Poems by Langston Hughes

Peace

We passed their graves:

The dead men there

Winners or losers.

Did not care.

 

In the dark

They could not see

Who had gained

The victory .

Langston Hughes

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The Dream Keeper

I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There's nothing more to say.

The poem ends,

Soft as it began ––

I loved my friend.

Langston Hughes

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Dreams

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

 

Hold fast to dreams

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

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Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore ––

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over ––

Like a syrupy sweet?

 

Maybe it just sags

Like a heavy load.

 

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes

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Troubled Woman

She stands

In the quiet darkness,

This troubled woman

Bowed by

Weariness and pain

Like an autumn flower

In the frozen rain,

Like a

Wind-blown autumn flower

That never lifts its head

Again

 

Langston Hughes

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Some Poems by Stephen Crane

You say you are holy

You say you are holy,

And that

Because I have not seen you sin.

Aye, but there are those

Who see you sin, my friend.                  

                                                    Stephen Crane

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Huge Ball

Many workmen

Built a huge ball of masonry

Upon a mountain-top.

Then they went to the valley below,

And turned to behold their work.

"It is grand," they said;

They loved the thing.

Of a sudden, it moved:

It came upon them swiftly;

It crushed them all to blood.

But some had opportunity to squeal.

                                                    Stephen Crane

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Truth

"Truth," said a traveller,

"Is a rock, a mighty fortress;

Often have I been to it,

Even to its highest tower,

From whence the world looks black."

 

"Truth," said a traveller,

"Is a breath, a wind,

A shadow, a phantom;

Long have I pursued it,

But never have I touched

The hem of its garment."

 

And I believed the second traveller;

For truth was to me

A breath, a wind,

A shadow, a phantom,

And never had I touched

The hem of its garment.

                                                    Stephen Crane

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Charity

Charity thou art a lie,

A toy of women,

A pleasure of certain men.

In the presence of justice,

 

Lo, the walls of the temple

Are visible

Through thy form of sudden shadows.

                                                    Stephen Crane

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The Procession

There were many who went in huddled procession,

They knew not whither;

But, at any rate, success or calamity

Would attend all in equality.

 

There was one who sought a new road.

He went into direful thickets,

And ultimately he died thus, alone;

But they said he had courage.

                                                    Stephen Crane

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Learned Man

A learned man came to me once.

He said, "I know the way, — come."

And I was overjoyed at this.

Together we hastened.

 

Soon, too soon, were we

Where my eyes were useless,

And I knew not the ways of my feet.

 

I clung to the hand of my friend;

But at last he cried, "I am lost."

                                                    Stephen Crane

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Two Ballads

The Pretty Maid

Where are you going to, my pretty maid?

I'm going a-milking, sir, she said,

Sir, she said, sir, she said,

I'm going a-milking, sir, she said.

 

May I go with you, my pretty maid?

You're kindly welcome, sir, she said.

 

Say, will you marry me, my pretty maid?

Yes, if you please, kind sir, she said.

 

What is your father, my pretty maid?

My father's a farmer, sir, she said.

 

What is your fortune, my pretty maid?

My face is my fortune, sir, she said.

 

Then I can't marry you, my pretty maid.

Nobody asked you, sir, she said.

        Anonymous

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Is My Team Ploughing

'Is my team ploughing,

That I was used to drive

And hear the harness jingle

When I was man alive?'

 

Ay, the horses trample,

The harness jingles now;

No change though you lie under

The land you used to plough.

 

'Is football playing

Along the river shore,

With lads to chase the leather,

Now I stand up no more?'

 

Ay, the ball is flying,

The lads play heart and soul;

The goal stands up, the keeper

Stands up to keep the goal.

 

'Is my girl happy,

That I thought hard to leave,

And has she tired of weeping

As she lies down at eve?'

 

Ay, she lies down lightly,

She lies not down to weep:

Your girl is well contented.

Be still, my lad, and sleep.

 

'Is my friend hearty,

Now I am thin and pine,

And has he found to sleep in

A better bed than mine?'

 

Yes, lad I lie easy,

I lie as lads would choose;

I cheer a dead man's sweet heart,

Never ask me whose.

 A. E. Housman

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Owl and Pussy Cat

Owl And Pussy Cat

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat:

They took some honey, and plenty of money

Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

And sang to a small guitar,

"Oh, lovely Pussy, oh, Pussy, my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are,

You are,

You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

 

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,

How charmingly sweet you sing!

Oh, let us be married; too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away for a year and a day,

To the land where the bong-tree grows;

And there in the wood a Piggy-wig stood,

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose,

His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

 

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

So they took it away and were married next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

                                                    Edward Lear

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Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Land Of Counterpane      

WHEN I was sick and lay a-bed,

I had two pillows at my head,

And all my toys beside me lay

To keep me happy all the day.

 

And sometimes for an hour or so

I watched my leaden soldiers go,

With different uniforms and drills,

Among the bed-clothes through the hills;

 

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets

All up and down among the sheets;

Or brought my trees and houses out,

And planted cities all about.

 

I was the giant great and still

That sits upon the pillow-hill,

And sees before him, dale and plain,

The pleasant land of counterpane.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Looking Forward

WHEN I am grown to man's estate

I shall be very proud and great,

And tell the other girls and boys

Not to meddle with my toys.

 

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Rain

THE rain is raining all around,

It falls on field and tree,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

And on the ships at sea.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Singing

OF speckled eggs the birdie sings

And nests among the trees;

The sailor sings of ropes and things

In ships upon the seas.

 

The children sing in far Japan,

The children sing in Spain;

The organ with the organ man

Is singing in the rain.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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Simple definitions for some Poetic Terms

Ballad: A narrative poem, sometimes of folk origin, very often anonymous, simple and direct, with historical, romantic, tragic or supernatural setting.

Alliteration: repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of stressed syllables.

Allusion:  referring to characters and events of mythology, story, literature, etc., in order to evoke a certain atmosphere.

Apostrophe: direct address or appeal to a person and (often, as part of personification) to an abstraction or inanimate object.  

Metonymy: the use of some object to stand for an abstraction or other idea with which it is associated. (very close to symbol).

Parody: a poem or prose writing imitating – closely in rhythm, tone, and theme – a serious writing.

Personification: a figure in which inanimate objects or abstractions are spoken of as human beings.

Irony: 1) saying or showing one thing but meaning another thing.

Paradox: an apparent contradiction, a surprising or seemingly absurd statement which on examination proves to contain a truth. (close to irony).

Synecdoche: use of a part to stand for the whole or vice versa. (close to metonymy).

Some Literary Terms related to Poetry

Poetry, literature that evokes an intense imaginative understanding of experience or a specific emotional reaction through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm.

Poetry vs. Prose: Poetry may be distinguished from prose literature in terms of form by its compression, by its frequent (though not prescribed) use of the conventions of meter and rhyme, by its dependence upon the line as a formal unit, by its powerful vocabulary, and by its freedom of syntax. The characteristic emotional content of poetry shows itself through a variety of techniques, from direct description to highly personalized symbolism. In literary texts, what is referred to as poetry indicates the poetic language, i.e., the poetic content. Therefore, in these texts, poetry refers to good poetry.

Prosody, the rhythmic aspect of language; in literary criticism, the term chiefly refers to the metrical structure of poetry and the study of such structure.

Nursery rhyme, verse traditionally told or sung to small children. The oral tradition of nursery rhymes is ancient, but new verses have also entered the stream which can be safely called poems of childhood .

Example, "Hush-a-bye baby on the tree top":

Hush-a-by baby on the tree top.

When the wind blows the cradle will rock,

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,

Down will come baby, cradle and all.

Ballad, form of short narrative folk song the distinctive style of which formed in Europe during the late Middle Ages. The ballad has been preserved as a musical and literary form up to modern times.

Typically, the folk ballad (or standard ballad) tells a compact tale in a style that achieves bold, sensational effects through deliberate starkness and abruptness. Despite a strict economy of narrative, it employs a variety of devices to prolong highly charged moments in the story and to thicken the emotional atmosphere, the most common being a frequent repetition of some key word, line, or phrase. Any consequent bareness of texture finds ample compensation in this dramatic rhetoric.

Because ballads have developed among illiterate people, and are freshly created from memory at each performance, they are subject to constant change in both text and tune; tradition has preserved them by re-creation, not by inscription. They exhibit attraction to supernatural happenings; with the fate of lovers (usually, though not always, tragic); with crime and its punishment; with apocryphal legends (the chief stuff of religious balladry); with historical disasters (usually matters of regional rather than national importance); with sensational acts of God and man; with the deeds of outlaws and badmen; and with the hazards of such occupations as seafaring and railroading.

Metre, also spelled METER, in poetry, the rhythmic pattern of a poetic line. Metre (q.v.), although often equated with rhythm, is perhaps more accurately described as one method of organizing a poem's rhythm. Unlike rhythm, metre is not a requisite of poetry; it is, rather, an abstract organization of elements of stress, duration, or number of syllables per line into a specific formal pattern. The interaction of a given metrical pattern with any other aspect of sound in a poem produces a tension, or counterpoint, that creates the rhythm of metrically based poetry.

Scansion, the analysis and visual representation of a poem's metrical pattern. Adapted from the classical method of analyzing ancient Greek and Roman quantitative verse, scansion in English prosody employs a system of symbols to reveal the mechanics of a poem--i.e., the predominant type of foot (the smallest metrical unit of stressed and unstressed syllables); the number of feet per line; and the rhyme scheme. The purpose of scansion is to enhance the reader's sensitivity to the ways in which rhythmic elements in a poem convey meaning. Deviations in a poem's metrical pattern are often significant to its meaning.

Sprung rhythm, an irregular system of prosody developed by the 19th-century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is based on the number of stressed syllables in a line and permits an indeterminate number of unstressed syllables. In sprung rhythm, a foot may be composed of from one to four syllables. (In regular English metres, a foot consists of two or three syllables.) Because stressed syllables often occur sequentially in this patterning rather than in alternation with unstressed syllables, the rhythm is said to be "sprung." Hopkins claimed to be only the theoretician, not the inventor, of sprung rhythm. He saw it as the rhythm of common English speech and the basis of such early English poems as Langland's Piers Plowman and nursery rhymes such as:

Díng, dóng, béll;        (3 stresses)

Pússĕy's ín thĕ wéll. (3 stresses)

Sprung rhythm is a bridge between regular metre and free verse. An example of Hopkins' use of it is:

Márgărĕt ăre yŏu gríevĭng   (2 stresses)

Ŏvĕr góldĕn grŏve ŭnléavĭng           (2 stresses)

From "Spring and fall to a Young Child"

Stanza, unit of a poem that consists of two or more lines of verse organized according to content and form and usually repeated as a recurring pattern in the poem. The structure of a stanza (also called a strophe, or a stave) is determined by the number of lines, the dominant metre, and the rhyme scheme. Thus, a stanza of four lines of iambic pentameter, rhyming abab, could be described as a quatrain.

Verse, a single line of metrical composition; more broadly, the metrical composition itself or the poetic technique of a particular poem.

Couplet, a pair of end-rhymed lines of verse that are self-contained in grammatical structure and meaning. Examples are:

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;

Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.

(Alexander Pope, "Eloisa to Abelard")

 

Think what you will, we seize into our hands

His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands.

(Shakespeare, Richard II)

Diction, choice of words, especially with regard to correctness, clearness, or effectiveness. Any of the four generally accepted levels of diction--formal, informal, colloquial, or slang--may be correct in a particular context but incorrect in another or when mixed unintentionally. Most ideas have a number of alternate words that the writer can select to suit his purposes. "Children," "kids," "youngsters," "youths," and "brats," for example, all have different evocative values, i.e., connotations.

Foot, plural FEET, in verse, the smallest metrical unit of measurement. The dominant kind and number of feet, revealed by scansion, determines the metre of a poem.

If a single line of the poem contains only one foot, it is called monometer; two feet, dimeter; three feet, trimeter; four feet, tetrameter; five feet, pentameter; six feet, hexameter; seven feet, heptameter; eight feet, octameter. More than six, however, is rare. The metre of a poem (e.g., iambic pentameter, dactylic hexameter) is the kind plus the number of feet in each line.

Iamb, metrical foot consisting of one short syllable (as in classical verse) or one unstressed syllable (as in English verse) followed by one long or stressed syllable, as in the word be|caúse.

Trochee, metrical foot consisting of one long syllable (as in classical verse) or stressed syllable (as in English verse) followed by one short or unstressed syllable, as in the word háp| py.

Rhythm, in poetry, the patterned recurrence, within a certain range of regularity, of specific language features, usually features of sound. Although difficult to define, rhythm is readily discriminated by the ear and the mind, having as it does a physiological basis. It is universally agreed to involve qualities of movement, repetition, and pattern and to arise from the poem's nature as a temporal structure. Rhythm, by any definition, is essential to poetry; prose may be said to exhibit rhythm but in a much less highly organized sense. The presence of rhythmic patterns heightens emotional response and often affords the reader a sense of balance.

Rhyme, also spelled RIME, phenomenon that occurs when two or more words with similarly sounding final syllables are so placed as to echo one another.

Figure of Speech, any intentional deviation from literal statement or common usage that emphasizes, clarifies, or embellishes both written and spoken language. Forming an integral part of language, figures of speech are found in primitive oral literatures, as well as in polished poetry and prose and in everyday speech. Greeting-card rhymes, advertising slogans, newspaper headlines, the captions of cartoons, and the mottoes of families and institutions often use figures of speech, generally for humorous, mnemonic, or eye-catching purposes. The argots of sports, jazz, business, politics, or any specialized groups abound in figurative language.

Most figures in everyday speech are formed by extending the vocabulary of what is already familiar and better known to what is less well known. Thus metaphors (implied resemblances) derived from human physiology are commonly extended to nature or inanimate objects as in the expressions "the mouth of a river," "the snout of a glacier," "the bowels of the earth," or "the eye of a needle." Conversely, resemblances to natural phenomena are frequently applied to other areas, as in the expressions "a wave of enthusiasm," "a ripple of excitement," or "a storm of abuse." Use of simile (a comparison, usually indicated by "like" or "as") is exemplified in "We were packed in the room like sardines." Personification (speaking of an abstract quality or inanimate object as if it were a person) is exemplified in "Money talks"; metonymy (using the name of one thing for another closely related to it), in "How would the Pentagon react?"; synecdoche (use of a part to imply the whole), in expressions such as "brass" for high-ranking military officers or "hard hats" for construction workers.

Other common forms of figurative speech are hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration for the sake of effect), as in "I'm so mad I could chew nails"; the rhetorical question (asked for effect, with no answer expected), as in "How can I express my thanks to you?"; litotes (an emphasis by negation), as in "It's no fun to be sick"; and onomatopoeia (imitation of natural sounds by words), in such words as "crunch," "gurgle," "plunk," and "splash."

Alliteration, in prosody, the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or stressed syllables. Sometimes the repetition of initial vowel sounds (head rhyme) is also referred to as alliteration. As a poetic device, it is often discussed with assonance and consonance. In languages (such as Chinese) that emphasize tonality, the use of alliteration is rare or absent.

Alliteration is found in many common phrases, such as "pretty as a picture" and "dead as a doornail," and is a common poetic device in almost all languages. In its simplest form, it reinforces one or two consonantal sounds, as in William Shakespeare's line:

 

When I do count the clock that tells the time

(Sonnet XII)

A more complex pattern of alliteration is created when consonants both at the beginning of words and at the beginning of stressed syllables within words are repeated, as in Percy Bysshe Shelley's line:

The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's

("Stanzas Written inDejection Near Naples")

Hyperbole, (overstatement) a figure of speech that is an intentional exaggeration for emphasis or comic effect. Hyperbole is common in love poetry, in which it is used to convey the lover's intense admiration for his beloved.

Irony, language device, either in spoken or written form (verbal irony), in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the literal meanings of the words, or in a theatrical situation (dramatic irony) in which there is an incongruity between what is expected and what occurs. Verbal irony arises from a sophisticated or resigned awareness of contrast between what is and what ought to be and expresses a controlled pathos without sentimentality. It is a form of indirection that avoids overt praise or censure as in the casual irony of the statement "That was a smart thing to do!" (meaning "very foolish").

Litotes, a figure of speech, conscious understatement in which emphasis is achieved by negation; examples are the common expressions "not bad!" and "no mean feat." Litotes is a stylistic feature of Old English poetry and of the Icelandic sagas, and it is responsible for much of their characteristic stoical restraint. The term meiosis means understatement generally, and litotes is considered a form of meiosis.

Metaphor, figure of speech that implies comparison between two unlike entities, as distinguished from simile, an explicit comparison signalled by the words "like" or "as." The familiar metaphor "Iron Horse," for train, becomes the elaborate central concept of one of Emily Dickinson's poems, which begins

I like to see it lap the Miles,

And lick the Valleys up,

And stop to feed itself at Tanks;

And then prodigious step . . .

Metonymy (Greek: "change of name," or "misnomer"), figure of speech in which the name of an object or concept is replaced with a word closely related to or suggested by the original, as "crown" for "king" ("The power of the crown was mortally weakened") or an author for his works ("I'm studying Shakespeare"). A familiar Shakespearean example is Mark Antony's speech in Julius Caesar in which he asks of his audience: "Lend me your ears." Metonymy is closely related to synecdoche, the naming of a part for the whole or a whole for the part, and is a common poetic device. Metonymy has the effect of creating concrete and vivid images in place of generalities, as in the substitution of a specific "grave" for the abstraction "death." Metonymy is standard journalistic and headline practice as in the use of "city hall" for "municipal government," the "White House" for the "President of the United States," or "Kremlin" for the government of the Soviet Union.

Paradox, apparently self-contradictory statement, the underlying meaning of which is revealed only by careful scrutiny. The purpose of a paradox is to arrest attention and provoke fresh thought. The statement "Less is more" is an example. When a paradox is compressed into two words as in "loud silence," "lonely crowd," or "living death," it is called an oxymoron.

Parody (Greek paroidía, "a song sung alongside another"), in literature, a form of satirical criticism or comic mockery that imitates the style and manner of a particular writer or school of writers so as to emphasize the weakness of the writer or the overused conventions of the school.

Personification, figure of speech in which human characteristics are attributed to an abstract quality, animal, or inanimate object. A

Synecdoche, figure of speech in which a part represents the whole, as in the expression "hired hands" for workmen or, less commonly, the whole represents a part, as in the use of the word "society" to mean high society. Closely related to metonymy--the replacement of a word by one closely related to the original--synecdoche is an important poetic device for creating vivid imagery. An example is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's line in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "The western wave was all aflame," in which "wave" substitutes for "sea." See also metonymy .

Hush-a-bye, baby

Hush-a-bye, baby,
   On the tree top:
When the wind blows,
   The cradle will rock;
When the bough breaks,
   The cradle will fall;
Down will come baby,
   Cradle and all.

 

 

Alternate version:

Rock-a-bye, baby, in the tree top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock;
When the bough bends, the cradle will fall.
Down will come baby, bough, cradle, and all.

منابع ثانویه کارشناسی ارشد ادبیات انگلیسی

·        List of Recommended Works

 

·        Primary Importance:

 

·        British

 

·        Beowulf

·        The Battle of Maldon

·        "The Wife's Lament"

·        "Judith"

·        Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Cressida

·        Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

·        Wyatt, "Farewell, Love," "They Flee from Me"

·        Spenser, The Faerie Queene [Book I]

·        Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, Defence of Poesy [also considered secondary]

·        Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"

·        Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, The Tempest, 1 Henry IV, Henry V, Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream

·        Ralegh, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"

·        Jonson, Volpone [also judged secondary]

·        Donne, "Go and catch a falling star," "The Flea," "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," Holy Sonnet 14: "Batter my heart," Holy Sonnet 10: "Death, be not proud"

·        Herrick, "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"

·        Herbert, "Easter Wings"

·        Milton, Paradise Lost

·        Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

·        Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress

·        Defoe, Robinson Crusoe [also judged secondary]

·        Swift, "A Modest Proposal," Gulliver's Travels

·        Pope, An Essay on Man, An Essay on Criticism [the first two also judged secondary], The Rape of the Lock

·        Fielding, Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews

·        Richardson, Clarissa [at least read about], Pamela

·        Johnson, "Vanity of Human Wishes," "Preface to Shakespeare" [also judged secondary]

·        Sterne, Tristram Shandy [also judged secondary]

·        Goldsmith, "The Deserted Village"

·        Sheridan, School for Scandal, The Rivals

·        Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

·        Blake, Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [also judged secondary]

·        Austen, Pride and Prejudice

·        Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey," "Michael," "The World Is Too Much With Us," Preface to Lyrical Ballads, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," The Prelude [also judged secondary]

·        Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan," "Dejection: An Ode," "Frost at Midnight," "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison"

·        Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage [excerpts], Don Juan [Books 1-4], Manfred

·        Shelley, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," "Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," "To a Sky-Lark," "Adonais," A Defence of Poetry

·        Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," Letters [NAEL], "The Eve of St. Agnes," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "To Autumn" [also judged secondary]

·        M. Shelley, Frankenstein

·        E. B. Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese [also judged secondary]

·        Dickens, Great Expectations, Bleak House [also judged secondary], Hard Times

·        Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott," "Ulysses," In Memoriam A.H.H. [excerpts], "Crossing the Bar," Idylls of the King ["The Passing of Arthur"]

·        Thackeray, Vanity Fair [also judged secondary]

·        R. Browning, "My Last Duchess," "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" [also judged secondary], "Andrea del Sarto," "Caliban upon Setebos," "Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister," "Porphyria's Lover," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb" [also judged secondary]

·        E. Bronte, Wuthering Heights

·        C. Bronte, Jane Eyre

·        G. Eliot, Middlemarch [also judged secondary], Silas Marner [also judged secondary]

·        Mill, On Liberty

·        C. Rossetti, Goblin Market

·        Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, "Channel Firing," "The Darkling Thrush," "Neutral Tones"

·        Arnold, "To a Friend," "The Buried Life," "Dover Beach," "The Scholar Gypsy," "Thyrsis"

·        Carroll, "Jabberwocky"

·        Hardy, "Hap," "The Darkling Thrush," "Channel Firing," "The Convergence of the Twain"

·        Hopkins, "God's Grandeur," "The Windhover," "Spring and Fall: to a young child"

·        Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

·        Housman, "To an Athlete Dying Young," "Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff"

·        Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est," "Anthem for Doomed Youth"

·        Conrad, Heart of Darkness

·        Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "Easter 1916," "The Second Coming," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Leda and the Swan," "Among School Children," "The Circus Animals' Desertion"

·        Forster, A Passage to India [also judged secondary]

·        Joyce, Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses [at least read in and read about]

·        Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse

·        Lawrence, Women in Love, Sons and Lovers [also judged secondary], "The Rocking Horse Winner," "The Horse-Dealer's Daughter," Tortoise poems, Fruit poems

·        Mansfield, "The Garden Party"

·        Beckett, Waiting for Godot

·        Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts," "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

·        Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," "Fern Hill"

·        Larkin, "Church Going" [also judged secondary]

·        T. Hughes, "Thought-Fox"

·        Heaney, "Digging"

 

·        American

 

·        E. Taylor, "Huswifery"

·        Edward, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" [also judged secondary]

·        Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer

·        Cooper, Last of the Mohicans [also judged secondary], The Deerslayer [also judged secondary]

·        Emerson, "The American Scholar," "The Over-Soul," "Nature," "Divinity School Address"

·        Thoreau, Walden, "Civil Disobedience"

·        Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Raven"

·        Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, "Young Goodman Brown," "Rappaccini's Daughter" [both stories also judged secondary], Preface to House of the Seven Gables

·        Melville, Moby Dick, Billy Budd, "Bartleby the Scrivener," "Benito Cereno"

·        Whitman, Leaves of Grass [1888 ed.]

·        Dickinson, "There's a certain Slant of light," "Because I could not stop for Death"

·        Twain, Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

·        S. Crane, The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, "The Open Boat"

·        James, Daisy Miller [also judged secondary], The American, The Portrait of a Lady

·        Norris, McTeague [also judged secondary]

·        Chopin, The Awakening [also judged secondary]

·        Wharton, "Roman Fever"

·        Cather, O Pioneers, My Antonia

·        Frost, "Mending Wall," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," "The Gift Outright," "Home Burial,"

·        Sandburg, "Chicago"

·        Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

·        Dreiser, Sister Carrie

·        London, The Call of the Wild

·        T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," The Wasteland, Four Quartets

·        O'Neill, The Emperor Jones

·        W. Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow," "To Elsie," "Spring and All," "The Young Housewife," "Danse Russe," Imaginations, Spring and All

·        Pound, "In a Station in the Metro," Cantos I and XLV [The Cantos as a whole also judged secondary], "The Garden," "The River Merchant to His Wife," "A Pact"

·        Stevens, Harmonium, "Sunday Morning," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "The Emperor of Ice Cream"

·        H. Crane, The Bridge

·        Cummings, Collected Poems, "Buffalo Bill's," "I sing of Olaf," "Cambridge Ladies"

·        F. S. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, "Winter Dreams" [also judged secondary], "Babylon Revisited"

·        Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom! [also judged secondary], The Sound and the Fury, Go Down, Moses, Light in August

·        Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms [also judged secondary], The Sun Also Rises [also judged secondary], "Soldier's Home," "Big Two-Hearted River" [Parts I and II), "Hills Like White Elephants"

·        L. Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "Harlem" ["A Dream Deferred"], "Theme for English B," "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," The Weary Blues

·        Olson, "Projective Verse"

·        Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

·        Wright, Native Son

·        Lewis, Main Street

·        Lowell, Life Studies, "For the Union Dead," "Skunk Hour," "The Drinker," "Waking in the Blue," "After Surprising Conversions"

·        Roethke, The Far Field, "The Far Field," "Elegy for Jane," "Root Cellar," "My Papa's Waltz"

·        T. Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie

·        Ellison, Invisible Man

·        Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues"

·        Ginsberg, Howl, "America," "A Supermarket in California"

·        Kerouac, On the Road

·        Snyder, Turtle Island

·        Miller, Death of a Salesman

·        Bellow, Herzog [also judged secondary]

·        O'Connor, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "Good Country People," "Everything That Rises Must Converge," Wise Blood

·        Heller, Catch-22

·        Bishop, "Questions of Travel," "In The Waiting Room," "The Fish"

·        Lowell, "For the Union Dead"

·        Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

·        Mailer, Armies of the Night

·        Percy, The Movie-Goer

·        Rich, "Diving into the Wreck"

·        Plath, "Daddy"

·        Momaday, House Made of Dawn

·        Silko, Ceremony

·        Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

·        Morrison, Beloved, Song of Solomon

·        Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

·        Walker, The Color Purple, "Everyday Use"

 

·        World

 

·        Bible: Genesis, Job, one of the Gospels

·        Homer, The Odyssey

·        Plato, The Republic

·        Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, Agamemnon

·        Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, Antigone

·        Euripides, Medea

·        Aristophanes, Lysistrata

·        Virgil, Aeneid

·        Ovid, Metamorphoses

·        Dante, Inferno

·        Moliere, The Misanthrope, Tartuffe

·        Cervantes, Don Quixote

·        Voltaire, Candide

·        Goethe, Faust

·        Flaubert, Madame Bovary

·        Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov

·        Ibsen, A Doll's House

·        Strindberg, Miss Julie

·        Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch"

·        Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

·        Kafka, "Metamorphosis"

·        Camus, The Plague, The Stranger

·        Sartre, No Exit

·        Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country

·        Achebe, Things Fall Apart

·        Walcott, "A Far Cry from Africa"

 

 

·        Secondary Importance:

 

·        British

 

·        Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur

·        Spenser, The Faerie Queene [all but Book I], Amoretti

·        Sidney, Defence of Poesy [also judged primary]

·        Marlowe, The Jew of Malta

·        Shakespeare, As You Like It, Antony and Cleopatra, Richard II, 2 Henry IV, Richard III, Twelfth Night

·        Jonson, Volpone [also judged primary]

·        Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

·        Lovelace, "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars"

·        Waller, "Song" ["Go, lovely rose!"]

·        Milton, "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Lycidas," "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent"

·        Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham," [Shakespeare and Ben Jonson Compared], [In Praise of Chaucer]

·        Behn, Oroonoko

·        Pepys, Diary

·        Defoe, Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe [also judged primary], Journal of the Plague Year

·        Swift, "Tale of a Tub"

·        Pope, The Dunciad

·        Addison and Steele (NAEL)

·        Fielding, Shamela

·        Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson

·        Johnson, Rasselas, Dictionary, Preface to Shakespeare [also judged primary], Lives of the Poets

·        Thomson, The Seasons

·        Sterne, Tristram Shandy [also judged primary]

·        Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

·        Godwin, Caleb WIlliams

·        Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman [NAEL]

·        Collins, Jubilate Agno

·        Cowper, The Task, "The Castaway"

·        Austen, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion

·        Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [also judged primary], The Four Zoas

·        Burns, "To a Mouse," "Tam O'Shanter," "Afton Water," "A Red, Red Rose," "Auld Lang Syne"

·        Clare, "I Am"

·        Wordsworth, "The Tables Turned," "Resolution and Independence," "I Wandered Lonely. . . ," "My Heart Leaps Up," "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge," "It Is a Beauteous Evening," "London," "The World Is Too Much with Us," "Surprised by Joy"

·        Coleridge, Christabel, Biographia Literaria [NAEL]

·        Byron, "Written After Swimming. . . ," "She walks in beauty"

·        Shelley, "Mont Blanc," Prometheus Unbound [know about]

·        Keats, Endymion [Book I], "Ode to Psyche," "Lamia," "Ode on Melancholy," "To Autumn" [also judged primary]

·        Tennyson, "Mariana," "The Lotus-Eaters," "Break, Break, Break," "The Eagle: A Fragment," "Sweet and Low," "The Splendor Falls," "Tears, Idel Tears," "The Charge of the Light Brigade"

·        Morris, "The Defense of Guenevere," "The Haystack in the Floods"

·        Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

·        Thackeray, Vanity Fair [also judged primary]

·        E. B. Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese [#22, 43], Aurora Leigh [NAEL]

·        R. Browning, "Porphyria's Lover" [also judged primary], "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb" [also judged primary], "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Pippa Passes," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "An Epistle . . . Karshish, the Arab Physician," The Ring and the Book [Books 1, 7, 10-12], "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" [also judged primary]

·        Dickens, David Copperfield, Hard Times [also judged primary], Bleak House [also judged primary], Oliver Twist

·        Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch [also judged primary], Adam Bede

·        D. G. Rossetti, "The Blessed Damozel," The House of Life ["The Sonnet"]

·        Rossetti, "Song" ["When I am dead, my dearest"], "A Birthday"

·        Carlyle, Sartor Resartus [NAEL]

·        Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua [NAEL], The Idea of a University

·        Huxley, Agnosticism and Christianity [NAEL]

·        Ruskin, Modern Painters, The Stones of Venice [NAEL]

·        Arnold, The Function of Criticism [NAEL], "Literature and Science," "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," "Thyrsis"

·        Lear, "How Pleasant to Know . . . ," "The J. . . ," "The Owl and the Pussy Cat," Limericks

·        Carroll, "The Walrus and the Carpenter"

·        Henley, "Invictus"

·        Thompson, "The Hound of Heaven"

·        Dowson, "Cynara"

·        Hopkins, "Spring and Fall," "Pied Beauty"

·        Hardy, "Drummer Hodge," "The Ruined Maid," "A Trampwoman's Tragedy," "Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?," Jude the Obscure, The Mayer of Casterbridge, Far from the Madding Crowd

·        Shaw, Pygmalion

·        Conrad, Nostromo, Lord Jim

·        Synge, Playboy of the Western World

·        Forster, Howard's End, A Passage to India [also judged primary]

·        O'Casey, Juno and the Paycock

·        Brooke, "The Soldier"

·        Thomas, "As the Team's Head Brass"

·        Sassoon, "Base Details"

·        Sassoon, "They"

·        Owen, "Strange Meeting"

·        Yeats, "Who Goes with Fergus," "Adam's Curse," "No Second Troy," "September 1913," "The Wild Swans at Coole," "Under Ben Bulben"

·        Lawrence, Sons and Lovers [also judged primary], The Rainbow, "Piano," "Bavarian Gentians"

·        Ford, The Good Soldier

·        Huxley, Brave New World

·        Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1984

·        Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape, Endgame

·        Auden, "Spain, 1937," "Sept. 1, 1939"

·        Thomas, "The Force That Through the Green Fuse. . ."

·        Hughes, "Pike"

·        Heaney, "The Skunk," "Station Island"

·        Larkin, "Church Going" [also judged primary]

 

·        American

 

·        Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" [also judged primary]

·        Knight, The Journal of Madam Knight

·        Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

·        Irving, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

·        Brown, Wieland, Edgar Huntley

·        Cooper, The Pioneers

·        Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown," "Rappacini's Daughter" [both stories also judged primary]

·        Poe, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter," "The Cask of Amontillado," "Anabel Lee," "The Philosophy of Composition"

·        Dana, Two Years Before the Mast

·        Melville, The Confidence Man

·        Emerson, Selected Essays

·        Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

·        Twain, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," The Prince and the Pauper, Roughing It, Innocents Abroad, The Tragedy of Puddin Head Wilson

·        James, Daisy Miller [also judged primary]

·        Howells, A Modern Instance

·        Norris, McTeague [also judged primary]

·        Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware

·        Eliot, "Ash Wednesday," Murder in the Cathedral

·        W. C. Williams, Paterson

·        Stevens, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction

·        F. S. Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night, "The Ice Palace"

·        Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom! [also judged primary]

·        Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises [also judged primary], "Cat in the Rain"

·        Stein, Three Lives

·        L. Hughes, Montage of a Dream Deferred

·        Olson, Selected Writings

·        Lewis, Babbit

·        Lowell, Lord Weary's Castle

·        H. Miller, Tropic of Cancer

·        Sinclair, The Jungle

·        Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans

·        Ferlinghetti, Starting From San Francisco, "Constantly Risking Absurdity," "Big Fat Hairy Vision of Evil"

·        Snyder, Earth House Hold

·        Nabokov, Lolita

·        Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

·        Kosinski, The Painted Bird

·        Plath, The Bell Jar

·        Snodgrass, Heart's Needle

·        Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49

·        Barth, The Floating Opera

·        Rothenberg, Poland 1931

·        Levertov, The Jacob's Ladder

·        Creeley, The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley

·        Merwin, Green With Beasts

·        Updike, Rabbit, Run

·        Bellow, Seize the Day, Herzog [also judged primary]

·        Percy, The Second Coming

·        Doctorow, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel

·        Atwood, The Robber Bride

·        Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

·        Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

·        Tan, The Joy Luck Club

·        Kingston, The Woman Warrior

·        Dove, The Yellow House on the Corner

·        Harjo, She Had Some Horses

 

·        World

 

·        Bible: Exodus, I Samuel [the story of Saul and David]

·        Homer, The Iliad

·        Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides

·        Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

·        Aristophanes, The Frogs

·        Dante, Purgatory, Paradise

·        Some knowledge of (know their names and major works) Chretien de Troyes, Guillaume de Machaut, Marie de France, Christine de Pisan, Petrarch, Walther von der Vogelweide, Gottfried von Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Castiglione, Villon

·        Boccaccio, Decameron

·        Some knowledge of Ariosto, Calderon, Camoens, Corneille, John of the Cross, Mme. De LaFayette, Lafontaine, "Lazarillo de Tormes," Lope de Vega, Luis de Leon, Machiavelli, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne, More, Pascal, Rabelais, Racine, Ronsard, Hans Sachs, Mme. De Sevigne, Tasso, Teresa of Avila (Teresa of Jesus), Van den Vondel

·        Some knowledge of Boileau, Diderot, Goldoni, LaBruyere, LaFontaine, LaRochefoucald, Rousseau, Scott

·        Ibsen, Hedda Gabler, An Enemy of the People

·        Koestler, Darkness at Noon

 

·        Resources:

 

·        M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms [a good handbook, for literary terms and critical theory]

·        Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature [available cheap at Green Valley Book Fair]

·        Dorothy Van Ghent, The English Novel [older, but very good and in BC library]

·        Preminger, Brogan, Warnke, Hardison, and Miner, eds. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics [in BC library]