning which makes it understood. It means the female parent of the animal, and that is the denotation. But the word carries many associations – warmth, security, comfort, love, self-denial, sacrifice, devotion. Because of the many associations the word ‘mother’ has, it is used in connection with other things about which we feel strongly – our country, our school. Connotations are associated with the feelings, denotations with the brain. The writer of a science book (or a lawyer or any prose writer) do not intend to appeal to the emotions and feelings of the reader, only to his brain, his understanding, he restricts his words. He has to select the words which mean one thing and only one thing. Let’s examine this verse: Action calls like a bugle and my heart / Buckles..". The word ‘buckle’ is used to denote the action of fastening a belt and also collapsing a solid body – a sheet of metal or a wheel. In a piece of scientific or legal writing the word must have only one meaning or the other. But in this line of verse, the poet is not restricted. Words are the raw material of poetry.

Poetry is easier to remember than prose and that is because of the rhythm, rhyme, and sound devices–assonance, consonance, alliteration-which grant poetry its musical and rhythmical qualities that make it more memorable than prose and that:

There is a lot of anonymous poetry in the world, but very little anonymous prose. Sound is the essence of verse, and hence verse