Genius and Madness in Christopher Smart’s My Cat Jeoffry
A series of verses commencing with the word “for”, Christopher Smart’s “My Cat Jeoffry” is surprisingly modernistic and intriguing. Written while Smart was confined in a mental asylum for incessant praying, the aphoristic poem praises the cat Jeoffry, a faithful servant to God. Unrestricted by rigid poetic structures, “My Cat Jeoffry” is nevertheless organized and coherent, ablaze with a current of religious fervour. It is impossible to know if the poem was inspired by genius or by madness, but it is infused with sanity and truth. While the poem is about a cat’s devotion to God through its daily actions, Smart’s “My Cat Jeoffry” also serves as a lesson to humankind.
Imbued with a sense of humour and light-heartedness, the poem is a song of praise at the transparent level. Listing the cat Jeoffry’s virtues one by one, Smart explains how the feline worships God in his own way. The repetition on the word “for” connotes the ritualized actions of Jeoffry’s everyday life, and it also conveys a sense that Jeoffry’s actions should not be disputed. As there are no rhyming schemes or poetic devices such as enjambments, “My Cat Jeoffry” appears to be a spontaneous account of the cat’s actions.
The divine presence of God is inescapable, for phrases such as “the Living God” (line 2), “counteracts the Devil” (26), and “the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt” (35) are abundant. Moreover, the “sacred” number seven is emphasized; Smart mentions Jeoffry’s first divine action as “wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness” (4) and that “one mouse in seven escapes by [Jeoffry’s] dallying” (22). Harkening back to the Ten Commandments, Smart compile...
... middle of paper ...
...levels of meanings do not undermine one another, for they can exist simultaneously and separately. Smart intends to praise the innocent and faithful cat Jeoffry, but he also wishes to comment on the concept of the self and its relationship to God and to others. The characteristics of Jeoffry are ideal in the world of felines, and they can be applied to the human world as well. The poem leaves no doubt that service to God springs from everyday actions – although one does not truly know what Smart’s standpoint is regarding the devoted. With powerful imageries and witty diction, Smart’s “My Cat Jeoffry” sends a convincing message that one’s spiritual life need not be separate from one’s physical life.
Work Cited
Smart, Christopher, "My Cat Jeoffry," Jubilate Agno, 1939. The Norton Anthology of Literature. 7th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 2000. 1: 2840-2842.
Why I Left the Church” by Richard Garcia is a poem that explores the ongoing and conflicting relationship between a child’s fantasy and the Church. Although the majority of the text is told in present tense, readers are put through the lenses of a young boy who contemplates the legitimacy of the restricting and constricting nature of worship. It is a narrative that mixes a realist approach of storytelling with a fantasy twist that goes from literal metaphors to figurative metaphors in the description of why the narrator left the church. The poet presents the issue of childhood innocence and preset mindsets created by the Church using strong metaphors and imagery that appeal to all the senses.
Yet the Reverend also uses the word 'beautiful' and appreciates the wonders of the natural world. Certainly, a sense of something beyond the pragmatic permeates Maclean?s story. This ?something? is incarnated in Paul, who obviously does not conform to a narrowly-defined description of a ?good Christian.? He is a rabblerouser adrift in the world, a sophisticated ladies? man and gambler who squanders what is seemingly ample journalistic talent. Paul, however, is also effortlessly artistic, able to break free of his father?s strict fishing instructions to create his own poetry with a rod. Surely, something holy must reside in the sheer, effortless beaut...
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001’s main purpose was to enhance the education system and hold schools accountable in its attempt to bring equality in the fight against poverty for poor and minority groups. Once this Act was signed into law the American public expected an overhaul of the education system with only good outcomes. The public assumed our children would be receiving the best education available and the economic issues that plagued schools would no longer be a problem. In the beginning of its implementation No Child Left Behind was expected to bring America up to standards with other nations, this was something that America has struggled to do for many years. Our children were now being put first according to Act and the public and many political figures were ecstatic over the possibilities.
Overall, it expresses the love and affection of Collin about this poem. This poem is basically looked at, or listened to, and the rodent tested. Such imagery used in poem supports the central ideas of Collin in poem, that the reading poetry must be, just like a good exploration, a discovery act. The poem has a very conversational effect and scholastic feel in it. First stanza directly linked to the second stanza while the third and fourth stanza of this poem has distinct thoughts in them. Similarly, the six stanzas come in a follow-up way but the mood actually changed in the last two stanzas of the poem. In short, Collin has written this poem in a very special and artistic way which really changes other’s minds about how to better understand a poem by knowing its actual meaning.
...nity of all living things, including himself. The harsh reaction of organized religion to this idea is illustrated in the second "Little Boy Lost," in which the youth is actually burned for his rebellious thinking. The first set of poems tells of the boy's lack of success in a religious system in that did not seem to really care about the boy, and left him floundering. It then describes his introduction to God in the forest, who brought him back to his mother, the earth, which showed him proper reverence of God through nature, not priestly education. The second poem captures organized religion's harsh reaction to this unorthodox and rebellious thinking, and destroys the boy for trying to reach outside of the accepted normal teachings. Together, the poems show an evolution from Blake's dissatisfaction with organized religion to an outright indictment of its practices.
While William Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Innocence was written before the French Revolution and Blake’s “Holy Thursday” from Songs of Experience was written after, creating obvious differences in formal structure; these poems are also uniquely intertwined by telling the same story of children arriving to church on Holy Thursday. However, each gives a different perspective that plays off each other as well the idea of innocence and experience. The idea that innocence is simply a veil that we are not only aware of but use to mask the horrors of the world until we gain enough experience to know that it is better to see the world for simply what it is.
It is clear that Bishop’s “The Unbeliever” is heavily influenced by her poetic idol Moore because it contains elements are inconsistent with Bishop’s work as a whole. History shows that Elizabeth Bishop was not a strict modernist poet, yet in this sample of her early work you can see her imploring strategies more consistent with Moore’s own unique style. The habit of following a strict structure and the habit of carefully sculpting her poems are two of Moore’s distinctive mannerisms. While the shape of “The Unbeliever” does serve a specific purpose, it is interesting to note that this is an uncommon tactic for Bishop. Not only does Moore heavily influence Bishop’s work “The Unbeliever”, but it is clear that the poem is also specifically impacted by Moore’s poem “The Mind is an Enchanting Thing”. Beyond following a strict rigid structure and rhyme scheme, Elizabeth Bishop goes one step further and borrows an image from Moore’s poem. While it could be mere coincidence that both poems use the image of a bird, the way that Bishop writes the gull to “blindly [seat] himself astride” (Bishop, 24), represents a direct allusion to the way Moore’s kiwi walks along the ground as if it was “blind” (Moore, 124).
New Revised Standard Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1989. Print. The. Russell, Eddie.
Holy Bible: Contemporary English Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1995. Print. (BS195 .C66 1995)
Yin, R 2003. Case Study Research: Design and Methods (third edition), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
The image of the cat clawing at the reeds stands out the most. A person reading this poem can envision the cat clawing the reeds and screaming as the young boys hold it under the water bringing the cat closer and closer to death with each passing moment. The purpose that the young girl tries to explain is that she understands the way young boys are and that they do not love anything.
Cohen et al. (2010) wrote that assessment can be a major contributor to raising standards in schools in terms of teaching, learning and student achievement. In addition, if assessment is properly handled with consistency, reliability, validity and rigour, it can have a possitive effect on learning and can improve students' own understanding of how can they learn more effectively and improve.
Hughes’ systematic hawk makes Doty’s golden retrieval seem very much lost and distracted as each day passes. The hawk would like nothing more than to fly alone and dictate the universe, whereas the dog simply travels with his master as nothing more than a companion. The hawk recognizes the world around him with a callous superciliousness and deliberate approach for the future while the dog lives in the present and concentrates on the small, but valuable things in life. Both animals live their lives differently and individually as humans do. The utilization of an animal’s point of view is accomplished completely in both poems as the poets connect the animals’ thought processes to that of the human race.
Educational accountability in the United States has a great impact on public school assessment practices. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on schools to demonstrate academic progress; this pressure is mainly in the form of standardized testing. Currently the assessment practices that are used are traditional and non-authentic forms of assessment that reveal only if a student can recognize or recall what they have learned. In an effort to redefine learning in our schools, emphasis needs to be placed on authentic educational assessments and standardized testing to improve student performance. An assessment should reflect real world applications of how knowledge and understanding are used. Assessments based on situations that are relevant to students' own experiences can motivate them to give their best performance.
In spite of the importance of assessment in education, few teachers receive proper training on how to design or analyze assessments. Due to this, when teachers are not provided with suitable assessments from their textbooks or instructional resources, teachers construct their own in an unsystematic manner. They create questions and essay prompts comparable to the ones that their teachers used, and they treat them as evaluations to administer when instructional activities are completed predominantly for allocating students' grades. In order to use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments by making sure that they create sound assessments. To ensure that their assessments are sound they need include five basic indicators that can be used as steps to follow when creating assessments. The first of these indicators and the first step a teacher must take when creating a sound assessme...