For this blog post I am going to be looking at 4 different
poems. I am going to be looking at the relationships between these poems but I
feel that looking at them in pairs will be the most productive. The first set
of poems I will be looking at will be "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" by
T.S Eliot and "April Rain Song" by Langston Hughes. The second set of
poems that I will be looking at will be "The Age Demanded" by Ernest
Hemingway and "50-50" by Langston Hughes. For each of these sets I
have created some guiding questions for my thinking and use of these poems...
1. How do the two poems compare, how do they differ?
2. What is the tone of the poem and how is that established?
3. How could these poems be used in a classroom? If these
could not be used why not, and how could the same lessons or ideas be taught
without the use of these specific poems?
"Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and "April Rain
Song" -
How do the two poems compare? Both of these poems are about
the nature in relation to the night. I think that both of these things are the
topics of the poems because both night and nature are mysterious in their own
ways. The poems discuss nature and night in very different ways, with different
approaches, and different styles; however, they are the topics nonetheless.
These poems are different in many ways. The first that is noticeable is their
length and format. "Rhapsody" is much longer and has stanzas that
vary in length throughout the poem, creating more of a mysterious and chaotic
vibe. "April" has a much more traditional layout with 2 stanzas at 3
lines each and a final line at the end. This poem is much shorter, more direct,
and less mysterious in its format and message. "Rhapsody" takes the
reader on a journey as the night progresses and becomes morning as each stanza
moves to the next. With this evolution of night to morning comes a deeper
understanding of the narrator or speaker and how crazy he is. The speakers
memories have dissolved and so have all his clear relations. He is now at the
mercy of the moon, the "lunar synthesis". The man is going crazy as
he walks the street the street lamps are the ones that begin to speak with him.
The street lamps are guiding his thoughts as we moves forward toward his house,
but also closer to morning with each step he takes. This poem is very dark in
many ways. This poem takes place in the middle of the night so the obvious
setting would be dark with only passing light as he walks under the street
lights. The only other light that is provided is that from the moon. The moon,
the street lights, and his memories are all working against the man to take
control of his thoughts and think about all of the dreadful things that happen
at night on the streets. The streets he is currently walking on, the streets
that cannot talk and tell the mysteries that lie within them, the streets that
he needs to walk on to get home to so he can finally go to sleep and gain
control of his memories again. "Rhapsody" is so much darker than
"April". "April Rain Song" recalls a warm spring night
filled with beautiful silver rain that comes down and kisses the cheeks of the
people waiting for it. The rain is used as a cleansing form of nature rather
than a disruptive form of nature like in "Rhapsody". In
"April" the rain is soothing like a mothers embrace, everything it
touches it makes nicer. The rain is so beautiful and melodic that it can sing a
lullaby to those that listen. This poem celebrates the changing of the seasons,
the life of spring, and the beauty of nature. Hughes even exclaims at the end
that she loves the rain, and how could you not when it is acting is such a
beautiful and refreshing way? Both of these poems provide great insight as to
how nature and night interact with each other and how that interaction
influences people. In "Rhapsody" the different aspects of nature, the
moon, the wind, the night, all interacted in a negative way that caused the man
to lose his memories until morning arrives, creating a manic tone "that
makes the reader feel on edge and uneasy. In "April" Hughes writes a
beautifully peaceful poem about her love of the rain, its cleansing quality,
and how the rain has a calming and nurturing interaction with people when it
occurs. Both of these poems I feel are appropriate to use in the classroom. I
would like to use them in the same way I did here, looking at the side by side
or using them with other works. I find that my students interact well with
poetry when they are given multiple to look it, in a way it gives them more to
hold onto when they are analyzing a piece. With the lesson I would ask them to
find similarities or differences between the two texts that are being analyzed,
and I would ask them to find different parts of the poems that they identify
with. Do they identify more with "Rhapsody" or "April" and
why is that? Does the night make them feel mysterious and scared about the
darkness around them? Does the rain calm them and sooth their thoughts as they
drift off to sleep? More than anything this would be used as an exploratory
lesson for students to read and identify with different pieces of poetry to
find styles they enjoy so that when they being writing their own they have an
idea of where to start.
"The Age Demanded" and "50-50" -
I chose to group these two poems together because while I
was reading them the tone of "you can never win" came to mind, with
every ying there is a yang, and life is full of hard choices and
contradictions. These two poems are very similar because they both deal with a
hard choice being made. A path is presented in front of you but them life
demands something else. in "the Age" when "the age demanded that
we sing / And cut away our tongue." It becomes clear with this first line
that what the age is demanding cannot happen with the circumstances that the
people are in. Telling someone to do one thing and then putting those exact
restrictions on that situation is the epitome of a contradiction. To sing and
then cut away someones tongue creates an impossible situation and potentially
with the tone of this poem an impossible age, or world at this very moment.
What the age is demanding is not practical nor possible, but is the age really
demanding these exact things or is the age actually making much larger demands
and this is what Hemingway is using as a placeholder? This is what I believe to
be be true for the poem. I interpret this poem as being a depiction of the impossibility
that surrounds what the so-called "times" demand of people. "the
times" demand something of a generation but then make it impossible to
deliver and then label them as a failure or lazy, when in reality this is just
"the sort of shit that it demanded". "the Age Demanded" is
similar to "50-50" in many ways but also has distinct differences. In
"50-50" the speaker has to make a decision about being alone for the
rest of her life, or sharing her bed and thus securing a man in her life, and
also sharing her money. Is it worth the company of a man to relieve her of her
loneliness to also share her money with him also, or is it better to be alone
and also have the money that she earned herself all to herself? This is the
type of impossible question that only she can answer because every single
person would think about this situation differently, that is what makes love
unique. This type of impossible situation is what makes these poems similar.
What makes them different is that the people being effected is either a
singular person or entire generation of people. The outcomes are entirely
different for each situation but that does not downgrade the validity of
either. Both situations are equally valid in their difficulty but it is how we
handle and respond to difficult situations in life that define who we are. The
generations choice to become who they are and either do what the age demands or
not, is their choice to make, and one that they will live with. This is the
same situation that the woman in 50-50 will make, to accept the man and share
every aspect of her life with him, or not, these are only choices that
individuals can make, and then live with. I think that both of these poems
address difficult aspects of life that everyone must come to grips with. These
poems would be ones that I would want to use in my classroom but they would
have to be prefaced especially with the profanity used in "the Age
Demanded" I feel like my students could learn a lot from these poems and
there are so many aspects they could really connect with.
Links provided below for the poems discussed in this blog
post -
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