The Convergence of the Twain

"The Convergence of the Twain" is about the event made famous for us in the movie Titanic. Focus on the way the events unfold in the poem, and try to articulate the point the poem makes about it.

This poem is beautifully worded. The style is different, simpler than the other poems we’ve read from Hardy. The image presented is that of the Titanic being almost not savaged as much as artistically and naturally overtaken by the sea, like it was being accepted into this different world. The idea Hardy wants us to see is that even this was supposed to happen. That the moment this ship came into creation, it's companion iceberg was already out there somewhere, waiting.

“Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent will that stir and urges everything

Prepared a sinister mate
For her- So gaily great-
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.”

The Ruined Maid

"The Ruined Maid" isn't on the Schedule, but I think some might want to respond to it. What is the poem's attitude toward the "ruined" Amelia--"ruined" meaning that she's a prostitute.

The attitude toward prostitution doesn’t seem a bad one. The primary speaker talks about Amelia’s changes for the better, how Amelia dresses more fashionably, speaker properly, even her skin and hands are finer, softer and her attitude is even brighter. The speaker, Amelia’s old friend even comments on how she wishes she could be like Amelia and have these nice things, but Amelia tells her, “My dear- A raw country girl, such as you be,//Cannot quite expect that. You ain’t ruined.” I feel that Amelia doesn’t want the two lives to cross. Her answers are simple, all saying that she’s “ruined” without further discussion. Her friend, the speaker doesn’t seem to quite understand this, only seeing her for her finery. The speaker accepts her and almost seems in awe.

The Darkling Thrush

As the note to "The Darkling Thrush" points out, the poem was written (or at least dated) on the eve of the 20th century. As with "Neutral Tones," focus in your response to this on the speaker's tone as it is reflected in the imagery, paying particular attention to the description of the thrush (a type of bird).

Here it is winter. Our speaker is leaning on a gate in a forested place, seemingly alone, checking out nature around him. He compares the landscape to the ending century, “The land’s sharp features seemed to be//The Century’s corpse outleant” Which is a scary image, a corpse leaning out of its coffin. Maybe as though it was watching its final moments pass by. The whole night seems to be as lacking in zeal as the speaker, or so he thinks, “And every spirit upon earth//Seemed fervourless as I.” Then comes the thrush. In all this drabness, the thrust is this sudden sort of jolt of joy.

“At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illuminated”

Though the thrush is not a young and fresh creature, but “aged… frail, gaunt, and small” so it doesn’t represent the newness of the coming century. I’d say that his song was the possibility of hope for something new and incredible in the future.

“That I could think there trembled through,
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.”

What did you think of the poem?

Neutral Tones

I (and others) find "Neutral Tones" to be the bitterest poem in the English language. Focus in your response to this mainly on the speaker's tone and on how it is reflected in the imagery.
--
At first I thought the term was bittersweet, but no, bitter is fitting with this poem. The speaker is one of a pair, likely lovers considering the final stanza. The speaker is recalling this scene, this lover, though he admits that other happenings have colored the memories since these events.

"Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves."

The poem is set in winter, which can be beautiful, but is not described as such here. Where the sun could have been white like fresh snow or something pleasant, it’s instead “white, as though chidden of God” the grass if “starving sod” the leaves were “from an ash, and gray” which I feel was just to heighten the drabness of this scene. It’s richly drab if that’s anything. Even the way his lover looks at him. “Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove//Over tedious riddles of years ago” Where she is obviously studying him, he gives the image age and a sort of boredom or tedious nature. One would eventually get bored of studying ancient riddles or at least tire of it. Even her smile and grin were remembered foully. Her smile was “the deadest thing//Alive enough to have strength to die” then her grin was “a grin of bitterness thereby//Like an ominous bird a-wing.” One wonders if this was a foul and dark memory before the pair obviously turned out poorly with hatred at least from his side.

Hap

In explicating "Hap," focus on the ways in which it represents what I say above about Hardy's view of the world being ruled only by happenstance, chance, and situational irony.

The whole poem is about chance, that being the meaning of its name even. The speaker is unhappy due to some sort of misfortune in chance. In the first stanza, he says that if a “vengeful god” would just tell him that “thy sorrow is [my] ecstacy” that this god might take some joy from the speaker’s own pain, then he could bear the hard, being “Half-eased in that a Powerfuller then I//Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.” Meaning that he could then bear it because it meant that someone had gotten pleasure from his sorrow. However, he then says that this is not so. He doesn’t believe that he has been given his lot by gods, but by time and chance and that “The purblind Doomsters had as readily strown//Blisses about my pilgramage as pain.” Which leads him to believe that his bad times could have just as easily been good times, but for the matter of chance.

What stood out the most for you?

Musee des Beaux Arts

"Musee des Beaux Arts" is one of several poems based upon Pieter Brueghel's painting The Fall of Icarus. The other most famous one is by the American poet William Carlos Williams. Auden's speaker here (like those in many of his poems, suave, understated, ironic--here, as often, in spite of the horrors or desolation he describes) begins by describing several other paintings by the Dutch Old Masters in this imaginary Museum of Fine Arts, using what he says of them to lead into the remarks on the Bruegel painting. In responding to this poem, consider how it relates to the painting, but also discuss its broader message about human suffering.

The poem talks about the continuation of life. How it’s only human to continue on toward the next birth instead of simply mourning the pain and suffering of the time, though the younger generation will never appreciate this while they are young. “How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting//For the miraculous birth, there always must be//Children who did not specially want it to happen” and how the Dutch masters understood this process well. “About suffering they were never wrong,//The Old Masters: how well they understood//Its human position” Then the speaker concentrates on The Fall of Icarus. The painting is well described and truly, no one is watching the man’s failure. Though his failure was important to him, a situation of life and death that ended in death, it wasn’t important to the average man. “the ploughman may//Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,//But for him it was not an important failure” There is a ship that likely saw the man fly, but no face shows towards Icarus in the water as they still have their own business. “and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen//Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,//Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly away.” Even the sun only showed on Icarus only because it must. “the sun shone//As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green//Water” I feel that the speaker is trying to say that suffering is inevitable and we must take it in stride and look forward to the positive things as opposed to the negative. Though the aged were looking forward to the next birth, they could have just as easily been awaiting their own death.

You get hung up on the age thing (and first painiting) in this reading--isnt the poem more about the "human position" of suffering, about how we all, wrapped up in our own lives and concerns, tend to overlook the suffering of others?

In Memory of W.B. Yeats

Auden wrote (or finished) "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" shortly after Yeats died as an elegy to Yeats (and it is one of the best 20th century elegies). However, like Yeats' "Under Ben Bulben," it's also a poem about poetry. Consider in your response how the poem addresses BOTH things.
Also, after reading "In Memory of W.B. Yeats," go back to Yeats' "Under Ben Bulben" and see if you see any similarities or hear any echoes between the two poems; if so, note those in your response.

The poem starts off with beautifully crafted imagery. It’s as though the whole world mourns Yeats. “The brooks were frozen, the air-ports almost deserted,//And snow disfigured the public statues;//The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day” It’s useful to the speaker that this death did happen in winter as it lends itself so easily to a world in mourning. The next part involving the river flowing and the wolves running however, contradicts this. This then suggests that things continued on, outright calling out that his poetry would continue on regardless of Yeats’ death. “The death of the poet was kept from his poems.”
One of the noticeable points that this and “Under Ben Bulben” seem to have in common is the commentary on calling people to the arts, something Yeats had done at other times as well and is likely an homage to him in this piece as well as a continued call.

With a farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress

A man can only do so much in his life, and should reach for greater, something I recall from “Ben Bulben.” The final lines truly call this to mind: “In the prison of his days//Teacher the free man how to praise.”

Good (and funny) on the setting/mood, and good on one of the main echos of "Ben Bulben," but don't both address and give advice to poets?
Doesn't this poem also say other, more subtle things about the poet and his work than that the work lives on, and what do you think of what this poem says of poetry?

Fern Hill

In reading "Fern Hill," it might be helpful to keep in mind Wordworth's "We Are Seven" and Hopkins' "Spring and Fall"--for this poem, like those, is about our obliviousness to death in early youth. Focus on how Thomas gets this idea across, paying close attention to the words and images. Also, read this poem ALOUD, and focus too on what makes this unrhymed poem so powerfully poetic.

The poem still had an interesting rhythm to it without the rhyming. I feel like it might relate to their being similar sounds, alliteration, but subtly and the repeated use of certain words. “Trail with daisies and bar’ley’…. And as I was green and care’free’…. Time let me play and ‘be’….” Then there is the repetition of certain words, like green. Green here shows both the green and pleasantness of this scene as well as the naivety that goes with youth. In the end, green is mentioned in relation to death and time, so perhaps there it’s more relatable to the green of eroded brass like on a watch. Golden is also repeated, expressing the joy of youth and the enjoyment of naivety. You can’t be brought down by things you don’t know about. Unlike the other two poems we’ve read, this is the narrator looking back at their youth and seeing it with new eyes. He sees the joy he held, and he says the carefree state. While the others suggest that one day this state will change, for the speaker here it already has.

Decent on the poetics here, but also note the syllable counts in the lines:-)

Decent, too on the green and golden, but on the "tarnish" thing, not--see the last lines.

Great on the different focus/adress of this as compared to the others.

BUT--how does this poem affect you?

The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

In responding to "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," discuss how it illustrates what the Editors say on p. 2444: "Thomas saw the workings of biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and again and again in his poetry he sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity." Also discuss the meaning of the repeated phrase, "And I am dumb to tell."

You can see the fusion easily here. The speaker takes scientific explanations and gives them an almost magical air. He does not say why such a thing is so, just that it is so and it does this. “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower//Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees//Is my destroyer.” This natural force that brings flowers to grow and bloom he equates to the natural forces that age the human body. The concept makes excellent sense, as a plant doesn’t just bloom, it must age first from a seedling. “And I am dumb to…” I feel suggests that the speaker feels almost silly making these suggestions, that such natural things could not be so related to the human body or condition, and yet they are. The final two lines sum this up I feel. “And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb//How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.” Suggesting that the speaker is still aging and already in a sense decaying much like the already dead.

Interesting on the science angle here--definitely 20th-century stuff, but in an almost Biblical tone.
Good on the life force angle, but see my replies to Ash and Erica (and all) on the "I am dumb to tell."

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

After reading "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and making some notes on it, click on this link to hear Yeats reading the poem. Focus in your response on how his reading confirms, adds to or alters your understanding of the poem.

As I read the poem, I felt it was a longing. The footnote I feel agrees with this. This is his ideal wish, to create this home for himself in Innisfree. The first stanza has him describing the place, “And a small cabin will I have there, of clay and wattles made” He even says he will have bean rows and bees, perhaps things he had growing up or that help him recall his joyful days there. The speaker feels he’ll find peace at this place, “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,//Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the crickets sings” He feels peace can be found in this sort of place because it’s not some maddening fast paced environment. The speaker even feels pulled to this other place, as he heard the sound of the lake he missed where ever he went, sort of haunting him.

"I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."

Listening to it, I feel my opinion and his agree on this poem. He sounds like a sad old man when he reads this poem.

No Second Troy

"No Second Troy" almost HAS to be read as authobiographical, containing pretty clear references to Maud Gonne. (Another poem Yeats wrote to/for her, which the ladies might find touching, is "The Folly of Being Comforted".) Interestingly, however, Yeats transcends the personal by identifying Maud Gonne with Helen of Troy. Focus on this in your response.

The references to Gonne are for her passion as a revolutionary activist and her strength in that. The similarities between herself and Helen of Troy make good sense when thinking of it from Yeats’ point of view. He loved her as men loved Helen, leading to the infamous war. What I suggest though, is that the speaker’s Helen is not just some great beauty, but a woman of strong passion that can make things for herself. The speaker asks, “Was there another Troy for her to burn?” which suggests many things. Would this woman be the downfall to great nations, perhaps by way of revolutional inspirations? To me, I feel she is as the title suggests. “No Second Troy” meaning she will not be one to be used and an item to be stolen.

Yes, the speaker (or Yeats) sees her this way, but Gonne also turned many other men's (and more politically involpved ones) heads.
On the title, maybe you're right, but maybe it also means she does what she does BECAUSE there is no second Troy for her to cause to be burned--that she's a Helen outside of her proper (heroic) time?
See Yeats' other poems on the Irish Rebellion--he was pretty ambivalent about it.

I enjoyed reading this poem there were times when I felt like the speaker was describing Maude and there were other times when the speaker was describing Helen. I especially felt that the first half of the poem was specifically about Maude and the second half of the poem was specifically about Helen. What do you think?

Easter 1916 & September 1913

Before you read "Easter 1916," read "September 1913." In responding to these, focus on the different views of/attitudes toward the Irish expressed in these poems, and speculate (having read the intro to Yeats in the book) about what caused this difference.
I feel that “September” could be better set to music than “Innisfree” because of the repetition of that final line. Not overly relevant, just a thought there. “September” is about what Yeats sees as a lack of passion in his countrymen. Here specifically, the speaker speaks of a lack of passion for the arts at first, with the reference to the lack of care the middle class held for the possibility of housing a collection of French impressionist painting when all that was asked for was a place to put them. Later the speaker brings in mention of prominent figures in the fight for Ireland’s freedom. He suggests that if they could go back and “call those exiles as they were” that people would still say they were made mad by “some woman’s yellow hair” lured into their behaviors by means beyond themselves. That is just dismissive and disrespectful of them, which I feel is what is being expressed in this poem. His repeated line, “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,//It’s with O’Leary in the grave.” is I feel the simplest sum of this poem.

In “Easter” we see Yeats taking back his previous words. The speaker here talks of knowing these men, these people likely when he held the opinions expressed in “September”, but that they have since changed, “All changed, changed utterly://A terrible beauty is born.” as he repeats here. He again lists of people who fought, most who were executed, then goes on talking about the change. The speaker here sees that the people have changed; they don’t just sit idly by and allow things to happen around it.

You only get the first poem at the end--how does that refrain relate to what the speaker is saying of the Irish in the first?
Better on the second, but how would you characterize the tone of it (especially that "A terrible beauty is born")? See an attitude toward the Uprising developing between "No Second Troy" and this?
If you want a poem that REALLY should be set to music, respond to "Who Goes With Fergus." (actually, though, "Down By the Salley Gardens" is the one poem of Yeats that has most often been set to music).

Under Ben Bulben

"Under Ben Bulben" is a self-epitaph, written in anticipation of the poet's own death.It begins (first three parts) by transferring an ancient sybil (female soothsayer) to Ireland, and goes on to talk of Irish history and the Irish.
We’re set off with mystical images: Sages and the Witch of Atlas, horsemen and fairy women, a company of immortals that travels through the dawn by the mountain, Ben Bulben. I feel with this presentation, these are all the same people. The next stanza speaks of the mortality of man. The speaker suggests that no matter how a person might die, it is not death they fear, but “A brief parting from those dear” and once dead their burial carries them along to their final eternity. I find this suggestion interesting; it involves no mention of Heaven or Hell, simply eternity and what waits there, being your loved ones. The third stanza goes on to reference John Mitchel, Irish nationalist, who called men to arms with his line, “Send war in our time, O Lord!” It almost reads as standing to fight is a natural position to man,
“Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind
He complete his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease.”
Also saying that all men feel this at some point of time, “Before he can accomplish fate//Know his work or choose his mate.”
I can see the soothsayer business in the first part, the sybil being part of the company at the start. I don’t personally know Irish mythology, but the belief that when you’re put into the ground it you pass along into eternity was also slightly mentioned in “Dead Man’s Dump”, though Rosenburg did not specify eternity, he say that the dead soldiers had returned to the earth, making me feel that the burial of a body might be a key factor in their mourning and passing process.

In part 4, the speaker addresses the Irish poet, tracing the history of art from Michaelangelo to the unsatisfactory present, which he calls upon the present Irish poet to improve.
This continues in part 5, where the speaker gives more specific direction to the Irish poets.
This section is a plee to the artists (including writers I’m sure, but here most named are especially of artistic merit) to continue creating, to make great works like Michaelanglo’s Sistine Chapel that has lasted the ages can continue to be creating and give a beautiful meaning to life and representation of a further purpose. The second artist he mentions, Quattrocento created works of dreamy images that also gave the speaker thoughts of the eternal. Then he calls up artists and poets, which both include Blake and more than one are followers of Blake, which makes good sense in this context. Blake was not only a master, but his strong faith and works of faith fit in perfectly. The speaker doesn’t just want art for art’s sake, he wants it to have meaning, to show people that there is more beyond this existence and to give a spark to life.

Finally, in part 6, the poem focuses on Yeats himself, his life, his grave and epitaph. In responding, expand on these notes, quoting to support your commentary. As I say in the schedule, we'll come back to this poem when we get to W.H. Auden's "In Memory of W.B. Yeats."
It’s rather morbid honestly, I couldn’t imaging writing something about my grave like this. I feel here again, he wishes to push for a lack of vanity in himself. He wants his grave simple, “No marble, no conventional phrase” At his grave he wants the words, “Cast a cold eye/On life, on death.//Horseman, pass by!” I feel that he is still pushing for us to think about more than just living and existing, to actually work to make something of oneself and to give a meaning to life. Also I feel he suggests we should not fear death, as possibly the speaker no longer does. By this point, I know Yeats had buried many friends, so I feel he has come to accept it in this.

On the first 3 parts, isn't Yeats' speaker actually focusing on the continuum of Irish history and culture, placing that within the context of the whole of history, and suggesting that when Irishmen dies, they become a part of that history, that culture? And isn't he tracging Irish history to his time? Doesn't this tie it better to the next part, on the history of art, placing Irish art within it?
Also, on the directions to poets, isn't he adressing Irish poets, calling on them to preserve and promote Irish culture?
Also rethink/reread the ending in this context.

The Second Coming

"The Second Coming," as I said above, illustrates Yeats' theory of history repeating itself in a rising and narrowing spiral, on different planes of reality. Use this (and the footnote) to discuss what the poem suggests (and how) about the (1919) present it represents--about the way in which the speaker sees this age as a repetition, with difference, of the advent of Christ.

His suggestion of the Second Coming at this time makes good sense. The whole of Europe is recovering from one World War and have little clue of the one to follow it soon after. Ireland itself has gone through some Hellish times by way of the rebellion shaking things up and were at that time dealing with the Anglo-Irish War itself. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” sounds like a good way to put it. The world at Christ’s birth was also rather chaotic and much of the power (I believe, from what I recall of history) that much of the power was held by one empire (Rome) which maybe at this point he equates with England not purely because they are a super power (they took a big hit in the war and I think this is about the time America was coming into its “super power” status), but also because England has such a hold on Ireland and wishes to squash out rebellion and not allow questioning. This is a time of change, as was the time of Christ. The speaker feels like this is all building up to something, and his idea of this something is the Anti-Christ.

Decent reading of the poem's inspiration, though I think you get a bit too much into the England/America thing here. Aren't the most interesting aspects of this the view of history as a spiral and the poem's prophetic nature: the view of what's coming as the work of an antichrist (history repeating itself as tragedy)?

The Wild Swans at Coole

The "poem idea" of "The Wild Swans at Coole" is a return. In it, the speaker has returned to a place 19 years after his last visit. What has changed (in the scene and the speaker)? How does the speaker feel about this?
--
It’s interesting that he visits in the fall as that is very much a time of change in itself. That isn’t actually a change for his view, however, considering his original visit was also in the fall. The primary change in the place he’s visiting is the swans. His first visit, he couldn’t count everyone before they flew off. Then this time he gets an exact point, 59, which we can assume is less considering he was able to make the point. Though perhaps the swans are also older and more subdued in age, not skitting off in fear of some stranger. The speaker sees his own aging and changing though as he considers the change in the amount of swans. He recalls that he had “trod with a lighter tread” then and now that there are fewer swans, and says that “my heart is sore” suggesting it’s simply or them, but ti is for everything, how things all change. At first I thought his wondering where the swans would go when they had left him had meant his death, giving the impression of his own immortality, but I feel now that it’s a matter of lose. He takes it well though, knowing his lose is another man’s gain, even though he might not be exactly pleased with this.

I can tell you're not up to snuff from the spelling in this, but good on that the poem is really about the speakers' sense of loss, and VERY good on the last part--minus quotes.

The Mark on the Wall

"The Mark on the Wall" is an excerpt from a collection of autobiographical essays titled Monday or Tuesday, which Woolf published in 1921. I include it here, because it's the best example in our book of Woolf's use of stream of consciousness. In responding to it, focus on the way the narrator's mind flits from impression to thought to memory to impression, and so on.

The stream of consciousness writing is interesting. I learned about this process in poetry when I was in high school and wrote some terrible terrible things that I don’t care to look back on. But I’m familiar with this! Woolf does it beautifully. Without considering who we’d be reading, when I saw that it would be a matter of stream of consciousness, I expected it to be a pain and difficult to read because of jumping from thought to thought. But Woolf is a master of it. She flows from talking about this unknown mark on the wall into an idol daydream she’s had since childhood, the past residents of the house, things she’s lost in her lifetime, babes and giants even, but continues to return to this mark. With all this thinking, all these ideas that came from some smudge on the wall, the end honestly is so startling that I laughed out loud. Of all the things she’d thought of what the mark could be, all the ideas it inspired in the speaker, it turns out to be a snail and this is told her by someone else entirely. Frankly, if this is truly how Woolf found her mind working, it’s no wonder she was such an excellent writer.

LOL on those "terrible terrible things":-)--but that showed you how hard it is to carry this off, and you see, too, that Woolf is a master (mistress?) of it.
We'll see this again in Joyce. Thinking of it as a fiction technique, how does it compare for you to the style, for example, of Dickens?
Here and in your reply to Aden, you focus on that very sudden and down-to-earth realization about the mark--but isn't the mark mainly a device which she uses as an occasion for the stream of consciousness?

A Room of One's Own: Women

What does Woolf say a woman needs in order to be a writer? What is the larger meaning of this?

In order to become a writer, Woolf feels a woman needs her own money and a room of her own. I feel this means that a woman writer must be sure she is in a position in which she can provide these things without either being hindered. This is a statement of independence, privacy, and revolution. As she, or Mary of her tale rather, was leaving to write something down after a fine thought had occurred to her, when her path was interrupted, she lost the inspiration. Then Mary heads to the library of Oxbridge while again differently inspired, and is turned away because she is a lone woman and needs either introduction or accompaniment to make use of the facility. As the story progresses on, Mary finds that woman have been and still are quite limited in rights. With this, I feel that Woolf wishes women of her time to pursue what rights they have above their past generations and to strive for more for the next. How can a woman be a writer of any repute to do for herself if she cannot do for herself?

A bit hurried/slightly incoherent on this, but isn't it because she uses stream of consciousness here, too?
Good on the title and the 500 pounds as representing independence, on her creating the character of Mary (Seton, Beaton, etc.) as her example, and on the limited access of women to higher ed at the time (might have included the women's college here, too). Good, too, that you extend this to women's rights in general, but isn't her focus mainly on women as writers?

What did you think of the tale of Shakespeare's imaginary sister? I felt she described the consequences of what would happen should one not have a room of their own quite well. It was also neat that she enveloped a tragedy out of a family that produced tragedies. Also, what did you think of her views on money? I felt that she made a valid point that without money one may be bitter. If you are treated as an unequal, you would be drawn to write about your inequalities. With money, you may be inspired to write more fictitiously.

Good on the money thing, too, but see how that relates most to women?

A Room of One's Own

Why does she include the meals at the two Colleges? What do they show about the status of women in her time?

The two meals show the great contrast in the two schools quickly and in a manner that can be easily related to. Everyone eats and it’s not difficult to see the difference in such things. Oxbridge has grand food and a fancy desert that she can’t even give a name to as “to call it pudding and so relate it to rice and tapioca would be an insult.” The whole dinner was leisurely, though the lose of something was evident when comparing the discussion to times before the war, that maybe people cannot relate to each other and artistry in general the same way as what was then new is not as flowing, but darker and with in more simple speech without flowery beautiful language. Then at the Fernham we see a different sort of dinner and discussion. There was no desert, the biscuits were dry, and the soup so thin that “one could have seen through the transparent liquid any pattern that there might have been on the plate itself. But there was no pattern.” I feel that properly describes the dinner. Then there was no talk of leisure, only leaving to allow the dining hall to be made ready for the morning meal. This makes me feel there was little discussion or relaxation, this was a meal to feed the stomach and not the mind. This seems very unfair when comparing the two meals. The inequality in the sexes is glaringly obvious here.

Good here on the contrast between the meals, and especially good on the lack of conversation at Fernham.
See my reply to Ash on this about the historical context, with regard to women and higher education.
I'd really like your reaction/response to her Judith Shakespeare story.

Tradition and the Individual Talent

"Tradition and the Individual Talent" is about what the title says--how and how far the modern poet (Eliot's target audience) is and should be influenced by the entire literary tradition. Focus on this in your response.

Eliot feels there is a lack of tradition unless it’s taken to be compared with what I’ll call modern or new, as in “this is too traditional” or “so-and-so’s work is traditional”, however, the old and dead poets still have their presence known in more modern works. Should we approach a work looking for what makes it more independent of its predecessors or inspirations, we would often miss out on what might truly give if live and individuality, that being what in it that harkens back to those very predecessors. Meaning that these modern poets have taken what they’ve learned, perhaps even from tradition sources, and while it is still very much their own, the inspiration or backing of the technique or word usage, or something makes it obvious that the poets of the past have been studied. However, one cannot just stand on the shoulders of great poets, one much Take in the source material and truly learn and understand it. I think one of the most significant points made here is this: “Someone said: ‘The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.’ Precisely, and they are that which we know.”

Good grasp of Eliot's two takes on tradition in this, and especially of his more postive (and difficult) take--and very good quote at the end:-).
Any thoughts on what he says of the necessity of the poet extinguishing his personality in his poetry?
How about how the first applies to Eliot's own poetry and the second to both Eliot's and Browning's, whom Eliot admired? Also, can you see how the second point hearkens back to Keats' idea of the "cameleon poet?"

Endgame

As for the prompts on this, simply make notes on your evolving reaction to the play as you read it, and then post these and your overall reaction.
I read Godot in high school, and I can certainly feel this is the same writer. The play starts strangely, with Clov checking out what’s outside the windows and in the trash cans. Knowing Hamm’s parents are in them, I sort of understand the humor in looking in, but I’m hoping to understand that better when they come in to play. The interaction between Clov and Hamm is fun, you can tell Clov is used to this treatment, but he still doesn’t care for it. Hamm seems to not know the proper state of things. He forgets that the world is changed at times, but other times he recalls clearly. Nell and Nagg are oddly endearing. They still feel for each other, trying, but failing to kiss as they do. They’ve also forgotten much and are assumedly in worse shape than their son and his servant considering they’re physically in trash cans. The trousers story was funny in a very dry sort of way.
When Clov examines the outside with a telescope, we learn that they are near the sea, but that there is nothing there really. No waves, no sun, all grey. It’s bleak, but makes good sense for this. It’s some sort of end of times where everything isn’t leaving in vibrant explosions, but just ceasing and rotting away. When Clov finds a flea, Hamm says “But humanity might start from there all over again!” and then he insists it killed. This makes no sense. But then, Hamm must not want humanity to renew, he must want it to complete and end as it is doing.
We come to find that Clov has served Hamm since he was small. Yet he will still leave if he had the combination to the cupboard. Hamm tells him to kill him that he’ll give him the combination, but Clov won’t kill him though he still insists he’ll leave. Which then leads to the confusing question of how would Hamm know that Clov had left instead of simply dying.
Hamm’s story feels disjointed, but that’s because of him more than the story itself I feel. He gets distracted mostly by criticizing how he puts things “Nicely put that” “A bit feeble, that.” His story is about a man asking him for bread and then corn for his boy. Hamm denies him this and goes on about how things won’t improve. Use your head, can’t you, use your head, you’re on earth, there’s no cure for that!” “But what in God’s name do you imagine? That the earth will awake in spring?” Instead he offers to take the man in as a servant, but the man asks if he will take on his son as well. Perhaps the boy was Clov?
This entire time Hamm is terribly rude to his parents. He tells them to quiet down, promises his father a sugar plum when there is none. His father understands that it’s like a role reversal for them, but he also feels that things will reverse once more. Considering Hamm is stuck in the chair, I feel this is very possible. When he picked up talking again in another monologue after Nell turns out dead, he suggests that maybe he’d crawl along the floor on his stomach to escape and plead for help, mirroring the image of the man that had gone to him before. He even says he will call for his father and son, though what son? Maybe Clov, considering he had earlier said he’d been like a father to him.
In the end, Clov did leave after spotting another person outside. Hamm was left alone, when he called to his father the man did not appear, so he was quite possibly dead as well.
This is a strange but interesting play. It’s sort of different from Waiting For Godot in that that one was about waiting for the action, a great deal of action has happened already. We are also waiting for someone to get up the nerve to leave. I’d love to see this performed or be involved in a production of it. There so much going on without anything really going on at all. The relationship between Hamm and his father is strained dreadfully, even in this decomposing state, Nell and Nagg still love each other and wish to be with one another, especially Nagg because we can see that Nell is getting towards her end and is the least lucid of the lot. Then the relationship between Clov and Hamm is strange. Clov threatens to leave constantly and Hamm doesn’t always believe him, or so he says. They are not just servant and master, but like father and son and vice versa. While Hamm took Clov in, Clov is the one that takes care of Hamm.

Good reading of the play, especially on the post-apocalyptic--though long after the apocalypse--setting, the relations between the characters, their various states, Hamm's (non)sense, and the hints at the backstory.
Good on the humor in it, too--Becket was a Vaudeville fan.
Having gotten all of this, as I asked Ash & Erica, what, if anything, does this play say about the human condition and human relationships in general?
Your comment about seeing the play in performance: couldn't you see the video?