Background of the author
Class Discussion Questions:
1. What is "a mind of winter" and why must one have it? Follow the syntax of "The Snow Man"--how many sentences does it contain? What are the primary actions in the poem?
2. How does "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" show the relationship between the mind of the poet and the creation of meaning? Does this speaker "behold nothing that is not there"?
3. In what ways is "The Death of a Soldier" a good example of finding what will suffice? What would the alternative be to finding what will suffice? Why does the speaker tell us what the soldier "does not become"?
4. What does the speaker in "Of Modern Poetry" mean by "the act of finding what will suffice"? Why must modern poetry produce "the poem of the mind"? What can the mind do?
5. What is the role of the imagination in "The Plain Sense of Things"? What is the "fantastic effort" that has failed?
6. How is "finding what will suffice" different from the "work of the imagination"?
7. How does "Poetry and Meaning" demonstrate the Modernist preoccupation with meaning?
