Poem 5
To watch my YouTube video on Brooks and Weiss for Poem 5, please click on this link:
Another assignment choice, represented by the Prado poem, is a poem that tells a story that is intended to lead to a larger truth. The final choice, represented by the Ramanujan poem, is a meditative poem (which may include fragments of stories as examples) that reaches some sort of truth (or realization that the truth is out of reach).
SOME IDEAS FOR DOING THE 2 KINDS OF "MEDITATION" TOPIC
1) keep everything that's good and relevant
2) cross out all the crap and the irrelevant
3) even in the good stuff, improve the quality of language by making tropes and images more vivid
4) put the good and relevant stuff in a sequence that makes sense
5) find the best lines or sentence to end the poem with an achievement of understanding or the understanding of the inability to understand.
This could take a while. Be patient.
Examples of possible topics:
The nature of individual identity (a la Ramanujan)
The meaning of death for the living (a la Prado).
The meaning of death for the dying.
The transience of existence vs. the desire for permanence (a la Ashbery)
The nature of romantic love vs. lust vs. friendship (But even if it's in the title, don't use the word love in the poem!!! Do it all through images and tropes. And don't make it a love poem to a significant other; this is a philosophical exploration of love through tropes and images, not a love poem.)
The political, social, economic, or psychological, or or philosophical meaning(s) of some cultural phenomenon (This is not an opportunity to praise or celebrate the phenomenon but to analyze its meaning(s). By cultural phenomenon, I mean it could be a kind of movie or music or art or internet culture practice or form(s) of face-to-face communication or communal religious or sport experience.
The meaning of the social construction of gender or race or class. (This is an opportunity to explore without stating an ideological position or commitment. First you need to ask questions and temporarily suspend, for example, political anger at injustice, so that you can understand particulars. After finishing the poem, go back to your anger, so that you can use it to fight injustice.)
Adelia Prado, “Successive Deaths”
The poet really did experience the deaths mentioned in the poem. Stylistically, Prado uses a conversational tone, no stanza/strophe breaks, and enjambment that emphasizes strong words at the end of a line. This is an example of a narrative poem that is intended to lead to a larger truth. There is a narrative progression (or, to cite the title, “succession”) in three stages from the naming of one death and its meaning for her to another and then to the third:
· Quick consolation for her sister’s death
· Slower consolation for her mother’s death
· No consolation for her father’s death
After the narrative is complete, the poet reaches the larger truth (which is a summation and not a narrative element): She lives now in her memory, as an attempt to recover the 3 people she has lost, rather than in the actual present, and the biblical allusion to the “burning bush” forcefully presents the intensity of this experience.
But what makes the narrative and the progress toward the larger truth work—poetically? Both images and tropes do this. For example, consider the imagery of particular, meaningful domestic objects and elements of the setting, as in the elements of consolation for her sister’s death: “There was a new dress/ and a thicket in the back yard where I could exist.” We should also recognize that the “breasts” (first in line 6 and returning 3 lines from the end) are an important trope for different stages in life that reflect the movement from slower consolation to being inconsolable. The girl whose breasts are just starting to grow can be distracted by her “newfound uneasiness,” but the woman whose breasts are fully developed has experienced three deaths and cannot enjoy the present as she is obsessed with remembering the past. (“Newfound uneasiness” is an example of Prado using abstraction sparingly but very precisely. I have encouraged you in your poems not to use abstraction and generalization much, but if you do, try to find fresh and precise combinations of words the way Prado is here.) The details of the past such as how the father was “pursing his lips” and how “his body curled/ in his last sleep” may be very ordinary, but the wistful tone makes the reader perceived how they are cherished.
A.K. Ramanujan, “Lines”
Like Prado, Ramanujan has no stanza or strophe breaks here, though he does in many other poems, and his enjambments can be surprising. That is apt, because the poem is about being surprised. Ramanujan’s free verse lines tend to be slightly shorter than Prado’s. Sometimes, the shortest lines (“just like you”; “across your chest”) have a powerful impact because of their difference from the previous few lines.
The title of the poem is very suggestive; it can be “lines” of a portrait, given the theme of identity, or lines in a face that indicate wear and tear, or even lines of a poem about identity. Ramanujan’s is a meditative poem rather than a narrative poem leading to a final meditation because, unlike Prado’s, it is not built on a story line but gives concrete examples (you might say, fragments that could be parts of stories) that lead him either to a larger understanding or a deeper mystery, depending on how you interpret the poem.
Notice how the speaker begins with a question to show perplexity about identity. Though the lines about the wife asking about her husband’s haircut seems to throw off the main focus, since it is possible that the actual husband and not a doppelganger looks strange with a new haircut, all the other examples in the poem relate directly to the doppelganger effect: the idea that two people who are not related seem to look exactly alike, and in this case, the speaker himself sees his doubles—both men and women. What comes out of this meditation on the perception (not the actuality) of identity is the strangeness or uncanniness of what the speaker sees: it’s “me,” but it’s not me. There is frequently one detail that is off, so it’s not only unsettling to find your double, but also to find that you aren’t really looking in a mirror—you can imagine that it’s you but you’ve changed in one small way, and you’re uncomfortable with the change: “Clones subtly gone wrong/ make you wrong, unmake your sense….” Sometimes, it’s not just the visual appearance, but a mannerism, such as the woman who “walks with a left-/ foot shuffle and turns around/ a quarter-circle when afraid/ just like you.”
This sense of unease is clinched by the tropes and images of physical discomfort at the end of the poem: “… and you feel/ sudden streaks of orange heat/ across your chest.” This synesthesia (mixing of senses) is so much more effective than just saying: “I feel anxious and afraid.” Once again, concrete imagery has a much more powerful effect than typical abstractions.
This is from Aliyah, with my reply afterward:
ReplyDeleteReading Gwendolyn Brooks poem made me understand what Professor Fink told me about poem 4. He said he rather have a shorter poem packed surrealism and imagery rather than a longer poem that drags on dangling to continuously incorporate the material. The poem was short and to the point. It used a wider spectrum of vocabulary and really made you feel what he was saying. Theodore Weiss’s poem reminds me of a short story rather than a poem. I felt as though i was reading a chapter in a book, and to fit the “style” of poetry the lines were cut in half and spaced out to resemble stanzas. With that being said it doesn’t mean i didn’t enjoy the poem, i did. It was very descriptive. I had to read it more than once to try and grasp a meaning.
- Aliyah Brown
Reply by TF: You know, you're right, Aliyah, that Gwendolyn Brooks includes some surrealism in this poem. I should've emphasized that in the video. Her poem is rather short, but if you think about the great poems of the poet she's praising, Langston Hughes was very concise, too. Think about "Harlem," the famous "dream deferred" poem. It's not long at all, but every word has power.
I understand why you consider Weiss's poem like a short story. But he would probably argue that there's a logic to his free-verse: for example, he may have had a similar number of accented syllables in each line, and he may have used caesura (pauses in the middle of lines) and enjambment to achieve particular effects.
Hi Professor Fink,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed learning about cultural allusion in today's class. I found Gwendolyn Brook's "Langston Hughes" to be a form of paying homage to Langston Hughes. In line with what you said about it being a poem of praise, I like how she used images and tropes to show praise to Langston Hughes because it demonstrated to powerful effect of showing and describing rather than telling. I also learned something new from her poem. The word "horticulture" stuck out to me because to sounds so distinctive and unique. I looked it up and the definition of horticulture is "the art or practice of garden cultivation and management".
Like you brought out during class, I found this line:
"Holds horticulture
In the eye of the vulture"
to be a very good use of rhyme coupled with irony because like you said, horticulture is favorably known while vulture is historically scorned. So, through doing so, she was bringing out how Langston Hughes was a testament to the ability of African Americans to find success despite what was going on.
I also heard you mention two other poetic techniques in class: assonance and alliteration. Can you explain more to me about what assonance and alliteration is? If you can, I would also like some examples.
Lastly, can you explain the poetic technique of cultural allusion a little more deeper for me? What does a poem have to entail in order to qualify as a cultural allusion poem? Also, what is the criteria for incorporating cultural allusion in your work?
Janessa, I like your analysis of the Brooks poem very much.
DeleteAn example of assonance is: hurt word. The vowel "e"/"u" and the next letter "r" have the same sound in each, thus producing a similar sound that is NOT a rhyme within the line of poetry, called an internal rhyme, because the "t" and the "d" are clearly different. (Rhymes that are only at the end of lines are just called rhymes. However, you might correctly argue that Emily Dickinson's slant rhymes, if they were not at the ends of lines, would be assonance!) Bird word is an internal rhyme, not assonance.
Here's a silly example of alliteration: The susurrating sea slides over the sassy sound.
(That's a lot of alliteration.) Here's another: The talented Fauci should teach Trump tremendously.
The purpose of this poetic exercise of writing a poem with cultural allusions is to put a cultural allusion in 85% to 100% of the sentences and/or fragments in the poem. There are many areas of cultural allusion. What would be fun is for:
the English majors to combine into a poetic "stew" (one that is not merely trying to prove a thesis but is exploring culture) something like 1/4 pop music quotations or references to musicians, 1/4 popular movie lines or brief references to movie plots, 1/4 references to well known literary texts, 1/4 direct references to political figures or events. This is just an example; I'm not telling you to do exactly that.
And I want to anticipate a misconception. This is NOT necessarily a collage or appropriation poem: Weiss is constructing a narrative with meditative, not a collage. And when you allude to something, you are not always quoting directly, you might be paraphrasing or giving some sort of shorthand.
Another thing I found interesting from today's class was when you were discussing Theodore Weiss's "The Fire At Alexandria". I noticed that for the majority of the poem, Weiss was conveying his imaginative thoughts about what happened and why by the incorporation of tropes, images, and cultural allusions to characters in greek mythology as well as real life famous historical figures and authors.
ReplyDeleteAre we allowed to do what Weiss did in cultural allusion poems by inventing imaginative reasons and explanations for things? If so, what tips would you give on how to go about doing so?
Yes, Janessa, it's fun and interesting to invent imaginative reasons and explanations, so go for it. But I can't give any tips other than when you are thinking about historical or cultural events or processes, a new explanation either pops into your head or it doesn't. You can try to force it, but that might not work. So you keeping switching to another thematic angle or poetic strategy until something "catches fire."
DeleteI know lots of allusions in both literature and poetry, I've seen in the Chronicles Of Narnia with King Aslan.
ReplyDeleteYes, Manuel, you have given evidence of your awareness of literature and film in the comments section of our blog. The key, I think, is to make these allusions resonate with each other.
DeleteGwendolyn Brooks' poem, "Langston Hughes" was a cultural homage in the simplest sense.
ReplyDeleteWhat I liked about it the most was the nuanced idolatry and the overall, encompassing tone of reverence. Langston was not a cultural deity only to African Americans and the aforementioned community but his was a metal pole, whom many writers and artists were attracted to. His artistic presence set a precedence for such communities by resisting, speaking and leading. In a word, he fought expressed issues many other American black people felt at the time, as he had the platform to do so.
The lines that caught my attention the most were the lines about the Holocaust;
"Of the Holocaust he/Is helmsman, hatchet, headlight/ See". Imagery wise- I immediately saw the picture she was painting, Langston as an important solution/effect to a notable "problem/cause"; a leader or guardian of some sort. More Importantly, I believed she used the allusion of the Holocaust to evoke connotations of war. T
he lines, "Hold Horticulture In the eye of the vulture" to me sounds like, she is saying Langston often sought seek personal beauty among public tragedy; allowing his art to grow and resonate amidst a zeitgeist of such moral and political fascism. The Harlem Renaissance grew out of unfair times. Creating and producing art was the community's way of dealing, and coping with trauma. This idea is exemplified further in the lines, "Remedial Fears" and "Till the air is cured of it's fever". In this context, the "fever" is symbolic of racism, art is represented as the "cure". Gwendolyn Brooks' poem screams, "Long live art".
This poem inspired me so much, that I decided to write my poem on something thematically similar. In fact. my direct inspiration rests in one evocative line.
Brianna, I like your oxymoronic phrase, "nuanced idolatry." Try using it in a poem!
DeleteAre you connecting the allusion to the Nazi Holocaust to war because of the idea that "helmsman" could be a trope of naval battle? To me, "holocaust" indicates the African slave trade and its consequences during slavery in the colonies and U.S. up to 1865, Reconstruction, the time of the Harlem Renaissance here, and the strange preposition "of" signifies "about/in relation to/regarding," so a paraphrase might read: in relation to/regarding the African-American Holocaust, Hughes is a leader and illuminator of the battle against it.
I can see both ways, holocaust meaning 'bloodletting' in a general sense. But, yes I was thinking specifically of a comparison to the Nazi Holocaust when reading.
Deletecan we write in "slang" to show culture for poem 5?-donta
ReplyDeleteDonta, you can write in slang, but that is not enough to show allusions to culture: along with the slang there must be a very specific reference to something cultural.
DeleteGot it
DeleteHow vivid should we be to make sure it's an allusion? Do we have to be vague about the hidden meaning?
ReplyDeleteYou can use ambiguity, but the allusion itself should be clear as one possible meaning.
ReplyDeleteGot it.
DeletePerhaps you don't have questions for me about either Prado and Ramanujan poems or the two choices for poem 5, but some of you might answer my questions:
ReplyDeleteCan you think of an area of meditation (thinking about the nature truth, reality, etc.) in which you are not sure of the truth/reality or even if there is one and you want to explore the possibilities? For example, like Ramanujan, do you want to explore the nature of individual identity--for example, your own or your close relative's or significant other's? And if this is the case, and since you know that I am discouraging you poets from using a lot of abstraction and generalization--love, hate, happiness, sadness, freedom, tyranny, etc.--then can you find (a la Prado) a sequence of narratives (including images and tropes) to guide you through that exploration to reach either a truth or a realization of the absence of truth by the end of that poem? Or can you find a sequence of concrete observations (using images and tropes), as Ramanujan and Ashbery do, to reach some sort of understanding (or understanding of the inability to understand) by the poem's end?
In case my questions above seem overwhelming, if you want to deal with a big philosophical topic like human identity, then it's best just to be casual: have it in mind, start free writing (either in poetic lines or paragraphs) and let everything come out without any negative or positive judgment. Just keep up the writing for 10 or 20 or 25 minutes, until you are tired. Then put it away for a few minutes (or hours) and when you look at it again, see if there is either a) a bunch of narratives, probably out of sequence, but so what, OR b) a bunch of concrete observations using images and tropes that relate to thinking about the subject matter. Your job as a "revisionist" or "revisionary" is to:
Delete1) keep everything that's good and relevant
2) cross out all the crap and the irrelevant
3) even in the good stuff, improve the quality of language by making tropes and images more vivid
4) put the good and relevant stuff in a sequence that makes sense
5) find the best lines or sentence to end the poem with an achievement of understanding or the understanding of the inability to understand.
This could take a while. Be patient.
Also, folks, I should give you more examples than Ramanujan's identity and Prado's death and mourning:
The nature of romantic love vs. lust vs. friendship (But even if it's in the title, don't use the word love in the poem!!!!!!!!! Do it all through images and tropes. And don't make it a love poem to a significant other; this is a philosophical exploration of love through tropes and images, not a love poem.)
The political, social, economic, or psychological, or or philosophical meaning(s) of some cultural phenomenon (This is not an opportunity to praise or celebrate the phenomenon but to analyze its meaning(s). By cultural phenomenon, I mean it could be a kind of movie or music or art or internet culture practice or form(s) of face-to-face communication or communal religious or sport experience.
The meaning of the social construction of gender or race or class. (This is an opportunity to explore without stating an ideological position or commitment. First you need to ask questions and temporarily suspend, for example, political anger at injustice, so that you can understand particulars. After finishing the poem, go back to your anger, so that you can use it to fight injustice.)
There are other examples one could think of, but these are enough for now.
Hello Professor Fink,
ReplyDeleteI wanted to say that I enjoyed learning about narrative and meditative poetry today. Some things you pointed out that stood out to me in reference to Adelia Prado's "Successive Deaths" was the language and style of the poem. Like you said, she used a conversational tone and there were no stanzas/strophes. As I was reading that, what I got from it was that in order to incorporate a conversational style in your poetry, you may want to leave out stanzas and strophes and just write straight free verse. Is that correct?
Also, I like how your pointed out that the title was suggestive of the theme of her poem. For example, you brought out the word "Succession" and how she expressed that through the order in which she described the three deaths and how they affected her. Another thing I like about Prado's poem is that like you said, she used strong words at the end of her enjambments to create a stronger emphasis or feeling.
Just to clarify, a narrative poem is supposed to lead to a larger truth through the creation of a successive sequence that tells a story in successive stages from beginning to end right?
Also, I notice that you said to take notice of the particular imagery of domestic objects and elements from the poem. When we write narrative poetry, is it that it's more important for us t form our images and tropes around specific details, objects, and elements that are part of the narrative we are trying to write about?
Lastly, I notice that you mentioned how when Prado said: "A newfound uneasiness", she was using abstractions sparingly but very precisely. I also notice you said that if we do like Prado, we should find fresh and concrete words to group together. Can you give me more examples of that?
Janessa, stanzas and strophes have an aesthetic beauty to them that should not necessarily be sacrificed. MANY poets use a conversational style and yet use stanzas and strophes; perhaps the enjambments in the stanzas and strophes--i.e. Ashbery's poem-- are a counterpoint to the colloquial style. (In music, counterpoint is a simultaneous use of different elements, perhaps opposites.) By the way, stanzas and strophes ARE straight free verse. The term "free verse" only refers to its difference from traditional meter, in which a line's accents and syllables are scanned for regularity.
DeleteYou are right about the particular kind of narrative poem that either leads to a larger truth or shows how truth seems unreachable.
I'll get to your other questions later.
Janessa, regarding my suggestion to "take notice of the particular imagery of domestic objects and elements from the poem" and your question about "form[ing] our images and tropes around specific details, objects, and elements that are part of the narrative we are trying to write about?" I am trying to alert you to the danger of telling a story full of abstractions and generalizations--i.e. Protagonist A is a good, nice person; antagonist C is nasty and spiteful-- and instead using vivid images and tropes that will allow the reader not only to have the sensory experience of the narrative but to develop an understanding of how those images and tropes relate to the ongoing meditation about the truth of identity or death or whatever the subject matter is. The bottom line is: as poets, you all need to TRUST THE READER to have a brain and a heart. Don't tell the reader what to feel or think; enable the reader to do their own feeling and thinking. Well, maybe in 3% of the poem, you're telling the reader what to think, but limit it to 1-3%--even 10% is too much.
DeleteAlso, you want more examples of what Prado is doing. Almost every poem in the packet is doing that! Seek them and ye shall find. In my YouTube video on Ashbery's meditative poem about the transience of existence, "Down by the Station, Early in the Morning," which I mentioned in my "Announcements" email on Monday, I do get into his use of the fresh and concrete, but also what's interesting about him is that and he takes boring cliches and changes just a few words to make them really interesting and then strings them into a long sentence with complicated syntax.
This is a question from Diamond:
ReplyDeleteIs about the doppelgänger effect in the second poem . Can you only use is in humans such a female and male to
or can you also use Objects ? In the doppelgänger effect ?
Diamond.f
Of course, we are interested in your replies to Diamond's excellent question, but I'll give one for now: I think it's a great idea to use objects to represent a doppelgänger effect. And if you invest the objects with the trope of personification, then the imagination can really take off.
DeleteHi Diamond. I love your question. It shows a brilliant and genius mind and spirit. I never thought of that. Thank you for asking that question and inspiring us all. In conjunction with what Prof. Fink said, I do think you could use objects in the doppleganger effect by personifying them with human traits and attributes. Additionally, I think this technique would be a good technique to apply if you were writing a narrative poem because like Prado, you could use certain objects or elements pertaining to the story you are writing about to form tropes and images through the personifying of those objects or elements.
DeleteFor A.K. Ramanujan's poem: "Lines" and learning about meditative poetry, I enjoyed learning about the elements of a meditative poem. I notice how you said that his poem is a meditative poem because it isn't built on a story but instead fragments of a story that lead to a larger truth or deeper mystery. After reading that, what I learned from it is that the difference between a narrative poem and a meditative poem is that even though they both attempt to lead to a larger truth, a narrative poem is built upon a story while a meditative poem is built only using what could be fragments of a story.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I like about Ramanujan's poem is the fact that he started his poem off with a question about the perplexity of identity because it fits perfectly with the style of poetry he is using. Since he is writing a meditative poem, starting his poem off with a question was an excellent idea because it gave the readers "food for thought", something to think about and take with them as they were reading the poem.
I also noticed how you introduced the term "synesthesia" which is a mixing of the senses. Can you give me more examples of synesthesia?
Janessa, I agree with everything you say about Ramanujan's poem. But everyone should remember that the distinction I make between a purely narrative poem and a meditative poem is a separation for the purpose of poetry exercises for students who have been taking poetry seriously for a decade or less, as opposed to poets who have been involved for considerably longer. Most literary critics of poetry and experienced poetic practitioners would concur that in long poems and long poetic series both modes that we identified are used in different portions of the text. Literary critics who have a philosophical perspective on poetic texts might also disagree with my distinction from a theoretical viewpoint, but my purpose is very practical: getting you to limit the mode of the poem will allow you to gain experience and competence in that mode, and later on, you can move on to more "hybrid" forms.
DeleteI'm going to make up some examples of synesthesia right now, on the spot:
That computer image tastes like butter.
Sing me a fingertip.
We got drunk on sunrise.
This algebraic equation smells like metal.
Can you glimpse the screech?
What is syntax?
ReplyDeleteSentence-structure--i.e. (to give a very simple example without dependent clauses) a subject coming before a verb coming before an object, though in Shakespeare's sometimes inverted syntax in his sonnets, the verb might come before the sentence's subject. Syntax is different in different languages; for example, in Japanese, the verb usually comes at the end of a sentence.
DeleteDiamond has just come up with something really interesting:
ReplyDeleteThis is my exercise for successive Death
Lines 1-7 (Wasn’t sure if you wanted the whole poem )
Successive Birth
When my sister nativity, I cried a great deal
And was quick to console. There was a white sheet and see through crib I could look in
When my Mother anticipation, I was consoled slowly
There was a newfound of life
My Brest were shaped like to hillocks
And I was quite naked
My comments about this exercise it was kind of hard for me. Trying change the concept from death to birth but still trying to make the poem sound just as good was different for me , since I never do that with any of my former poems I might give it a try and see if it can better the poem . Also making sure the poem supported the Successive of birth was my goal but overall I liked this exercise .
Hi Diamond! Excellent job! I truly love your poetry. I like how you personified the abstracts of nativity and anticipation. I love this specific line of yours:
Delete"There was a newfound of life".
That line evokes such powerful, sensory feeling and sense. I can sense through that line the joy of anticipating a new birth, a new beginning.
Keep up the excellent work. You are truly a gifted, talented, and genius poet. May you keep on writing, prospering, and thriving.
Successive Births
ReplyDeleteWhen my sister was born, I cried some deal
and was quickly relieved. There was another dress
and thicket in the back yard where I could exist.
When my mother was born, I cried nothing.
There was a newfound presence:
my breasts were holes
and I was blank.
I was yet to cross my arms over them and to cry.
When my father was born, I again cried nothing.
I hunted up new pictures, saw acquaintances,
relatives, who would yet tell me of how he talks,
his way of pursing his lips and being certain.
I disregarded the way his body curled
in his first sleep and words
he said when he touched his feet:
"Never mind. I'm alright".
Who will relieve me?
My breasts failed their promise
and the thicket where I exist
is the genuine burning bush of imagination.
Janessa, I especially enjoy lines 4-8. Your revisions put us in the position of "the genuine burning bush of imagination" to think about "seeing" the birth of one's parents!
DeleteAs you know, the revision for poem 4 is due today, and poem 5 is due on Friday. If you have questions on either, please email me. I will be looking at and responding to email until 2:50, then will check once again later this evening, and will check email 2-3 times tomorrow (Thurs.).
ReplyDeleteSo far, 3 students have submitted and received comments for the revision of poem 4, so I'm ready to read 9.
(Next week, you won't have anything due until Friday--and things will slow down a bit before the final push.)
As I was doing this exercise, I learned the importance of applying a concept a polished poet and professor once taught me: poetic logic. While I was re-writing this poem to fit what Adelia Prado wrote, I noticed that in order for a poem to make sense, the words, phrases, lines, and tropes have to be reflective of the theme suggested by the title.
ReplyDeleteFor example, when re-writing the poem through changing certain phrases and words to add up to birth instead of death, I noticed that because the poem was written with the concept of death in mind, when I tweaked some words and phrases to match up to the concept of birth, it didn't make sense. Plus, the tropes used didn't work for birth the way it did for death.
In terms of poetic logic, I learned that everything you use in your poem, whether it be words, phrases, style, tropes, or images, must line up with the theme or message you are trying to convey through your poem.
Doing this exercise also taught me more about language and the importance of making sure the language we use is coherent and clear because when it's not, it's very hard for people to understand you as well as read what you write.
Yes, Janessa, the exercise had precisely the effect that I wanted it to. And in most cases, it is important to make "sure the language we use is coherent and clear," but often poets embrace the possibility of ambiguity, as Manuel suggested in a post yesterday.
DeleteWhat I mean is that double meaning is ok--even when the 2 meanings seem opposite and cancel each other out. Sometimes a poem RESISTS one unified meaning, and the reason this is beneficial in poetry is that it reflects actual situations in life where, as I said before, one attempts to meditate about the truth but cannot achieve full meaning.
Accepting that setback, at least as temporary, might signify maturity and wisdom.
In the cases where one word or phrase can mean 2 things and those signified elements do not contradict each other, we can celebrate the ability of language to expand meaning rather than restrict it.
Thank you for sharing that with me. I never thought of it that way. You gave me something new to think about and incorporate in my writing.
DeleteHello Professor,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed lecture on Brooks and Weiss poems. I also thought Brooks did an amazing job in capturing what Hughes represented for his time. Her use of language and descriptions paint a clear picture of her admiration for Hughes and his work. It is an allusion because the only clear indication of subject is her title. I would also like to comment on Prado's poem "Successive Deaths". I decided to write a poem that tells a truth that leads to a larger reveal. However, I am a bit unsure if I am going the right direction. As you mentioned above, you gave us some examples of topics to use for "meditation poems". Can we use the same topics for Prado's style? Or does the topic have to be personal? I have an idea for poem 5 but it is about social class difference. The poem doesn't reveal this at the start but towards the end I have a line that ties it all up. I guess I'm not sure if I'm doing a meditation poem or a collection of narratives like Prado. It sort of seems like I am straddling between both.
Melanie,
DeleteYou can use any topic you like. Social class difference is a great topic. If you are straddling the two modes exemplified by Weiss and Prado, it's fine.
As I already latched myself unto the idea of writing an allusion poem, I still read the meditative poems with an open mind. Reading Prado's poem, "Successive Deaths" my attention was struck with specific words, images and emotions. The words, "cried", "died", "consoled", "thicket" and "breasts" seemed to be of the most interest as they were repeated twice or movie. The lines about the thicket, I think represent obscurity, concealment, or a safe haven from one's problems. The repeated lines about her breasts and her new dress symbolize femininity, maturity and strength amidst a time of tragedy and weakness. There is double meaning in the line, "I was quite naked", because I think the speaker is both naked in a physically sense but also in a figuratively emotional sense. With this line I was additionally thinking of the biblical Garden of Eden nakedness; the purity connotation. This is further annotated by her usage of the word, "Thicket". Something else to note is the poet's use of past tense, the poem is an unearthing of buried memory or a sanitation of a wound. I personally enjoyed the imagery of the backyard, of the weeds, the burial, deathbed, her family member's last words. The poem has a mortuary elegiac nature about it but in a way that it almost writes like a photo album. It's morbid, it's remembrance, it's a fleshy memory through and through. "I hunted up old pictures"--and, "visited acquaintances."
ReplyDeleteAs for Ramanujan's poem, "Lines", my personal favorites were, "images detached from mirrors", "no longer you" and,invisible things you see." I think the motifs in this poem include reflection and ghosts. Specific words like, ""images, "mirror", "shadow", "float", "minds", "invisible", "shuffle" and "clones" make me think that the speaker is being haunted, haunted by faces, people and memory of past experiences and loves. "The other theme would be body parts. The poet uses body parts to represent identity and thus person hood and feelings. Words like, "face", "hair", "nose","brow", "shape", "parts", fingers" and chest" serve the aforementioned role. There are so much sensory details to mediate upon in this poem.
Professor Fink, what is the exercise everybody here is doing?
Forget it, I saw it in the email.
DeleteBrianna, I think the "photo album" point you make about Prado's way of proceeding is especially relevant to her work, because I see this poetic strategy in many of her poems about family or love, and in Ramanujan's oeuvre, the binary opposition of absence/presence, embodied in the trope of ghosts/ghosting (not in the contemporary Web 2.0 sense), is rather pervasive.
DeleteHi Professor Fink,
ReplyDeleteSo far, I haven't received an email from my peer critiquing partners. Is there anything else you would like me to do if I don't get an email from them? Thank you again for granting me the privilege to volunteer and show my work to others.
I think at this point people regard peer-critiquing as optional. You don't have to do anything else.
DeleteOur two poet volunteers are eager to hear what you have to say about their poems. (They've already heard from me.) I'll keep these on the blog for a day so that if you comment later, the poets will be able to look. You might consider the relationship between Janessa's poem and Brooks' "Langston Hughes," and you might think about how Manuel uses anaphora in the middle of his poem, as well as his particular uses of rhyme.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I just read your response to my post about the language exercise we did on Wednesday. I like how you brought out that poets embrace ambiguity by taking advantage of words with double-meaning to reflect the reality of life situations. I also like how you said that we can celebrate the ability of language to expand meaning rather than restrict it. When you can, can you please explain more to me about how a poet can use language to expand meaning rather than restrict it. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the other day, I was looking over your poetry textbook and reviewing the different poetic techniques and tropes. While doing so, I realize that I still need a better understanding of metonymy and synecdoche. I did a little bit of further research and while doing so, I learned how metonymy and synecdoche are interrelated. Can you help me understand more about metonymy and synecdoche? Also, if you know any good places I can look to research them, please let me know.
In ENG 102, metonymy and synecdoche have always been the hardest things to teach. Various poets and critical theorists talk about them, but I think the bottom line for poets is that it's good to recognize them in other people's work but you can't force either into being within your own poems. I suppose there could be a metonymy or synecdoche practicing exercise, but I wonder whether it would really strengthen poetic muscles. The most famous article on metonymy and metaphor is Roman Jakobsen's "On Aphasia"--at least I think that's the title, but I have to run "to" my next class. And then Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) speaks of the first two elements of the dream work: condensation and displacement in the terms that theorists of rhetoric relate to metaphor and metonymy respectively. In his book Ecrits, the post-Freudian psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan elaborates on the structure of metonymy in the unconscious, but Lacan is extremely obscure, and most academics read other academics' explanation of him rather than reading Lacan himself.
DeleteFor Janessa's poem, "Sheba Benny", there is an eloquent elegance to the form, via the way it moves, the pacing and amorphous rhythm. I like that her word choice has musical allusions and echoic connotations. Using terms like, "lucid", "traipse" and "tranquil" really does immerse the reader in a dream-like state or hazy mood. The visual element of the poem is fluid as well. The tone is slow and sweet like walking in molasses. I enjoyed reading it, it was short but very poetic and lyrical.
ReplyDeleteBrianna, I'm not sure what you mean by "amorphous rhythm"--perhaps varied rhythm. In the poem's shortest lines, I find iambic dimeter, as well as 1 or 2 iambic trimeter lines, both of which were sometimes used by Brooks, as well as non-iambic lines that generally contain 2 or 3 accents (strong syllables) but, of course, the last 2 lines each contain 1 accent. So like Brooks, Janessa approaches an iambic norm and keeps swerving slightly away from it. In early poems, Brooks stick with the iambic norm throughout.
DeleteI meant that visually, the stanza format is very fluid, almost like it's moving. I did not mean that her poem didn't adhere to rules or poetic form.
DeleteThank you for clarifying.
DeleteI also work as an English tutor and the week before last, I had to help one of my students with writing a critical analysis paper based on a poem they read in class. The poem was "Dear John Wayne" by Louise Erdrich. While working with him, I taught him the definitions of some of the tropes from your textbook and I remember my student coming back to me expressing how they got the techniques of oxymoron and pun mixed up with each other. When you can, please guide me to where I can go to do further research on these poetry techniques.
ReplyDeleteOxymoron and pun are very different. A pun is a double, triple, or quadruple meaning of a word or phrase. An oxymoron brings together 2 opposites, often in an adjective/noun combo. A typical example of oxymoron is the Greek derivation of sophomore: wise fool. Let's discuss metonymy and synecdoche further when we do poem 6.
DeleteI really enjoyed reading Manuel Pamposa poem, I was able to see the images in my head and create a scene.
ReplyDelete- Olivia
DeleteOlivia, I think this is a quality many people value in poetry, myself included.
DeleteIt's based off of a folklore (and might be possibly true because of eyewitnesses) of creatures called River Dinos or Prairie Devils. It is said these dinosaur-like creatures would live near rivers hence the millions of years quote because they themselves survived and are reacting to our world.
DeleteI enjoyed the four poems discussed but I likes Weiss's and Prado's the most.
ReplyDeleteThe Fire At Alexandria poem was great because I am familiar with the writers and the gods referenced except Sappho. When he spoke about the "magnificent authors who were kept in scholarly rows whose names we have no passing record of" made me think of how in the future people will be able to look back at all our digital information photos and posts with which they will think of us as magnificent authors letting them peek into how our lives were really like in the present day. The part in the beginning of the third stanza about the scribes weeping really struck me and I could see it using my imagination.
I also really enjoyed Adelia Prado's poem Successive Deaths as it depicts how loss affected her. How with each death it got harder to get over is something many can relate to.
Anabel, I find your response to Weiss's poem highly pertinent because you unite the intellectual and emotional components in a way that I suspect would please the poet.
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