#2 (Howe's themes)

In The Good Thief, Marie Howe employs a wide variety of themes. Perhaps the most common, because of its encompassing nature, is religion. In her poems, she both alludes to and directly mentions Christianity. A lamb is a central figure, representative of Jesus, the Lamb of God. Many poems have Scriptures directly mentioned underneath their title. Other titles directly reference significant Biblical figures, such as Mary, Issac, and Eve. I was concerned about this abundance of religious references at first, merely because I had never read so many in such a short collection before. I feared that the references could take away from her own talent of writing, but in fact they greatly enrich it. Although Biblical context can seem an overwhelmingly huge topic, Howe successfully breaks it down and directly and uses it in conjunction with her own writing. I applaud her work and think that it is a sign that she has mastered the craft that she can tackle subjects that others would avoid. This is also present in some of the other themes, when she mentions family relations that can sometimes be glossed over, such as an abusive father and an invisible mother. Overall, it is Howe's mastery of a wide variety of complex themes that allow her work in The Good Thief to be so successful.

#1 (couplets)

I was interested in learning more about the variety of couplets that exist. Our stanza packet really only discussed the heroic couplet. I decided to pick the couplet as the form to study more because it seemed like a basic form that could be appended to others. As such, knowledge of this form is perhaps the most crucial. Below is more detail on some varieties of couplets, and all credit is due to this website: http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/couplet.html Note that the meter is really the distinguishing factor between the couplet types, and that they are used for various purposes.


Short Couplet- iambic or trochaic tetrameter. From Maxine Kumin's "Morning Swim"

Into my empty head there come
a cotton beach, a dock wherefrom

I set out, oily and nude
through mist in oily solitude.

Split Couplet- the first line in iambic pentameter, the second in iambic dimeter. From Richard Steere's "On a Sea-Storm Nigh the Coast"

The weighty seas are rowled from the deeps
In mighty heaps,
And from the rocks' foundations do arise
To kiss the skies.

Heroic Couplet- two lines of iambic pentameter, also the last two lines of the English sonnet. From Richard Steere's "On a Sea-Storm Nigh the Coast"

Wave after wave in hills each other crowds,
As if the deeps resolved to storm the clouds.

Alexandrine Couplet- an alexandrine is a line of iambic hexameter, so an alexandrine couplet is two rhymed lines of such. These often come at the end of stanzas or poems and, in these cases, are also called codas.

Qasida- an Arabic form consisting of any number of lines all rhyming on the same rhyme.