Sonny's Blues to the end of the story

1. The narrator comes up with a number of metaphors for the process of making music the way Sonny does (a kind involving improvisation) on pages 103-104. What metaphors can you spot?

2. In general, how would you describe the way this last part of the story is narrated compared to the earlier parts? Or does the last part seem like the earlier parts?

3. How would you interpret the narrator's buying Sonny a drink, and Sonny's response, at the end of the story? You don't need to pay too much attention to the footnote cited at the end, unless you want to.

4. Does the story end happily or unhappily or other? Explain.

5. Having gotten to the end of the story, what you now say that the author is suggesting about the relationship between being addicted to heroin and playing music?

6. Find a sentence you like, quote it, and explain why.

"Sonny's Blues," paragraphs 46-226

To recap: The narrator returns on leave from the Navy to attend his mother's funeral. While there, he talks his brother Sonny into staying in high school, reminding him that there is a piano in the apartment he will be living in, that of the narrator's fiancee's family. Sonny leaves that apartment when the mother complains about the sacrifices the family is making for him. When the narrator returns from the military, he and Sonny fight, and stop seeing each other. Then Sonny gets busted for using heroin (this is at the beginning of the story; there's been a long flashback in between). The narrator writes to him in prison on the day his daughter Grace dies. The narrator and sonny start to correspond, and when Sonny gets out of prison he comes to stay with the narrator and his family. That's where we are now.

1. We learn about Grace's illness and death at paragraphs 177-178; Sonny wrote about it in his letter to the narrator back at paragraphs 50-52. How does Grace's death matter in the story so far?

2. The narrator writes that Sonny's piano-playing in the narrator's fiancee's house (the narrator was away in the navy) must have been like "torture" to the fiancee's family. Please note that it's not that Sonny's playing is bad--on the contrary--but as the devoted follower of Charlie Parker, aka "Bird," Sonny is learning how to play a form of jazz known as "Be-Bop," and it's challenging to listen to, even today, for most people. At the time it was even more challenging because it was brand new.

Read over paragraph 170 as a description of a young artist in training, devoted to his art. Comment.

3. The narrator's mother tells him about the death of his father's brother (paragraphs 91-105). What makes the story particularly poignant or painful?

4. The narrator remembers Sunday afternoons and evening when he was a child in paragraph 82 (starting with "This was the last time I ever saw my mother alive." How does this memory connect to the narrator's feelings and thoughts about what is going on now with Sonny living with him, either taking heroin or not?

5. Try to put into your own words a succinct summary of the conversation between the narrator and Sonny at paragraphs 183-226.

6. In the conversation mentioned above, music and the effect of heroin are both discussed. Can you describe their relationship, according to Sonny, even though it's not easy for Sonny himself to express it?

"Sonny's Blues" paragraphs 1-47

1. Can you cite any passages that support the idea that the narrator loved his brother Sonny? Can you find passages that support the idea that he didn't? Cite passage, and explain.

2. In paragraph 18, the narrator asks, "Anyway, what the hell can I do?" What would your answer to this question be?

3. In paragraphs 5, 6, and 7, the narrator talks about the darkness of the lives of his teen-aged students; his students' after-school conversation, including shouting, cursing, and laughing; and a boy whistling a tune. Comment. (Yes, this is a very open-ended question.)

4. Sonny's friend says that he feels as if he is somehow responsible for Sonny's drug addiction, even though all he did was tell Sonny that it felt great to be high. Is there anything in the reading that points tot he idea that the narrator also feels somehow responsible? (paragraphs 26-28)

5. How would you explain Sonny's friend's reaction to being given a five dollar bill by the narrator (paragraphs 43-35)?

"Dream Song 14" by John Berryman

John Berryman

Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.



Note: When the speaker says "Henry bores me," he is referring to himself. In the longer set of poems known as The Dream Songs, the main character is named Henry and often refers to himself as Henry. In fact, he switches from first to second to third person in a non-conventional way. Also note: Achilles, the main character in Homer's Iliad, complained because his commander, Agamemnon, had treated him unjustly concerning the spoils of battle. Achilles refuses to fight on the Greek side and the Trojans start to get the upper hand as a result.

1. What does this poem sound like? Supply a simile (for example, "It sounds like a nursery rhyme" or "it sounds like someone walking on crutches" or "it sounds like a parrot squawking." Try to be accurate to you own experience. Don't worry about being thought outlandish. NOTE the rhyme patterns in the three stanzas above.

2. What are the five single most important words in this poem, in your opinion? After listing them, explain why in the case of ONE of the words.

the poem "Introduction to Poetry"

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Everyone answer both prompts. Don't look at anyone else's answer before writing your answer to the first prompt.

1. What does this poem sound like? Supply a simile (for example, "It sounds like a nursery rhyme" or "it sounds like someone walking on crutches" or "it sounds like a parrot squawking." Try to be accurate to you own experience. Don't worry about being thought outlandish.

2. What are the five single most important words in this poem, in your opinion? After listing them, explain why in the case of ONE of the words.

the poem "Kubla Khan"

Kubla Khan, or A Vision in a Dream.

A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Everyone answer both prompts. Don't look at anyone else's answer before writing your answer to the first prompt.

1. What does this poem sound like? Supply a simile (for example, "It sounds like a nursery rhyme" or "it sounds like someone walking on crutches" or "it sounds like a parrot squawking." Try to be accurate to you own experience. Don't worry about being thought outlandish.

2. What are the five single most important words in this poem, in your opinion? After listing them, explain why in the case of ONE of the words.

Sula 151-174

a culvert


1. T or F: The paragraph on pp. 154-155 starting with "Christmas came one morning and haggled everybody's nerves" could be interpreted as an attempt to explain how difficult it is to be poor." and how attempts at

2. T or F: The sentence "The white people who came" at the bottom of p. 154 could be interpreted as an attempt to explain how charity can lead to resentment, not gratitude.

3. In the previous reading, Sula wondered if maybe in some way she had been "good." Are there any parts of the current reading that support that idea? Consider the ways things get worse after she dies; consider her role in Shadrack's inner life.

4. At the top of p. 157, an explanation is given for Shadrack's having said to Sula, after the drowning of Chicken, "always." Try to put the explanation in your own words.

5. The people in the spontaneous parade begin to smash up the tunnel that has started being built (162-163): in your own words--why do they smash it up or try to?

6. Discuss the connection between what happens at the tunnel and the fact that it is National Suicide Day.