A key instructional goal of English language arts instruction is teaching students to read and interpret complex literary texts. This report reviews the literature on the development and pedagogy of literary analysis skills. It analyzes literary analysis skills as a "key practice," a bundle of disciplinary skills and strategies that form…

Discusses H.D.'s influence on Adrienne Rich in the context of Rich's vision of female literary tradition as a "family" model of influence in which mothers and daughters, represented by past and present authors, seek to transcend the divisive attitudes of patriarchy (in contrast to Bloom's theory of literary, oedipal rivalry). (ML)

Surveys previous approaches to free verse. Proposes a new method of articulating the diversity of free verse. Discusses paired poems to show the kinds of things that this new method gives educators to say when they want to talk about the verse of free verse poetry. (RS)

Examines the poetics of Richard Hugo, William Stafford, Donald Hall, and Robert Bly. Proposes that these poets are associated more with European and South American literature than with the poetry previously written in the United States and England. Discusses what these poets tell others about language and about writing poetry. (RL)

Examines the relationship between self and modernism in the context of Sri Lankan poetry in English. The dissolution of the unitary self and the problem of its representation in literature are closely linked to the dynamics of writing in English in a country in the Outer Circle. (24 references) (JL)

Argues that, despite the capacity of cognitive psychologists to shed light on certain disputes in literary theory, it is necessary to continue to look to poets for insight into how authors share their experience with others through print. (FL)

This paper argues that, although T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" provoke comparisons with the late quartets of Beethoven, an analysis of Four Quartets and Bela Bartok's Fourth and Fifth String Quartets produces a clearer understanding of the formal structures in the poetry and music. Symmetries offset asymmetries. (Author/KC)

Examines some themes in the work of the African surrealist poet, Aime Cesaire. The elements in his poetry are found in the natural world. Filled with tension, his work demonstrates cultural liberation, independence and dignity, and the desire to reclaim nature, salvation, God, and peace. (BJV)

The successful oral reading of poetry requires that oral interpreters conduct phenomenological investigations of the first lines of the poems, not merely to make these lines happen properly but to suggest what has preceded the first line. Individual word meanings in the opening lines of a poem establish "structures of intentionality"--the…

James Baldwin's special sense of his blackness enables him to combine Walt Whitman's awareness of urban wandering and Henry James' self-conscious cosmopolitanism in his books, particularly "Go Tell It on the Mountain." (BJV)

Suggests that a poetic writing of traits, inviting readers to seek meaning in a poem's visual form, rests on a myth of the portrait in which marks of a written language are drawn directly from nature. (DF)

Describes and presents examples of work from the Western Michigan school of bad versemakers, a group of nineteenth century poets who strove to give their frontier experiences high seriousness, but achieved, at best, unintentional humor. (MM)

Examines the problems of spoken poetry, both from the poet's viewpoint and from the viewpoint of adolescents in literature classes. Considers the efficacy of conceptualizing poetry, especially spoken poetry, as popular art. (RL)

The social and literary representation of the unmarried woman of "a certain age"--the spinster--provides a convenient focus for observing the overall progress of all women in English life. As the single woman's stature increased in the esteem of her culture, English writers began to reflect the changing social attitudes by depicting her in ever…

Reviews the literary forms and trends of Chicano literature. Discusses the growing critical canon accompanying the development of this literature, and describes pedagogical approaches to courses and curriculum planning in this area. (SR)