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For Wednesday: Hardy, Selected Poems, pp.1-26 (see below)



NOTE: In the Dover edition I ordered for our class, read the first 26 pages of poems, either all of them or whichever ones catch your fancy. Hardy's poems are easier to read than most, since they almost always tell stories and are told from a specific character's point of view, like Browning's. However, Hardy also likes to use strange turns of phrase and rustic-sounding words, befitting the background of many of his speakers. Here are three things to keep in mind when reading him:

1. Look up unfamiliar words such as "fervourless," "illiited," "blast-beruffled," etc., since they can change the meaning of a line (or a poem!). Don't skim over the strange words.

2. As always, read poetry out loud whenever you can, for two reasons: Hardy's poetry is very musical, but it can be hard to 'hear' this when you read it silently; and two, Hardy's poetry is usually dramatic, meaning someone is speaking each one to the audience, and often, to another person. So it helps to give this character a voice.

3. Hardy has a few themes that he likes to vary and repeat in different ways and through different characters. Once you pick up on these themes, it can be exciting to see how he finds new ways to express them (the questions below will help you identify some of them).

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: We read "Hap" in class today, and in many ways, "Hap" is the prototypical Hardy poem, from which many others spring. How does the main theme of Hap--that "Purblind Doomsters" control our fate--appear in another poem, though in a different way? How else does he translate the experience of "hap"?

Q2: Many poets and writers in this class have discussed the concept of immortality, which is usually only created through death (remember "Porphyria's Lover"?). Hardy writes several poems about immortality and the dead who hope to live forever through "art." How does this shake out in the real world? What ultimately keeps the dead "alive" in spirit?

Q3: In many ways, Hardy has a lot in common with Wordsworth, who believes that nature unlocks the secrets of the sublime. What "secrets" do Hardy's characters find in nature and the natural world? What do they seem to understand (or see) that we don't? 

Q4: In the poem, "The Burghers," a man secretly allows his wife and her lover escape without killing them as he planned. Yet when his friend asks if the blow he dealt them was mortal, he replies, "Remorseful--worse" (7). What do you think he means by this, and why might remorse be the most painful "blow" of all?

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