Lucas Palliser
Honors English III, 2nd Hour
January 23, 2012
Illuminated Poetry Self-Analysis
Illuminating William Wordsworth's “The Tables Turned” was an enjoyable experience. Although I did not choose to recite this poem, I was very much interested in it. As I read the poem, various images popped into my head, which was why I thought it would be perfect to illuminate. I believed that adding a visual aspect to the poem would make it flourish, and now that I have put together the Photo Story, I can honestly say that it did. But before I illuminated “The Tables Turned”, I had to decipher the text in order to understand some key elements within it.
The main message that the poem is trying to convey is quite a simple concept, one that also defies our society today. The poem is trying to tell the reader to put aside a man-made education, such as science and art, and let nature be the teacher. If I were to pick out one line from the poem that I think is of the most importance, I would pick, “Let nature be your teacher”. Within the poem, education is described as dull and endless, while nature is glorified. Within my illumination, I tried my best to take color out of all the images that had to do with man, and make the images of nature burst with color. I believe that this radical contrast was essential to my illumination, because the poem is all about the beauty of nature, and is being critical of what man has to teach.
“The Tables Turned” has a theme that is very true, given some thought. Nature is the best teacher, not the professor one traditionally learns from. This does make a lot of sense in reality, considering man has survived many thousands of years, most of them nature was the only teacher around. In the poem, “Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things” perfectly supports this theme, saying that we constantly interrupt nature, when instead we should learn from it in a much more passive manner. In my illumination, I included numerous visuals of nature, such as birds, mountains, and forests, to show just how diverse nature is. Humans could learn a lot from nature, urges the poem, so by varying each image, I think one will see that nature can teach us many various lessons.
The tone of “The Tables Turned” is a bit more complex, in my opinion. Right off the beginning, the tone seems very energetic, peppy. Beginning with, “Up! Up!”, the poem sounds like a child waking up for some exciting day. But at the same time, the tone is certainly critical towards books and that sort of education. “Enough of Science and of Art” and “Books!’tis a dull and endless strife” represent this critical tone, as if the speaker has had some terrible experience in school. In fact, the speaker reminds me of some mythological creature, perhaps an elf, in the way he glorifies nature over books.
After I assembled my rough illumination, encompassing the essence of my poem, much work still had to be done. In lines that I thought held great significance within the poem, I enlarged the font and found very specific pictures to represent them as vividly as possible. Such as “Let Nature be your teacher”, I chose a picture that clearly represented nature, and made the font just a bit larger to signify its meaning. Some pictures were still a hassle to work with, trying to find a font color that would easily stand out from the picture. Once I had sorted out the various pictures and fonts, finding some music to go along with my poem was actually quite simple. I have experience with using Photo Story, and the music generator within the program is not inferior, by any means. I just decided to choose a song that I have had on my computer for what seems like forever, a song that sounds like nature at its best. Once I showed my illumination to my parents, they both agreed that the song was very fitting for the poem, and I found their input to be quite useful. If one is unsure of some aspect of their Photo Story, I do recommend that they ask a friend or family member.
When I finished my illumination of William Wordsworth's “The Tables Turned”, my parents actually called me a computer genius. Making a Photo Story is not a harsh challenge however, and I would recommend one to give it a try. If they were to illuminate a poem, as did I, understanding the poem is really the key to creating the illumination. Analyzing some aspects of the poem, such as the theme, message, and tone, gives one a basis to branch out from. Although it may appear challenging, creating the Photo Story itself is very easy, following the instructions given. Just make sure to find pictures and music that truly represents the poem and creating your Photo Story will not be a challenge by any means.