In many ways Lawrence's poem is a perfect place to begin, but in all of the poetry for this week, try to go beyond the literal and explore the associations of the poetry, the resonances of words, the themes that seem to drive the poets, and the persuasive and musical language. First, "Piano:" The poem is passionate, evocative and musical.  We are tempted to imagine that it is a spontaneous outpouring of Lawrence's emotion.  When one examines the revisions of the poem, however, it becomes clear that we are dealing with an artefact: something, planned and created consciously with particular effects in mind.  This is a lyric poem, intense, compressed, personal, and musical.  The first person narrator takes us into his experience and makes us participate in the sounds of the music and the sensation of remembering, and the emotion attached to those memories. The effects of the poem are created self-consciously, from the onomatopoeic sounds of  "booming" and "tingling" bass and treble strings to the apparently spontaneous memories that come flooding back. (Try saying "boom" and "tingle" aloud to experience the bass/treble distinction that is inherent in the words themselves.  Better yet, get two or three others to say them with you.) Click on the icon to the left to listen to a reading of the poem or read it aloud for yourself and consider what kind of effects are achieved. We might look initially at particular aspects of poetry. The poem here is a reexamined experience or feeling, triggered by a particular event (what we might call a "sensory trigger"): the piano recital Lawrence describes in the opening line, "softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me."  The "s" alliteration in the first line lulls us with its sibilant shushing noise and prepares us for the leap into childhood.  For it is a matter of moments only before the piano recital is replaced by memory, of Sunday evenings, a mother missed, and childhood days long gone. The analepsis into the past is not without its burden or "betrayal."  The memories evoked are painful to bear not because they were unpleasant; on the contrary, it is presumably because the narrator compares his childhood memories with his adult experiences.  It is the "now" experience that makes the narrator "weep like a child for the past." The journey back in time is dramatic, sweeping.  That dynamic movement is reflected powerfully in the poem´s use of enjambement.  The lack of end-punctuation sweeping us irresistibly back to reluctant memories "down the vista of years" in line after line. The literal reading of the poem reveals a simple memory trigger.  The narrator hears the sound of a piano and makes certain associations in his mind.  Where the poem has power and impact is in the resonance of those associations with our own.  He is remembering childhood (and associating it with innocence, security, warmth), then returning to adulthood which seems polarized, harsh, unfriendly and utterly bereft of his fond childhood memories.  What are the findings of the poem?  What are its concerns?  How would you describe the tone of the poem? -- Isolate lines or phrases that help you to lock in the feeling or tone. Compare this poem to Lawrence's "Discord in Childhood," and the graphic pictorial (or sensory) representation of childhood insecurities and impressions.  Is it safe to assume Lawrence is a biographical writer?  Does it render the poetry private and inaccessible if this is an account from his childhood, or is the childhood anxiety a universal truth in which we may all participate?  If the experience is Lawrence´s, how are we able to share it, or take meaning from it? Then take a look at Lawrence´s "Snake," here too (click here for audio), there are two voices, the voice of the adult man (conditioned by society) and the voice of primal awe that admires the snake.  Why does Lawrence allow the social voice to win out in his poem, and what does it tell us about manhood, or adulthood, or indeed, about society? Next take a look at Stafford´s "Traveling through the Dark" (589).  Once again, there is a conflict going on between a social and an instinctive response.  Finding a deer dead and with a live unborn fawn, the man (who seems to have more intimacy with his car -- the inorganic -- than with the animal -- organic -- which confronts him), is held to a point of decision where nature waits with baited breath, and the world seems to hang in the balance before he decides to toss the deer carcass (and the never to be born fawn) into the canyon.  What is the moral decision?  Does the man do the right thing? Finally, before we move to our next poem, and a discussion about Hardy´s Ruined Maid and Meter, take a look at Rich´s "Aunt Jennifer´s Tigers," where an old woman´s embroidery tells the stark tale of her life -- and reveals what?