Hello again! Dr. Musgrove here. Welcome back to our course together. As always, please take a moment to get settled into a **distraction-free place**, a period of time that is **quiet and peaceful**, and a **sitting position that is comfortable** so that you can focus your attention, your energy, and your learning on the ideas I'll be presenting in this video lecture. In addition, once you are ready, make sure you are prepared with a method you like for taking notes during this lecture. Whatever method you use, give yourself the permission to take your time and feel confident and proud about what you're learning. You'll learn best if you think of your notes as a **creative act** by putting what you are learning into your **own words and your own images**, rather than copying information directly from this lecture. These notes, custom-created by you, will also help prepare you for the **reflection assignment** that follows the viewing of this lecture. --- In this lecture, I'd like to introduce some basic concepts that will help us in our study of poetry, both as a genre and as a discipline, especially as they relate to **comparison in poetry**. Previously, we focused on the four elements of the text: **author**, **reader**, **form**, and **topic**. These are presented in the visual of this subdivided triangle to show how they can be identified and discussed separately, but also to accentuate their relationships within what the text has to offer. However, in this lecture, we will be focusing on the **form** and what it delivers, specifically the **comparisons made by the poet in the poem**. The Venn diagram image of two overlapping circles is used here to represent what occurs in comparison. When we compare two things, we are looking for similarities—what they share in common, where they intersect and join in such a way that a new understanding is possible. As a reminder, there are five elements authors use to create poetry. They are the basic language elements of **shape**, **line**, **music**, **comparison**, and **balance**. These five elements must be in place for a poem to be a poem. Ultimately, we will be looking for ways these elements are assembled artfully and cooperatively create poetic beauty. By **comparison in poetry**, we mean the similarities depicted in the poem via analogy, including metaphor, personification, simile, and other forms of comparison. The Venn diagram at the top of this slide of two overlapping circles is used here to represent what occurs in comparison. When we compare two things, we are looking for similarities, what they share in common, or where they add together and join in such a way that a new understanding is possible. For example, if I were to tell you that my heart is broken, I would not actually have a vital organ that is damaged. I would be taking one thing, my heart, equating it to another thing, a broken thing, and together they would result in an emotional outcome of losing love. In other words, we have an equation: A + B = C, where C is the overlap of A and B. We also know that the heart is often a symbol for love, so it also makes sense that when love is broken, the heart is broken too. There is also the physical sensation of loss that is often felt in the chest due to the loss of breath and tightening of the lungs. This feeling located in the chest is also where our heart is, so that's why the comparison works. It's an emotional pain we feel where the heart is located, and it's the symbol of love broken in two. Again, my heart is not literally damaged, only metaphorically. Okay, here are the four aspects of comparison described in the course glossary: **metaphor**, **personification**, **simile**, and **symbol**. --- So, let's look at a few examples of comparison that come from the collection *The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy*, edited by John Bram. Here is Jack Gilbert's poem, "Horses at Midnight Without a Moon": Horses at Midnight Without a Moon Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt. But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down but the angel flies up again, taking us with her. The summer mornings begin inch by inch while we sleep and walk with us later as long-legged beauty through the dirty streets. It is no surprise that danger and suffering surround us. What astonishes is the singing. We know the horses are there in the dark meadow because we can smell them, can hear them breathing. Our spirit persists like a man struggling through the frozen valley who suddenly smells flowers and realizes the snow is melting out of sight on top of the mountain, knows that spring has begun. This poem, written in the first person plural perspective ("we"), takes as its topic the conflict we all feel between hope and despair. There are many ways the poet creates comparisons with **personification** in this poem to help us imagine more powerfully the continual struggle we face between belief and doubt, victory of spring over winter, life over death. So let's look at some examples of comparison in this poem: In the first line, "our heart" is **personified** as a wanderer lost in dark woods. In the second line, "our dreams" are wrestlers in a castle that is a symbol of our doubt. Still, as the third line offers, there is also "music in us," the potential for joy and beauty to lift us up. Our hope then in the next sentence is **personified** as being oppressed but turns into an angel who rescues us. Next, summer mornings are patient with us and then walk with us like a tall, beautiful woman. And given this beauty, there must also be ugliness; we can only recognize one in the company of another, but again we are still astonished by the singing, even as it appears in response to the suffering. And finally, our spirit of hope is compared to the persistence of a man struggling through the cold and finally rewarded with fragrant flowers, melting snow, and the beginning of spring—warmer climate, renewed life. --- Here's another example of a poem with comparisons, Denise Levertov's poem, "Aware": Aware When I found the door, I found the vine-leaves speaking among themselves in abundant whispers. My presence made them hush their green breath, embarrassed, the way humans stand up buttoning their jackets, acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if the conversation had ended just before you arrived. I liked the glimpse I had, though, of their obscure gestures, I liked the sound of such private voices. Next time, I'll move like cautious sunlight, open the door by fractions, eavesdrop peacefully. This poem, written in the first person singular perspective ("I"), takes as its topic quiet observation, a mindful and silent and concentrated listening that does not disturb the object of attention. Let's look at some examples of comparison in this poem: In the second and third line, the vine leaves being observed are **personified** as whispering among themselves. This whispering, a form of onomatopoeia, is also a **metaphor** for the sound leaves make in a breeze. They are **personified** again as they hush themselves and become embarrassed as humans also do. Next, they are **personified** again as having gestures and private voices. And the poem closes with a final **simile** when the narrator decides to "move like cautious sunlight" the next time she opens the door so as not to disturb the vine leaves' peaceful talk. This is a very nicely composed poem in many ways, especially in terms of the pace created by the varying enjambments, but the overall effect of the many personifications in the poem is that the poet or narrator desires an improved personal relationship with nature. That is, the vine leaves are also **symbolic** of the entire natural world, a common desire by poets in lyric poetry to have a more intimate relationship with nature so that they can better learn from the voices that come from that green breath, especially about the benefits of awareness, persistence, hope, privacy, peace, and renewal. --- So again, by **comparison in poetry**, we mean the similarities depicted in the poem via analogy, including metaphor, personification, simile, and other forms of comparison. Again, comparison is one of the five elements of beauty in poetry. Like shape, line, and music, comparison in poems is always there. The comparison may be as obvious as a simile or as obscure as a symbol, but the more we look for the comparisons evident in poems, the more we will be able to compare ourselves to the experience offered by the text, to equate our lives to the relationships depicted, and to practice and to be guided by the same kind of poetic consciousness displayed in the poem. --- In a previous lecture, I introduced the concept of **poetic consciousness**. It is defined as the ability to be awake to the present and then to develop the abilities to be **attentive, fearless, focused, grateful, and compassionate** in each moment. The discipline of poetry can provide us training in developing **mindfulness**, and that poetry itself, especially lyric poetry and haiku, can be understood as brief guided meditations. In other words, poets create through verse an opportunity for us to practice a heightened sense of conscious attention. Poetry is also designed to give us continual practice in sharpening and directing our minds so that we can give better attention to ourselves, others, and the world for the benefit of all. When we consciously attend to the comparisons in poems in their various aspects, we enter more intimately and practice more intentionally the search for areas of similarity between otherwise dissimilar ideas, images, and people. In other words, we just may discover partnerships that are beneficial. This again is the equation of comparison: the search for similarities, A + B = C. There are always practical benefits available to us, such as insight and healing, when we see others as our equals. --- Okay, so this is the end of this brief lecture. If you wish to review, please watch again and take notes along the way that will help you remember what you've experienced. One of the main points I'd like you to remember from this lecture is that **comparison in poems is always present, just as we are always comparing ourselves with each other moment to moment, primarily of course in unconscious ways.** When we develop good practice in identifying comparisons in poetry, we can also transfer that habit to a more conscious comparison-making ability that rejects false differences and unnecessary separations between us and others. As a result, we benefit from seeing how much we already have in common, how much we are already members of the same human family with the same human problems and the same human possibilities. As always, email me if you have any questions or concerns about this lecture or our course.