DYLAN THOMAS: "The voice discovers the Poet's ear"
ORAL INTERP PREPARATION
- start with the title
- Author's intent implied?
- Clues to meaning?
- what type of poem?
- tell a story?
- create a mood? (other purposes)Who is speaking to whom?
- Narrative / Epic
- Narrator telling story/poem to audience
- characters in dialogue
- element of plot- Lyric
- someone like author speaking to:
- self, inner dialogue
- muse, god, unseen auditor
- elegies, odes, reflective poetry
- Sylvia Plath, Emily Dicknison
- highly personal, emotional
- remembering or capsulized experience
- personal benefit, purgation, cathartic- Dramatic
- defined persona that is not author
- usually in the first person
- often in conflict situation
- often in conversation
- characterization is very impt.
- monologues, soliloquiesAbout what is the speaker speaking?
- actions, motivation? - is there conflict?
- what ideas and thoughts are explores?
- what moods or emotions are created?Where and when is the poem taking place
- setting? plot?
- timeless present?
- Lyric: insight, flash (timeless present)
- Narrative: unfolds, progresses like story
- Dramatic: happening nowHow does the speaker speak?
- discern patterns of meter, sounds, images
- is the poet conveying meaning thru patterns?
- what is the nature of the speaker's language?Three types of imagery employed
- Sensory imagery: appealing to senses
- tactile, visual, auditory, thermal
- gustatory, aural etc.
- kinesthetic (emotional body memory)- Literary imagery: analogic language
- analogic vs. digital
- associations, similarities, figures of spch
- associative juxtapositions
- Robert Frost's "shock of recognition"
- metaphors, similies
- allusions: extrinsic reference
- hyperbole: exaggeration
- personifications, paradoxes
- Tone color: sounds of language
- creative use of sounds:
- alliteration: rep. of consonant sound
- assonance: rep. of vowel sounds
- consonance: rep. of cons aftr diff vowels
- rhyme, meter (back seat!)
- underlining sense w/ sounds
- frictives (k,f,s,z,th,sh,): conflict
- plosives (p,b) effect?
- liquid "l": pleasant
- dentals (t,d) rushed effect
- short vowels move quickly
- long vowels, diphthongs: slowly
- Meter: conventional and free verse
- conventional: rhythmic base
- free verse: more subtle, less regular
- Phrasing considerations: (set rhy. to break)
- caesura: pause w/in line
- punctuation
- tone color
- primary cadence
- sense of the sentence
- enbjambment (thought carries to next ln.)
- end stopped: end w/ punct; inflect dwn
- endjambed: no punct; inflect up?PERFORMANCE ANALOGS
- focus for Who to Whom
- mapping out the action for Where/when
- character voices, speaker's voice
- vocal/physical response to:
- sensory imagery: sensory showing
- literary imagery: give time for "shock of recog"
- tone color: careful rate: richness of language
- giving your performance shape
- fulcrum: major change of imagery / pattern / theme / thought
- climax: emotional / logical pinnacleGENERAL NOTES
- take your time
- pay attention to diction
- explore imagery fully
- explore wide variety of poetry experiences
- hook with humor, move to other purposes
- keep appropriate to season, experience, units