2. Agenda
Poetry Reading
Review of New Criticism
Close reading Application
T.S. Eliot
Essay #1
3. Read these four poems
“There Is a Girl Inside”
“The Fish”
“A Black Rook in Rainy Weather”
“Memories of West Street and Lepke”
These are available through the
links on the course website
4. Consider which of these
questions help you understand
the poems
1. How does the work use imagery to develop its own symbols? (i.e. making a
certain road stand for death by constant association)
2. What is the quality of the work's organic unity "...the working together of all the
parts to make an inseparable whole..." (Tyson 121)? In other words, does how the
work is put together reflect what it is?
3. How are the various parts of the work interconnected?
4. How do paradox, irony, ambiguity, and tension work in the text?
5. How do these parts and their collective whole contribute to or not contribute to
the aesthetic quality of the work?
6. How does the author resolve apparent contradictions within the work?
7. What does the form of the work say about its content?
8. Is there a central or focal passage that can be said to sum up the entirety of the
work?
9. How do the rhythms and/or rhyme schemes of a poem contribute to the meaning
or effect of the piece?
5. Post #4:
Pick one of the poems
Using the questions on the previous slide, list
five examples you might be able to use in close
reading of one poem.
6. Read, Think, and Respond!
T.S Eliot: “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
This is available as both a link and as text under
“course readings” and “secondary texts.”
Post #5: QHQ Eliot
7. Classwork/ Homework
Read the four poems
Post #4: Using the questions on the previous
slide, list five examples you might be able to use in
close reading of one poem.
Read: T.S Eliot: “Tradition and the Individual
Talent”
Post #5: QHQ Eliot
Read: The essay #1 assignment
Begin notes for essay 1
