Defninig rhetorical analysis as a means of studying writer/audience relationships allowing both intrinsic and extrinsic analysis, the author discusses the three sections of Levertov's poem, "From a Notebook: October '68--May '69." Section 1 is the speaker's personal comparison of her associations with life and death, comparison of…

The poet always listens to himself or herself as part of the expressive act that is the poem, and that listening becomes an essential part of the completed poem. The listening is never fused into the expressiveness of the poem's making, however, but continues in a dramatic relationship with that expressiveness. The difficulty of poetry stems from…

Both film and ancient religious writing have much in common, especially in regard to their ability to convey powerful messages to modern audiences. A study analyzed the timeless meta-narratives in the ancient Hindu poem, the "Bhagavad Gita," and in the 1998 American film, "The Thin Red Line." It used the methodology of…

When teachers base classroom discussion of literature, particularly poetry, on the authors' manuscripts, notebooks, and letters, they allow students to watch writers write and to appreciate the craft involved in creative writing. Watching the writer at work--examining the drafts and correspondence for such poems as Blake's "London" or Keats'"To…

This paper uses narrative criticism to analyze the ancient Indian religious poem, the "Bhagavad Gita." This important text, the second most widely translated piece of literature in the world, will receive much-deserved rhetorical attention to its narrative and how this helps construct issues of the self, the world, action, and ontology.…

In "The Reason for Poetry," the first of two lectures contained in this booklet, the poet William Meredith argues for a more generous definition of poetry. To move away from the narrow appreciation of poetry as "what I like," Meredith suggests that readers must shift their focus from their own expectations on reading a poem to…

Over 200 participants from 10 states and 17 universities attended "The First National Symposium on Chicano Literature and Critical Analysis." Five of the papers presented at the symposium are given in this publication. The papers cover Chicano poetry, novel, drama, and popular folklore humor. "National Character vs Universality in…

The teaching-questioning strategy developed in this paper, based on reader-response criticism and Kenneth Burke's pentad, can be used by teachers to elicit responses to any literary work and is designed to help students participate in a work's dramatic context, discover meaning as they read, and assure that their critical essays are based on an…

Silence has often been treated as simply a negative phenomenon rather than as a communicative device. Four aspects of silence include: (1) negative silence, which is the experience of silence as having no positive value; (2) primordial silence, the phenomenon out of which utterance arises; (3) silence as a mode of being; and (4) silence as a…

Suggestions are offered in this paper for adapting C. S. Lewis's poems for oral interpretation. A discussion of Lewis's lifelong correspondence with his friend Arthur Greeves provides insights into Lewis's perceptions of his own writing. Eighty poems selected from Lewis's "Poems" as appropriate for oral interpretation are classified…

The emergence in Chicano poetry of the language experiments and folk wisdom of the oral traditions of barrio cuentos, corridos, dichos, and actos reveals that this literature is neither fleeting nor novel. Jose Montoya's "Resonant Valley" exemplifies the Chicano's preservation of ancient wisdom and practice in new formal experiments and…

This paper describes Rod McKuen's theories of poetic composition, arguing that McKuen appeals to the anti-intellectual, blindly sentimental capacities of the American public. A comparison of McKuen's work with the work of such poets as James Dickey, Robert Lowell, and Theodore Roethke is outlined in order to demonstrate to students the superficial…

Muses on such topics as the importance of teaching students about the craft of poetry and of helping them see that life can turn into literature. (GT)

An assessment of Black Elk's poetry reveals that Indians' attitudes toward words differ from ours. For example, on certain occasions Indian songs become instruments which bring an influx of energy into a whole society or draw rain or heal sickness. Words which recreate or conjure the agents of the poet's vision are relevant because they uplift the…

As a shrewd technician of the language, A. L. Tennyson rightly understood that words are not controllable; they do not always obey rules. As Tennyson said, words "half reveal and half conceal the soul within." In "Ulysses," the title character's speech to his fellow mariners--where he attempts to explain why he has decided to…