What is an ode?

1. Waitrose What is an ode? From the Greek, “aoide” or “song” to something Public or privatereflection Traditionally formal, stately or grand and long Greek/Latinodes had repeating stanza patterns. Romantic odesbrokethese structures, focusing on outpouring of emotion(e.g. Keats “Ode to a Nightingale”, or “To Autumn” – Waitrose advert) Now oftena song reflecting on an idea or objectrepresenting an idea, with varying forms. These notes are on student/teacher share file.

2. What do Pollard and Boland do with Odes? • Pollard Part II = series of Odes. • What are their subjects, forms and tones like? Mangoes/A London Plane Tree • Boland no specific Odes, but what about: • “The Poets”, “The Pilgrim” and “Migration” which are all partly songs to an idea? Jody Allen Randolph says Boland has “command of a range of poetic forms, and a lyric voice.”

3. Objectives Understand how: • poetic forms change over time. • contemporary poets choose their own forms. • rhythm is important in all poetic forms. Begin to be able to analyse and express our analysis of rhythm.

4. “Rhythm is basic: hearing our hearts beat, feeling our lungs breathe, walking, dancing, sex, and sport – all create and require a sense of rhythm. In all speech rhythmic patterns help us pick out phrase and meaning from strings of syllables, and create and shape these rhythms, manipulating readers with words underpinning them, is part of a poet’s job.” The Poetry Handbook, OUP. Describing and analysing rhythm can be as complex as musical notation, but all readers of poetry hear rhythm (consciously or not). So how can we express our thoughts about it?

5. How can we describe this rhythm? u u u u u The drenching night drags on: no sleep or snore, • How many syllables? • How many feet? • Where does the emphasis fall? • So what do we call this metre? Recite verse one of “After the Irish of Egan O’Rahilly”. Answer these questions, plus: • Does the rhythm break/change/reverse at any point and how does that change the emphasis? 10 5 Every 2nd beat Iambic pentameter

6. Objectives Understand how: • poetic forms change over time. • contemporary poets choose their own forms. • rhythm is important in all poetic forms. Begin to be able to analyse and express our analysis of rhythm.

7. Aogán Ó Rathaille Is Fada Liom Oíche Fhírfhliuch Is fada liom oíche fhírfhliuch gan suan, gan srann, gan ceathra, gan maoin caoire nd buaibh na mbeann; anfa ar toinn taoibh liom do bhuair mo cheann, 's nár chleachtas im naíon fíogaigh ná ruacain abhann. Dá maireadh an rí dionmhar ó bhruach na Leamhan's an ghasra do bhí ag roinn leis 1ér thrua mo challi gceannas na gcríoch gcaoin gcluthar gcuanach gcam, go dealbh i dtír Dhuibhneach níor bhuan mo chlann. An Carathach groí fíochmhar Iér fuadh an mheangis Carathach Laoi i ndaoirse gan fuascladh fann;Carathach, rí Chinn Toirc, in uaigh 's a chlann, 's is atuirse trím chroí gan a dtuairisc ann. Do shearg mo chroí im chlíteach, do bhuair mo leann, na seabhaic nár fríth cinnte, agár dhual an eangó Chaiseal go Toinn Chlíona 's go Tuamhain thall, a mbailte's a dtír díthchreachta ag sluaghaibh Gall. A thonnsa thíos is airde géim go hard, meabhair mo chinnse cloíte ód bhéiceach tá;cabhair dá dtíodh arís ar Éirinn bhán, do ghlam nach binn do dhingfinn féin id bhráid. The original in Irish.

8. The Drenching Night Drags On Another translation. How can we describe the rhythm here? How is this poem different to Boland’s? The drenching night drags on: no sleep or snore, no stock, no wealth of sheep, no horned cows.This storm on the waves nearby has harrowed my head-- I who ate no winkles or dogfish in my youth! If that guardian King from the bank of the Leamhan lived on,with all who shared his fate (and would pity my plight) to rule that soft, snug region, bayed and harboured, my people would not stay poor in Duibhne country. Great Carthy, fierce and fine, who loathed deceit;with Carthy of the Laoi, in yoke unyielding, faint;and Carthy King of Ceann Toirc with his children, buried;it is bitterness through my heart they have left no trace. My heart has dried in my ribs, my humours soured, that those never-niggardly lords, whose holdings ranged from Caiseal to Cliona's Wave and out to Thomond,are savaged by alien hordes in land and townland. You wave down there, lifting your loudest roar, the wits in my head are worsted by your wails. If help ever came to lovely Ireland again I'd wedge your ugly howling down your throat! From An Duanaire: An Irish Anthology: 1600-1900: Poems of the Dispossessed   edited by Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1981)

9. “After The Irish of Egan O’Rahilly” Understanding and interpretation • Who is speaking? “I cry for boyhood” • Where are they? “in a drenching night” “uproar of the wave” • How do they feel (tone) and how’s it expressed?“my five wits” • Who is missing and why does that matter?“O if he lived…I and my own/ would not be desolate” “Fierce McCarthy” etc • What has happened to the land and how does the poet express his feelings about it?“my heart shrinks” “every hawk…is lost” • Who is addressed in the final stanza and what does it show us about the poet’s feelings? “take warning wave” • Are any words emphasised because of the rhythm? Which ones, how and why? • Work out the rhyme scheme– what does it add to the feel of the poem? • Find three examples of bitter sounding alliteration. • Any other poetic devices, connotations or formpoints?

10. Historical references • Egan O’rahilly, or Aogán Ó Rathaille(c. 1675 - 1729) – a Southern Irish poet, related to theMcCarthymore family. “The land he lived on was owned by Catholics and it was confiscated after a battle between Catholic and Protestant forces in 1690. He lived for a time in poor circumstances, at the edge of Castlemaine Harbour, near Killarney (poem no. His poetry is often heroic, desolate and grand in tone, is in many ways a result of his effort to come to terms with the chaos in which he and his people found themselves.” Note by Thomas Kinsella. • Winkles – revolting shellfish you ate if you were poor. • McCarthy Mor – head of a Southern Irish Clan. • River Laune – Sounthern Irish river exiting into the Atlantic. http://www.discoverireland.com/gb/ireland-things-to-see-and-do/listings/gss/product/?fid=FI_10285 • Cashel – Southern Irish county next to Cork and Limerick. Make a nice blue cheese. Main town famous hillpoint. http://www.cashel.ie/

11. Objectives Understand how: • poetic forms change over time. • contemporary poets choose their own forms. • rhythm is important in all poetic forms. Begin to be able to analyse and express our analysis of rhythm.

12. Homework • Annotate the rest of “After the Irish”. • Read and make any notes(to help write meaningfully about our poems) onMetre and Metrical Feetin the Boagey book. • Write alist of questionswe could ask ourselves about “Lullaby”.

13. To Autumn Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun, Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

14. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

15. Where are the songs of spring? Aye, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, - While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. John Keats 1795-1821