The Pitcher Robert Francis Tell all the truth

The Pitcher Robert Francis Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Emily Dickinson His art is eccentricity, his aim How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at, Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies His passion how to avoid the obvious, His technique how to vary the avoidance. Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise The others throw to be comprehended. He Throws to be a moment misunderstood. As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild, But every seeming aberration willed. The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind — Not to, yet still, still to communicate Making the batter understand too late.

Senior AP Review

Welcome Back! • Get the textbook! It has a blue spine, The Bedford Introduction to Literature • The grading weights are: – 55 for in-class essays – 5 for participation – 40 for everything else • Get a notebook!

Diction • • Formal Informal Colloquial Dialect Jargon Denotation and connotation Poetic

Figurative language • • • Metaphor / Simile Extended metaphor, controlling, conceit Pun Synechdoche-part signifies whole—hand, ears Metonymy-something associated with subject is substituted for it—silver screen, paper shufflers Apostrophe-something absent is addressed Hyperbole Understatement Paradox-pen is mightier Oxymoron-sweet sorrow

Symbol • Conventional symbols-roses, spring, moon, night, winter • Literary or contextual For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf

Allegory • Characters represent abstrations-charity, hope, pride, youth • Didactic-teaches a moral, ethical, or religious lesson

• Situational Irony Richard Corey WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, 5 And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good-morning, " and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich—yes, richer than a king, And admirably schooled in every grace: 10 In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, 15 Went home and put a bullet through his head. Edwin Arlington Robinson. 1869– 45.

Irony • Verbal (Kenneth Fearing: "AD" from New and Collected Poems, Indiana University Press, 1956. ) Written in early 40’s AD Wanted: Men; Millions of men are wanted at once in a big new field; New, tremendous, thrilling, great. If you´ve ever been a figure in the chamber of horrors, If you´ve ever escaped from a psychiatric ward, If you thrill at the thought of throwing poison into wells, have heavenly visions of people, by the thousands, dying in flames — You are the very man we want We mean business and our business is you Wanted: A race of brand-new men. Apply: Middle Europe; No skill needed; No ambition required; no brains wanted and no character allowed; Take a permanent job in the coming profession Wages: Death.

Irony • Dramaticyou know more about the speaker than they do e. e. cummings "next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn's early my country tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beautiful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute? " He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water

Irony • Cosmic A Man Said to the Universe A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However, " replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation. " (Stephen Crane, War is Kind & Other Lines: XXI, 1899)

• Senior AP book, 949, for sounds and rhyme schemes

Instructions on Not Giving Up Ada Limón, 1976 More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.