Week Nine Response - Comment Under This Post

Write a 250 word response on:
“Why Poetry Is or Is Not Relevant or Useful Today.”

Deadline: March 25

Your short essay should synthesize material from each of the sources provided: (1) King Lear, (2) William Carlos Williams, (3) Sir Philip Sidney.

Quotations should flow seamlessly into the surrounding material -- that is, if one were listening to your essay being read, the listener would hardly be able to distinguish where your material ended and the quoted material began.

At least some material from each quote must be used verbatim and placed inside quotation marks. You may paraphrase other sections of the material of necessary. See your textbook for footnotes accompanying Lear and Sir Philip Sidney.

From Shakespeare’s Tragedy, King Lear

Explanatory Note: After dividing up his inheritance between his two daughters, Goneril and Regan, King Lear decides to visit them. The ungrateful daughters, however, are worried about their father’s whims and about the fact he continues to keep a retinue of 100 knights and their squires. They argue with him to get him to reduce his retinue.

REGAN
I dare avouch it, sir: what, fifty followers?Is it not well? What should you need of more?Yea, or so many, sith that both charge and dangerSpeak ’gainst so great a number? How, in one house,Should many people, under two commands,Hold amity? ’Tis hard; almost impossible.

GONERIL
Why might not you, my lord, receive attendanceFrom those that she calls servants or from mine?

REGAN
Why not, my lord? If then they chanced to slack you,We could control them. If you will come to me,--For now I spy a danger,--I entreat youTo bring but five and twenty: to no moreWill I give place or notice.

[break]

REGAN
What need one?

KING LEAR
O, reason not the need: our basest beggarsAre in the poorest thing superfluous:Allow not nature more than nature needs,Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s: thou art a lady;If only to go warm were gorgeous,Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,--You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,As full of grief as age; wretched in both!If it be you that stir these daughters’ heartsAgainst their father, fool me not so muchTo bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,I will have such revenges on you both,That all the world shall--I will do such things,--What they are, yet I know not: but they shall beThe terrors of the earth. You think I’ll weepNo, I’ll not weep:I have full cause of weeping; but this heartShall break into a hundred thousand flaws,Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

Sir Philip Sidney
From The Defense of Poesy

[the LESSONS OF HORSEMANSHIP]
When the right virtuous Edward Wotton and I were at the Emperor’s court together, we gave ourselves to learn horsemanship of John Pietro Pugliano, one that with great commendation had the place of an esquire in his stable. And he, according to the fertileness of the Italian wit, did not only afford us the demonstration of his practice but sought to enrich our minds with the contemplations therein which he thought most precious. But with none I remember mine ears were at any time more loaden, than when (either angered with slow payment, or moved with our learner-like admiration) he exercised his speech in the praise of his faculty. He said soldiers were the noblest estate of mankind, and horsemen the noblest of soldiers. He said they were the masters of war and ornaments of peace, speedy goers and strong abiders, triumphers both in camps and courts. Nay, to so unbelieved a point he proceeded, as that no earthly thing bred such wonder to a prince as to be a good horseman. Skill of government was but a pedanteria in comparison. Then would he add certain praises, by telling what a peerless beast the horse was, the only serviceable courtier without flattery, the beast of most beauty, faithfulness, courage, and such more, that if I had not been a piece of a logician before I came to him I think he would have persuaded me to have wished myself a horse. But thus much at least with his no few words he drave into me, that self-love is better than any gilding to make that seem gorgeous wherein ourselves be parties. Wherein, if Pugliano’s strong affection and weak arguments will not satisfy you, I will give you a nearer example of myself, who (I know not by what mischance) in these my not old years and idlest times having slipped into the title of a poet, am provoked to say something unto you in the defense of that my unelected vocation, which if I handle with more good will than good reasons, bear with me, since the scholar is to be pardoned that followeth the steps of his master. And yet I must say that, as I have just cause to make a pitiful defense of poor poetry, which from almost the highest estimation of learning is fallen to be the laughingstock of children, so have I need to bring some more available proofs; since the former is by no man barred of his deserved credit, the silly latter hath had even the names of philosophers used to the defacing of it, with great danger of civil war among the Muses.


From “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”
William Carlos Williams

My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides.

Week 8 Response - Comment Under This Post