Dover Beach Assignment

Assignment 1 (200 words)

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/arnold/writings/doverbeach.html

Explain how the images in Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” develop further the ideas and sentiments suggested by Arnold’s final line concerning “ignorant armies clash[ing] by night.”

Assignment 2 (300 words)

http://www.jimmysantiagobaca.com/greenchile.html

How is this poem “Green Chile” a love poem? Compare the kind of love this poem illustrates (and it could be more than one kind of love) to the kind of love that Sharon Olds’ “Last Night” illustrates. In Olds’ poem, dragonflies are the dominant image. In Santiago’s poem, chile peppers are the dominant image. What do these images share in terms of the message they portray? Be specific and think broadly!

Last Night

by Sharon Olds

The next day, I am almost afraid.

Love? It was more like dragonflies

in the sun, 100 degrees at noon,

the ends of their abdomens stuck together, I

close my eyes when I remember. I hardly

knew myself, like something twisting and

twisting out of a chrysalis,

enormous, without language, all

head, all shut eyes, and the humming

like madness, the way they writhe away,

and do not leave, back, back,

away, back. Did I know you? No kiss,

no tenderness—-more like killing, death-grip

holding to life, genitals

like violent hands clasped tight

barely moving, more like being closed

in a great jaw and eaten, and the screaming

I groan to remember it, and when we started

to die, then I refuse to remember,

the way a drunkard forgets. After,

you held my hands extremely hard as my

body moved in shudders like the ferry when its

axle is loosed past engagement, you kept me

sealed exactly against you, our hairlines

wet as the arc of a gateway after

a cloudburst, you secured me in your arms till I slept—-

that was love, and we woke in the morning

clasped, fragrant, buoyant, that was

the morning after love.