The poem
We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship, although it meant the end of travel. Although it stood stock-still like cloudy rock and all the sea were moving marble. We'd rather have the iceberg than the ship; we'd rather own this breathing plain of snow though the ship's sails were laid upon the sea as the snow lies undissolved upon the water. O solemn, floating field, are you aware an iceberg takes repose with you, and when it wakes may pasture on your snows?
This is a scene a sailor'd give his eyes for. The ship's ignored. The iceberg rises and sinks again; its glassy pinnacles correct elliptics in the sky. This is a scene where he who treads the boards is artlessly rhetorical. The curtain is light enough to rise on finest ropes that airy twists of snow provide. The wits of these white peaks spar with the sun. Its weight the iceberg dares upon a shifting stage and stands and stares.
The iceberg cuts its facets from within. Like jewelry from a grave it saves itself perpetually and adorns only itself, perhaps the snows which so surprise us lying on the sea. Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off where waves give in to one another's waves and clouds run in a warmer sky. Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.
This poem was on the 2006 AP LIterature and Compostiion exam. IT SUCKS!!!!!!!
same, i had it in canada. i think it was easier than the stupid one on dying love by dryden
Yup, that was crap. What the heck was with the first question, "what does although mean?" GRRRRRR!
this was one of the worst poems i have EVER read....damn College Board...who cares about a freaking iceberg?!
ok those last comments were hilarious...everyone is so right...that first question what the crap?!?! and yes no one cares about icebergs....but its gr8 that everyone hated this poem. Cheers to all good luck on other exams...
I think some legal and moral intervention is in order. As Ms. Bishop was on crack at the time of writing her poem, we have an obligation as AP Victims to inform both the authorities and her parents as to her deviant behavior. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Bishop, Your daughter was so high while writing her poem "The Imaginary Iceberg" that she failed to recognize the iceberg as real, and not simply one of her hallucinations.…
Read the whole commentI think some legal and moral intervention is in order. As Ms. Bishop was on crack at the time of writing her poem, we have an obligation as AP Victims to inform both the authorities and her parents as to her deviant behavior.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Bishop,
Your daughter was so high while writing her poem "The Imaginary Iceberg" that she failed to recognize the iceberg as real, and not simply one of her hallucinations. The dear little ship she spoke of collided with said iceberg in 1912, killing thousands. Maybe it's her method of coping with loss, but I strongly suggest you remind her of the ship's current home at the bottom of the ocean, and also that her iceberg was not quite as imaginary as she had thought.
Sincerely,
- A victim of your daughter's hallucinations.
P.S. Please, also, tell Elizabeth that her iceberg was simply a chunk of ice and has long since melted. A cow probably quenched its thirst with a chunk of her iceberg, and the rest of it likely became snow cones, which were then excreted by little children into swimming pools and honey buckets. Essentially, her iceberg is now a river of sewage.
It never occurred to me that College Board would recycle poems, what with the vastness of 'great poetry'.
On a tangent, what was the first poem in the 2009 AP Lit and Composition test called? The one about a girl working at a drive-in diner during the summer.
I'm an idiot who makes illiterate, worthless comments about poetry that I fail to understand because of my overwhelming narcissism and vacuity. Plus, I think I'm so funny and witty even though I have absolutely nothing meaningful or pointed to say, and instead utter things like "She was on crack" and "omggg it suckzz!11!!"