Readings
Frost, Robert. “Birches.” In The Poetry of Rober Frost. Henry Holt and Co., 1979. ISBN: 9780805005028.
Hughes, Langston. “Harlem.” In Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. Vintage Classics, 1990. ISBN: 9780679728184.
Pardlo, Gregory. “Double Dutch.” In Totem. The American Poetry Review, 2007. ISBN: 9780977639533.
Cohen, Andrea. “Lit.” The New Yorker. February 16, 2015.
Dunbar, Paul “We Wear the Mask.” In The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dodd, CreateSpace, 2017. ISBN: 9781475157574.
Jess, Tyehimba. “Booker-Washington Double Shovel.” In Olio. Wave Books, 2016. ISBN: 9781940696201.
Reading Exercises
- Andrea Cohen’s poem explores the possibilities of a single metaphor. You should begin by asking yourself what the tenor of that metaphor is.
- The two parts of metaphor are generally designated as tenor, or thing meant (“I”), and vehicle, or thing identified with (“the walrus”).
- Langston Hughes’ poem (not unlike Shakespeare’s “Shall I compare thee…”) considers a series of different similes for understanding of how a temporal process will unfold: think about what each one offers and the domains from which the vehicles of these comparisons are drawn. (These are both tight, short poems that are also worth thinking about in light of many of the formal questions we’ve been exploring—but I’ll focus on their figures of speech).
- Gregory Pardlo’s and Robert Frost’s slightly longer poems both describe with great attention and affection games played by children. You might find it useful to google video of double dutch competitions, or of birch trees if you’ve never seen them.
- To notice in Pardlo’s poem: domains from which comparisons are drawn (and what do these tell us about the object described); when he uses simile, and when metaphor (mark these up on your copy!).
- To notice in Frost’s poem: all this and when the poem shifts from describing something observed to describing something not observed, but imagined.
- Finally, Jess’s poem builds on Dunbar’s metaphor of wearing a mask as a way of talking about double consciousness (and this idea of doubleness is important in his book as a whole). There is more complexity in this poem and its multiple versions than I find easy to talk about here, but let’s at least begin exploring.
