TGI A Snow Day: Our Snow Day Class

See, I knew we’d be out because of snow today!

For those of you who are visiting the blog today, thank you for being dedicated and trading some of your free time to participate in class.

To get started, here are some terms I want you to learn:

Allusion - Unacknowledged quotations or citations from our cultural heritage such as religious texts, history, literature from America, Britain, and/or the rest of the world.. Authors assume that readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning to the new context.

Atmosphere or Mood - the emotional aura invoked by a work.

Tone - the author’s attitude toward his subject (what he’s writing about) or her reader.

Here’s a great site for literary terms:

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/glossary_a.htm

Here’s our text: Eavan Boland’s poem, “Atlantis - A Lost Sonnet”

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.
　
For today, to get things started on this site, here are some basic questions:

1.) How is it possible that the disappearance of Atlantis can be similar to the life of the person telling this poem, even though this person is living in contemporary, current day society?

2.) What is the author’s tone toward Atlantis?

3.) What is the author’s tone toward his or her so-called past life?

4.) Do you think the author appreciates a person who likes to read this kind of poem? In other words, is the author making fun of someone who would like this? What kind of reader is the author imagining as her reader?

5.) What emotions do you think the author is trying to raise?