H
ere is a poem by William Meredith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet from New England. After we read it
aloud together, read it to yourself a few times through, and take some notes to the side. Remember the
three things to look at when analyzing a poem? Write them here:
1.
2.
3.
The Illiterate
Touching your goodness, I am like a man
Who turns a letter over in his hand
And you might think this was because the hand
Was unfamiliar but, truth is, the man
Has never had a letter from anyone;
And now he is both afraid of what it means
And ashamed because he has no other means
To find out what it says than to ask someone.
His uncle could have left the farm to him,
Or his parents could have died before he sent them word,
Or the dark girl changed and want him for beloved.
Afraid and letter-proud, he keeps it with him.
What would you call his feeling for the words
That keep him rich and orphaned and beloved?
The first step in reading a poem is to look carefully at what the poet is saying. You may be aware of the form, but
don’t focus on it until you understand the meaning.
Notice the two uses of the word hand. What does the first mean?
What does the second mean?
Discuss the following questions with a partner:
What are the possibilities the letter carries?
Do you think the poet is talking about a man who receives an actual letter or about the narrator himself?
What is the narrator saying about himself in “Touching your goodness, I am like a man / Who…?”
Look again at the title of the poem. Write ideas or questions about the title’s meaning:
This is a Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet. What can you say about rhyme scheme, rhythm (meter), and stanza
patterns of Petrarchan sonnets based on this one?
You’ve learned about rhyme scheme, meter, and stanza patterns; what you haven’t learned yet is about poetic
feet. The basis of meter is the foot, a combination of two or three syllables. The iamb is the most common
individual poetic foot; it has two syllables with the stress on the second one. An example of an iamb is the word
today, which we pronounce with the stress on the second syllable. The opposite of an iamb is the trochee, which
has the stressed syllable first, as in sandwich or power. Iambic pentameter, with a number of trochaic variations,
is the meter of the sonnet as well as of a lot of other poetry. Shakespeare, for example, wrote most of his plays
in unrhymed iambic pentameter, which is known as blank verse. The sonnet, however, uses specific rhyme and
stanza patterns.
Traditionally, the rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet is abbaabba cdecde; however, Meredith has used a
variation in “The Illiterate.” He has been true to the distinction of the two stanzas because in the traditional
Italian sonnet, the first stanza sets forth a situation and the second comments on it.
What is the situation set forth in the first eight lines?
What does the narrator say about the situation in the last six lines?
The Shakespearean, or English, Sonnet
Hey!
This is American Studies. Why are we looking at Shakespeare? Bear with
me; we’re only meeting him for one sonnet—it’s necessary since we need to see what
the difference is between the Italian sonnet and this kind, which is named after him.
Like the Italian sonnet, this type has fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter. It
differs, however, in its arrangement of thought: three quatrains develop a central
idea or argument, and a couplet provides some kind of conclusion. As you can see
from one of the Bard’s most famous sonnets, the rhyme scheme creates the pattern.
Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rose lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Imagine that this is an essay with a thesis statement, an argument, and a conclusion. Analyze the way the
thought pattern progresses through the three quatrains and the couplet.
First quatrain: What point does the speaker make about love?
Second quatrain: To what does the speaker compare love? How does the comparison show what the speaker
thinks about love?
Third quatrain: How does the speaker use the negative to say what love is?
Couplet: How do the final two lines provide a feeling of conclusion to the argument?
In a more contemporary Shakespearean sonnet, Edna St. Vincent Millay explores the same subject: love.
Pity Me Not
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind holds at every turn.
Using the guidelines from your analysis of Shakespeare’s sonnet, analyze Millay’s poem. Focus on two points:
the way the pattern of the poem underscores the points of her argument
the way the two poems develop the idea of what love is
Remember that the organization of the Shakespearean sonnet provides a basis for posing a question or idea and
then providing a resolution in the final two lines.