David, very well said.
Tom, I'm flattered, but haven't "written" a lecture for twenty years. Just work with the text, heavily annotated, in a give-and-take discussion that takes us into the image patterns of static and dynamic (stones of varying value and connotation, for instance), robotic responses to pain, the possibility of "He" being Christ (as he walked His "wooden way")or a lost lover, uses of metaphor and simile, and, of course, whether the pain expressed is physical or emotional, and if the analogy of the two is apt. Even those damned dashes! And Caps!! And how they affect a reader's reaction. New ideas pop up each time I teach it--or it teaches me, as do the students. Get this. I'd taught Frost's "Stopping by Woods" so long I didn't think anything new could come up, but a student recently pointed out that "promises" is the only three-syllable word in the poem--carries the heaviest weight for the speaker. Duh.
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Ralph
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