Tuesday, the 21st. Rhythm and Figurative Language

Thank you for your Monday songs. Keep sending them my way.
Today some more presentations, and Dan McGrew
Tomorrow-Some more Robert Service?
Wednesday&Friday-a Kahoot
Thursday-St. George Day
Friday-Journal

1:30 Meeting today in TEAMS so you can pick up your locker items. We go back to 1 tomorrow. Thank you for your answers to yesterday's assignment. If you haven't answered the questions yet, you have to Wednesday's class. If you have answered, your marks are in powerschool, and you may answer the questions again to improve your mark, though most of you did very well. 

After getting much formal education, Robert Service wanted adventure, which found him living in the Yukon during Canada's Gold Rush. He wrote many of his poems there. One Saturday night, while wondering what to write for a church concert, he passed a saloon where he heard "a bunch of the boys whooping it up." He ran to the bank that he worked at, and wrote this poem below. Legend has it he was almost shot when he ran into the bank that Saturday night. Many years later, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and President Ronald Reagan would recite this poem to each other.  He is also related to Ms Wilson.

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

Robert Service

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up
In the Malamute saloon;

The kid that handles the music-box 
Was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, 
Sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, 
The lady that's known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, 
And into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, 
Dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave 
And scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, 
And he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, 
Though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink 
Was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There's men that somehow just grip your eyes,
And hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me
Like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare
Of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass,
And the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was,
And wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head -- and there watching him
Was the lady that's known as Lou.

His eyes went rubbering round the room,
And he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell
In the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink;
There was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room,
And flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt
He sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands --
My God! but that man could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone,
When the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in
With a silence you most could HEAR;
With only the howl of a timber wolf,
And you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world,
Clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red,
The North Lights swept in bars? --
Then you've a haunch what the music meant . . .
Hunger and night and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind,
That's banished with bacon and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men
For a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are,
Four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy,
And crowned with a woman's love --
A woman dearer than all the world,
And true as Heaven is true --
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, --
The lady that's known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed,
So soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean
Of all that it once held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved;
That her love was a devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you
Was to crawl away and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair,
And it thrilled you through and through --
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere,"
Said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost died away . . .
Then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay,"
And my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong,
And it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill . . .
Then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned
In a most peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt
He sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin,
And he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me,
And none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight,
And I'll bet my poke they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell . . .
and that one is Dan McGrew."

Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out,
And two guns blazed in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up,
And two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead,
Was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast
Of the lady that's known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case,
And I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch",
And I'm not denying it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys,
But strictly between us two --
The woman that kissed him and -- pinched his poke --
Was the lady that's known as Lou.

A quick lesson in poetry rhythm can be found here. Important to know that words have beats and how the beats are emphasized creates a rhythm.

1. This poem has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, 14 syllables a line (posting the poem above I divided the lines into 2). How a poem chooses to stress and destress syllables is referred to as a foot.  This style of unstressed and stressed is call iambic. The poem has 7 of these foots in a line, and the feet in a line is called a meter (only in poetry!). Hepta is greek for 7 so this poem is an iambic heptameter, sometimes called a fourteener (because of the 14 syllables a line). This is exactly the style that Aerosmith used for their hit song Walk this Way.

So, question one. Open the music below,  wait for the intro to play, and sing 2 stanzas of the poem above to the music below.

click here to open music in new window

2. Lots of rich figurative language is used in this poem. In stanza two, give an example of figurative language used to describe this mysterious miner. 

“He looked like a man with a foot in the grave.” 

Dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.

scarcely the strength of a louse

3. Stanza 8, find an example of repetition. 

"Repay, repay," 

to kill, to kill

Also find an example of alliteration that isn't a repeating word. 

saw him sway

blind with blood.

turned and burned

flood and blood

4. Can you find a metaphor in stanza 4? Tough question.

“ His eyes went rubbering around the room.”

Clutched the keys with his talon hands.

5. Poke in this poem refers to a bag of gold nuggets. Who ended up dead and who ended up with the gold?

Both McGrew and the stranger ended up dying, while “ the woman that’s known as Lou” ends up taking the stranger’s gold.

Blog your answers below. 

When I am an Old Woman

Warning

(When I Am An Old Woman)

Poem by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick the flowers in other people's gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausage at a go

Or only bread and pickles for a week

And hoard pens and pencils and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We will have friends for dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now

So people who know me are not surprised

When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.

The Red Hat Society

Die Slowly by Pablo Neruda

Die Slowly

He who becomes the slave of habit,

who follows the same routes every day,

who never changes pace,

who does not risk and change the color of his clothes,

who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly.

He or she who shuns passion,

who prefers black on white,

dotting ones 'i's rather than a bundle of emotions,

the kind that make your eyes glimmer,

that turn a yawn into a smile,

that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly.

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,

who is unhappy at work,

who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,

to thus follow a dream,

those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly.

He who does not travel,

who does not read,

who does not listen to music,

who does not find grace in himself, dies slowly.

He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,

who does not allow himself to be helped,

who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck,

about the rain that never stops, dies slowly.

He or she who abandon a project before starting it,

who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn’t know,

he or she who don’t reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly.

Let’s try and avoid death in small doses,

always reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort by far

greater than the simple fact of breathing.

Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness

by Pablo Neruda

Mending Wall

On this very cold Thursday, a famous poem about Snow, and one about a Summer's Day

From your handout sheet, contrast the style of ee cummings with a classical sonnet. Very contrasting styles and very contrasting weather.


Cruising whisperfully
desc(end begin design becend)
Tangle(s pangles)
of (Come gos)
lilting-
lyful of!
(r)emarkable
shy and are
(from nowhere (into) find)

Snow

Crushing whispers fully descended

Fluttering fully by

If endings and beginnings, by design, become entangled

The spangles of come and go do cringe

Within its liltingly full branches

Birds chirp because, again,

The remarkably shy come from nowhere

And argue scarcely amongst the flowers

First They Came for

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller was a U-boat commander in the First World War and a conservative Protestant minister who initially supported Hitler's rise to power. He was later imprisoned in 1937 for criticizing Hitler and his government. 





1.Who are “they” that Niemöller writes about, as in, “first they came for…”?

2. What does it mean when he says, “came for”?

3. Why does he repeat the phrase, “Then they came for…” several times?

4. What effect does the repetition of this phrase have on the listener?

5. What other groups did the Nazis “come for” before and during the 2nd WW?

6. The narrator of Niemöller’s is obviously himself. But the narrator is also somebody else. Who?

7. What does he mean by, “I didn’t speak up”? What are some ways he could have “spoken up”?

8. Do you think that most everyone in Germany was partly responsible for the Nazi’s rise to power and them keeping power, or that only a few were responsible? Explain your answer.

9. How much responsibility do you feel for what takes place around you: in your family, in your school, in your city, in your country, and in the world? List at least three responsibilities you feel for each level.