Textuality » 3A Interacting
LESSON OF 27th SEPTEMBER 2011
Poetry is all the words who are written by someone.
Poetry:
- Lyrical poetry: poetry that speaks about intimate, inner, private, personal problems, emotions, thoughts, something peculiar to the author
- Reflecting poetry: poetry that makes the reader think/reflect
- Narrative poetry: poetry that narrates/tells a story
- Argumentative poetry: poetry that discusses a problem and provides argumentations.
There are a lot of different reasons to write a poem. Besides existing many kind of poetry, there exist different forms of poetry:
- Poems in free verse: free from conventions (libere da convinzioni specifiche)
- The Sonnet (forma di poesia)
- The Ballad
- The Ode.
The language of poetry is complex because it requites serious analysis of words, sounds, word order and much more.
ORAL TEST
What is the title of the text?
What do you expect to read about?
What description do you expect, for example?
Is the poem a description?
What sort of description do you expect? I expect the text to describe vagabond's feelings, emotions and why vagabonds don't have a final destination.I'll read the poem to see if my expectations were right or wrong.Title creates expectations on readers which may be right or wrong.
Who is speaking? / Who is the speaking voice? - A vagabond
The poet has used an enjambment (run-on lines). It compels the reader to read on to the next line in order to understand the meaning.
Why do you think the poet uses a substantive made from an adjective? Because he is talking into consideration the problems of the category. He focuses his attention on a category of people/on a specific gorup of people, not on individual/single person.
At line three there is another run-on-line.
Nowhere: using this word the poet hints (makes the reader think about something without saying it) at they are homeless. -> (the poet says that anywhere to sleep: homeless)
Using this choice (nowhere, no place), the poet makes it so that the reader has the idea of privation stick in his mind. He uses therefore an anaphoric construction ("nowhere", "no place"), reinforced by the alliterative sound "no". The idea of privation, of the lack of a home, is given not only by words but also by syntax and sound.
Also there are two infinitive in the poem: to eat and to sleep. What is the effect? To sleep and to eat create an idea of distance (qualcosa che non ci appartiene), of a remote dimension from their everyday reality, reinforced by the assonance of the sound "ee".
The poem ends with the reiteration of an abstract adjective "tearless", where the suffix "-less" highlights a sense of lack again.
The use of the modal verb "cannot" underlines the impossibility of vagabonds to have what is the minimum for survive (for human survival).
NEW WORDS:
- To requite = contraccambiare
- To go vagabond, to go a destination, to go a rut, to wander with direction = vagabondare
- The desperate = aggettivo sostantivato
- To care a person = curare una persona
- To care about something = preoccuparsi di qualcosa
- To care of somebody = prendersi cura di qualcuno
- In order = alla fine di
- To understand the meaning = capire il significato
- To hint at = alludere a
- Therefore = quindi, dunque
- Anaphoric construction = costruzione/struttura anaforica
- Lack = mancanza
- To highlight = mettere in rilievo
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM "VAGABONDS" BY LANGSTON HUGHES
The text is a short poem organised into three short groups of line that convey the idea of vagabonds privations and difficult life. Their daily existence is marked by the lack of the minimum for human survive. They are deprived even of their identity: you cannot see any specific face, you can name no one because they have not got a name: they are "The desperate", "The hungry" and "The tearless". The reader is free to imagine their faces but not to think of their homes. The poem proceeds with statements and exploits an anaphoric structure (who do not, who cannot). Repetition, the use of assonance (to eat, to sleep) and alliteration (nowhere, no care) create a memorable effect in the reader's mind.