Link to a photo and brief biography of  Taban Lo Liyong

1.  Is race at issue in Liyong's poem?  Consider the ways in which he alludes to Caliban and Prospero.  Also note the figures in the last stanza on p. 41, all of whom are white Europeans except Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali).
2.  Based upon the opening lines of the poem, what is Taban Lo Liyong's attitude toward Shakespeare?  How does that attitude help to define his own poetics?
3.  On pp. 45-46, Liyong questions the idea that anyone can act as a free individual, but he determines to try.  How--if at all--does his threefold doctrine of defiance (p. 46) affect your reading of The Tempest?
4.  How does Liyong's emphasis on the flesh and on the power of sexuality compare with Shakespeare's sense of that pwer in The Tempest?
5.  Is Shakespeare a stripper of the sort defined on p. 49?  How so or how not so?
6.  Compare the conclusion of the poem (pp. 50-51) with Gonzalo's utopian vision (The Tempest II.i.152-183) and with Prospero's evocation of human and artistic mortality (The Tempest IV.i.146-163).  Are they related?

Tuesday, March 30, 1999
Study Questions on Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage"

Please see the brief introduction to Hayden on p. 851 in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

1.  Note the interweaving of catalogues (especially names of slave ships), narrative (especially narratives quoted from sea-travelers' logs and from court transcripts), song, and pure lyric meditation.  What is the effect of the combination of these different kinds of discourse?  Who speaks / sings at various points?

2.  In lines 32-33, the writer of the journal entry calls the sharks that follow the ship "our grinning / tutelary gods."  What does this mean?  How does such an idea work to help define the character who writes these lines and / or the themes of Hayden's poem?

3.  Analyze the revision of Ariel's song at lines 17-19 and 107-109.  How do the two revisions differ?  Why the two different re-wordings?

4.  Are the passages noted above the only allusions to The Tempest, or do you find other passages related to Shakespeare's text?

5.  What is camposant?  What is a compass rose?  What does the speaker mean in line 3: "horror the corposant and compass rose"?

6.  Comment on lines 92-100.  How do these lines function in the poem?  How (if at all) do they comment on The Tempest?

7.  Follow this link to a reproduction of J. M. W. Turner's renowned painting The Slave Ship (painted 1840; housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).  How does the effect of the painting compare with that of the Hayden's poem?