This page contains snippets of poetry for discussion in Doctor Wheeler's literature courses, exercises involving poetry, and literary terms and definitions. Stay tuned for new additions! Classical Chinese Poetry Close Reading Exercise: "Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (an exercise in close reading). Click here for a PDF version of the poem. Examples of Iambs, Trochees, Spondees, Dactyls, and Anapests (PDF file) Haiku: What is Haiku Poetry? Literary Terms and Definitions (a list of vocabulary every English student should know) Meter (a large--150k+--handout discussing how to do scansion) Paraphrasing versus summarizing poetry Periods of Literary History (a handout in PDF format) Poetry to Download: "Andrea Del Sarto" by Robert Browning in PDF format "The Bait" by John Donne in PDF format "A Birthday" by Christina Rossetti in PDF format. Beowulf: the First Nineteen Lines (an examination of how textual editing affects the poetry we read) Close Reading of a Literary Passage (a guide to closely examining a piece of literature). Click here for the same material as a downloadable PDF document. "Eating Poetry" by Mark Strand in PDF format. "Evolution," by Langdon Smith in PDF format. "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti in PDF format. Haiku Samples (PDF handout of various poets--Japanese and Western) "Hymn to Proserpine" (by Algernon Swinburne, PDF handout) "The Haunted House," by George Sylvester Viereck, a poem in pdf format. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," by Yeats, a poem in PDF format. "Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath in PDF format. "Lapis Lazuli," by W.B. Yeats, a poem in PDF format. "Non Sum Qualis Eram" by Ernest Dowson, a poem in PDF format. "The Rape of the Lock" by Alexander Pope, excerpts of the mock epic poem in PDF format. Sonnets: (a downloadable PDF handout) "Spring and Fall" by Gerard Manley Hopkins in PDF format; click here for an online version. "Stanzas of the Graves" (TBA: A beautiful and haunting Celtic lamentation) "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff" by A. E. Housman. (Housman contrasts the virtues of drinking alcohol versus reading tragic poetry.) Click here to download a pdf version. "To His Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell (PDF format) Two Poems ("A Birthday" and "Goblin Market") by Christina Rossetti. "Two Songs for Hedli Anderson" by W. H. Auden (in PDF format) "The Unknown Citizen" by W. H. Auden (in PDF format) Rhetoric of Pathos in Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" (an analysis of how emotion works in poetry) Schemes and Tropes (the poetic and rhetorical devices that create eloquence) Shakespearean Sonnet Assignment (a downloadable pdf handout)

Copyright Dr. L. Kip Wheeler 1998-2010. Permission is granted for non-profit, educational, and student reproduction. Last updated August 17, 2010. Contact: kwheeler@cn.edu Please e-mail corrections, suggestions, or comments to help me improve this site. Click here for credits, thanks, and additional copyright information.