English Poetry Lecture 1: An Introduction to Poetry

Valera Maraheim, Salam alaikum. Welcome to English Poetry, an advanced course in English poetry and poetry written in English at the Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine. My name is Revati Lawyer. I have a PhD in English poetry, and I hope this journey is going to be an interesting journey into the nature of poetry, the elements of poetry, and what makes poetry.

We'll talk about many things related to poetry, like I just mentioned, the nature of poetry, and also what makes poetry, and how to approach and understand and analyze poetry. And hopefully, we'll discuss these issues in our first class today. Okay, when we talk about poetry, we talk about a special kind of writing. Okay, so let's, at the beginning, talk about my main objective from this course. When you prepare a course, it's always good to have an idea in mind: Why are you teaching this? What do you expect the students, the participants, to understand, to get? What are you going to equip them with? Personally, every time I teach a course, any course actually, I have one major goal in mind. I claim that I want to change my students' lives, hopefully to the better.

Because I do believe, and this is for many people, this is literature. What is literature going to change about me, or in me, or for me, or around me? It doesn't probably put food on the table. It doesn't, I don't know, make me rich, although it does most of the time if you are a successful writer, especially if you are a novelist. So I say the first thing in in in my course is that poetry is about making us better human beings. Poetry is about improving the way we look at things, the way we deal with others, the way we deal with life, with difficulties, the way we deal with ourselves, the way we we treat ourselves, the way we think about things. And probably, I usually mention this: how poetry is self-expression. And you said this already before, how poetry is self-expression. There's something you feel, the urge to get it out, whether you want to communicate or not, whether you want people to react to your self-expression or not. Poetry, literature, is an act, a very significant act of self-expression. I don't want to exaggerate, but it could be as important as the need to eat sometimes. And sometimes we write poetry to reach out to others, to communicate. But the fact that poetry has to be taken in this light, in the light that it's a life-changing experience, is what I care about in this course. Probably a poem is not going to change your life, or a line of this, or a school of poetry, but the way you deal with language today, the way you deal with with poetry, the way you look at literature, to me, is significant. So hopefully, we're going to work together and try to understand the nature of poetry from this angle. How we're going to, I quote, I quote a poet, an American critic, who says that poetry, don't something for something, like don't let poetry be engaged, make it part of your life. Don't just look at the poem, say "Wow" or "Aha," and then go back home as if nothing happened to you. So we'll see how this course is going to do that.

And the second thing is that how poetry, the construction of poetry, the essence of poetry, how poets select and choose, how poets construct their poems. In the light of what we're going to discuss in a bit, you already studied in a course before, how art imitates life, the theory of imitation, and the huge dispute and quarrel between Plato and Aristotle. And what did Aristotle do to poets? He banished them, he kicked him out because he believed that poets are corrupt, they're liars, all because he believed that essentially they can't imitate because they are imitating imitation. And then Aristotle says, no, there could be honest or good imitations of life. And then we speak about how life imitates art, how life imitates art. We see this all the time. We see how fiction, works of fiction, could change lives, change people's lives. And I usually challenge people saying that perhaps a lot of what we know, maybe a lot of the ethics, the morals, the manners, are things that we acquired from TV, from cartoons, from stories, from things that probably didn't happen in real life, just figments of somebody's imagination.

And then there is this, how life creates art. And probably if "create" is a huge, big word, let's say, how life shapes our literature. And this is a fact, because basically, when you write poetry, sometimes people go crazy and just imagine. Look at Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling, if you would like, really think about how she came up with all these things that basically are not based on real life. Because I don't know, do you have a wonder? Tom, can you, do you have a broom that can use to fly? Do you just, what's the word, desperate? What, sorry, what's the word when you move from one place to the other and Harry Potter? Okay, we'll get it later. So art, but again, the themes in Harry Potter are taken from life: love, fighting evil, friendship, the power of family, the love of parents. These are themes based on real events and experiences. But when I talk about it, which I'd like to talk about, point number four, how again, this is connected with my big goal, big objective, how poetry is about changing our lives. Literature is about changing our lives. So when we talk about art creating life, art shaping life, it goes under the same issue. Can you think of an example? Can you probably think of a poem or a poet that could help us understand the last point, art creating life? Please.

Okay, so you're giving me examples where poets create and change and inspire. Probably, as you know, there's a reactivation, usually accuses those people of inciting violence because we do sometimes you listen to a song, you listen to a poem, just like you want to fight back. You want to, we have this urge. Or any other example, please. Try to look for other meanings, how it helps us and teaches us in life, how to look to other assets and face it. It's like an Indiana Jones kind of journey into the text that can be transferred into real life, how to seek things, how to seek truth, how to read between the lines. That's a very good example also. Please. Do you mean like comparing and contrasting and properly learning from others' achievements? Okay, that's also nice.

Now, how many of you like, have you ever been to Jerusalem? Raise your hand if you have been, ever been to Jerusalem. Like we have 60 students here, we have one, two, probably three. That's that's very few of you. I've never been to Jerusalem. So we're Palestinians, we're living in other, we can't go to Jerusalem because of the, there's the occupation. But we loved Jerusalem, right? We loved Jerusalem because what it means to us. We've never been there, but believe me, when you go there, you will feel that you've been there hundreds of times because you read about Jerusalem in literature, in stories. Of course, it doesn't mean that we should take Jerusalem, that Jerusalem in the poem, or in the story, and that's it. No, but in in literature, Jerusalem is back to us, comes back to us. It's true that there is suffering, there is pain, there's occupation. And that's why Tamim al-Barghouti, as a Palestinian poet, as a young Palestinian poet, I think he's doing a great service to the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian struggle. When you read Tamim al-Barghouti, you listen to him reciting his poem, "From Quds," or other poems, he brings you a lot. He takes you to Jerusalem, you live Jerusalem, he takes you back to it, you liberate it for just a little bit of time. And if there is hope, if you can imagine a free Palestine, free Jerusalem, probably you will work towards that. And the same thing applies to occupied Palestine. We've never been to other parts of Palestine because of this very location. But we've been told so many times by our parents and grandparents, especially our mothers, they've been telling us stories about Palestine, the good old days, how Palestine was, you know, all nice and beautiful, unoccupied, undraped. And therefore, I say, in in this case, how our homeland turns into a story. In reality, we can't have it, we don't have it, but it can turn into poems, into poetry, into literature, into stories. So our homeland turns into a story. We love our homeland because of the story. We love our homeland because of the story, and we love the story because it's about our homeland. And this connection is significant. Israel wants to sever this relationship, for example, between Palestinians and land, Palestinian and Jerusalem and other places and cities. And literature attaches us back, connects us strongly to Palestine. So in in my imagination, in my in my thinking, actually, this is a very significant thing that literature contributes to creating realities, creating reality, is making the impossible sound sound possible in real life. Again, because because we are here in Palestine and Gaza, I'll be giving you examples from Palestinian and Arab literature so we can compare and make things clearer. We all know Fadwa Tuqan, the Palestinian poet. And please do not introduce her as Ibrahim Tuqan's sister. Let's talk about Fadwa Tuqan as Fadwa Tuqan. And then somewhere else, mention that, and by the way, Ibrahim Tuqan was here. Let's not throw her under the shadow of her brother, even if he was a great poet, we can't deny that. So this is Fadwa Tuqan, a Palestinian poet. Forty years ago or 50 years ago, writing poetry. Of course, we always fall into this trap of saying she was arrested for just writing poetry. We do this so that even as believers in the power, why is that? Why would Israel arrest somebody or put somebody under house arrest? She only wrote a poem. So we contradict ourselves sometimes. We believe in the power of literature changing life as a means of resistance, a means of fighting back. And in the end of the essay, just she just wrote a poem. We shouldn't be saying that. Okay, so Moshe Dayan and Israel in general said that the poems of Fadwa Tuqan were like facing 20 enemy fighters. Wow. She didn't throw stones, she didn't shoot at the invading Israeli military jeeps. She just wrote poetry. And I'm falling for that again. I'm saying she just wrote poetry. So this is what, how Israel's, for example, is dealing with Palestinian poets. And the same thing happened to Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour. She wrote poetry celebrating Palestinian struggle, encouraging Palestinians to resist, not to give up, to fight back. She was put under house arrest, she was sent to prison for years. And therefore, I end here with a very significant point: Don't forget that Palestine was first and foremost occupied in Zionist literature and science. Poetry, when the Zionists thought of going back to Palestine, it wasn't like, "Oh, let's go to Palestine." It took them years, like over 50 years of thinking and planning, you know, all the politics and money and everything else. But poetry played one of the most crucial roles here. If this is our class, if I tell you, let's move to this, the other class, you need guarantees that we're going to go there, we're going to find chairs, right? That the other class, the other place is better, it's more peaceful, that we have some kind of connection, some kind of right. So for 50 years before the occupation of Palestine and the establishment of the so-called Israel in 1948, Palestine in Zionist Jewish literature was presented to the Jewish people around the world as the things I'll be mentioning some of them. But sometime again, there's a contradiction here, there's a paradox. Always Palestine is a land without a people, or a people without a land. Palestine flows with milk and honey. There's no one there, so let's go. We'll see how later on how many even Jewish people were disappointed when they came to Palestine. Number one, there was no milk and honey, because flowing with milk and honey's like you just going to be groping around and milk and honey will be thrown at you. And there were people, there have always been people in Palestine. Okay, so these are examples of how poetry can be a very significant part of life. Okay, so this is my major point here. Let's see what Nadia has to say. Should I go back? Go on. Because there were people here. So Palestine is a bribe, but it's already married, married to another man. There's a book called "Married to Another Man" by the way, it's about the same, the same state. And there are people here. But the fact that Israel worked hard to ethnically cleanse Palestine, to kick Palestinians out, first and foremost in literature, yes, in politics and everything, shows how significant poetry is. So again, to sum up, Palestine was occupied metaphorically in the poem long before it was physically and militarily occupied. In your life, so let's do the same. Let's fight back. Let's restore Palestine in in our writings, in our poetry, in our stories.

Okay, the other objectives, other than I know the first objective is like, dreaming sake, I want to change the world with a poem. But these are the concrete objectives I am planning here. So we need to distinguish all forms of poetry, the forms, the types of poetry. We need to try to understand the development of our poetic forms and types throughout time and place. We need to become familiar with poetic imagery, figures of speech, literary devices, and how these are used to, you know, support the meaning. We need to learn the basics of meter and music and sound. And of course, the tone and tone variation, that's going to come somewhere else. We need to consider the relationship between the form, the shape, and the meaning. Many, many students always ask me this question: Is the shape of the poem, if the poem, you know, some poems will look like exactly like this, it's like a block, why is this connected to the meaning? Or is it haphazard, just random? We'll see, we'll see about that. Is there a relationship? Is this alright, the right question to ask? Because some poems look like, I don't know, like, I don't know, like this, shapeless, formless. Is it connected? This is part of our journey here to understand this. It's just a shape. Okay, so it's usually a given, something that exists already, and all you have to do is fill this shape, this vacant space, with words and expressions. Okay. Okay, nice. So go here. We like this word. Like I hear many people say, I do this all the time when I comment on poetry. Sometimes I say, okay, maybe I'm stretching it a little bit here, maybe I'm forcing this, you know, maybe I'm twisting the text. But again, what is forcing or not forcing a meaning into the text? What it could be bad sometimes because we are, we stretch stuff. But my question is, if you're saying you're forcing this on me, like on other readers, we were forcing this particular meaning on this text, someone else could see that to be the legitimate or the valid meaning or thought behind behind something. And that's the beauty of it. We could have so many meanings, so many interpretations to one text, to one line of verse. We could differ. But when we differ, we need to at least always go to the text and use textual evidence. That's the key issue here. Use always use textual evidence to make your point. If you're saying Shakespeare started like, you give the example of Sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" That if you want to compare the beginning and the ending on the story, how Shakespeare started kind of digging, how is he being? You could say, for example, his, I don't, I don't see if, I don't think Shakespeare's big in here. I don't think he is, you know. And then you say, number one, look at the question form. He's not taking things matter-of-factly, saying, "I will compare you, you, or to a summer's day." There's a question here. So that's possible. I think the form here, the question form, be a piece of evidence to support this particular argument. But the new safe examine and how the whole poem ended with Shakespeare assuming his man, you know, masculine authority at the end, when he was so affirmative. And always we talked about this, of course, there's no "always" here, but when you read the poem, you need to always connect, not always again, to connect between the beginning, the opening, and the ending, and how things go. The beginning, there is this, you know, sweet, cool, nice way of picking somebody at least to listen to, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" question, because he doesn't wait for the answer. Where is the woman again? Going back to women. Maybe Allah Hafiz is going to say, like, "Where are the women?" There's no woman here. But because this poetry on a dialogue, so we're going to comment on this. But again, how the power, the same poem ended with, "So long as men can breathe," very affirmative, very assertive. This is so Shakespeare. "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this and this gives life to thee." Makes a difference, in my opinion. So this is part of the form. It doesn't have to be just the shape, how the poem looked, but how things is welded, how how things are set, what words, what sounds, what, you know. Okay, so good point. No, ha, again, other objectives here, to apply lessons of poetic shape to close reading. We talked about themes, but most importantly, we're going to examine how the poem means what it means. Whatever it means, we could differ on the meaning, on the theme, and even sometimes we could give two different opinions of a particular text. This could be extreme, and use the same evidence, textual evidence, to support the arguments. It's valid. I'm not going to say no to you. There's no wrong reading because it's, it all depends on how you see things. We are all different people with different experiences and backgrounds. So close reading is significant, trying to read between the lines. And the key issue here is that poets always choose things deliberately, meticulously, for a reason. And even when they don't do this, there's also a reason why didn't you say this. So it's not about, okay, why is Shakespeare said studying the poem with "Shall I compare thee?" Why is he saying "Shall I?" not "Can I?" or "Could I?" Grammatically speaking, basically, it's almost the same. It's the sound. In "Can I," "Could I," a little bit tough, and he wants to sound sweet, at least at the opening of the poem, perhaps? Yes, because "Shall I" is like, "Shall I, shall I?" Probably more portly, the sound of it. Well, it could mean nothing. And then we go back to the question: Did the poet mean this? There's no stupid question. But I think this is not the right question to ask. We don't care about. There's something good in criticism, authorial intention, you know, authorial intention. If you spend most of your time examining whether the author intended something or not, you're wasting your time. It shouldn't matter, at least, you know. Yeah, it's sometimes important to try to understand. Not all of them, but sometimes, you know, why are you reducing this fascinating poem into this particular meaning? I find myself usually ignoring what poets say about their poetry, or also say about their stories, because the text is what we care about, and the text is bigger than us. It's bigger than the author, no matter who he or she is. Don't assume that the poet is always a he. We're going to highlight the importance of time and place, as you know, like, for example, as Palestinians, time and place is significant to us. For the Romantics, time and place, you know, significant also because they're deeply rooted, connected to something about the theme. And why we do things like nature for the Romantics, to examine open forms, and to examine poetry as a means of resistance. Not only resisting like enemy occupiers, like Palestinians are doing, the Irish people, like people who South Africa, in Asia, in India have been doing or have done already. But also resisting norms and traditions, resisting customs, sometimes trying to turn a whole world inside out and upside down. And even more, how poetry is also used as a means of resisting other forms of mainstream poetic, you know, techniques and forms, like John Donne. So poetry, like there are three levels here. Number one, it's it's a weapon. You resist injustices imposed upon you by alien occupiers. You also resist traditions and customs, you break away with them, you just regard them like that's in life, society, politics, economics. And then you could also use poetry to change poetry itself, like John Donne. Probably the Romantics also did the same. Again, to learn to compare different poets and different poems. You would be studying comparative literature next, next semester. So let's start from this course to learn how to try, how to connect between different poems, different poets, different ages, different places, to find similarities, dissimilarities, and see how different people say the same thing. And finally, and don't be intimidated here, because this is totally, I know you're not native speakers, it could find it difficult to write poetry. So this is totally optional part of the assessment is writing poetry. And we're going to do this by learning to write parodies, by imitating other poems, other poets, by playing on other lines of verse. Okay, so for example, instead of when we study Wordsworth's "The Daffodils," we could play on the fact that he's in "wandering lonely as a cloud." I wandered, you know, I wandered lonely as, I don't know, what piece of pizza that people keep pushing from plate to plate. And then you'll find it wrong. I think I can do something with this. So we're good. But again, that doesn't mean that parody is just this light form of poetry. Parody is a significant form of poetry. We'll see this later on. And hopefully, we're going to try to write original poetry. Original poetry means you're your own. So I know, you know, I'm writing poetry already, some of you, and that you already wrote poetry and other people before wrote. So let's write more. Remember, we said this is about changing lives. Probably a poem you write now could change somebody's perspective, ideology, in five, ten, fifteen, hundred years. Okay, questions, suggestions, please. So I expect you to do these things, to have these things in four months, among other things. But again, this is very flexible. We can change and add. We're going to read and write poems exploring lyrical, narrative, dramatic, and other devices, subject matters. We're going to write assignments including reflections, parodies, and responses. You're expected to engage in this. But again, part of this, we need to develop critical reading, analytical reading of poetry. If we can analyze poetry, we can analyze everything. So this is going to help us to equip us with the skills to critical and analytical reading of everything. Hopefully, unforced. Finally, I want to emphasize this: to write original poetry. Hopefully, we're going to have like 10, 15, 30, 50 poets at the end of the course, if I am very ambitious. Okay, how am I going to assess assist you? This is the suggestion here. And again, look at this optional 20-mark assignment. It's totally optional. You don't have to do it if you are intimidated. But believe me, just remove the negative idea. You can't write poetry. And hopefully, hopefully, with the exercises we're going to be doing in class and online, you can write it. So we'll have 10 marks for participation and attendance, 20 marks for online assignments on our Facebook group. We will have to write, I about seven responses to seven different poems from seven different schools. And I'm going to organize this in a way so you can write one essay, one reflection, at least every 10 days or every four to 14 days. So I'm expecting you to write one reflection of a poem that we study every two weeks. That's not a lot of hard work, but it's good because you'll get 20 marks at the end of the day. Okay, so it's going to work like this: If we study Shakespeare, we study like four texts of Shakespeare, you choose one text. And then we move, for example, to the Neo-Classical Age. We started like three or four texts from this age, you choose one of them. You have to choose one poem from every age, so you can, you can learn to write about different ages in different ways. And this is not, it's not big, it's about 300 words. And please write it yourself. Don't plagiarize. I know I trust you, but don't don't copy-paste. What what you write is a lot better than what you'll copy-paste from the internet. Okay, clear about this? So please, no plagiarism. I'll give you examples later on how to do the essays. Just this page. Yeah, it's not, you know, 300 words, like half a page. So don't be intimidated. This is good for you. Again, if you want to write poetry at the end of the course, in four months, you can submit ten or fifteen poems and you'll get 20 marks for that. When you submit something to me, like when you submit whether the reflection on or the the poems, the first thing I do is to check for plagiarism. I know I trust you, but I have to say this many times. I don't want you to steal somebody else's poetry or to translate somebody else's poetry or, you know. So if I check for plagiarism, if I know it for certain, it's yours, I'll give you the minimum mark, just as a thank you for submitting this. Twelve marks, so you take 12 marks just for submitting your own poetry. And then I thought, I I read the poems and I give you marks for the originality, for the ideas, for the search, and everything. So I'm, I think if you do this, many of you will get around 16, 17, 18, 19. Some students last year got full 20 marks. They were three really good poets. You can't go back to them and ask them about their experience doing this. I know some students are intimidated by this. Believe me, writing English poetry, no offense to English, solely Shakespeare, is a lot easier than writing Arabic poetry. All you need to do is just give it a try. Give it a try. Okay. Midterm, 20 marks. If you do the poetry, final exam is going to be out of 30, which is good. If you don't do this totally optional, I'm not going to judge. 50 marks. And finally, I'm suggesting a bonus project, creative project, creative is an initiative. Anything you could think of. For example, I suggested to the other group, like, I don't know, like five of you could select like a hundred lines of verse from English literature and writing their translation and posting them, organizing, analyzing with just a lab and those guys in charge here with the department and, you know, sticking them around campus here. So you like show people that because, you know, when I tell people, like, I'm specialized in English literature, English poetry, sometimes they say, "Really? There's English in there? Totally in English?" Like, "What? What is this? Wasn't you know, sometimes we hate it when people from America or Europe say, 'You have internet in Gaza?' What, we're not from the Stone Age here?" Sometimes we do the same, like, "Is there poetry in in Hebrew?" Of course, there's poetry in Hebrew. "Of course, there is poetry in English." So probably if we do this, I suggested something like a project like, I don't know, like if you three of you attended the same high school, you could go to your high school teacher and tell her or him that, "Hey, I want to come here like two or three Thursdays and recite poetry, Arabic poetry and its translation to the students." So I can, you know, make them, you know, so you choose Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan, somebody reads the English text, somebody reads the, you know, just reaching out, like spreading the word, or any crazy creative idea you could have in mind. This is totally bonus. Totally optional. Question? Question about the date? I'm flexible. I'm open to suggestions.

Finally, the material I compiled from this amazing guy, his doctor Mark Phillips, on his own line. He's young, a young guy. You can follow him on Twitter. He has a blog called "Understanding Poetry." I used his material and added questions, edited a little bit of things. Compiled it into material that will be in the bookshop probably tomorrow. And finally, I'm using this fascinating book called "Mastering English Poetry." I have the hard copy. Probably if you want to borrow it sometime in the future, I can give it to you. Okay. Oh, now the whole course, the whole material, class material, is divided into three sections. Section one talks about again, poetry, the nature of development of poetry, the forms of poetry, the literary devices, major themes in poetry. There are eight lessons. Well, maybe we're not going to do the lessons like, "Okay, today we talk about the shape, tomorrow we talk about the sonnet." Eight or something. We're going to study the course in a kind of chronological order, from the late 16th century to Shakespeare, to 17th century, until the until until today. So when we, this is the core of our course. Number two, selected poems from different ages, different heroes, different different poets. When we talk about the poems, we will discuss issues related to form, to shape, to literary devices, to imagery. The third part of the text included some critical essays, articles, teach you how to write critically, comment critically on poems. And finally, there are exercises and exam samples for practice. I know you like exam samples, so you can see how things, how things go. Okay, fine, fine. Finally, to end the first part is this poem by Ali Abunimah that I really loved very much. This was a scene poem last year in the exam, a poem that you haven't seen before. You need to read and analyze depending on what you learned throughout the course. Somebody please read. Wow, beautiful reading. Or more. Yeah, please. "Dream remnants, the remains, the ruins of the sky, probably naked." Two syllables. [Music] What do you think is this poem? This is an English poem, very short, little by Palestinian writer, Ali Abunimah. Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. And the great guys. Yeah. What do you think? Can you find something nice, attractive, different, beautiful, poetic? Yeah. Is there a line you like? An image you like? A metaphor you like? How does the poem make you feel? How would you engage with the poem? Please. Conciseness. The poet is very content. It says so many things in so little words. And this is why, okay, let me interrupt. Sorry. That's why sometimes it's sad to start analyzing a poem from the poet himself or herself. So if you don't know that this is Palestinian, you could have said many things. It doesn't mean what you're going to say is irrelevant, but the fact that you know that this is Palestinian, you want to relate this to Palestine. And this is a kind of forcing, but you just mentioned, not that it's bad, but we do this. Yeah, there's a pair of this between sigh and raising. Well, what is he saying? One for what? What do you understand from line number four? "No raised a thousand voices with the stillness of my sigh." Please. The funny way. [Music] Okay, okay. But when he says "a thousand voices," he didn't, he says, "I didn't raise a thousand voices with what? The stillness of my sigh." A sigh is usually inactive, passive. Is he suggesting that even a sigh can be a weapon, can be something you use to fight back, to resist the pain, the suffering you just mentioned here, to change the reality? Don't create excuses, don't say I can't, don't say I'm powerless. Of course, we never blame victims, we shouldn't trash victims and judge them. They know better. But again, the suggestion is that stillness, even the sigh, the stillness of the sigh, could be, you know, a powerful means of expression. Yeah, if half of you are sighing now, I will quit class, will quit work. Maybe it's a message that get the hell out of here, perhaps. And in the last sentence. Uh-huh. Mmm-hmm. But isn't this us? It asks every minute, every hour, every day. [Music] Dream. There's a lot of negativity. Perhaps is he, is the poem about justification? In actually justification, just justifying inaction? Is he proud of this? He is. Okay. And sometimes, expressing is good, you know, psychology. Talking out. Again, these are poetry, expressing yourself. If you keep lying to yourself, keeping things to yourself, it's not going to help. Getting it out, just getting it out. Okay, starting from expressing yourself and taking things from there. Yeah, of course, alone, he can't do it. Alone, he can't do it. But he is saying that I should have done this. And then I think we should have done this. My voice, your voice, her voice, somebody else's voice. And then you have the thousand voices raised. If you keep it to yourself, it's not going to help. Now, okay, the idea about urging people to try, urging people to do whatever you can to change. It's probably the theme of this poem. Anything related to the form, the words, the choice, the diction, the sounds, the rhyme, you find interesting? Like Reem said, there is a repetition of "never." No, no, no. Not a lot of negativity. See, this is how what I say, like, how the choice of words, how to even here, look at the "no" beginning the sentence, it just thrown into your face. What else do you notice other than the negativity, please? Passed on the way to the airport is traveling. Is this like actual physical travel, or this is travel from young age to old age? Please. Thank you very much. And this is the nature of Arabic language, by the way, having the same rhyme. Basically, I cry, I sorry, I don't get the sound. Not a Rosanna, it's "I." Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so this is going A, A, A, A. I like this connection between English and Arabic. When we write English poetry, we don't usually do this. But this is masterfully done by Ali Abunimah. And I'm gonna sound like "sky cry." He is actually, this is like part of the sighing here. He is sighing here. He's not keeping, he's not suppressing his, you know, anger, emotions, negative feelings, probably feeling of helplessness. He's getting it out there by the poem. But also here, he is sighing. He said, "I didn't even sigh aloud," but he's doing it here. And I like how the poem, and usually ask this question, is the poet going to change? I know Ali Abunimah, of course, is going to change. But the poet here, assuming that we don't know Ali Abunimah, is the poet going to change? What do you think? Can you give evidence from the text? Of course, we could say, you could say yes, you could say no, it's up to you. Yeah. Okay, nice. What's your evidence from the text? Yeah, he could have said "I," but because "I," I don't try. But probably, don't we say like the past simple? It's about something that happened in the past and finished in the past, finished actions in the past. So is he now doing the opposite? Are you saying like, because he's even giving examples of doing the impossible, doing the impossible like closing the desert, for example? But doesn't this like usually reflect what we, when we engage in something, usually people look at things we want to do as they impossible. Could be something normal, natural, like doing our rights. Like now, tell somebody, "I'm planning to travel outside Gaza." I know the travel, the siege, the borders, and everything. You're like, "What? You're doing the impossible." How it's almost impossible. Very few people can come travel here. So it depends on how you look at things. If you see what I mean, like for others, for me, this sounds like closing the desert. But all I had to do was raise my voice, was speak up, was talk, at least sighing. And the very act of writing the poem, Islam here, the very act of writing the poem, is part of the fact that he is willing to change. At least if it's too late for him because he's old, using the past simple. He's traveling, he's moving. At least for us, it's going to inspire us, it's going to change us. Please. I love this. It doesn't make a difference with an airport or the airport there. But he knows his destination. But here he is being adventurous. Thank you. What's your name? I said I'm giving one, you've one mark for this remark. Yes. And he's going to an airport, so he's going to keep driving until he feels that this is where he is going to go, his destination, not the airport. The airport, he knows where he's going. And this act of being adventurous is very politic. One more, please. Okay, I want to comment on one thing. Probably we can take this online because we need very quickly. Yeah, sure. But there are many negatives here. Not okay. So double negative could mean positive. Double- double negative. Double negative. That's nice. I don't know. Doesn't work here this way. But again, if we stretch and force things, could work. So this negative takes this one, this takes one, this one, this one. I think we still have with resilient with one negative here. So I don't know. That what I like how the poem even starts with "Oh," same sound, and it ended with creating the vicious. Thank you, Nadia. The vicious circle. Is he going in a circle? Probably. You can follow Abraham on Twitter and ask him, "Ali, have you changed?" Don't ask him if he meant it or not. The text is more important to me than an anagram. I hope Ali Abunimah is not watching this because he's a friend. I think that usually the image that vicious circle could give an indication that probably he's not going to change. But again, if in an exam, I ask you, "Was the unseen poem last year?" And one cannot bully Sana, it's on the first page of the book, and it was in the mid, in the in the unseen poem, and the students like, "We saw this poem before. Where, where, where it rings a bell." So if you say that, "I believe he's going to change," and give evidence, we take marks for that. I'm not going to say wrong. You say, "I don't believe he's going to change," and you give. That was the key issue is to give textual evidence from the poem, from the text. Show me where there's like here, the idea as Ann mentioned, that he's being adventurous, he just wants to, you know, to be unpredictable. He's going to an airport, not to a particular place. He's probably free. Please. Do metaphorical. It's it's like a station. He's moving from one place to the to the other. Type. We'll stop for one minute. The montage. Be careful. To Akash reserved. Probably we can't control ourselves. Miss class. Miss Nadia arrived. In slide, the slide about Hasan, who never. I like your idea like the myth that the airport is not an actual airport, it's a station in life. It's a place in in life. I'm a dublicate han appliquéd Bible investor who tells a little mortal is real rhetorically. Look, Bali Maharaja, Bali Maharaja, have cable pooja. Okay, Albanian Mouser. Well, banished. I'm chef. Okay. Okay, let's have this exercise before we end today's session. I'll give you one or two minutes maximum to try to list three reasons why you like poetry personally. What do you like about poetry? Power? Probably just be very brief. And the second question, can you list reasons why you think poetry is different or difficult? Why is it different from other forms of writing? Take one minute. Listening very quickly. Why you like poetry? Why you should like poetry? Why it is important? When you finish, try to share your answers with your classmates. Okay. Finished. Two reasons, one reason. You don't have to write three. Move to the second point. You don't have to write full sentences, full elaborate answers. Parashurama eleven. Okay, could you please at least have a peek on your friends' answers? Can you talk? See if you have the same answers, different answers, same ideas, different ideas? Yeah. Okay, somebody did you check your friends and last? Do you have the same ideas? Similar ideas? Different ideas? Could you share, please? Yes. Wow. I like this expression. Gives us a sense, probably a sense of direction in life. Okay, that's too much, too extreme. Without positives? No, I would say without poetry, there's no meaningful life. But you know, we could differ here. I like your ideas, please. Sorry. Thank you very much. There's this thing of animating life, animating experiences. Please. Oh, nice. Or is it as beautiful as, or probably more or less equally importantly, sometimes more? Nice way of putting it. Thank you very much. Rob, when we talk about texts, about poems, when we talk about people, about languages, I like to draw the iceberg. If you know me, you know the iceberg. Iceberg, not going to write itself this way. Iceberg, you know, the Titanic. I always draw this. There's always a little bit of tiny tip above the surface. But what lies beneath? The hidden meanings, the implied, the stuff between the lines. And this is again, the fun of it. The deeper you go, the more meanings you find. The way you connect things. So poetry sometimes, it's not about what it says, it's about what it doesn't say. And that's the beauty of it. More. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, so just you want to to urge yourself to write poetry. You read more poetry. Why is poetry difficult or different? I know it's not, in my opinion, it's challenging. Its beauty. There's a challenge of reading. It makes you therefore makes you special. Why is it different? What makes it different, please? Not all poems are short. But basically, and in this course, I've selected like short poems. So, okay, nice. That the the size of the text. It's not a long text, story or a novel, of course. And this is the challenge. You want to work harder to read more, to connect things, different ways. And also, not the language, the grammar, also the culture and the references and the allusions. Possible. Possible. Also more, please. Like the last exercise, I want to do. I want you again to write down, jot down the words or expressions that come to your mind when we say poetry. Things related to poetry that come to our mind. Just words. You don't have to write full sentences. What phrases, maximum three, four words. You know, the shades, the connotations. When somebody says poetry, I'm studying poetry, there's a poem here, somebody is a poet. What comes to your mind? Done already? Oh, you're very quick. Right. One, two, three, four, five things. How many things have you listed? Nice. Three. This is three. Okay. Please give me the words you you wrote down. One word. One. I'm not, no, I'm asking you to define poetry. Just what are the words, the phrases that come to your mind when you think of poetry? When somebody says poetry or poet, please. Rhyme. Excellent. Good. Tone. Okay. Tone. Listen. Rhyme is particular to poetry. Tone could be anywhere. But yeah, there is the issue of tone. Varied. Alliteration. We could find any trace in somewhere else. But yeah, what? Metaphor. Think we could also find meter for somewhere else. Creative. That could be creativity somewhere else. But person experience. Very good. Telling secrets. Possible. Sometimes we reveal ourselves in ways we don't do anywhere else. Can be song. Nice. The word friends. That's nice. That's nice. If you find inspiration. Well, if I know all friends are horrible these days. So if you find, if you have good friends to inspire you, to urge you to write, to encourage you to write, you're lucky. Okay. Delicacy. Oh, beauty. Beauty is truth. Truth, beauty. Hypocrisy. Yeah. I'm taller. I'm not sure. I know me. Apple Luna Millea. Valuing that's the portion with the Quran. She coolly Wadena. He moon. Different emotions. Romanticism. An exaggeration. One word. Yes. What's that? Probability of meaning. Meanings. Okay. We'll wrap this up and finish with this list. You mentioned many of the things I already prepared here about about poetry. Somebody read the list. Well, this doesn't include everything. Please. The lines, the stanzas, this particular structure and shape. Yeah. Some people say it's difficult. Not necessarily, but it's a challenge. Sometimes, you know, condensed saying so many things in very few words. More. More is less in poetry. Brevity is the soul of wit, the soul of poetry. More. Yeah. Sometimes doesn't follow the rules of grammar. We know there's a book called "Grammar for Poetry," and this could confuse us. That syntax of the poetry could be different. Sometimes we need to to follow the subject and the verb. Sometimes there's something called fronting, where the object is at the beginning of the sentence. Could be confusing. So we need to pay attention to these things. That's why I say if you understand poetry, you really, really deeper into the language. Please. Repetition. In academic writing, shouldn't repeat. Even if you say in the first paragraph, for example, you shouldn't say, for example, in the first paragraph, or later on, because, for example, say, for instance, say, you know, a variety of words, synonyms. But in the key issue of a poem, could be repeating particular words, particular phrases, even particular lines. There is a repetition, and there is always a meaning behind. And finally, ellipsis. There is a lot of stuff deleted. But this is grammatically, I mean, this is grammar. This is grammatically speaking, it's implied. We could understand that. But sometimes the things, the unsaid things, I just said, if they're in the poem, it's there for a reason. If it's not there, it's not there for a reason. Sometimes the poem could be about what's not said rather than about what is said. Thank you very much. I'll stop here, and we continue next week. Please enjoy the weekend. Article Asha, if you have questions, we could stay for one or two minutes.