The British Library's Poets and Poetry Page - Great for Unseens

The are several poems by great poets and read by well known actors. For exam preparation it does not come much better than this. Once you click the link scroll down to find suitable poems. Then read and annotate them for Language, Form and Structure for the Unseen section of Unit 3.
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/poetryperformance/poetryhome.html

This link below leads to a time-line of texts produced in English over time. It's quite spectacular!
http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/evolvingenglish/englishtimeline.html

The Challenges of Teaching Poetry by Billy Collins

The Challenges in Teaching Poetry

A Concept Map For Form and Structure in Poetry

Click the image twice to enlarge with clarity

Basic but enough to get by for AS English Literature. 

Yeats and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

The early slides are full of information on Yeats's 1893 poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree". Focus on the poet's symbolism as you read it.

W. B. Yeats

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Here's an unusual term that features in this presentation explained in Wikipedia
Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae or synaesthesiae)—from the Ancient Greek σύν (syn), "together," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), "sensation"—is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes.

"Linnets" belong to a species of bird known as a finch. They are songbirds and symbolise home and family.

"The Applicant" by Sylvia Plath

The poem was published in her famous collection of poems, "Ariel", a couple of years after her death in 1965.

- The Applicant

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit----

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that ?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk , talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Resources for studying Sylvia Plath's "The Applicant"

One source which possibly moved Sylvia Plath to create her poem was Cliff Richard's 1959 release, "Living Doll". With hindsight and the benefit of time, even he is embarrassed by the "dodgy" lyrics of the song. He thinks that he needed "guts" to sing it. Who would produce such sexist lyrics today?


Another important source for the poem was a painting by the Belgian surrealist artistRené François Ghislain Magritte (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967).



Here's an extract from an essay which discusses this painting and its relationship with Plath's poem.

"The Applicant"

"Plath also denounces the role of wife, especially in "The Applicant," in which a man goes into a shop to purchase a wife. A salesperson interrogates him about his needs, recommends a model with many skills, and then summons one for him, saying "Come here, sweetie, out of the closet" (Hughes 1981, 221). Plath's image is eerily similar to Rene Magritte's "Homage to Mack Sennet (1934, "Huldigung an Mack Sennet," Musee Communale, La Louviere, Belgien), which portrays an armoire with one door open to reveal a floor length, white, long-sleeved, semi-transparent silk gown hanging from a wooden coat hanger with the front of the gown facing the door opening. The ugly, styleless armoire seems shoddily made. The mirror on its closed door reflects nothing; it is a flat surface on which gray fades into black. Nearly everything in the painting is dull, ordinary, common, and shabby-in browns, beiges, grays, and blacks-except the bodice of the gown itself, whose shape appears to cover two nippled, very realistic woman's breasts. There is no indication of hands, feet, head, or body--just breasts, which change the shape of an otherwise two-dimensional nightgown. The rest of the gown hangs limply from its hanger, without humanity or sexuality. Here--as if for sale and certainly for the taking by whoever so desires--is a hollow nothingness. Magritte, like Hollywood and Madison Avenue, has reduced woman to a pair of perfect, emblematic breasts. Forever available, this is a sex symbol which will never disagree with, annoy, or betray any man.

Similarly passive and available, Plath's mannequin waits in a closet too. It is capable of performing all wifely and housewifely tasks; it will provide a hand when its husband's hand is empty: "It will bring teacups and roll away headaches / And do whatever you tell it." Her mannequin is a "living doll" (Hughes 1981, 221); "It can sew, it can cook / It can talk, talk, talk," and is guaranteed to have "nothing wrong with it" (222). Like Ira Levin's later creation, the Stepford wives, its only function is to satisfy a husband's needs--including sexual intercourse--but does so without interest, affect, or feeling. Like Magritte's breasted gown, Plath's mannequin lacks individuality and any will of its own. All hers can do is "talk, talk, talk," but it almost certainly does so without ever saying anything worth listening to. (11)

Plath takes a painting that does not have feminist content and transforms it into a poem that does. But, unlike a feminist who thinks of other women as her sisters, Plath, in each case, attacks the woman who has accepted her role and presents the woman as subhuman--as ape, as lollipop, and as robot. Plath herself wanted to have it all."

Websites: articles, essays, comments, etc.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1566011/sylvia_plaths_the_applicant.html?cat=38

http://education.theage.com.au/pagedetail.asp?intpageid=1595&strsection=students&intsectionid=3

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/sylviaplath/1437/comments/2

http://www.iun.edu/~plath/vol1/browne.pdf

http://www.uta.fi/~tiina.r.koivisto/AmLit9.pdf

"My Shoes" read by Charles Simic

The Belgrade born, US poet reads his own poem.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/audioitem.html?id=604

"Ecstasy" by Sharon Olds

From page 73 of "Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times", Sharon Old's poem shares themes and ideas that are present in several other poems in this anthology. The poem's depiction of sexual experience and its imagery and focus on how "language" can also separate us recalls Adrienne Rich's "Two Songs".

Why not try some Bach while you revise eighteenth-century poems?

J.S. Bach 1685-1750 was one of the greatest composers and musicians of his time. Why not listen to some of the music that poets from his time would have heard - and loved. This intricate piece of baroque is the musical equivalent of the fashions in poetry, painting, furniture and architecture of the period. Can A2 students of the old syllabus listen to better? Enjoy, as you read. Maybe I'll play this at the beginning of a class test to set the mood!

BWV - 1006 - Prelude from lute suite 4 - John Williams

The Poetry Terminology Quiz by Famous Poems.Org

I took the Poetry Terminology Quiz at Famous Poems.org

My results: Ultimate Poetry Guru! My Score Average The average quiz taker scored 65%, while I scored a whopping 100%! How's that for a poetry expert?

Think you can do better? Head to the Famous Poems Library and Take the Quiz!

"Amazing! We don't know how you did it, but there it is, right as rain. Only a handful of people has ever scored perfectly on our quiz. And hundreds, if not thousands, of future quiz takers will try to do what you've just done and fail miserably. You've got a gift, my friend!"

I did this for a laugh; however, it would have been an embarrassment to get less than 100% as I teach the study of poetry for a living! However, for some fun-time revision, see how well you can do!

http://www.famous-poems.org/quiz

Here's another brief quiz with some broader questions on poetry through the ages:

http://www.quizmoz.com/quizzes/Literature-Quizzes/t/The-Poetry-Quiz.asp

A reading of Christopher Marlowe's "A Passionate Shepherd To His Love"

Marlowe's carpe diem lyric with its idyllic rural setting became very popular as a poem of seduction in its day ( the Elizabethan period of the late 1500s ). The speaker makes several naturalistic promises for the voiceless woman's chastity but he does not make an offer of marriage.



Here's a full set of notes on this poem.  When you get there examine the links on the right of the page  for further information on this interesting poem.

http://www.answers.com/topic/the-passionate-shepherd-to-his-love-poem-1

Henry Fielding and London in the 1750s

By the 1750s, when Thomas Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" was published (although it was probably begun in 1742) London was growing at an astonishing rate through trade and from an influx of people from the countryside. More than 575,000 souls existed in overcrowded streets in which crime, disease, gin-drinking, fake lotteries, afflicted everyone. 

As today, the differences between the rich and the poor was increasing year, by year. Great affluence existed alongside grinding poverty. It was still the age of  "The Peacock Man" which had begun after the Restoration 90 years before. It was an age of excessive behaviour in dress and immoral living; it was an age of exuberance and depression - an age of science and and an age of extremes.

For more information on London during this period try this link:

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/London-life18th.jsp