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ornamental line

Signposts & Battlegrounds

"the gods have invented
curious torture for us" (l.10).
H.D.'s "Loss" (1916)

 

Points for Reflection

Thomas Hardy's "In Time of the Breaking of Nations" (1916), PDF

  1. What does "clod" mean, besides a lump of earth/clay, and why might Hardy use it in the first line?
  2. Is the slow, uneven movement of man and horse intended to render each less, or more, noble (l.1-4)?
  3. What might "smoke without flame" (l.5) signify, figuratively?
  4. Why might Hardy capitalize "Dynasties" (l.8)? It's not a proper noun here . . .
  5. Why "wight" (l.9), and why "whispering" (l.10)?
  6. Why generate a title derived from The Bible (Jeremiah 51:20)?
  7. To what end does Hardy focus on the socioeconomic class pictured here?
  8. Does this poem magnify or diminish the significance of war and large-scale violence?


Fenton Johnson's "The Old Repair Man" (c.1913-20), PDF

  1. Is the new good envisioned by Johnson something terrestrial or otherworldly, present or future?
  2. Does this poem appear to concern a particular ethnic group, or humanity in general?
  3. Does this poem balance the possibilities that humans are a work of craftsmanship (l.16) and an experiment (l.17), or privilege one as more likely?


Claude McKay's "The White House" (1922), PDF

  1. What images does McKay use to convey the intensity of his narrator's suppressed emotions?
  2. Does the narrator find his sense of identity in expressing or in burying what he feels?
  3. Any idea as to why McKay appropriates and redeploys a racist description of the black man as "savage (l.6)?
  4. What might the "white house" represent?
  5. Why configure the white house's shut door as transparent instead of opaque (l.8)?


Angelina Weld Grimké's "The Puppet-Player" (1923), PDF

  1. Does this sound like the plaint of an oppressed people group, or the cry of all humanity?
  2. Can a poem this succinct still pack a punch?


W. H. Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" (1938; 1940), PDF

  1. Does Auden configure death as central or peripheral to human awareness?
  2. Do you think enigmatic line six refers to imminent grandparents eagerly awaiting their first grandchild, or to the advent of Christ in Christianity? Why?
  3. What is the antecedent of the pronoun "They" (l.9)?
  4. Do you think Auden's reading of Breughel's painting apt given what you see within the frame?
  5. What has your own experience proven? Do you see a preponderance of people attuned to the suffering of others, or apathetic to it?

a painting of two soldiers walking in a field with wildflowers next to an old fence of posts and wire. it is foggy and either daybreak or dusk. they appear exhausted.
On the Wire (1918)
Harvey Thomas Dunn

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu