I am looking through a guide I purchased to refamiliarize myself with the AP exam and I have to tell you...I am amazed at how detailed the review of the exam is.
As you know, there will be three essays you will write about on the AP exam: (1) a prose passage essay, (2) a poetry essay, (3) and a free-response essay.
This is what the guide says about the poetry essay:
"The AP Lit exam is looking for connections between analysis and interpretation. For example, when you find a metaphor, you should identify it and [emphasis added] connect it to the poet's intended purpose or meaning. You shouldn't just list items as you locate them. You must connect them with your interpretation."
In other words, the AP exam writers want you to demonstrate your knowledge of the terminology of poetry and your breadth of knowledge in having read many poems.
Using this idea as a guiding principle, go through some of the poems we are discussing, pull out some remarkable piece of literary usage, and explain what it is and how it connects to the author's purpose.
I'll go first:
"I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence:"
Frost's use of the word sigh intimates a hesitant and somewhat dramatic retelling of this decision in his later years. His sigh could indicate both the weariness of the expression he is about to recount as it alludes to the relative unimportance of the decision of choosing between two equally worn paths.
Happy thinking,
Mr. B
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"And miles to go before I sleep / And miles to go before I sleep"
ReplyDeleteThe total meaning of Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is symbolic. This symbolism is clearly seen in the final lines. The speaker's admiration of the woods can be paralleled to the speaker’s admiration of life. His action of pausing along his journey to watch the woods fill up with snow is symbolic of taking the time to reflect on previous life experiences. Although the speaker reflects, he continues on his way. Despite the want to reflect on life’s positive, beautiful aspects, one cannot stray from facing the obstacles that are on the road ahead. At the poem’s conclusion, it is stated there are choices the speaker must fulfill, or “promises to keep.” The words “miles to go” in the final lines represent the happenings to come in the speaker’s future. The final words “before I sleep,” represent death.
"There is a place where the sidewalk ends
ReplyDeleteAnd before the street begins"
I think Silverstein is talking about the journeys one takes in life. When you've just finished something in your life, and you have a choice of what "street" your going to go down, what path your going to take, what decision your going to make.
"My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
ReplyDeleteTo children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."
Wilfred Owen uses these final lines of his poem "Dulce et Decorum est" to show his bitterness for how many people portrayed war. War was often shown as being glorious and wonderful, but in reality is horrible and ugly, and he means from these last lines that if one could see for themeselves the horrors of war, then the saying "It is beautiful to die for one's country" would seem all the more ironic and foolish.
"Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
ReplyDeleteNor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; "
Millay is stating how love literally is not all and how it can't physically supply you with the necessities of life. But I think these lines are metaphors for what love feels like. It feels like it can "feed" us what we need to live, and it feels like shelter or helps us rest in peace. The entire poem points out what love isn't in the physical, to counter how it feels in the mental and spiritual. It feels as though it can rescue you from drowning, but it can't. What love does is make food and drink taste better, makes sleep more relaxing, rescue us from ourselves and makes each breathe feel more important.
So Millay points out the obvious to direct us to the truth about love and how it IS in fact a neccessity.
“I shot him dead because—
ReplyDeleteBecause he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although”
Thomas Hardy uses repetition and the dash to imitate a hesitation and point of uncertainty in the speaker. He has to convince himself that he merely killed the man because it was war. However, just after he reassures himself, the semicolon indicates a momentary pause that is neither complete (like a period) or a brief pause (like a comma) but a broken thought that relates to the first half of the sentence. The “although” at the end of the stanza voices another point of uncertainty in this man’s story and allows him to fully delve into his insecurities about killing in battle.
"you better slow down.
ReplyDeletedon't dance so fast.
time is short.
the music won't last."
These few lines from the poem "slow dance" are repeated at the end of every stanza. Their repetition enforces the underlying message of the poem which is to take the time to notice all the little things in your life. The poem is anonymous but the website where i found it did say that it was written by a teenage girl who had recently been diagnosed with cancer. The poem is a subtle reminder to not take anything in life for granted because we don't really know when our time is up or when something will happen that changes everything we have.