Subject Code : GCAS 14

Subject Title: World Literature

No. of Units : 3

Semester, School Year : SECOND Semester 2022-2023

MIDTERM PERIOD

I. Major Topic : Poetry of the World

A. Lesson 1: World Poetry

1. Overview of Lesson 1:

Poetry is a type of literature based on the interplay of words and rhythm. It often
employs rhyme and meter (a set of rules governing the number and arrangement of
syllables in each line). In poetry, words are strung together to form sounds, images, and
ideas that might be too complex or abstract to describe directly.

2. Learning Outcomes :

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to :

a. Define poetry
b. Recite a poem

3.Presentation and Development of the Lesson

Poetry was once written according to fairly strict rules of meter and rhyme, and
each culture had its own rules. For example, Anglo-Saxon poets had their own rhyme
schemes and meters, while Greek poets and Arabic poets had others. Although these
classical forms are still widely used today, modern poets frequently do away with rules
altogether – their poems generally do not rhyme, and do not fit any particular meter.
These poems, however, still have a rhythmic quality and seek to create beauty through
their words. The Greek poet Homer wrote some of the ancient world’s most famous
literature. He wrote in a style called epic poetry, which deals with gods, heroes,
monsters, and other large-scale “epic” themes. Homer’s long poems tell stories of
Greek heroes like Achilles and Odysseus, and have inspired countless generations of
poets, novelists, and philosophers alike.
 Poetry gives powerful insight into the cultures that create it. Because of this,
fantasy and science fiction authors often create poetry for their invented cultures.
J.R.R. Tolkien famously wrote different kinds of poetry for elves, dwarves, hobbits, and
humans, and the rhythms and subject matter of their poetry was supposed to show how
these races differed from one another. In a more humorous vein, many Star Trek fans
have taken to writing love poetry in the invented Klingon language.
Poetry is probably the oldest form of literature, and probably predates the origin of
writing itself. The oldest written manuscripts we have are poems, mostly epic poems
telling the stories of ancient mythology. Examples include the Epic of Gilgamesh and
the Vedas (sacred texts of Hinduism). This style of writing may have developed to help
people memorize long chains of information in the days before writing. Rhythm and
rhyme can make the text more memorable, and thus easier to preserve for cultures that
do not have a written language.
Poetry can be written with all the same purposes as any other kind of literature –
beauty, humor, storytelling, political messages, etc.

4.Generalization of the Lesson

Poetry has been around for almost four thousand years. Like other forms of
literature, poetry is written to share ideas, express emotions, and create imagery. Poets
choose words for their meaning and acoustics, arranging them to create a tempo known
as the meter. Some poems incorporate rhyme schemes, with two or more lines that end
in like-sounding words.
Today, poetry remains an important part of art and culture. From Shakespearean
sonnets to Maya Angelou’s reflective compositions, poems are long-lived, read and
recited for generations.

5. Activities
Activity 1: Lecture/ discussion
Activity 2: Poetry recital

6. Evaluation: Poetry Reading

7.Assignment: Have copies of most significant/ popular poems from US,

AfroAsian, Europe and the World
B Lesson 2: Facts of Poetry
 1. Overview of Lesson 2:

The amazing art form of poetry is all around us, so because of that, today, we have
compiled a list of interesting facts about poetry and some facts about what is poems true
use.
1. One of the most popular forms of writing short poems is the haiku. Originating from
Japan, the haiku has only seventeen syllables. There are three lines containing
five, seven, and again five syllables.

2. Mahabharata is the longest poem in the world. It is an Indian epic poem which has
around 1.8 million words and is named Mahabharata.

3. Poetry is a way to make a profit. I know it sounds bad and hypocritical, but yes,
you can make money out of poetry. As long as you have the right poems for the
target demographic, by publishing a book of poetry and making posts you can earn
a profit. Whatever you do, do not forget how important is to write poems about the
one you love and how pure your writing needs to be.

4. March 21st is World Poetry Day. This day is celebrated on an initiative by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for
appreciation and support from poetry and poets from around the world. On that
day, it’s a blessing to think about some great birthday gift ideas for boyfriend.

5. The Epic is one of the earliest types of poetry. It consists of a long story (narrative)
which includes many awesome heroic actions.

6. The oldest written poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh originating from Babylon. In it we
have the story of a king, Gilgamesh, who was half-god, half-man. It is believed that
the Epic of Gilgamesh is around 4,000 years old.

7. A stanza, originally contains 12 lines. A couplet is a two-line stanza, and a quatrain

is a four line couplet.

8. Poetry is an outlet for our emotions. It doesn’t matter what kind of emotion it is.
Poetry helps us define it in our hearts and reminds us that these words are a
reminder of our expressions towards others. Whether you write poems for her or
love poems for him from the heart, being yourself is the most important thing.
 9. Poetry is a great way to improve your vocabulary. As you read poetry you will start
to find more complex words that you’ve never heard of, same is with writing, you
would like to find new words so you can mix those with your poetry. So, poetry will
invoke your creativity and you will start to look for words to add to your vocabulary.

10. Poetry can be used to make your rap better. When comparing rap music vs. poetry,
it’s important not to think in a negative way. Just because the mainstream media
is broadcasting rap about guns, drugs, women and money it doesn’t mean that that
should be your style of writing. There are a lot of underground artists trying to uplift
our society and you should be one of them, just find a theme that challenges and
inspires the mainstream society.

2. Learning Outcomes :

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to :

a. Discuss facts about poetry

3.Presentation and Development of the Lesson

Poetry is one of the most accessible art forms in the world.

1. Poetry, spoken or written, predates other styles of literature

Mankind’s oldest surviving manuscript is from the Geometric period (900-700BC). It

was an epic poem about the demigod and Sumerian king, Gilgamesh, that circulated from
Mesopotamia, Europe all the way to Asia, carved on stone pillars. It goes to reason that
the first ever scripture was based on verbal storytelling styles that existed way before –
so yes, spoken word and written poetry are positively, decisively, ancient art forms.

They also go hand in hand. From the 11th to the 14th century, troubadours and
trobairitz (male and female composers and performers of Old Occitan lyric poetry) formed
the first Romance language – meaning they used techniques to beautify or spoil words
when speaking, adding layers of depth to the already apparent meaning of what were
normally humorous or vulgar satires. They advanced metaphysical and intellectual
perspectives, developing European lyricism with mechanisms such as euophony,
cacophony, sound symbolism and metre. Bringing language to life, and performing is a
large part of poetry. Poems aren’t songs because they don’t need music. A poem has
music between the lines, on either side of each word, and inside the very syllables of each
word.
 2. Officially, there are three main types of poetry

You may know of the philosopher Aristotle, or heard his name in passing and never
really known what the dude was about. His writings formed the basis for much of Western
philosophy, covering everything from biology, zoology and metaphysics to ethics,
government, and poetry. He lived from 384 BC to 322 BC, further proof of just how old
(and wise) poetry is. He divided poetry into the epic, the comic and the tragic – developing
rules to distinguish each genre and the basis for future interpretations throughout the
Middle East in the Islamic Golden Age and Europe during the Renaissance.

It was upon his philosophy that the three still-standing categories of poetry were
established: lyric (expresses personal emotions, usually in the first person), dramatic
(describes an event or situation, normally a story told out loud to teach something) and
epic (covers topics around culture, patriotism or heroic deeds, typically a lengthy,
character-led narrative).

It’s in the latter that Aristotle’s comic and tragic ended up being sub-categorised. Most
poems find a way to defy these classifications, so why does having a system like this even
matter? It’s important historically, because poetry was often distinguished from prose by
its supposed lack of logical content or course – these labels denoted that poems were
rational stories in their own right, just free of the shackles of a linear structure.

3. While there are rules that help us define poetry, poetry is all about breaking
protocol

Poets are the directors, the runners, the cast, the entire team – they decide and deliver
every single element of their own work. Because poetry is such an autonomous act, it is
often born from the depths of our souls and covers very personal material, becoming the
movies of self – think of the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Frank O’Hara, and Don
Paterson.

As such, there can be a loneliness in the process, as a poet chases the perfect way
to express what they alone know and crystallise how they feel in words. That desire to
encapsulate memories and emotions, which are often shape shifting, means poems can
be equally shape shifting – a poem doesn’t have to rhyme, readers of poetry don’t need
to pause at the end of every line – often you’re actually meant to push through onto the
next line, and poetry is the only art form where there’s never really clarification as to
whether the context is fiction or nonfiction. Poetry empowers you to adapt and to
experiment, that is why we have the term ‘poetic license’.
 4. Poetry can be a gateway to other creative arts

Poets are investigators who have been liberated from the conventions of language
and social mores: changing patterns of language as they write, to change the
metacognition of their audience as they read. They say all the world’s greatest thinkers
do poetry – either writing it or reading it.

As a thinking, feeling, philosophical artist, you can use your poetry experience to deal
with your internal world and free it from the seclusion of your soul, expressing yourself in
the external world.

Poetry can be the breath that gives life to your own unique voice, becoming the
foundation for understanding yourself as a creative being in the wider world. Many poets
have simultaneously been philosophers (Friedrich Nietzsche), actors (Peter Sellers),
authors (Maya Angelou), musicians (Leonard Cohen) and even politicians (Pablo Neruda)
– and conversely they’ve also been some the most vital activists throughout history.

5. Poetry is a vehicle for social change

One of the earliest authors and poets ever known by name in world history, was early
female philosopher and poet, Enheduanna (2354 BC) – but from what we know, it was
extremely rare for women to be literate during this era. Poetry proved itself just as radical
in the Women’s Movement of 1960; a decade when many women writers challenged
traditional poetic form and subject matter, entering into feverish dialogue with the sexist
and racist society around them, and mobilising the civil rights camp – especially in
America.

To name just a few legendary poets of the time, there was Amiri Baraka, Sonia
Sanchez, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, and Audre Lorde. She was born in 1934 and
died in 1992, but understood intersectional feminism way before it became the buzzword
it is today, famously saying; “Those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black,
who are older — know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our
differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the
master’s house.” More than a hobby or a career, women like her saw it as their duty to
bring an anger, an emotional precision to the table for the sake of survival, fuelling
generations of literary activists, both male and female, to come.
 More Facts about Poetry

- Poetry is the best way to vent out your emotions and evoke feelings, regardless
what kind they are. Poems convey the truest and most honest feelings one can
have, that’s why some poems are often kept private by their authors.

- Stanza – a group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem. A
couplet contains two-line stanzas and a quatrain is a four-line couplet.

- One of the most popular forms of writing short poems is the haiku. Originating from
Japan, the haiku has only seventeen syllables. There are three lines containing
five, seven, and again five syllables.

- Poems don’t have to rhyme always. Sometimes rhyme doesn’t suit the theme or
the feeling of the poem, so many poets write in blank verse – poetry that doesn’t
rhyme, but has a particular meter (rhythm). Free verse – a poetry without a meter.

- The earliest forms of poetry predate written language. They were sung or recited
to help people remember genealogy, laws, and oral history.

- The word "poetry" is from the Greek term poiesis, which means "making."

- Poetry is one of the oldest forms of communication, dating back to prehistoric times
with hunting poetry in Africa and ancient Egypt.

- The oldest surviving epic poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh and dates from the 3rd
millennium BC in Sumer (now Iraq).

- The longest poem in the world is the Mahabharata. An Indian epic poem dating
from the 4th century BC or earlier, the poem has about 1.8 million words.

- Poet's Day is celebrated every August 21.

- The skin of murderer George Cudmore was used to bind an 1852 edition of John
Milton's Poetical Works.
- The word "unfriend" first appeared in a 1275 medieval poem titled "Brut" by
Layamon. Coincidentally, this is also the same poem in which the word "muggle"
first appears.

- German poet Gottlob Burmann so despised the letter "r" that he avoided using it
in his poems and suppressed it in his speech during the last 17 years of his life.

- Anne Bradstreet was the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished poet

in the British American colonies. After she died, her husband collected her poems
and published them as a book, making her the first woman to have a published
book in America.

- Ben Jonson was named the first poet laureate of England in 1616. However, the
title didn't become an official royal office until 1668 when John Dryden was
appointed. A poet laureate is responsible for writing poems for national occasions.

- Existing fragments of Aristotle's Poetics described the three genres of poetry: the
epic, the comic, and the tragic. It also laid out the rules for developing each genre
to its full potential.

“Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn”.- Thomas Gray
- French essayist and poet Sully Prudhomme (1839–1907) was the first
person to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

- Geoffrey Chaucer's name is derived from the French chausseur, meaning

"shoemaker."

- Known as the father of English literature, British author Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–
1400) is also considered the father of poetry and the greatest English poet of the
Middle Ages.

- Geoffrey Chaucer was the first poet to be buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster
Abbey.

- In 1998, an original printing of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales sold at auction for $7.4
million.

- The Victorian novelist Samuel Butler speculated that the ancient Greek poet
Homer was a woman. Other scholars argue that the Iliad and the Odyssey were
the work of many people.
- Nicknamed the female Homer, Sappho has become an symbol of homosexual love
between women. Her poetry skill was widely known, and Plato even called her the
"tenth Muse."

- E. E. Cummings self-published his book of poetry "No Thanks," financed by his

mother. In the book, he listed the 13 publishers who rejected his work, which would
later become a classic.

- Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, a Persian poet and Sufi master born in 1207, is the
best-selling poet in the United States. A compelling figure in poetry, Rumi's poems
articulate what it feels like to be alive.

- Poet George McDonald (1824–1905) wrote a two-word poem called "The Shortest
and Sweetest of Songs." It reads "Come Home."

- According to author Lizzie Doten, the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe provided her with
the poems that she published in "Poems from the Inner Life."

- Metrophobia is the fear of poetry.

- Metromania is the compulsion to write poetry.

- The epitaph on American poet Emily Dickinson's grave stone consists of two
words: "called back."

- Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" is considered to be an iconic expression of the

1950s Beat Generation. Its frank portrayal of sex, suicide, and drugs was so
scandalous that the publisher was imprisoned for distributing obscene material.

- The world's shortest poem is a one-letter poem by Aram Saroyan. It is simply a

four-legged version of the letter "m." The meaning of the poem is uncertain, though
some scholars describe it as a "closeup of a letter being born."

- William Shakespeare is the best-selling poet of all time. With over 4 billion book
sales globally, his surviving works include approximately 40 plays, 150 sonnets, 2
long-story poems, and a few eulogies.

- With over 113 publications, Lee Bennett Hopkins (1938–) is considered to be the
most prolific poet of the modern era.
 - The oldest surviving love poem is on a 4,000-year-old clay tablet simply named
"Istanbul #2461." The unknown poet wrote this poem for king Shu-Sin to recite to
his bride during a virility ritual.

4. Generalization of the Lesson

These are some facts you should know about poetry!

- Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythm qualities of language!

- Poems has a huge history! Early poems were created from folk songs such as the
Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas,
Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

- Forms and conventions are used in poetry to suggest differential interpretation to

words, or to evoke emotive responses!

- You can find a lot of metaphors in poems!

- The Epic of Gilgamesh, comes from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer and it is the
oldest epic poem!

- Rap is concidered to by synchronized poetry

- “Haiku” is a traditional form of Japanese poetry and it is one of the most famous
forms!

- Poets have their own day too! In the 21th of August!

- In Layamon’s medieval epic poem in 1275, Brut, we can find the word ”unfriend” !

- An Indian epic poem called Mahabharata is the longest poem in the world. It has
around 1.8 million words.

- The oldest poem in English is ”Beowulf”! It was written in the 8th century!

- ‘Flyting’ is the term for a poetic slanging-match, where two poets assail each other
in turn with streams of abusive verse.
 - ‘Metrophobia’ is the name for a fear of poetry.

- ‘Metromania’ denotes the compulsion to write poetry.

- The ancient epic Indian poem the Mahabharata runs to over 100,000 lines.

- Herman Melville’s 1876 work Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land is
the longest published poem in American literature.

- The Greek epic poet Homer is thought to have written a (sadly all but lost) poem
called Margites, about an exceedingly stupid man.

- The three biggest-selling poets in the world are Shakespeare, Lao-Tzu, and Khalil
Gibran.

5. Activities
Activity 1:Discussion
Activity 2:PPt Presentation

6. Evaluation. Group works. Human Diorama for the different epics mentioned above

7.Assignment.
a. Choose poems mentioned above which is familiar to you. Have copies of those
b. Prepare for Poetry interpretation
c. What are the different types/ forms of poetry?
d. What are figures of speech and sounds of poetry?

C. Lesson 3: Japan’s Poetry

1. Overview of Lesson 3:

Traditional Japanese poetry comes in many highly technical forms. You've probably
all heard of haiku, but there are many more types of Japanese poetry. The most significant
are the chōka, tanka, renga, haikai, renku, hokku, and haiku.
The chōka and tanka are both forms of waka. In a nutshell, the chōka is a long
waka, and the tanka is a short waka. Over time, the tanka became much more popular;
as a result, waka and tanka are sometimes used interchangably.
 According to the amazing Princeton Companion to Japanese Literature: the renga
is made up of linked stanzas of tanka, "joined in sequence so that each made an integral
poetic unit with its predecessor . . . but without semantic connection with any other stanza
in the sequence made of such alterations." It probably won't surprise you to learn that
there were crazy complex rules as to what kinds of stanzas went in what order, and a
single renga might be written by as many as three different poets.
The haikai is a relaxed form of renga (originally with light-hearted themes as well),
and renku is the modern name for haikai. The hokku is the opening stanza of a renga or
haikai with three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. If you're familiar with haiku, that structure will
sound mighty familiar. In fact, the haiku developed out of the hokku – but the concept of
the haiku as a freestanding form wasn't developed until the late 1800s. Yes, this means
that Bashō, who is generally thought of as the greatest haiku poet, didn't technically write
any haiku, since they didn't exist when he was around.

2. Learning Outcomes :

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to :

a. Interpret some Japanese poems

b. Identify the different poems of Japan

3.Presentation and Development of the Lesson

Japanese poems have a long and rich history that dates back well over a thousand
years. From the famous haiku to the lesser-known katauta, there are many varieties of
Japanese poetry that have evolved over the centuries.
Written Japanese poetry has existed as an art form since the Chinese Tang
Dynasty (618–907 CE), a rich cultural period across Asia. Poetry flourished in China
during this time, and its influence extended to Japanese culture. For example, Kojiki
(written in 712 CE) and Nihon Shoki (720 CE) are the oldest known Japanese books.
These collections of mythology, history, and poetry from the Nara period were written
primarily in Chinese.
Traditional Japanese poetry is known as waka. In Japan, poetry has often been
gathered into anthologies, and the oldest known book is a 20-volume compendium of
waka called Man'yōsh (or Manyoshu) printed in the seventh century. The collection
includes 265 chōka, which are long poems, and 4,207 tanka, or short poems. Other
famous poetry collections include The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu and The Pillow
Book by Sei Shōnagon, both completed in the early eleventh century.
 10 Types of Japanese Poetry
Over the centuries, there have been many different forms of poetry in the Japanese
language, all differentiated by themes and kana—syllabic meters in Japanese poetry.
Modern Japanese poetry—post–World War II—is known as gendai-shi, or contemporary
poetry. Here are 10 of the most well-known types of Japanese poetry from history:
1. Haiku: Haikus are the most well-known form of Japanese poetry. The haiku once
functioned the opening stanza of another form of poetry known as renga.

Originally called hokku, the haiku became its own standalone poetic form in the
nineteenth century when it was renamed haiku by famous haiku poet Masaoka
Shiki. Shiki was one of four famous haiku masters—along with Kobayashi Issa
(1763–1828), Matsuo Basho (1644–1694), and Yosa Buson (1716–1784).

Buson, of Kyoto prefecture, was a poet-painter and would incorporate his haikus
into his art—a combination known as haiga. Traditionally, haiku poems are
nonrhyming and have 17 syllables, broken up into a 5-7-5 formation. Modern
haiku is more flexible; some are written with a 5-3-5 pattern and some are simply
comprised of three non-rhyming lines. Japanese haiku poetry centers around
themes of nature and the seasons. In English, a haiku is printed in three lines
while in Japanese it is written as one vertical line.

2. Kanshi: Kanshi the Japanese word for Chinese poetry, and it includes Japanese
poetry written in Chinese. Kanshi was a popular genre of poetry in the Heian
period (794–1185), and a favorite among Japanese aristocrats.

3. Renga: In the twelfth century, the poetic style renga came about. Renga is a
collaborative form of poetry. It involves two or more stanzas, and the opening
stanza is called a hokku—a portion of the form that was eventually separated into
its own poetic form known as haiku. One poet writes the opening stanza of a
renga which has 17 syllables divided into three lines. The next poet writes the
second stanza, which is a couplet with seven syllables in each line. This stanza
pattern is repeated. Matsuo Basho was known for renga poetry, as was a
Buddhist priest by the name of Sōgi (1421–1502).

4. Renku: Renku is another type of collaborative poetry and linked verse—

alternating three-line and two-line stanzas written by different poets. Renku often
had comical themes that sometimes bordered on the vulgar. Writing renku was
often a form of entertainment, as poets would gather to write these poems
together.
5. Waka: The earliest Japanese poetry form is known as waka, which refers to any
genre of poetry written in Japanese. In ancient times, the aristocratic class,
known as kuge, would often exchange waka instead of letters. During the Heian
period, women were the primary waka poets since men traditionally wrote in
Chinese during this time. One of the most famous waka poets was Kakinomoto
Hitomaro (c.653-c.710). Some of the most famous collections of Japanese poetry
are waka. Kokin Wakashū (or Kokinshu) was published in 902 and was a
20volume anthology of waka poems. It included works by famous poet Ono no
Komachi (825–900) and Heian waka poet Fujiwara no Okikaze.

6. Tanka: Tanka is the modern name for classic Japanese poetry, meaning “short
poems.” Tanka poetry is non-rhyming. There are five lines in a tanka with a meter
pattern of 5-7-5-7-7. The first three lines of a tanka (5-7-5) are called kami-no-ku,
or “upper phrase.” The last two lines are called shimo-no-ku, or “lower phrase.”

7. Haikai: Haikai is a form of linked verse that incorporates satire or puns. Matsuo
Basho was the best-known poet of the Edo period and of this genre. Haikai
poems contain over 100 verses.

8. Haibun: In the seventeenth century, Matsuo Basho popularized this form of

poetry which is a combination of haiku and prose.

9. Katauta: This three-line poem has a syllabic meter of either 5-7-5 or 5-7-7. A
katauta is often called an incomplete poem. The form is written as one lover
addressing another. When paired with the response from the other lover, the two
katauta become a sedoka.

10. Sedoka: A sedoka poem is a call and response poem. These love poems are
made up of two katauta verses. The first verse is a katauta in which one lover
poses a question to another. The second verse is the partner’s reply, also written
is a katauta. Each verse has a 5-7-5 or 5-7-7 pattern.

Examples of Japanese poems:

On the Death of the Emperor Temmu by Empress Jitō (645-702), from
Women Poets of Japan

Even flaming fire can be

snatched up, smothered and
carried in a bag. Why then
can't I meet my dead lord
again?
Untitled by Kakinomoto Hitomaro (d. 708-715), from One Hundred Poems
from the Japanese

Kamo yama no
My girl is waiting for me

Iwane shi makeru

And does not know

Ware wo kamo
That my body will stay here

Shira ni to imo ga Machitsutsu aramu On

the rocks of Mount Kamo.
Man'yōshū, XIX: 4290 by Ōtomo Yakamochi (718-785), from Japanese
Court Poetry

Haru no no ni
Now it is spring –

Kasumi tanabiki
And across the moors the haze

Uraganashi
Stretches heavily –

Kono yūkage ni
And within these rays at sunset,

Uguisu naku mo.

A warbler fills the radiant mist with song.
Man'yōshū, XIV: 3570 by Anonymous, from Japanese Court Poetry

Ashi no ha ni
I shall miss you most

Yūgiri tachite
When twilight brings the rising mists

Kamo ga ne no
To hang upon the reeds

Samuki yūbe shi

And as the evening darkens cold

Na oba shinuban.
With mallards' cries across the marsh.
Kokinshū, XVII: 879 by Ariwara Narihira (818-893), from Japanese Court
Poetry

Ōkata wa
Lovely as it is,

Tsuki o mo medeji
The moon will never win my praise –

Kore zo kono
No, not such a thing,

Tsumoreba hito no
Whose accumulated splendors heap

Oi to naru mono.
The burden of old age on man.
Untitled by Ono no Komachi (833-857), from Women Poets of Japan

He does not come.

Tonight in the dark of the moon I
wake wanting him.
My breasts heave and blaze. My
heart chars.
Untitled by Murasaki Shikibu (974-1031), from Women Poets of Japan

This life of ours would not cause you sorrow

if you thought of it as like the
mountain cherry blossoms
which bloom and fade in a day.
Untitled by Saigyō (1118-1190), from A Reader's Guide to Japanese
Literature
Gazing at them, these
blossoms have grown so
much a part of me,

to part with them when they fall seems

bitter indeed!
Shinkokinshū, IV: 361 by Jakuren (d. 1202), from Japanese Court Poetry

Sabishisa wa Loneliness
–

Sono iro to shi mo

The essential color of a beauty

Nakarikeri
Not to be defined:

Maki tatsu yama no

Over the dark evergreens, the dusk

Aki no yūgure.
That gathers on far autumn hills.
Untitled by Bashō (1644-1694), from Basho: The Complete Haiku

nozarashi o weather
beaten

kokoro ni kaze no wind

pierces my body

shimu mi kana to
my heart
Untitled by Bashō (1644-1694), from Basho: The Complete Haiku

yagate shinu soon

to die

keshiki wa miezu yet

showing no sign

semi no koe the

cicada's voice
Untitled by Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), from A Reader's Guide to Japanese
Literature
Beneath the bright
Cherry blossoms
None are indeed Utter
strangers.

Untitled by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), from The Columbia Anthology of

Modern Japanese Literature

mihotoko mo Buddha
too –

tobira o akete he's opened

his altar doors,

suzumi kana cooling

off
The Oyster Shell by Kambara Ariake (1876-1952), from The Poetry of Living
Japan

An oyster in his shell

Lives in a boundless sea, Alone,
precarious, limited, How
miserable his thoughts . . .

Unseeing and unhelped,

He sleeps behind a sheltering rock. But in
his wakeful moments he must sense The
ebb and flow of the infinite deep.

Though the turning tide at dawn

May flood in to its height,
The oyster's being, destined to decay, Is
tied to a narrow shell.

The evening star, so luminous,

Turns the waves to crests of corn:
Us it reminds of a distant dove – Of
what avail to him?

How sad a fate! Profound, unbearable,

The music of the ocean
Still confounds him day and night. He
closes tight his narrow home.

But on that day of storm

When woods along the sea are shattered,
How shall it survive – the oyster shell, His
shelter, left to die a destined death?
Late Autumn by Hagiwara Sakutaro (1886-1942), from The Poetry of Living
Japan

The train was passing overhead,

And my thoughts meandered into the shade.
Looking back, I was surprised to find How
my heart was at rest!
Streets were strewn with the autumn sun's last rays, Traffic
crowded the highway.
Does my life exist at all?
Yet in the window of a humble house,
Along a back street where the smoke still hung, Purple hollyhocks were blooming.
Untitled by Katsura Nobuko (1914-2004), from A Long Rainy Season

My mother's soul viewing

the plum blossoms,
returning at night.
Untitled by Itami Kimiko (b. 1925), from A Long Rainy Season

What lives in the lake

filled with a blue that
has no name?
Concerning Obscenity by Shuntarō Tanikawa (b. 1931), from The Selected
Poems of Shuntarō Tanikawa

No matter how pornographic a movie

it can't be as obscene as a couple
in love. If love is something
human obscenity too is something
human.
Lawrence, Miller, Rodin,
Picasso, Utamaro, the Manyō poets:
were they ever afraid of obscenity?
It is not a movie that is obscene we
are the ones basically obscene
warmly, gently, vigorously, and
with such ugliness and shame – we
are obscene days and nights
obscene with nothing else, obscene.
4.Generalization of the Lesson

Japanese poetry includes various styles, such as haiku (俳句) and tanka (短歌),
and is one of the most widely known forms of Japanese literature. The first compilation of
Japanese poems, the Manyoshu, dates back to the Nara Period in the 8th century. It
contains about 4500 poems written by royalty and commoners alike.

Poetry remained a popular activity over the centuries, such as during the Heian
Period (9th to 12th centuries), when composing and reciting poetry at garden parties was
a pastime with scholars and the nobility. In the Edo Period, the celebrated poet Matsuo
Basho popularized haiku. Later, the Meiji Period poet Masaoka Shiki introduced modern
forms of haiku and tanka.

5. Activities
Activity 1:Lecture Discussion

Activity 2: Poetry Reading

6. Evaluation : Choose Japanese Poems and interpret them.

7.Assignment: . Search on the American Poets and their Works

D. Lesson 4: Poems of USA

1. Overview of Lesson 1:

American poetry began to make its mark on literature during the 17th century, when
colonists wrote poetry using the ideals of British writers, but nonetheless, it was the
beginning of a long line of world famous poets. American poetry through the centuries has
garnered attention for its wide range of styles and its diversity amongst writers. In this
lesson, we will look at some of the most famous American poets, starting with the earliest
colonial writers up to current contemporary writers that have made significant
contributions to American poetry.

2. Learning Outcomes :
 At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to :
a. Distinguish the importance of American poetry
b. Analyze selected poems
c. Read and Recite selected poems

3.Presentation and Development of the Lesson

The poetry of the United States began as a literary art during the colonial era.
Unsurprisingly, most of the early poetry written in the colonies and fledgling republic used
contemporary British models of poetic form, diction, and theme. However, in the 19th
century a distinctive American idiom began to emerge. By the later part of that century,
when Walt Whitman was winning an enthusiastic audience abroad, poets from the United
States had begun to take their place at the forefront of the English-language avant-garde.
This position was sustained into the 20th century to the extent that Ezra Pound and T.S.
Eliot were perhaps the most influential English-language poets in the period around World
War I. By the 1960s, the young poets of the British Poetry Revival looked to their American
contemporaries and predecessors as models for the kind of poetry they wanted to write.
Toward the end of the millennium, consideration of American poetry had diversified,
as scholars placed an increased emphasis on poetry by women, African Americans,
Hispanics, Chicanos and other subcultural groupings. Poetry, and creative writing in
general, also tended to become more professionalized with the growth of Creative Writing
programs on campuses across the country.

Poetry is a collection of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty - Edgar Allan Poe
“Poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from the emotion
recollected in tranquility” - William Wordsworth
“Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying
things” - Mathew Arnold
Poems express powerful feelings, put emotions into words, share emotions, and
inspire readers. Poems are written in lines and stanzas. A line of poetry can be one
word long. Words don’t have to be aligned. They can be all over Sound and Language:

Robert Frost calls poetry. “Talk-songs” to express that poetry has musical
quality. It can make use of sound devices like rhyme, rhythm, meter, alliteration, and
refrain etc. It also makes use of figurative language to convey thought- provoking
message like personification, metaphor, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, and simile etc.
 American Poetry in its Historical Framework
- 1600 1776 1900 1945 01980 Colonial Poetry Post-independence Poetry Modern
Poetry Post WWII Poetry Contemporary Poetry

- Early Native American Poetry Native Americans were the people who came from
Asia and different other parts of the world. In 1492, Christopher Columbus made
first contact with these indigenous people . Hence, poetry in Native American
period was in oral tradition and mode of writing was highly conservative. When it
appeared in written form, it was highly influenced by British poetry of 18th
century when Romantic poets were trying to contact Nature on different scale.
The early colonial American poetry was also influenced by Puritanism and it can
be analyzed in the poetry of Thomas Morton and Anne Bradstreet who is known
as first recorded poets of British colonies in America.

- Post-Independence American Poetry The Declaration of American

Independence made American poets to search their own poetic models and
traditions different from European. Hence, the post-independence American
poetry somehow reflects the voice of its people. Some important names
appeared in this time such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson etc. American
Transcendentalism is one of the biggest hits of entire American literary history
which chiefly came from Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. It began in 1848 as a
protest against the general state of culture and society.

- Modern American Poetry This is called the richest time in American poetic
history. Both Imagism and Harlem Renaissance helped American poets to
create a music and voice of their own. The poets of this time rejected traditional
forms and received diverse influences in order to experiment more and more
with poetry. The significant poets of this time are Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and
Robert Frost.

- Post World War-II American Poetry The poetry of this time period was purely
academic and traditional. Poets became cautious of forms and customs. The
poetry of this time was highly modeled on different poetic forms like
Confessional Movement, Beats Generation Poetry, and Black Mountain Poetry
etc. The significant poets of this time period were Elizabeth Bishop, Robert
Lowell, and Sylvia Plath etc.

- Poetry Today since 1970s Poetic Movements Style of Poetry Contemporary Era
• Black Arts Movement representing African Culture • Revival of Beats Poetry led
to Poetry Slams and Rap today • Poetry on Web since 2000 • 1970s saw revival
 of interest in Surrealism and Hippies (Talk poems) • 1980s saw rise of Women’s
poetry • Emergence of multicultural poetry • At present time, poetry has moved
out of the mainstream and onto colleges and universities

American Poetry may include slavery, division, Identity, honor, self-esteem, selfexile,
migration, poverty, exploration, religious freedom and dogmas, self-discovery, self-
doubt, self-examination, exoteric emotions and feelings etc. The spectrum of English
poetry is narrower than American. It talks about diverse issues of society, love,
Romance, Nature, spirituality, mysticism, Humanitarianism, Democracy, cultural,
nationalism, traditions and mythology etc.
American poetry and entire literature is far more realistic and pessimistic in
portraying life and world. Whereas, English poetry also gets realistic but it is not as
direct as American one and the reality of English literature gets transformed in
portraying characters and life.
Because of disappointment out of numerous issues, American began suspecting the
culture. They began criticizing the culture, and started composing poems of this kind. In
this way, a revolution was witnessed in American culture.
“I” and Introspection Self remains at the heart of American poetry whether it is Walt
Whitman or Emily Dickinson or Emerson or Robert Frost or Sylvia Plath. “I” remains an
expansive, inclusive and micro-cosmic phenomenon to American poets. American
poetry is an endless chain of self-doubt and self-examination because “I”, “my” and “me”
remains a micro-cosmic experience for poets of America that’s why it is said that
American poetry is a bold-curiosity of SELF unlike English.
Contemporary Taste American Poetry has contemporary taste because it talks about
the issues of present-day world. Whereas, English Poetry has traditional taste and it
sounds classical and attic.
American people are not the natives of America, they don’t have generations behind,
they have roots elsewhere so they look in from outside . American Poetry has mainly
only five periods which help it to get flourished . It is more philosophical and reflects the
chaotic history of its people . The American and English poetry should never be fused
and nothing could be more inappropriate than this fusion because American are never
British in sensibility “American Literature has always been immigrant” Salman Rushdie
American Poetry: An Introduction

America’ is another name for the United States of America or the U.S. or the U.S. of A.
The indigenous peoples of America or the Native Americans are believed to have
migrated from Asia, beginning between 12,000 and 40,000 years ago. In 1492, the
explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, made the first
contact with the indigenous people.
 Early American Poetry . The poetry before the founding of the United States
was largely oral. Most of the early colonial poetry is modeled on the British poetry of the
seventeenth century. The influence of the Puritanism is clearly felt in early American
poetry.
ANNE BRADSTREET . One of the first recorded poets of the British colonies was
Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672), one of the earliest known women poets who wrote in
English.
Post-Independence American Poetry The thirteen American colonies declared
themselves as independent of the British Empire on 4 July 1776. The need to be free
from British poetic models and tradition is an important concern of the PostIndependence
American poets.
Post Independence American Poets Some of the most important poets of the
nineteenth century were Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow (1807–1882), and Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). The search for distinctive
American voice and identity is reflected in the presence of American landscape and
native traditions in their poetry.
AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM . The American Transcendentalism began
in 1848 as a protest against the general state of culture and society. It was founded on
the belief that the ideal spiritual state &quote; transcends & quote; the physical and
empirical and can be realized only through the individual's intuition , rather than through
the doctrines of established religions.
PROMINENT TRANSCENDENTALISTS . Prominent transcendentalists included
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman (1819 -1892).
Transcendentalism was the distinctly American strain of English Romanticism of William
Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge. Emerson is believed to have met these two poets.
EMERGENCE OF THE TRUE AMERICAN VOICE. Emerson declared in 1837,
‘Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to
a close’. Two very different poets represent the emergence of this new spirit and
genuinely American voice.
TWO AMERICAN POETIC IDIOMS . Louis Untermeyer (Modern American
Poetry) notes that these two poets represent two major American poetic idioms —the free
metric and direct emotional expression of Whitman, and the gnomic obscurity and irony
of Dickinson—both of which would stamp the American poetry of the 20th century.
Whitman is often called America’s first ‘poet of Democracy’.
Modernist poet Ezra Pound said He is America.”
Walt Whitman was born into a working class family in West Hills, New York, a
village near Hempstead, Long Island, on May 31, 1819, just thirty years after George
Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the newly formed United States.
Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse
during the American Civil War (1861–1865) in addition to publishing his poetry. After
a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey where his
health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.
Whitman's major work , Leaves of Grass , was first published in 1855 with his own
money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with ‘an American
epic’. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892.
Leaves of Grass has its genesis in an essay called ‘The Poet’ (1845) by Emerson, which
expressed the need for the United States to have its own new and unique poet to write
about the new country's virtues and vices. The title Leaves of Grass was a pun. &quote;
Grass&quote; was a term given by publishers to works of minor value and &quote;leaves
& quote; is another name for the pages on which they were printed.

Some other famous poems of Whitman are ‘ Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking’,
‘ I hear America Singing’ , ‘A Noiseless patient Spider’. His poems like ‘When Lilacs Last
in the Dooryard Bloom’d , and ‘ O Captain, My Captain’ are elegies on the death of
Abraham Lincoln.
One of the most important American poets and contemporaries of Walt Whitman
is Emily Dickinson. She was born 10 December 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where
she lived until her death on 15 May 1886. Although she was a prolific private poet, fewer
than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime.
Dickinson was a private and introverted person who disliked fame as the poem ‘ I am
Nobody’ shows. Adrienne Rich notes that this privacy was freedom to her. Dickinson’s
life as well her poetry stands in complete contrast to Whitman.
Dickinson's poems are unique. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, slant
rhyme , and unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with
themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends. The
influence of American Transcendentalism is also felt in her works.
THE TRADITION OF AMERICAN POETRY . The tradition of American poetry can
be represented by the contrasting figures of Whitman and Dickinson. What unites both is
the distinctive and individualistic voice that is very American and very powerful . The
passionate quest for genuine American identity and the spirit of non-conformity continued
in the twentieth century.

THE RISE OF MODERNISM. Modernism emerged in the early part of the twentieth
century as a reaction against the sentimental and romantic Victorian poetry. Ezra Pound
(1885–1972) and T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) steered American poetry toward greater
density, difficulty, and opacity, with the use of techniques like fragmentation, ellipsis,
allusion, juxtaposition, ironic and shifting personae, and mythic parallelism.
 IMAGISM. Modernist poetry in English is generally considered to have emerged
with the appearance of the Imagist movement. Imagism favored precision of imagery and
clear, sharp language and rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much
Romantic and Victorian poetry. They emphasized the use of free verse.
Other modernist poets of the period include Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), Wallace
Stevens (1879–1955), William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (1886–
1961), , Marianne Moore(1887–1972), E. E. Cummings (1894–1962), and Hart Crane
(1899–1932).
Robert Frost (1874-1963) is one the most influential American poets of the
twentieth century. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco on March 26, 1874. He moved
to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry
during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth
College in 1892, and later at Harvard, though he never earned a formal degree.
He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of
American colloquial speech. Though his poems avoid the experimental excesses and
techniques of the modernist contemporaries, a very modern and very American sensibility
is felt in Frost’s poetry. The influence of Imagism is also seen on his poetry.
His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early
twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A
popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving
four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. A typical Frost poem is ‘Mending Wall’, which appeared in
North of Boston (1914). It is meditative lyric that reports and assesses a dialogue between
neighbors who have joined in the annual occupation of rebuilding the wall which separates
their farms. The poem reexamines the stock belief regarding the relationship between
human beings and the relationship of human beings with nature. The speaker in the poem
a New England farmer questions conventional wisdom of mankind -‘Good fences make
good neighbors’ and indicates that forces of nature do not accept human boundaries.
‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ which appeared in Frost’s 1922
collection New Hampshire is widely known. The last stanza of the poem is extremely
famous: The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles
to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.”
Though the poem is read simplistically as the conflict between ‘beauty’ and ‘duty’
or between the romantic world view and the pragmatic one, Jeffery Meyers says ‘The
theme is the temptation of death, even suicide, symbolized by the woods that are filling
up with snow on the darkest evening of the year. The speaker says,; The woods are
lovely, dark and deep; but he resists their morbid attraction.
 One of the most famous American poems is ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert
Frost. It was published in the collection Mountain Interval in 1916. The speaker in the
poem is a traveler who is remembering his journey. He says that he had to make a
choice between two roads at an important juncture in his life. The speaker concludes by
saying: I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads
diverged in a wood, and I–I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the
difference . The traveler's choice in living unconventional life indicates his philosophical
outlook, his individualism and non-conformist attitude.
The journey of American poetry can be summed up as follows: The attitudes of
American poets are like those of the speaker- individualistic, non-conformist and always
keen to venture into unknown territories.
The major American poets like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost
have always believed in taking the Road which is usually not taken and which ‘ wanted
wear’. Consequently, they have made all the difference to literary traditions by opening
new pathways and streets and hence have been immensely influential internationally.

4.Generalization of the Lesson

American poetry of roughly the first half of the twentieth century is remarkable in
its richness, inventiveness, and diversity. The variety of poetry written and published in
the United States in the last century represents a great period that was marked by an
explosion of literary creativity. Its range of forms, styles, and preoccupations are in a
fundamental sense uncontainable. They exceed any single story we might try to tell about
them.
Poetry is a collection of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty - Edgar Allan Poe
“Poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from the emotion
recollected in tranquility” - William Wordsworth

“Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying
things” - Mathew Arnold
Poems express powerful feelings, put emotions into words, share emotions, and
inspire readers. Poems are written in lines and stanzas. A line of poetry can be one word
long. Words don’t have to be aligned. They can be all over Sound and Language:

Robert Frost calls poetry. “Talk-songs” to express that poetry has musical quality.
It can make use of sound devices like rhyme, rhythm, meter, alliteration, and refrain etc.
It also makes use of figurative language to convey thought- provoking message like
personification, metaphor, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, and simile etc.
 5. Activities
Activity 1: Poetry Reading/ recital
Activity 2:PPT/ Discussion/Poetry Analysis

7. Evaluation (quiz)
Quiz
1. Why does American poetry insist for the quest of “Self”?
2. Why identity is the major topic of American poetry?
3. In what ways, the realism of American poetry is different from English
literature? What makes it different from European/ English poetry?
4. What is so special about American poetry that gives it a contemporary taste?
5. What are topics of post WWII American Poetry?

7.Assignment

1. Have copies of poems of Robert Frost

2. Select poems of Emily Dickenson that depict on learning and love

E. Lesson 5: Canadian Poetry

1. Overview of Lesson 5:

Canadian poetry is poetry of or typical of Canada. The term encompasses poetry

written in Canada or by Canadian people in the official languages of English and French,
and an increasingly prominent body of work in Indigenous languages.
Although English Canadian poetry began to be written soon after European
colonization began, many of English-speaking Canada’s first celebrated poets come from
the Confederation period of the mid to late 19th century. In the 20th century,
AngloCanadian poets embraced European and American poetic innovations, such as
Modernism, Confessional poetry, Postmodernism, New Formalism, Concrete and Visual
poetry, and Slam, but always turned to a uniquely Canadian perspective.
The minority French Canadian poetry, primarily from Quebec, blossomed in the
19th century, moving through Modernism and Surrealism in the 20th century, to develop
a unique voice filled with passion, politics and vibrant imagery.
Montreal, with its exposure to both English and French poetry, became a hotbed of
poetic progress with movements such as the Montreal Group and Les Automatistes, and
notable poets such as Irving Layton and Leonard Cohen. Toronto (centered on the
Bohemian Embassy Coffee House and bpNichol’s grOnk) and Vancouver (with the
Downtown Poets and the TISH group) also developed as important poetry centers.
In the later 20th century, a growing awareness of Native identity coupled with the
struggle for Indigenous rights, fostered the growth of writing by Native Canadians.

2. Learning Outcomes :

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to :

a. Exert effort to participate actively in-group performance related to the topic

discussed.
b. Appreciate the authors of different works for their precious literary content, style
and techniques.

3.Presentation and Development of the Lesson

Canadian literature possesses a style unto itself. As Canada’s writers and poets
have developed a voice for the Great White North, a recurring theme is a refusal to adhere
to the poetic norm.
The first writers of English in Canada were visitors—explorers, travelers, and
British officers and their wives—who recorded their impressions of British North America
in charts, diaries, journals, and letters. These foundational documents of journeys and
settlements presage the documentary tradition in Canadian literature in which geography,
history, and arduous voyages of exploration and discovery represent the quest for a myth
of origins and for a personal and national identity. As the critic Northrop Frye observed,
Canadian literature is haunted by the overriding question “Where is here?”; thus,
metaphoric mappings of peoples and places became central to the evolution of the
Canadian literary imagination.
Most of the earliest poems were patriotic songs and hymns (The Loyal Verses of
Joseph Stansbury and Doctor Jonathan Odell, 1860) or topographical narratives,
reflecting the first visitors’ concern with discovering and naming the new land and its
inhabitants. In The Rising Village (1825), native-born Oliver Goldsmith used heroic
couplets to celebrate pioneer life and the growth of Nova Scotia, which, in his words,
promised to be “the wonder of the Western Skies.” His optimistic tones were a direct
response to the melancholy poem written by his Anglo-Irish granduncle, Oliver Goldsmith,
whose The Deserted Village (1770) concludes with the forced emigration of dispossessed
villagers.
 The Dominion of Canada, created in 1867 by the confederation of Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, Upper Canada, and Lower Canada (now Quebec), precipitated a flurry
of patriotic and literary activity. The so-called Confederation poets turned to the landscape
in their search for a truly native verse. Unlike their predecessors, they no longer merely
described or moralized nature but attempted to capture what the Ottawa poet Archibald
Lampman called the “answering harmony between the soul of the poet and the spirit and
mystery of nature.” New Brunswick poet Charles G.D. Roberts inspired his cousin, the
prolific and vagabond Bliss Carman, as well as Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott,
also an Ottawa poet, to begin writing verse. Lampman is known for his meditations on the
landscape. Scott, who was a government administrator, has become better known for
advocating the assimilation of First Nation peoples than for his poetry’s depiction of
Canada’s northern wilderness. Perhaps the most original poet of this period was Isabella
Valancy Crawford, whose colourful mythopoeic verse, with its images drawn from the lore
of native peoples, pioneer life, mythology, and a symbolic animated nature, was published
as Old Spookses’ Pass, Malcolm’s Katie, and Other Poems in 1884.
In the early 20th century, popular poets responding to the interest in local colour
depicted French Canadian customs and dialect (W.H. Drummond, The Habitant and
Other French-Canadian Poems, 1897), the Mohawk tribe and rituals (E. Pauline Johnson,
Legends of Vancouver, 1911; Flint and Feather, 1912), and the freedom and romance of
the north (Robert Service, Songs of a Sourdough, 1907). John McCrae’s account of World
War I, “In Flanders Fields” (1915), remains Canada’s bestknown poem. Slowly a reaction
against sentimental, patriotic, and derivative Victorian verse set in. E.J. Pratt created a
distinctive style both in lyric poems of seabound Newfoundland life (Newfoundland Verse,
1923) and in the epic narratives The Titanic (1935), Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940), and
Towards the Last Spike (1952), which through their reliance on accurate detail participate
in the documentary tradition. Influenced by Pratt, Earle Birney, another innovative and
experimental poet, published the frequently anthologized tragic narrative “David” (1942),
the first of many audacious, technically varied poems exploring the troubling nature of
humanity and the cosmos. His publications include the verse play Trial of a City and Other
Verse (1952) and poetic collections such as Rag & Bone Shop (1971) and Ghost in the
Wheels (1977).
Toronto’s Canadian Forum (founded in 1920), which Birney edited from 1936 to
1940, and Montreal’s McGill Fortnightly Review (1925–27) provided an outlet for the “new
poetry” and the emergence of Modernism. Here and in their anthology New Provinces
(1936), A.J.M. Smith, F.R. Scott, and A.M. Klein began their long literary careers.
Emphasizing concrete images, open language, and free verse, these modernists felt that
the poet’s task was to identify, name, and take possession of the land. Klein wrote in
“Portrait of the Poet as Landscape” (1948) that the poet is “the nth Adam taking a green
inventory / in a world but scarcely uttered, naming, praising.” The bonds of a colonial
frame of mind characterized by fear of the unknown, reliance on convention, a puritan
consciousness—what Frye, in the “Conclusion” written for the first edition of the Literary
History of Canada (1965), called the “garrison mentality”—were being broken and cast
off.
Strong reaction to the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and World War
II dominated the poems of the 1930s and ’40s. Using the documentary mode, Dorothy
Livesay condemned the exploitation of workers in Day and Night (1944), while her lyric
poems spoke frankly of sexual love (Signpost, 1932). In opposition to the cosmopolitan
and metaphysical verse promoted by Smith and the literary magazine Preview (1942–45),
Irving Layton, Louis Dudek, and Raymond Souster— through their little magazine Contact
(1952–54) and their publishing house, the Contact Press (1952–67)—urged poets to
focus on realism and the local North American context. P.K. Page, one of Canada’s most
intellectually rigorous poets, was associated with the Preview group in the ’40s when she
published her first collection, As Ten as Twenty (1946), which includes the evocative
renowned poem “Stories of Snow.”
Page’s later work increasingly reflected her interest in esoteric places, forms, and
religions, from Sufism (Evening Dance of the Grey Flies, 1981) to the glosa, a Spanish
poetic form (Hologram: A Book of Glosas, 1994).
Fueled by fervent literary nationalism and anti-Americanism, by the expansion of
new presses and literary magazines, and by the beckoning of avant-garde forms, poetry
blossomed after 1960. Prolific, ribald, and iconoclastic, Irving Layton published 48
volumes of poetry celebrating life in memorable lyric lines and lambasting Canadian
sexual puritanism and social and political cowardice. Much admired for his The
Martyrology (books 1–9, 1972–93), an investigation into language and the self, bp Nichol
(Barrie Phillip Nichol) explored concrete and sound poetry, as did bill bissett and Steve
McCaffery. Many of Canada’s novelists—including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje,
George Bowering, Leonard Cohen, and Dionne Brand—were poets first. Atwood’s The
Circle Game (1966), Power Politics (1971), and Two-Headed Poems (1978) are laconic,
ironic commentaries on contemporary mores and sexual politics: “you fit into me / like a
hook into an eye / a fish hook / an open eye.” In The
Journals of Susanna Moodie (1970), Atwood translated the 19th-
century author of Roughing It in the Bush into a modern figure of alienation. Her Morning
in the Burned House (1995) invokes popular and classical myths, the elegy, history, and
the personal lyric. Ondaatje also turned to historical personae in his collage The Collected
Works of Billy the Kid (1970), as did Bowering in his long poem George, Vancouver
(1970). Daphne Marlatt reinvented a fishing and canning town’s past in Steveston (1974),
and Robert Kroetsch explored his Prairie roots in Field
Notes (1981)—both important examples, along with Bowering’s Kerrisdale Elegies
(1984), of the serial long poem, another variation on the documentary mode. In
Handwriting (1998) Ondaatje returned to his birthplace, Sri Lanka. Fascination with place
and history also permeates Al Purdy’s poems about the country north of Belleville, Ont.,
and about his travels west and to the Arctic (Being Alive, 1978) and to the Soviet Union
(Piling Blood, 1984; The Collected Poems of Al Purdy, 1986). The landscape of
southwestern Saskatchewan figures centrally in the poetry of Lorna Crozier (Angels of
Flesh, Angels of Silence, 1988; What the Living Won’t Let Go, 1999). Also from
Saskatchewan, Karen Solie (Short Haul Engine, 2001; Modern and Normal, 2005) is
intrigued by physics, fractals, and the landscape. Fred Wah, one of the founders (along
with Bowering and Frank Davey) of the Vancouver poetry magazine Tish, explored his
roots in the Kootenays in Pictograms from the Interior of B.C. (1975), later turning to his
mixed heritage and Chinese background in Rooftops (1988) and So Far (1991). David
Zieroth (who has also published as Dale Zieroth) recalled his childhood on a Manitoba
farm in When the Stones Fly Up (1985) and The Village of Sliding Time (2006) and
meditated on everyday moments in Crows Do Not Have
Retirement (2001).

Don McKay (Field Marks, 2006) spin evocative poems out of historical events, key
personages, the natural world, and the quotidian. The desire of women to express their
distinctive voices and experiences in nonconventional forms also resulted in a surge of
feminist literary journals (Room of One’s Own, Atlantis, Tessera, Fireweed) and presses.
Collections by Marlatt (Touch to My Tongue, 1984; This Tremor Love Is, 2001) and Di
Brandt (Questions I Asked My Mother, 1987; Jerusalem, Beloved, 1995) reenvision
language, sexuality, and subjectivity through a feminist, lesbian, and theoretical lens.
Anne Carson writes playful poems that interweave contemporary and past voices. In
Autobiography of Red (1998)—the story of the winged red monster Geryon and his
doomed love for Herakles—she draws on the Greek poet Stesichoros, while in The
Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (2001) she invokes English poet
John Keats. A classics scholar, Carson has also translated Euripides’ plays (Grief
Lessons, 2006) and Sappho’s poems (If Not, Winter, 2002). Poets who engage in virtuoso
and highly experimental probings of language include Lisa Robertson (XEclogue, 1993,
rev. ed. 1999; The Weather, 2001) and Christian Bök (Eunoia, 2001). In Sheep’s Vigil by
a Fervent Person (2001) and Little Theatres; or, Aturuxos Calados (2005), Erin Mouré
offers inventive translations of Portuguese and Galician authors as she explores ideas of
local and global citizenship and community.
Inflected by anger and sorrow, Marie Annharte Baker (Being on the Moon, 1990),
Chrystos (Fire Power, 1995), Beth Brant (Mohawk Trail, 1985), and Marilyn Dumont (A
Really Good Brown Girl, 1996) protest stereotypes of First Nations and Métis. Dionne
Brand’s No Language Is Neutral (1990) and Marlene Nourbese Philip’s She Tries Her
Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (1988) challenge the colonization, sexism, and racism
of the English language, while George Elliott Clarke’s collage Whylah Falls (1990)
uncovers the life of Canadian blacks in a 1930s Nova Scotia village. In mapping arrivals
and departures through an increasing diversity of voices and selves, celebrating and
mourning differences, and protesting coercion, constraint, and smugness in a bountiful
array of forms from sonnet to ghazal to documentary long poem, Canadian poets have
opened the country of the mind and the minds of the country. Examples of Poems from
Canadian Poets The Moose
Elizabeth Bishop - 1911-1979

For Grace Bulmer Bowers

From narrow provinces of
fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river

enters or retreats in a
wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in, the
bay not at home;

where, silted red,

sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea, and
others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich mud in
burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads, down

rows of sugar maples, past
clapboard farmhouses and
neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon a bus

journeys west, the
windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,

and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces to
seven relatives and a
collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms, to

the farm, to the dog. The
bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals

form and slide and settle
in the white hens' feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses and
lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling to

their wet white string on
the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep inside
the foxgloves, and evening
commences.

One stop at Bass River.

Then the Economies
Lower, Middle, Upper; Five
Islands, Five Houses, where a
woman shakes a tablecloth out
after supper.

A pale flickering. Gone. The

Tantramar marshes and
the smell of salt hay. An
iron bridge trembles and a
loose plank rattles but
doesn't give way.

On the left, a red light

swims through the dark:
a ship's port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn. A
dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in with

two market bags, brisk,
freckled, elderly. "A
grand night. Yes, sir, all
the way to Boston." She
regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter the New

Brunswick woods, hairy,
scratchy, splintery; moonlight
and mist caught in them like
lamb's wool on bushes in a
pasture.
The passengers lie back.
Snores. Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night, a
gentle, auditory, slow
hallucination. . . .

In the creakings and noises,

an old conversation --not
concerning us, but
recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents' voices

uninterruptedly talking, in
Eternity: names being
mentioned, things cleared
up finally; what he said,
what she said, who got
pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;

the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth. That was
the son lost when the schooner
foundered.

He took to drink. Yes. She

went to the bad. When
Amos began to pray even
in the store and finally the
family had to put him
away.

"Yes . . ." that peculiar

affirmative. "Yes . . ." A
sharp, indrawn breath, half
groan, half acceptance,
that means "Life's like that.
We know it (also death)."

Talking the way they talked

in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on, dim
lamplight in the hall, down
in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it's all right now

even to fall asleep just as
on all those nights. --
Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt, turns off
his lights.

A moose has come out of the

impenetrable wood and stands
there, looms, rather, in the
middle of the road. It
approaches; it sniffs at the
bus's hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house (or,
safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us
"Perfectly harmless. . . ."

Some of the passengers

exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly, "Sure
are big creatures."
"It's awful plain."
"Look! It's a she!"

Taking her time, she

looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel (we
all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

"Curious creatures," says

our quiet driver, rolling
his r's. "Look at that,
would you." Then he
shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward, the

moose can be seen on the
moonlit macadam; then
there's a dim smell of
moose, an acrid smell of
gasoline.

A Bachelor
byRobertWilliamService

'Why keep a cow when I can buy,'

Said he, 'the milk I need,'
I wanted to spit in his eye
Of selfishness and greed;
But did not, for the reason he Was
stronger than I be.

I told him: ''Tis our human fate,

For better or for worse,
That man and maid should love and mate,
And little children nurse. Of course, if you
are less than man You can't do what we
can.

'So many loving maids would wed,

And wondrous mothers be.'
'I'll buy the love I want,' he said,
'No squally brats for me.'
. . . I hope the devil stoketh well For
him a special hell.

4.Generalization of the Lesson

Canadians have articulated their feelings about nature through literary expression,
and to thereby gain insight into their empathy for natural ecosystems and native species,
and their concern about damage caused to those values. six dominant themes were
identified of the expression of nature in Canadian literature: (1) humans as a part of
nature; (2) a bounty of natural resources; (3) fear of an adversarial wilderness; (4)
improvement of nature; (5) regret of environmental damage and perhaps despair of the
future; and (6) love and respect of species and natural landscapes.

5. Activities
Activity 1: lecture/discussion
Activity 2. Poetry Interpretation
 6. Evaluation (quiz)
Recital/ Choric Presentation

7.Assignment

1. Search for more poem samples from Canadian Authors

2. Have copies of English poems (England)
3. Note on the Indian’s poetry

F. Lesson 6: English Poetry

1. Overview of Lesson 6:

The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the
present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the most enduring
poems in European culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the
globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean
poetry written in England, or poetry written in the English language.
The oldest poetry written in the area currently known as England was composed in
Old English, a precursor to the English language that is not something a typical modern
English-speaker could be expected to be able to read. In addition, there was a tradition of
English poets writing also in Latin and classical Greek. Today's multicultural English
society is likely to produce some interesting poetry written in a wide range of other
languages, although such poetries are proving slow to emerge.
With the growth of trade and the British Empire, the English language had been
widely used outside England. In the twenty-first century, only a small percentage of the
world's native English speakers live in England, and there is also a vast population of non-
native speakers of English who are capable of writing poetry in the language. A number
of major national poetries, including the American, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian
poetry have emerged and developed. Since 1922, Irish poetry has also been increasingly
viewed as a separate area of study.

2. Learning Outcomes :

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to :

a. Exert effort to participate actively in-group performance related to the topic

discussed.
 b. Appreciate the authors of different works for their precious literary content, style
and techniques.
c. Share interest and awareness in a literary genre.
d. Discuss critically and purposively the different interpretations to find pleasure
in poetry.

3.Presentation and Development of the Lesson

The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; Bede attributes this to
Cædmon (fl. 658–680), who was, according to legend, an illiterate herdsman who
produced extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at Whitby. This is generally taken as
marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry.
Much of the poetry of the period is difficult to date, or even to arrange
chronologically; for example, estimates for the date of the great epic Beowulf range from
AD 608 right through to AD 1000, and there has never been anything even approaching
a consensus. It is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the
Rood was written before circa AD 700, when excerpts were carved in runes on the
Ruthwell Cross. The works signed by the poet Cynewulf, namely Christ II, Elene, The
Fates of the Apostles, and Juliana, have been assigned with reasonable certainty to the
eighth century. Some poems on historical events, such as The Battle of Brunanburh (937)
and the Battle of Maldon (991), appear to have been composed shortly after the events
in question, and can be dated reasonably precisely in consequence.
By and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by the manuscripts in
which it survives, rather than its date of composition. The most important manuscripts are
the four great poetical codices of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, known as
the Caedmon manuscript, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf
manuscript.
While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth. Beowulf
is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as
Waldere and the Finnsburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres
include much religious verse, from devotional works to biblical paraphrase; elegies such
as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin (often taken to be a description of the ruins
of Bath); and numerous proverbs, riddles, and charms.
With the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1066, the Anglo-Saxon
language immediately lost its status; the new aristocracy spoke French, and this became
the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. As the invaders
integrated, their language and that of the natives mingled: the French dialect of the upper
classes became Anglo-Norman, and Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into
Middle English.
 It was with the fourteenth century that major works of English literature began once
again to appear; these include the so-called Pearl Poet's Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Langland's political and religious allegory Piers
Plowman; Gower's Confessio Amantis; and, of course, the works of Chaucer, the most
highly regarded English poet of the middle ages, who was seen by his contemporaries as
a successor to the great tradition of Virgil and Dante.
The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start
date being around 1509. It is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance
extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the
way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of
medieval poets had, as already noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle and the
writings of European Renaissance precursors such as Dante.
The introduction of movable-block printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means
for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers.
Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish
the idea of a native poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In
addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped
bring the ideas and attitudes associated with the new learning to an English audience.
Among the best known examples of this are Edmund Spenser's The Faerie
Queene, which is effectively an extended hymn of praise to the queen, and Philip
Sydney's Arcadia. This courtly trend can also be seen in Spenser's Shepheardes
Calender. This poem marks the introduction into an English context of the classical
pastoral, a mode of poetry that assumes an aristocratic audience with a certain kind of
attitude to the land and peasants. The explorations of love found in the sonnets of William
Shakespeare and the poetry of Walter Raleigh and others also implies a courtly audience.
In addition to Shakespeare, other notable dramatists of the period include
Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson.

The Cavalier poets wrote in a lighter, more elegant and artificial style than the
Metaphysical poets. Leading members of the group include Ben Jonson, Richard
Lovelace, Robert Herrick, Edmund Waller, Thomas Carew and John Denham. The
Cavalier poets can be seen as the forerunners of the major poets of the Augustan era,
who admired them greatly.
The early 17th century also saw a group of poets who were interested in following
Spenser's example in the area of long mythic poems. These include Michael Drayton,
William Browne and the brothers Giles and Phineas Fletcher. Although these poets wrote
against the literary fashion of their day and have since been much neglected, their
tradition led directly to John Milton's great mythic long poem, Paradise Lost.
 It is hardly surprising that the world of fashion and scepticism that emerged
encouraged the art of satire. All the major poets of the period, Samuel Butler, John
Dryden, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, and the Irish poet Jonathan Swift, wrote
satirical verse. What is perhaps more surprising is that their satire was often written in
defence of public order and the established church and government. However, writers
such as Pope used their gift for satire to create scathing works responding to their
detractors or to criticise what they saw as social atrocities perpetrated by the government.
Pope's "The Dunciad" is a satirical slaying of two of his literary adversaries (Lewis
Theobald, and Colley Cibber in a later version), expressing the view that British society
was falling apart morally, culturally, and intellectually.
The main poets of this movement were William Blake, William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John
Keats. The birth of English Romanticism is often dated to the publication in 1798 of
Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads. However, Blake had been publishing since
the early 1780s. However, much of the focus on Blake only came about during the last
century when Northrap Frye discussed his work in his book "The Anatomy of Criticism."
Additionally, the Romantic movement marked a shift the use of language.
Attempting to express the "language of the common man", Wordsworth and his fellow
Romantic poets focused on employing poetic language for a wider audience, countering
the mimetic, tightly constrained Neo-Classic poems (although it's important to note that
the poet wrote first and foremost for his own creative, expression). In Shelley's "Defense
of Poetry", he contends that poets are the "creators of language" and that the poet's job
is to refresh language for their society.
The Romantics were not the only poets of note at this time. In the work of John
Clare the late Augustan voice is blended with a peasant's first-hand knowledge to produce
arguably some of the finest nature poetry in the English language. Another contemporary
poet who does not fit into the Romantic group was Walter Savage Landor. Landor was a
classicist whose poetry forms a link between the Augustans and Robert Browning, who
much admired it.
The major High Victorian poets were Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Tennyson was,
to some degree, the Spenser of the new age and his Idylls of the Kings can be read as a
Victorian version of The Faerie Queen, that is as a poem that sets out to provide a mythic
foundation to the idea of empire.
The Brownings spent much of their time out of England and explored European
models and matter in much of their poetry. Robert Browning's great innovation was the
dramatic monologue, which he used to its full extent in his long novel in verse, The Ring
and the Book. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is perhaps best remembered for Sonnets from
the Portuguese but her long poem Aurora Leigh is one of the classics of 19th century
feminist literature.
Matthew Arnold was much influenced by Wordsworth, though his poem Dover
Beach is often considered a precursor of the modernist revolution. Hopkins wrote in
relative obscurity and his work was not published until after his death. His unusual style
(involving what he called "sprung rhythm" and heavy reliance on rhyme and alliteration)
had a considerable influence on many of the poets of the 1940s.

4.Generalization of the Lesson

With one notable exception (the aptly-named Rhyming Poem), Anglo-Saxon poetry
is written in a form of alliterative verse.
Elizabethan verse drama is widely considered to be one of the major achievements
of literature in English, and its most famous exponent, William Shakespeare, is revered
as the greatest poet in the language. This drama, which served both as courtly masque
and popular entertainment, deals with all the major themes of contemporary literature and
life.

5. Activities
Activity 1: lecture/discussion/ Poetry analysis
Activity 2. Poetry Interpretation

7. Evaluation (quiz)
Group Recital/ Choric Presentation

7.Assignment

1.Have copies of well known English poems (England)

2. Note on the Indian’s poetry

G. Lesson 7: Indian Poetry

1. Overview of Lesson 7:

Indian English poetry is the oldest form of Indian English literature. Indian poets
writing in English have succeeded to nativize or indianize English in order to reveal typical
Indian situations. Henry Louis Vivian Derozio is considered the first poet in the lineage of
Indian English poetry followed by Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu,
Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt among others.
2. Learning Outcomes :

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to :

a. Appreciate the authors of different works for their precious literary content, style
and techniques.
b. Explore physical and mental capacity in-group showcase during group dynamics
sessions.
c. Enjoy reading and interpreting poetry using voice projection with fitting physical
movements.
d. Become research oriented and be able to come up with a good research project

3.Presentation and Development of the Lesson

Poetry is the expression of human life from times eternal. India in fact has a long
tradition of arts and poetry from ages. Colonialism gave a new language, English for the
expression of Indians. The poetry written by the Indians in English in the last 150 years
may be said to have three phases: the imitative, the assimilative and the experimental.
The period from 1850 to 1900 is the imitative phase when the Indian poets were
romantic poets in the Indian garb or in George Bottomley's words "Matthew Arnold in a
saree" or as some derogatively observes "Shakuntala in a mini-skirt". The chief sources
of inspiration were the British romantic poets: Wordsworth, Scott, Shelley, Keats, Byron.
The period from 1900 to 1947 is the assimilative period when the Indian poets
still romantic tried to assimilate the romanticism of the early nineteenth century British
poets and the "new" romantics of the decadent period for expressing the consciousness
of the Indian renaissance between nationalism and political changes which ultimately
led to the attainment of political freedom in 1947.

The first phase of Indian poetry was the period of literary renaissance in India.
Derozio's poems, Kasiprasad Ghose's The Shair or Ministrel and other poems, Michael
Madhusudan Dutt's The Captive Lady, Manmohan Ghose's Love Songs and Elegies are
a testimony to the creative upsurge occasioned by the romantic spirit kindled by the
literary renaissance. Toru Dutt alone among these romantic poets of the first phase puts
an emphasis on India and her heritage by putting into verse a large number of Indian
legends. The romantic Toru Dutt is also a predecessor in respect to the use of the tree in
verse as demonstrated by "Our Casuarina Tree", a predecessor in respect of childhood
memories recalled with nostalgia or regret.
The poets of the second phase, still romantic in spirit were Sarojini Naidu, Tagore,
Aurobindo Ghose and Harindranth Chattopadhyaya. The poetic output of these poets was
prolific. Romanticism of these Indian poets was fraught with nationalism, spirituality and
mysticism. It was therefore different from English romanticism. Indian romanticism
widened the poet's vision. While Aurbindo's was the search for the Divine in Man and
Tagore's was the quest for the Beautiful in Man and Nature. Both were philosopher poets.
Sarojini Naidu's romantic muse underscored the charm and splendor of traditional Indian
life and Indian scene. She had a fine ear for verbal melody as she was influenced not only
by English poetry but also by the Persian and Urdu poetry. She excelled in lyricism. She
was a true nightingale of India.
Poetry written in the colonial period with a view to establish Indian identity by the
Indian poets was an explosion or rather outburst of emotions: the nationalistic,
philosophical, spiritual or mystical emotions. The appeal was to the heart of the readers.
The poetry of Toru Dutt, Sri Aurbindo, Tagore and Sarojini Naidu could not be romantic
since they had to express the ethos of the age. They were not merely imitating the English
romantics, Victorians and Decadents blindly. Their poetry was the best voice of the
contemporary Indian time - spirit. It would be fair to say that Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu
constitute a kind of watershed between the first two phases, in that they share their
predecessor's individual nostalgia as well as their successor's sense of crisis and quest
for identity.
Before Indians could write poetry in English, two related preconditions had to be
met. First, the English language had to be sufficiently indianised to be able to express the
reality of the Indian situation. Secondly, Indians had to be sufficiently Anglicized to use
the English language to express themselves. In 1780 India's first newspaper, 'Hicky's
Bengal Gazette', was published in English. In 1817, the Hindu college, which later became
Presidency College, the premier educational institution of Bengal, was founded. More
significantly, in 1835, Viceroy Macaulay, in his famous Minute, laid the foundations of the
modern educational system, with his decision to promote European science and
literatures among Indians through the medium of the English language. The result was
that English became in India, as later in other British colonies, a passport to privilege.
Indian poetry in English began in Bengal, the province in which the British first
gained a stronghold. In addition, his poetry was largely an urban phenomenon centered
in Calcutta. In fact, for the first fifty years, it was confined entirely to a few Bengali families
who were residents of the city. Then, gradually it moved to other urban centers such as
Madras and Bombay; even today, Indian poetry in English remains largely urban.
Moreover, because English was an elite language in India, Indian poets in English came
from the upper classes and castes.
 When Indians first began to write poetry, it was not distinguished from that of the
British in India, or Anglo - Indians as they were called. Indeed, because India was a part
of the British Empire, Indian poets in English were not given a separate national identity;
their early efforts were considered tributary to the mainstream of English Literature.
Examples of Indian poems:

The Description of Uma’s Lovemaking —

Kalidasa
Shiva taught her how to make love in their
bed; Parvati offfered him back herself, full of
grace of a young woman, like a present one
gives to one’s guru She trembled in pain as her
bitten lower lip was released slowly Parvati
took a deep breath of cool air coming from the
crescent moon in Shiva’s hair While kissing
her long hair dust fell into Shiva’s third eye
Parvati blew it off with her perfumed breath fragrant as the
smell of a blossoming lotus So the lord of the beasts whose
mount is Nandi- the Bull, gratifying Kama, the God of
Love by immersing himself in pleasures of senses lived for
a month with Uma in the Mountain King’s palace.
Transcreated from Sanskrit by Abhay K. from Kumarasambhava 8.17-8.20

Where the mind is without fear

and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls; Where
words come out from the depth
of truth; Where tireless
striving stretches its arms
towards perfection; Where the
clear stream of reason has not
lost its way into the dreary
desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is lead
forward by thee into ever-
widening thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom,
my Father, let my country
awake. "Geetanjali"
- Rabindranath Tagore
Is there ought you need that my hands withhold,
Rich gifts of raiment or grain or gold?
Lo ! I have flung to the East and the West
Priceless treasures torn from my breast, And
yielded the sons of my stricken womb To the
drum-beats of the duty, the sabers of doom.
Gathered like pearls in their alien graves
Silent they sleep by the Persian waves,
Scattered like shells on Egyptian sands, They lie with
pale brows and brave, broken hands, they are strewn
like blossoms mown down by chance On the blood-
brown meadows of Flanders and France. Can ye
measure the grief of the tears I weep Or compass the
woe of the watch I keep?
Or the pride that thrills thro' my heart's despair
And the hope that comforts the anguish of prayer?
And the far sad glorious vision I see Of the torn
red banners of victory?
when the terror and the tumult of hate shall cease
And life be refashioned on anvils of peace,
And your love shall offer memorial thanks
To the comrades who fought on the dauntless ranks, And
you honour the deeds of the dauntless ones, Remember
the blood of my martyred sons!
The Gift of India
- Sarojini Naidu

4.Generalization of the Lesson

Contemporary Indian English poetry is the expression of certain attitudes and
values believed in by certain sections of today's Indian society, wholly urban, middle class.
The poets are realistic and intellectually critical in the expression of their individualized
experience. The poets go in for precision at all levels.
 The poems are not didactic but thought provoking as they fall back on
psychological problems presented in a psychoanalytical manner. So most of the poems
do not strive for resolution of themes or conclusive stance. Modern Indian poems are by
the poet turned psychologist, psychoanalyst, existentialist, surrealist etc. They are purely
an expression of thoughts felt.
There is a lot of experimentation in the modern Indian poetry with a view to
achieving modernity. Rhyme and stanzaic forms were replaced by free verse. Verbal
melody came to be evoked through the use of alliterative and assonant words. The tone
was one of intellectualized irony and sarcasm. The stance of the poets was one of
complete detachment and objectivity. The other innovation of the modern Indian poets is
the use of symbolism. The poets use modern techniques used by the film industry and
advertising industry, besides the stream of consciousness and free association of ideas.
There is much "word hunting" and "image-hunting" which reflects the medium of
consciousness on the part of the poet. The Indian poets therefore borrow words from their
regional languages. To be Indian, poets have to be rooted somewhere in India -
geographically, historically, socially or psychologically.
The Indian English poetry began far back before the independence. The credit of
introducing Indians to English goes to Lord Macaulay. The Indian value of cultural
assimilation was applied to English language. With English education, Indians befriended
English making it a language of their intellectual as well as emotional make - up.
5. Activities
Activity 1: lecture/discussion/ Poetry analysis
Activity 2. Poetry Interpretation

6. Evaluation : Midterm Examination

7.Assignment

1.Read Shakuntala and Sita

2.Have an advance reading on Drama

Prepared by:

Milynor Mejia Acibo, PhD