Sound and Sense Poetry Relay

Denotation & Connotation

With a partner you will be traveling between stations to explore and consider a variety of poems that feature
Denotation and Connotation as a primary technique to enhance meaning. For each poem you will discuss and
record your answers. You will receive only ten minutes at each station, so you must access and interpret the
poem quickly. Act with purpose.

Pathedy of Manners by Ellen Kay

At twenty she was brilliant and adored,

Phi Beta Kappa, sought for every dance;
Captured symbolic logic and the glance
Of men whose interest was their sole reward.

She learned the cultured jargon of those bred 5

To antique crystal and authentic pearls,
Scorned Wagner, praised the Degas dancing girls,
And when she might have thought, conversed instead.

She hung up her diploma, went abroad,

Saw catalogues of domes and tapestry, 10
Rejected an impoverished marquis,
And learned to tell real Wedgwood from a fraud.

Back home her breeding led her to espouse

A bright young man whose pearl cufflinks were real.
They had an ideal marriage, and ideal 15
But lonely children in an ideal house.

I saw her yesterday at forty-three,

Her children gone, her husband one year dead,
Toying with plots to kill time and re-wed
Illusions of lost opportunity. 20

But afraid to wonder what she might have known

With all that wealth and mind had offered her,
She shuns conviction, choosing to infer
Tenets of every mind except her own.

A hundred people call, though not one friend, 25

To parry a hundred doubts with nimble talk.
Her meanings lost in manners, she will walk
Alone in brilliant circles to the end.

 The title alludes to the type of drama called “comedy of manners” and coins a word combining the suffix -edy with the Greek root path- (as in pathetic,
sympathy, pathology). How does the poem narrate a story with both comic and pathetic implications?
 For what might the central character be blamed?
 Explore the multiple denotations and connotations attached to each of these words:

a. brilliant (1 and 28)

b. interest (4)
c. reward (4)
d. cultured (5)
e. jargon (5)
f. circles (28)

 Why are the poet’s words more effective than these possible synonyms:
g. “captured” (3) rather than learned
h. “conversed” (8) rather than chatted, gossiped, or talked
i. “catalogues” (10) rather than volumes or multitudes
j. “espouse” (13) rather than marry

 Discuss the effect of the word “re-wed” (line 19).

 At what point in the poem does the speaker shift from language that represents the way the woman might have talked about herself to language that
reveals how the speaker judges her?
 "THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US; LATE AND SOON"
THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth 1806.

 What two relevant denotations has “Wreathed”?

 Explain why the poet’s words are more effective than those possible alternatives: earth for “world; selling
and buying for “Getting and spending”; exposes for “bares”; dozing for “sleeping”; posies for “flowers”’
nourished for “suckled”; visions for “glimpses”; sound for “blow”

 Is “Great God!” a vocative (term of address) or an expletive (exclamation)? Or something of both?

 State the theme of the poem in a sentence.

Cross by Langston Hughes

My old man's a white old man

And my old mother's black.

If ever I cursed my white old man

I take my curses back.

If ever I cursed my black old mother

And wished she were in hell,

I'm sorry for that evil wish

And now I wish her well.

My old man died in a fine big house.

My ma died in a shack.

I wonder where I'm going to die,

Being neither white nor black?

 What different denotations does the title have? What connotations are linked to each of them?
 The language in this poem, such as “old man”, “ma” and “gonna”, is plain, and even colloquial. Is it appropriate to
the subject? Why or why not?
Desert Places by Robert Frost
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast

In a field I looked into going past,

And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,

But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.

All animals are smothered in their lairs.

I am too absent-spirited to count;

The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less—

A blanker whiteness of benighted snow

With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars--on stars where no human race is

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

 Examine the poem for examples of words or phrases with negative or positive connotations. Which stanza is most
negative/ Considering its possible synonyms, how emotionally powerful is the word “Scare”?

 What multiple denotations of the word “benighted” are functional in the poem? How does the etymology of “blanker”
add to its force in this context?

 “Absent-spirited” is coined from the common phrase “Absent minded.” What denotations of “spirit” are relevant
here/

 Who are “They” who can create fear by talking about the emptiness of space? Fear of what? What are the “desert
places” within the speaker that may be compared to literal emptiness of space?

 IN the first publication of the poem, line 14 concluded “on stars void of human races.” Frost’s final version calls
attention to the potentially comic effect of rhyming spaces/race is/places, a device called feminine rhyme often used

in humorous verse. Is the speaker feeling comical? Can you relate this effect to wht you determined about the word

“scare” in question 1?
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, 1911 - 1979
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.

Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 What various denotations of “lose” and its derivative forms are relevant to the context? What

connotations are attached to the separate denotative meanings?

 Explain how “owned” and “lost” shift the meanings of possessing and losing.

 What seems to be the purpose of the speaker in the first three tercets (three-line units)? How is the

advice given there supported by the personal experiences related in the next two tercets/

 The concluding quatrain (four-line unit) contains direct address to a person, as well as a command the

speaker addresses to herself. How do these details reveal the real purpose of the poem? Can all kinds of

losses be mastered with “one art of losing”?

SUGGESTION FOR WRITING: Consider the denotative meanings of the titles above.
Consider each poem carefully and note the multiple connotations that attach to the title
phrase as the poem progresses. Choose two or three titles, then write a short essay
comparing the denotative and connotative meanings of each.