Creeley

Reading Creeley, I feel Steiny frustrations, which I find exciting and extremely interesting.

Two of my favorite poem that I read this week of Creeley’s are “I Know A Man” and “The Language.”

It is strange that my reading of either of these poems did not result in a new perspective on something of an “ah-ha” moment. I did not even come away with clear visions to pair with the poem’s setting.

But, what is amazing, is that, I felt much.

In I Know a Man, I feel the angst and lightheartedness of a late night conversation a friend. When the world is dark and quiet and you have that one friend that says “why don’t we drive to the beach right now and skip school tomorrow?” And you look at them like “no, just drive.” The feelings that Creeley pens in this poem are thick and rich and seemingly almost tangible. Having a feeling of angst while in a car, when your thoughts are just as the things that are revealing themselves and then immediately becoming smaller in your rear view mirror correlates so well.

In The Language, well…. I am not quite sure why it was one of my favorites. I think the mysterious feeling that was not your expected feeling from a poem that has “love” in it. How would someone go about locating “I love you”? “Between teeth and eyes”? Does or does love not originate from the teeth and eyes or both? But one line in The Language that I can concur completely is this: “Words say everything.”

I also must add that i enjoyed reading historical biographies of Mr. Creeley to find that he is from the east coast and has ties to North Carolina where my fiance and I will be honeymooning at this summer! How fun!

Adrienne Rich- Bomb Testing

This is my very first time reading Adrienne Rich but I am happy to say that this will not be my last. 🙂

In conclusion, my question, or my main question rather is [[what does a bomb symbolize]]?

At first,just after my first read through, I perceived the dessert literally as the setting of the poem. I understood that two people seemed to be falling out of love because of how unfamiliar the dessert was to them. What they gave up, “chocolate-filled Jewish cookies, the language of love-letters, of suicide notes…”, seemed to begin to drive a wedge between the couple. While a lack of prior sentiments seems to take a toll on the couple, the separating factor seems to be that, in light of the different context, each person sees the other person differently. And not in a positive light.

After reading a couple of more time… my concluding question arose…..WAIT HOW ELSE ARE BOMBS PERCEIVED?

In light of the title Trying to Talk with a Man, what else can bombs mean? I

//think//

now… is that “bombs” is symbolic for baggage, and not baggage in the negative sense. Baggage as in the weight of personality differences. Personality differences often seem to serve as hurtles to loving others. Perhaps Rich desired to convey that talking with a man, or trying, is like testing bombs… as she and man exchange personality differences.

Furthermore, it seems that in this poem reveals that the woman in the poem(or man maybe, not specified) feels as if she is about to erupt. Later in this poem we see that her potiential eruption is due to the fact that she feels like she has lost the “man”, his personality, his personhood, to all that he as invested himself in. She is not an item on his list of things to tend to.

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Perhaps Rich is alluding to divorce. From A Survivor seems to more plainly point to divorce. It could even be said that the content of From a Survivor sums up the theme of Trying to Talk with a Man.

Langhston Hughes

Langhston Hughes! 😀

Langhston Hughes has long been one of the poets I have most enjoyed reading. The imagery he is able to muster in only a few lines is amazing. Hughes packs complex meaning into three poems so concise in form.

I loved reading Three Songs About Lynching. Something that I find interesting about these three poems is that Langhston seems to use a different perspective in each poem, or song.  In the beginning of Silhouette he seems to be himself scolding the “southern gentle lady” about taking pride in the hanging of a black man. He tells the southern lady to be good… suggesting that swooning at the hanging of a black man is {not} good. In Flight, He takes the voice of the one being chased down because of rape. In Lynching Song, he takes on the voice of a white man.

I would be interested to inquire with Mr. Hughes about why he chose to  the be these thee different voices.

An Exploitation of Racism

Claude McKay’s The Negro’s Tragedy stands out to me.

This was the first time I have read McKay and I feel like I have gained, certainly not understanding, but a little more insight into the black race’s burden.

McKay describing “the Negros’s tragedy” as a binding and heavy chain, the way no white person can understand, is thought-provoking, yet the most interesting section is one that talks about how though some seek to “set things right” he laughs at them and prays.

This poem, sadly, portrays racism during McKay’s life. Perhaps the most sad thing, though, is that one hundred years later, we can say the same about “the Negro’s tragedy”, its burden and its undeniable existence.

With this definition of racism on my mind, I reflect: racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.(paraphrase: racism is to believe something about someone simply based on their skin color and we usually see this in the form of one race thinking they are either better or worse than another based on their difference in skin color)

Claude McKay seems to be getting at the true nature of racism as he writes this poetic work. It seems to not merely be a concept that passing laws of equality could demolish or even address.  The way he laughs at those who seek to do away with the white man’s ignorance of the black man depicts this view.

Racism cannot be viewed as actions that can be outlawed, but a belief system that must be confronted with a moral standard that speaks to the way we value all people as people.

Yet, if it was that simple, McKay’s work would not hold relevance 100 years after it was written, would it?

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Not to speak to a specific work of Hughes, however, while reading McKay, I was reminded of Hughes writing.

Spring and All(or winter leading up to Spring?)

William Carlos William’s poem that I most enjoyed from this week’s reading was Spring and All. In the beginning, being only under the impression of a title that mentioned “spring,” I was not sure what to do with “contagious hospital.” Reading on, I found that this poem left me feeling something of….. vacancy maybe? “…brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen…” “…small trees / with dead brown leaves under them / lifeless vines…” Even after reading about the stiff curled carrot leaf, although Williams made no cold of lifeless reference to it, thought of how a leaf that is vibrant in color in the fall is curl and withered in the winter.

Perhaps William’s last stanza in comparison and relation to the rest of the poem gives a better understanding on what he sees as “Spring.” He mentions the “stark dignity of entrance”and “change” and “begin to awaken.” This stanza stops the feeling of vacancy and gives a feeling of anticipation.

After a poem, though short, having such a seemingly slow progression, I did not see the spring coming. I almost thought that Williams was playing a Steinish trick on me by calling the poem Spring and All and then writing about vacancy and lifelessness.Which was surprising compared to the other works of Williams I read.

One poem I would compare “Spring and All” to “Wasteland.” I feel like this comparison will seem farfetched for many, however, the slow and slightly off throwing progression of Spring and All gave me a similar feeling to the feeling I had when reading the Wasteland by Elliot. Not to such an extreme but similar.

Dying House or Jesus or Judas or Something Else

Elliot’s Modern Tendencies in Poetry can be applied to Gerontion.

 

Classmates, maybe this will help you; I paraphrased Elliot’s Modern Tendencies in Poetry.

 

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Poetry is a popular theme of extension lectures. People do not understand how or to what extent they are related to poetry. They also do not understand what “good” poetry is. Whether poetry is “good” or not depends on who is reading it and their preferences. What is “good” poetry anyways?

What is good poetry can be answerer by starting with the view that [poetry is a science]. This view regards poetry as serious business. Whether something is new depends on what is in the past. The poet and the scientist have parallel  training and equipment in the way that they each know only what has been done before. It is equally as important for poets to refer to history as it is for poets to review past poetry. Poets become more like previous poets as they go because they discover how to write a poem with meaning to them and meaning to others also. As a scientist merges with is work, so does a poet. Great poets are not only similar but seem to act members of the same unit. A mature poet sees the purpose in his work and is trained to convey that purpose. Observing the past helps give feelings their permanent intensity.

I have been leading up to this: just as whether there is any progress in science is questionable, so it is in poetry. Poets are the ones who appreciate poetry the most. The more recent a poet, the more experience, history and memory they have. I love Ezra Pound. The attitude of the modern poet should be analogous.

The two voices of poetry are emotional and unemotional.

Art has a social and individual use. This work, in its entirety, is simply a suggestion against the future.

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I am not so sure how to interpret this Gerontion, from the references to Christ, to Judas to an old man in his dying house?

 

However, Elliot’s view of how past poets inform and improve “good” poetry of today. Elliot references many past poets and references history. He not only references them but quotes some of their language. As far as history goes, he uses European history and Biblical history.

 

Again, not sure how to piece it all together, but I liked it. Can I like something I am unsure of? I hope so.

 

 

Finding Life, Thinking Death

Reading T. S. Elliot is like music to my ears after reading Gertrude Stein. It seems that T. S. Elliot’s work flows in a way that sets it apart from Stein’s angst-invoking poetry.

Like Emily Dickinson crafted her words around the essence of death, so does Elliot in his Journey of the Magi.

He stars of by describing the most cold journey. He calls the season “the very dead of winter.” Elliot communicates feelings of neediness, regret and hostility in his first stanza. In the next stanza he changes the scene with signs of new life and a new perspective. He paints the picture of a meadow with running water, vegetation you can smell and wildlife. He follows this introduction of life with the discover of a “satisfactory” place. After finding what they were looking for they seem to have returned to their homes changed. Their perspective on their homes and possessions is different now that they have discovered what they are looking for.

Because I understand this poem to be about the wise men’s journey to see Christ newly born, I do not really understand the contrast between death and life. It seems to be a time where only life could be on one’s mind.

Perhaps Elliot is drawing attention to the perspective shift of a person’s view of the world after they the meet King Jesus for the first time? I am also lost when the wise men in the poem speak of their own deaths. They say “There was a birth, certainly” and then speak here and there of whether they came for death and then speak of their returns.

All in all, I loved reading Elliot as a peot much more than Stein.

Blooming Passion

 In Queen Anne’s Lace, a poem by William Carlos Williams, Williams crafts language to compare the essence of a flower to the tension of passion and purity felt between a man and a woman. When Williams says “Her body is not so white as anemone petals nor so smooth — not so remote…” he is saying that while she is something to marvel at, she is not so simply described as anemone flowers. Her “whiteness” cannot be measured. The color white seems to symbolize purity and the purple “blemish” seems represent a flaw in purity. I love this poem for the imagery and the way it paints a picture so delicate and pure as the white flower pictured above while simultaneously causing it’s reader to feel the rise of passion that the girl feels as she is overcome with desire. “A pious wish to whiteness gone over…” could be an after thought to the purity she feels she has lost after allowing herself to be overcome with passion. The best part of the poem was where Williams describes the flowers on her body blossoming under his every touch. Also, I find it extremely interesting that Williams describes the woman’s desires as white as she is obviously sexually aware right before he calls her desire to be pure “gone.” These last lines best describe the tension between passion and purity because of how alive the woman’s desire towards passion must be within her. This desire for passion seems to have overshadowed her desire for purity. The purple tainting from the man’s touch seems to have been worth bargaining for to her.

Why Queen Anne’s Lace? Are not most flowers made of petals of a unified color with one “blemish” in the middle?

 

 

Poetical Figures as Rhetorical Devices

Gertrude Stein wrote Patriarchal Poetry in the early twentieth century. Stein’s use of rhetoric is evident and strong throughout this work. She flexes her ability to use poetical figures as rhetorical devices. This is also true for Elisa Gabbers in her work Walks Are Useless II, yet, in a very different way.

 

The significance of Gertrude Stein presenting a message as a women’s rights supporter and active lesbian woman during the early twentieth century cannot be ignored, however, I will present thoughts on the choice of rhetorical tools used in Gertrude Stein’s Patriarchal Poetry and Gabbert’s Walks Are Useless II. The tools I will recognize from the work of Stein and Gabbert are form and repetition. Their rhetoric is dependent on these poetic figures.

 

The first and most obvious poetic figure used as a rhetorical device in any poem is form. Stein’s form of Patriarchal Poetry is amazingly different than Gabbert’s work. Because the form of a poem is noticed before a poem is read, the form can be viewed as the “first impression” of a poetic work.

 

The second poetic figure used as a rhetorical device is repetition. Stein uses repetition with minimal punctuation. I was feeling a constant and, almost restless feel. Stein differs widely from Gabbert here because Gabbert does not repeat herself once in her work Walks Are Useless II.

 

I did not find Stein’s Patriarchal Poetry enjoyable to read. I found the repetition, length and lack of punctuation to be exhausting. The nonrepetitive, concise style that Gabbert presents is not only better for rhetorical purposes, but a more fun and understood read for myself.