American Literature After 1865 Final

Define modernism in Literature (the narrow definition, not the broader one)

Work that represents the transformation of traditional society under the pressures of modernity and that breaks down traditional literary forms in doing so

Identify the impacts theatre and film had on modern literature

Writers explored the commercial and artistic possibilities emerging in the new relationships among literature's printed page, the stage, and the screen in ways that look forward to the hyperreal, media-saturated generic experimentation that would characterize much American literature

Mary Oliver- "Wild Geese"

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Lucille Clifton- "The Mississippi river empties into the gulf"

and the gulf enters the sea and so forth, none of them emptying anything, all of them carrying yesterday forever on their white tipped backs, all of them dragging forward tomorrow. it is the great circulation of the earth's body, like the blood of the gods, this river in which the past is always flowing. every water is the same water coming round. everyday someone is standing on the edge of this river, staring into time, whispering mistakenly: only here. only now.

What were the major dividing issues within the African American cultural community during the Harlem Renaissance?

claim membership in the culture at large or stake out a separate artistic domain; celebrate rural African American folkways or commit to urban intellectuality; join the American mainstream or be aligned with worldwide revolutionary movements, etc.

Lucille Clifton- "wishes for sons"

i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. i wish them no 7-11. i wish them one week early and wearing a white skirt. i wish them one week late. later i wish them hot flashes and clots like you wouldn't believe. let the flashes come when they meet someone special. let the clots come when they want to. let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves.

Lucille Clifton- "[oh antic god]"

oh antic God return to me my mother in her thirties leaned across the front porch the huge pillow of her breasts pressing against the rail summoning me in for bed. I am almost the dead woman's age times two. I can barely recall her song the scent of her hands though her wild hair scratches my dreams at night. return to me, oh Lord of then and now, my mother's calling, her young voice humming my name.

Edna St. Vincent Millay- "Apostrophe to Man"

(On reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again) Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out. Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes; Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade; Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia and the distracted cellulose; Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort, Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, be all but overcome, be photographed; Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize Bacteria harmful to human tissue, Put death on the market; Breed, crowd, encroach, expand, expunge yourself, die out, Homo called sapiens.

Identify the differences in immigration politics during the interwar era and post WWII

1. Americans were not very eager to take in immigrants, including Jewish immigrants-- Roosevelt was trying to fight that mindset 2. The immigration hate was so bad that it actually hampered the war effort.

Identify the two "great engines" that fuel the vitality of contemporary literature

1. Artistic 2. Demographic

Be able to identify/define the three Minds of Psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud) using the iceberg analogy (conscious, subconscious, unconscious)

1. Conscious 2. Subconscious 3. Unconsciou

Be able to identify at least two causes of economic recessions (like the Great Depression (1930s))

1. High-interest rates 2. Stock market crash

Identify two benefits of the 1944 GI Bill

1. Money for veterans to buy homes 2. Money for veterans to attend school

What were the three reasons for the end of the Harlem Renaissance?

1. Retrenchment in the publishing industry after the stock market crash of 1929 2. The emergence of younger African American writers with different values 3. Dissention among Harlem artists themselves

Claude McKay- "America"

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests my youth. Her vigor flows like tides into my blood, Giving me strength erect against her hate, Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state, I stand within her walls with not a shred Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer. Darkly I gaze into the days ahead, And see her might and granite wonders there, Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand, Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Claude McKay- "The Lynching"

His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven. His father, by the cruelest way of pain, Had bidden him to his bosom once again; The awful sin remained still unforgiven. All night a bright and solitary star (Perchance the one that ever guided him, Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim) Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char. Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view The ghastly body swaying in the sun: The women thronged to look, but never a one Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue; And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.

Robert Frost - where did his work fit in with the Modernist movement?

His works can be seen as a thoughtful reply to high modernism's fondness for obscurity and difficulty.

Claude McKay- "The Harlem Dancer"

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes Blown by black players upon a picnic day. She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, The light gauze hanging loose about her form; To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm Grown lovelier for passing through a storm. Upon her swarthy neck black, shiny curls Profusely fell; and, tossing coins in praise, The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, Devoured her with their eager, passionate gaze; But, looking at her falsely-smiling face I knew her self was not in that strange place.

Cause of WWI

Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Joy Harjo - of what is her cultural heritage comprised?

Cherokee, French, and Irish

Eudora Welty- "Petrified Man"

During a shampoo and set, Leota tells her customer about her new tenant and friend, Mrs. Pike. At first, the two gossip politely, but as soon as Leota notices that Mrs. Fletcher's hair is falling out, probably due to her pregnancy rather than the perm she got the week before, the atmosphere changes from friendly to hostile.

Ursula K. Le Guin- "She Unnames Them"

Eve clearly views names as a way to control and categorize others. In returning the names, she rejects the uneven power relations of having Adam in charge of everything and everybody. So "She Unnames Them" is a defense of the right to self-determination. As Eve explains to the cats, "the issue was precisely one of individual choice." It is also a story about tearing down barriers. Names serve to emphasize the differences between the animals, but without names, their similarities become more evident.

Claude McKay- "If We Must Die"

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursèd lot. If we must die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us though dead! O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow! What though before us lies the open grave? Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Rafael Trujillo -dictatorship of the Dominican Republic and the Haitian Massacre

In 1957, the dictator ordered 20,000 Haitians killed because they couldn't pronounce the letter "r" in perejil.

William Carlos Williams- "The Dance"

In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess, the dancers go round, they go round and around, the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies (round as the thick- sided glasses whose wash they impound) their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them. Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures, prance as they dance in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.

Cause of WWII

Invasion of Poland by Germany

Identify the Fourth Wall and also what it means to break the Fourth Wall

It is the side of the stage that faces the audience. To break the wall is to speak directly to the audience and engaging the audience as their stage also

Nella Larsen- Passing

It was that smile that maddened Irene. She ran across the room, her terror tinged with ferocity, and laid a hand on Clare's bare arm. One thought possessed her. She couldn't have Clare Kendry cast aside by Bellew. She couldn't have her free.

A Harlem Rennaissance artist and their work

Louis Armstrong, Jazz

Identify the main reasons why post-WWII readers were more diverse and better educated than in previous generations

Many of the readers had been servicemen and while they were serving overseas, they encountered the languages and cultures of Europe, North Africa, India, and Japan during their service. When they came back home, the GI Bill allowed them to go to school for free.

Be able to describe Marxism and its effects on American politics

Marxism defines the capital and the labor classes and seeks to resolve the tension between social classes by controlling the means of production. The effect on American politics was that the influence of outside politics made America conform more to its values of liberty and justice for all.

William Carlos Williams - how many babies did he deliver during his physician career?

More than 2,000

Mestizo language

Multilingual English renewed by Spanish, African, and Latin American borrowings

What two theatrical tools does Williams often use to show the characters' inner battles?

Music and Lighting

Flannery O'Connor- "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Short story about a southern family driving through Georgia on the way to Florida. In the title story a grandmother, her son Bailey and daughter-in-law and their three children, June Starr, John Wesley, and a baby, are on a car journey. They encounter an escaped criminal called the Misfit and his two killers, Hiram and Bobby Lee. The family is casually wiped out by them when the grandmother recognizes the Misfit from his ''Wanted'' poster. The hallucinating grandmother murmurs: "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" The Misfit shoots her and says: "She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

Robert Frost- "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 say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

Robert Frost- "Out, Out—"

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside him in her apron To tell them 'Supper.' At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap— He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all— Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man's work, though a child at heart— He saw all spoiled. 'Don't let him cut my hand off— The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!' So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Identify some of the social liberation movements of the second half of the 20thcentury

The civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, the American Indian Movement, women's liberation movement, movement for gay rights.

Identify the Harlem Renaissance and at least one of the artists that thrived and/or played a large part in this Renaissance

The cultural outpouring that influenced writers, painters, and musicians of other ethnicities and that took place in Harlem, NY

Yusef Komunyakaa - what is one of his driving impulses in his poems?

The excavation of lost names

Rita Dove - identify "negative capability"

The gift of the poet to become what he or she is not.

Why were Vietnam veterans treated as they were and what were some of these treatments?

The veterans were treated badly partly due to the logistics of the never-ending conflict. The war lasted from 1964-1973. The longest war in American history up until that point. Some veterans were spat on, received no welcome-home parades, and had a hard time finding jobs once their hirees found out they served in Vietnam.

Nella Larsen - what conundrum did Larsen explore regarding the idea of a "pure" African American race and its impact on "racial allegiance" during the Harlem Renaissance?

There could be no such thing as race authenticity if there was no such thing as "pure" race. Even if race is an artificial construct, it has powerfully real effects that are always destructive of African American selfhood.

Why do the people of the DR not call the death of Trujillo an assassination? What do they call it and why?

They refer to the killing of Trujillo not as an assassination but as "ajusticiamiento", a Spanish word that implies justice being done. The people who killed him are not assassins, they did a good thing, not a bad one.

Carl Sandburg - what was his poetic aim?

To celebrate the working people of America in poems that they could understand.

What famous author (that we covered this semester) did McKay disagree with?

W.E.B. DuBois

Identify at least one major cause of both WWI and WWII (before America joined)

WWI: The assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand WWII: Germany invading Poland (Sept. 1, 1939), Germany invading the U.S.S.R. (June 22, 1941), and Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7/8, 1941)

Joy Harjo- "The Flood"

Watersnake and myth story

Joy Harjo- "When the world as We Knew It Ended"

We were dreaming on an occupied island at the farthest edge of a trembling nation when it went down. Two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched the sky. Men walked on the moon. Oil was sucked dry by two brothers. Then it went down. Swallowed by a fire dragon, by oil and fear. Eaten whole. It was coming. We had been watching since the eve of the missionaries in their long and solemn clothes, to see what would happen. We saw it from the kitchen window over the sink as we made coffee, cooked rice and potatoes, enough for an army. We saw it all, as we changed diapers and fed the babies. We saw it, through the branches of the knowledgeable tree through the snags of stars, through the sun and storms from our knees as we bathed and washed the floors. The conference of the birds warned us, as they flew over destroyers in the harbor, parked there since the first takeover. It was by their song and talk we knew when to rise when to look out the window to the commotion going on— the magnetic field thrown off by grief. We heard it. The racket in every corner of the world. As the hunger for war rose up in those who would steal to be president to be king or emperor, to own the trees, stones, and everything else that moved about the earth, inside the earth and above it. We knew it was coming, tasted the winds who gathered intelligence from each leaf and flower, from every mountain, sea and desert, from every prayer and song all over this tiny universe floating in the skies of infinite being. And then it was over, this world we had grown to love for its sweet grasses, for the many-colored horses and fishes, for the shimmering possibilities while dreaming. But then there were the seeds to plant and the babies who needed milk and comforting, and someone picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble and began to sing about the light flutter the kick beneath the skin of the earth we felt there, beneath us a warm animal a song being born between the legs of her; a poem.

WWI

1914-1918

WWII

1939-1945

Define New Criticism

A modernist-inspired method of critical interpretation grounded in reading the text "closely"

William Carlos Williams- "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"

According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling near the edge of the sea concerned with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning

Rita Dove- "Parsley"

1. The Cane Fields There is a parrot imitating spring in the palace, its feathers parsley green. Out of the swamp the cane appears to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General searches for a word; he is all the world there is. Like a parrot imitating spring, we lie down screaming as rain punches through and we come up green. We cannot speak an R— out of the swamp, the cane appears and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina. The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads. There is a parrot imitating spring. El General has found his word: perejil. Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining out of the swamp. The cane appears in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming. And we lie down. For every drop of blood there is a parrot imitating spring. Out of the swamp the cane appears. 2. The Palace The word the general's chosen is parsley. It is fall, when thoughts turn to love and death; the general thinks of his mother, how she died in the fall and he planted her walking cane at the grave and it flowered, each spring stolidly forming four-star blossoms. The general pulls on his boots, he stomps to her room in the palace, the one without curtains, the one with a parrot in a brass ring. As he paces he wonders Who can I kill today. And for a moment the little knot of screams is still. The parrot, who has traveled all the way from Australia in an ivory cage, is, coy as a widow, practising spring. Ever since the morning his mother collapsed in the kitchen while baking skull-shaped candies for the Day of the Dead, the general has hated sweets. He orders pastries brought up for the bird; they arrive dusted with sugar on a bed of lace. The knot in his throat starts to twitch; he sees his boots the first day in battle splashed with mud and urine as a soldier falls at his feet amazed— how stupid he looked!— at the sound of artillery. I never thought it would sing the soldier said, and died. Now the general sees the fields of sugar cane, lashed by rain and streaming. He sees his mother's smile, the teeth gnawed to arrowheads. He hears the Haitians sing without R's as they swing the great machetes: Katalina, they sing, Katalina, mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows his mother was no stupid woman; she could roll an R like a queen. Even a parrot can roll an R! In the bare room the bright feathers arch in a parody of greenery, as the last pale crumbs disappear under the blackened tongue. Someone calls out his name in a voice so like his mother's, a startled tear splashes the tip of his right boot. My mother, my love in death. The general remembers the tiny green sprigs men of his village wore in their capes to honor the birth of a son. He will order many, this time, to be killed for a single, beautiful word.

Identify/describe two major technological developments that affected the literary landscape and how they affected the literary landscape

1. The rise of television-- 2. The invention of the Internet--

Identify the three primary issues that divided writers and schools of writers during the modernist time period (interwar era) and be able to briefly describe these issues

1. Use of literary tradition 2. Place of popular culture in serious literature 3. How far should literature engage itself in political and social struggle

Galway Kinnell- "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps"

For I can snore like a bullhorn or play loud music or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman and Fergus will only sink deeper into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash, but let there be that heavy breathing or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house and he will wrench himself awake and make for it on the run—as now, we lie together, after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies, familiar touch of the long-married, and he appears—in his baseball pajamas, it happens, the neck opening so small he has to screw them on— and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep, his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child. In the half darkness we look at each other and smile and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body— this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making, sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake, this blessing love gives again into our arms.

Alien Registration Act

Gave the government increased leeway to deport immigrants for their political views and required noncitizens to register with the government.

Lucille Clifton - how is her poetry similar to Langston Hughes and William Carlos Williams?

Her poems allow us to hear the language of our daily lives as poetry and to experience poetry in our ordinary lives

Be able to describe Sigmund Freud's influence on the sexual mores of the 1920s

His ideas provided the psychological underpinnings for much of the literature in the interwar era-- whether the focus was the individual trapped in a repressive culture or the repressive culture itself.

Tennessee Williams - what family member was his source of inspiration in his work and why?

His sister, Rose, because she had a lobotomy and was never the same and he loved her so he wanted to include her in his plays so that she would live on in them.

Edna St. Vincent Millay- "I Forgot for a Moment"

I forgot for a moment France; I forgot England; I forgot my care: I lived for a moment in a world where I was free to be With the things and people that I love, and I was haappy there. I forgot for a moment Holland, I forgot my heavy care. I lived for a moment in a world so lovely, so inept At twisted words and crookèd deeds, it was as if I slept and dreamt. It seemed that all was well with Holland - not a tank had crushed The tulips there. Mile after mile the level lowlands blossomed - yellow square, white square, Scarlet strip and mauve strip bright beneath the brightly clouded sky, the round clouds and the gentle air. Along the straight canals between striped fields of tulips in the morning sailed Broad ships, their hulls by tulip-beds concealed, only the sails showing. It seemed that all was well with England - the harsh foreign voice hysterically vowing, Once more, to keep its word, at length was disbelieved, and hushed. It seemed that all was well with France, with her straight roads Lined with slender poplars, and the peasants on the skyline ploughing.

Alan Seeger- "I Have a Rendezvous with Death"

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear... But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Claude McKay- "Harlem Shadows"

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass To bend and barter at desire's call. Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet Go prowling through the night from street to street! Through the long night until the silver break Of day the little gray feet know no rest; Through the lone night until the last snow-flake Has dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast, The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street. Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace, Has pushed the timid little feet of clay, The sacred brown feet of my fallen race! Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet In Harlem wandering from street to street.

Mary Oliver- "Alligator Poem"

I knelt down at the edge of the water and if the white birds standing in the tops of the trees whistled any warning I didn't understand, I drank up to the very moment it came crashing toward me, its tail flailing like a bundle of swords, slashing the grass, and the inside of its cradle-shaped mouth gaping, and rimmed with teeth-- and that's how I almost died of foolishness in beautiful Florida. But I didn't. I leaped aside, and fell, and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its path as it swept down to the water and threw itself in, and, in the end, this isn't a poem about foolishness but about how I rose from the ground and saw the world as if for the second time, the way it really is. The water, that circle of shattered glass, healed itself with a slow whisper and lay back with the back-lit light of polished steel, and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees, shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and drifted away, while, for a keepsake, and to steady myself, I reached out, I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me-- blue stars and blood-red trumpets on long green stems-- for hours in my trembling hands they glittered like fire.

Yusef Komunyakaa- "Facing It"

My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. I said I wouldn't dammit: No tears. I'm stone. I'm flesh. My clouded reflection eyes me like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. I turn this way—the stone lets me go. I turn that way—I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again, depending on the light to make a difference. I go down the 58,022 names, half-expecting to find my own in letters like smoke. I touch the name Andrew Johnson; I see the booby trap's white flash. Names shimmer on a woman's blouse but when she walks away the names stay on the wall. Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's wings cutting across my stare. The sky. A plane in the sky. A white vet's image floats closer to me, then his pale eyes look through mine. I'm a window. He's lost his right arm inside the stone. In the black mirror a woman's trying to erase names: No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Richard Wilbur- "The Beautiful Changes"

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides The Queen Anne's Lace lying like lilies On water; it glides So from the walker, it turns Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes. The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon's tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows. Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They are not only yours; the beautiful changes In such kind ways, Wishing ever to sunder Things and things' selves for a second finding, to lose For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.

Carl Sandburg - "Grass"

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.

Identify the effects of the automobile on America

Reshaped the structure of American industry and occupations and altered the national typography also. Many jobs were created from the invention of the automobile.

Ursula K. Le Guin - what genre is Le Guin best known for?

Science Fiction

Robert Frost- "Mending Wall"

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: 'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

William Carlos Williams- "The Widow's Lament in Springtime"

Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plumtree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers. I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them.

The time period between WWI and WWII

The Interwar Era

Conscious

the small amount of mental activity we know about (what's above the surface of the water)

Unconscious

the things we are unaware of and cannot become aware of (all the way under the surface)

Subconscious

the things we could be aware of if we wanted/tried (the first bit that is under the water)

Lucille Clifton- "homage to my hips"

these hips are big hips they need space to move around in. they don't fit into little petty places. these hips are free hips. they don't like to be held back. these hips have never been enslaved, they go where they want to go they do what they want to do. these hips are mighty hips. these hips are magic hips. i have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top!

Identify some common characteristics of Harjo's poetry (what do her poems tend to focus on?)

they bring together mythic, feminist, and cultural perspectives and also unite contemporary urban experience with Native American myth and legend.

code-shifting

varying one's speech in different social contexts