综合英语教程(第三版)5电子教案unit7section2

Discussion In a small group, discuss the meaning of the following two quotations:
(1) “painting that speaks” (2) “a little leaf in the drawer of a sublet room”
KEYSs/expressions with examples to illustrate
their usage.
1 figure:
vi. appear in a conspicuous and prominent way e.g. Elections figure prominently in every government program.
Word Study Explain the words/expressions with examples to illustrate their usage.
1 figure: _________________________ 2 take … by the throat: __________________ 3 down to earth: _____________________ 4 fiddle: _________________________
KEYS
1 “painting that speaks”: Poetry is full of imagery of colors, sounds, and other visual and audio effects. 2 “a little leaf in the drawer of a sublet room”: A poem could be someone’s writing such as those things written on the pieces of paper left by the previous tenant in an apartment. 3 It is a little challenging to teach this part since it is comparatively abstract and maybe dull for the students. Try the following approach aimed at materializing the information. At the beginning, introduce the poem, “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams. Hold back the poet’s name first.
but they are incomplete, and the essence of poetry slips through them and escapes. One poet who tried many definitions once remarked with seeming impatience, “Poetry is the sum of its attributes.” 3 This observation implies an important truth: more than philosophical or critical arguments, the qualities of the poems we read shape our idea of poetry. In this respect, the poems you have read, are reading and will read in future will form a collective “definition” of what poetry is.
Defining Poetry A definition by examples, though useful sometimes, may not be very effective because it is often impossible to illustrate all the key features. How would you define poetry? Try your version.
4 fiddle:
n. a small device e.g. an expert on the fiddle
Some Elements of Poetry
Rhyme 1 Although English is a language rich in resources of rhyming, it is actively avoided in most conversation and prose writing, but for centuries it has been one of the most commonly used formal devices of poetry. Its purpose is to bind lines of verse together: to draw the reader along with rising expectations of an inevitable rhyme, and to fulfill those expectations at a crucial point in the poem. 2 True rhymes occur when the last stressed syllables of two or more lines share the same vowel sounds, followed by identical-sounding consonants or unstressed syllables.
Basic Issues What is poetry?
Basic Elements about Poetry
What is poetry? 15 1 Where there are people there are poems. Some of the earliest writings known are in verse, and throughout human history new poets have continued to appear, often without warning or preparation. Even young children can write real poems and like to do it. Whatever the reasons for poetry’s origins, it has continued to attract people. 2 Because poetry has consistently figured so large in human culture, many people have tried to define its true nature. It is “painting that speaks” ; “the best words in the best order” ; “the supreme fiction”; “a criticism of life”; “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge”; “a little leaf in the drawer of a sublet room”; “a way of taking life by the throat”; and so on, including the down-to-earth “all this fiddle”. These observations are well put,
4 Meter is a regularized form of verbal rhythm. Except for a very special purpose, it does not distort the normal rhythms of
This is Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in
the icebox and which you were probably
saving for breakfast Forgive me They were delicious
So sweet And so cold 4 Then, ask Ss, “Do you think this is a poem? Why or why not?” Both the pros and cons would come up with reasons related to rhyme, rhythm and meter, and so on. Let Ss defend themselves. After that, teachers release the poet’s name, and move on to explain why it is a poem from the perspectives of the basic elements of poetry.
Rhythm and Meter 3 There are two species of rhythm in poetry: the pattern of regular rhythmic recurrence called meter, and the lack of such pattern, which is called free verse. Each differs from the other not only in the way it sounds but in its origins and the kind of poetry that uses it. Meter goes back to poetry’s origins as song or chanting to accompany ritual dances; metrical poetry, then, should always be “heard” against an imagined background of ideally regular rhythm, and its divergences from this ideal regularity are like syncopations in music, local effects aimed at producing emphasis and variety. Free verse, however, has nothing to do with music; it is based on the actual rhythms of human speech, in which the stresses and accents of the words fall much less predictably.