Detroit, Michigan

On the literary map, travel from from Springfield, Illinois, to Detroit, Michigan.

Calculate:

# _____________ Miles to Detroit, Michigan

$ _____________ Cost for Gasoline to Detroit, Michigan

Visit Robert Hayden at www.Poets.org and fill-in-the-blanks.

"Born Asa Bundy Sheffey in ___________, Robert Hayden was raised in a poor neighborhood in Detroit. He had an emotionally tumultuous childhood and was shuttled between the home of his parents and that of a foster family, who lived next door. Because of impaired vision, he was unable to participate in sports, but was able to spend his time reading. In 1932, he graduated from high school and, with the help of a scholarship, attended Detroit City College (later Wayne State University). "

"Hayden published his first book of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust, in 1940. He enrolled in a graduate English Literature program at the University of Michigan where he studied with W. H. Auden. Auden became an influential critical guide in the development of Hayden's writing. In ___________, he became the first black American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (later called the Poet Laureate). He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in ____________."

Listen to "Soledad" and read "Those Winter Sundays."

What kind of imagery is central to the poem?


How is this imagery related to the emotional concerns of the poem?


How do the subsidiary images relate to the central images?


From what point in time does the speaker view the subject matter of the poem?


What has happened to him in the interval?



A SIDEWALK: "In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Hayden lived at 1201 Gardner Avenue, not far from campus; however, his severe nearsightedness made it impossible for him to drive, or even walk the rutted sidewalks to work. As a result, Hayden regularly took the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority's #5 bus that ran along Packard Street. Surrounded by fellow riders who surely recognized him by his inimitable coke-bottle glasses, Hayden was left undisturbed, though watched with wonderment about what lines he might be silently composing in his mind. Sitting or standing, not reading and unable to observe the scenery rushing by, he remained in quiet contemplation."

Clyde, Ohio

On the literary map, travel from Detroit, Michigan, to Clyde, Ohio.

Calculate:

# _____________ Miles to Clyde, Ohio.

$ _____________ Cost for Gasoline to Clyde, Ohio.

Read about in your text or at Sherwood Anderson. His most famous work is Winesburg, Ohio .


Now read "Sophistication" and answer these questions:

"Sophistication" is a story of two people caught between adolescence and maturity. George and Helen strain toward a new awareness of life while they are still bound to the familiar life of Winesburg. What reasons are given in the fourth paragraph for George's "new sense of maturity"?




The fifth paragraph describes the moment of sophistication, when a person first takes "the backward view of life." Anderson uses the image of a passing procession to suggest George's vision of the passing of time. What image does the author use to suggest the feelings of helplessness and uncertainty that accompany sophistication?




The author describes youth as a struggle between two forces: "the warm unthinking little animal" and "the thing that reflects and remembers (Adventures in American Literature 466). Find a few instances in the story of the sturggle between these two forces. What do you think Anderson means by this conflict?




At the end of the story, what do George and Helen gain from their silent evening together that "makes the mature life of men and women in the modern world possible"? What do you think George and Helen give up of their youth to gain this new-found sophistication?

Garrettsville, Ohio

On the literary map, travel from Clyde to Garrettsville, Ohio.

Calculate:

# _____________ Miles to Garrettsville, Ohio

$ _____________ Cost for Gasoline to Garrettsville, Ohio

Visit Hart Crane at www.Poets.org and fill-in-the-blanks.

"Born in Garrettsville, Ohio, Harold Hart Crane combined the influences of European literature and traditional versification with his own American sensibility. Publication of ____________ in 1930 brought Crane accolades."

"Hart Crane was a highly anxious and volatile child. He began writing verse in his early teenage years, and though he __________________________, he read regularly on his own, digesting the works of the Elizabethan dramatists and poets—______________________—and the nineteenth-century French poets. His father, a candy manufacturer, attempted to dissuade him from a career in poetry, but Crane was determined to follow his passion to write."

Read "To Brooklyn Bridge"

Hanover, New Hampshire

On the literary map, travel from from Garrettsville, Ohio, to Hanover, New Hampshire.

Calculate:

# _____________ Miles to Hanover, New Hampshire

$ _____________ Cost for Gasoline to Hanover, New Hampshire

Visit Richard Eberhart at www.Poets.org and fill-in-the-blanks.

"Richard Eberhart was appointed to the Advisory commission on the Arts for the National Cultural Center by President Eisenhower in 1959 and held the position of Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress from 1959-61. His Selected Poems, 1930-1965 won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1966. Richard Eberhart died at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on June 9, 2005, at the age of 101."

Quotes from Eberhart about poetry:

"__________________ make poetry possible."

"I have the idea of a ____________________ which the poet seizes, mysteriously, out of the air to give ____________________________."

"It is necessary to hail _____________ wherever it is found in men."

From Of Poetry and Poets: "Poetry is a confrontation of the __________________."

"It is a basic struggle of the soul, the mind, and the body to comprehend life; to bring ______________________ or to phenomena: and by will and insight to create communicable verbal forms for the pleasure of mankind."

"The poet may be said equally to depend on environment, to seek continuously the right environment, and the poem comes only when _________________________________.

"If a poet writes to save his soul, he ______________________________."

Read "The Groundhog"

Franconia, New Hampshire

On the literary map, travel from Hanover to Franconia, New Hampshire.

Calculate:

# _____________ Miles to Franconia, New Hampshire

$ _____________ Cost for Gasoline to Franconia, New Hampshire

Visit Robert Frost at www.Poets.org and fill-in-the-blanks.

"Robert Frost and his family lived in Franconia, New Hampshire, full-time from 1915 to 1920, and also spent nineteen summers there. Another residence, Robert Frost Stone House Museum is in South Shaftsbury, Vermont. This house is only minutes away from his gravesite in Bennington, Vermont."

"Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of _____________, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often _________________________________, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually _______, in the _________________ complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ____________ and ___________."

Read "Design" and

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.


In which lines of the poem does the speaker suggest that he has known destructive impulses?


Why does the speaker find “fire” and “ice” appropriate ways for the world to end?


How much importance would ordinarily be attached to a subject introduced by the phrase, “some say…”?

Head Tide, Maine

On the literary map, travel from Franconia, New Hampshire, to Head Tide, Maine.

Calculate:

# _____________ Miles to Head Tide, Maine

$ _____________ Cost for Gasoline to Head Tide, Maine

Visit Edwin Arlington Robinson at www.Poets.org and fill-in-the blanks.

"Edwin Arlington Robinson was born on ____________________, in Head Tide, Maine. His family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870, which renamed '_________________,' became the backdrop for many of Robinson's poems. Robinson described his childhood as stark and unhappy; he once wrote in a letter to Amy Lowell that he remembered wondering why _______________________________. After high school, Robinson spent two years studying at Harvard University as a special student and his first poems were published in the Harvard Advocate.

Read "Richard Cory" and "Miniver Cheevy"

Answer the questions.

Why is Miniver, the white fur trimming used on people’s garment in the Middle Ages, an appropriate name for for the character in this poem?



2. Explain how lines 23-24 reveal the poet’s attitude toward Miniver Cheevy.



3. How do other lines reflect the poet’s attitude toward Cheevy?



4. How does the ending of the poem affect your attitude toward Cheevy?