Choosing an R1B

I thought I'd let you all know that you can find course descriptions for the R1B courses on offer on individual department web sites:

• English


• Rhetoric (descriptions are not yet up)


• Comparative Literature


• Gender and Women's Studies (it looks like there's only one section)


• College Writing

Several other humanities departments also offer R1B (or variants thereof that will fill the R&C requirement), like French, Scandinavian, German, Spanish & Portuguese, and History of Art.


I also wanted to mention that Robin Blaser will be reading for Lunch Poems (in the library) on Nov. 6. He'll also be doing a conversation with Robert Hass on Nov. 5 (Wednesday). Blaser was part of the "Berkeley Renaissance," along with poets like Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan. We'll be reading poems by Robert Duncan soon, as well as poems by Robert Hass! Check it out.

Did O'Hara's parents let him go to the movies?

As I was reading Lunch Poems, my mind began to wander, and for some reason I kept thinking about what O’Hara’s parents would think of his poetry. It seems as though of all the occupations parents dream of their kids undertaking, such as practicing medicine or law, writing poetry is never on the list. I’m guessing O’Hara’s parents weren’t too thrilled about the idea, either. But to exacerbate the situation, his poetry is confusing and does not live up to the classic image of poetry: there’s no rhyme scheme or apparent structure. If you were to read it aloud, it wouldn’t even sound like poetry; it would sound like one huge run-on sentence. To all but the poetically inclined, his poems would seem talentless and worthless. I doubt his parents understood or appreciated his poetry at all. To prove my point, I will ask you to read the following example as if you were O’Hara’s parents; read this as if this was your (adult) son’s work:

Wouldn’t it be funny
if The Finger had designed us
to shit just once a week?

all week long we’d get fatter
and fatter and then on Sunday morning
while everyone’s in church
ploop!

I do have an appreciation for poetry, yet even I cannot help but question the value of this poem! Imagine what his parents thought! I do not mean to insult O’Hara’s style of poetry (maybe just this poem); I simply intend to ponder the kind of relationship O’Hara had with his parents.
The obvious poem to mention in this post would be “Ave Maria.” Unfortunately for me, we already talked about this poem in class, so I don’t want to be redundant. However, I do want to point out that all of O’Hara’s poetry seems to have a personal quality, and so it would not be unreasonable to say that he might be voicing some of his inner childhood angst in “Ave Maria.” This could be another indicator of possible family tension.
Of course, I could just google Frank O’Hara and find out the facts, rather than making presumptions based on his poetry. But there’s a risk in doing so: I might discover I’m completely wrong. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just stick to my theories.
After all, ignorance IS bliss.

Warning: occasional coarse language & adult content/not suitable for younger audiences

So I've been going through this week's reading assignment (week 10) of Lunch Poems. And it's pretty routine for me, I've noticed by now, that it's complicated literature and nothing really clicks in my mind immediately. We were asked in class to make a list of observations about the first poem, "Music." And from there, we went on to discuss our observations and later analyze the text.

I thought this would be a rather useful process to derive meaning from the rest of the poems, so I started making observations of what I was reading as I went along. This felt like a good way to start in trying to comprehend the readings, as I am not yet comfortable enough with the collection to further analyze the text. So in my observation, I realized that, yes these are indeed written from the perspective of lunchgoers, hence the name Lunch Poems.

I then came to notice something else...

This is fairly modern poetry, and with modern poetry comes modern language and modern uses of language. From what we've read in class, and what i've read before taking this class, I've never run in to this use of language (well, not in poetry). The language I speak of is, well, not necessarily vulgar but more over the top then what I normally encounter in poetry. I've compiled a list of the above mentioned language (as well as a few odd and weird ones just for kicks), so you be the judge.

- "Shit on the soup. let it burn." (page 7)
- "full of fat people who cough as at a movie they eat each other's dandruff in the flickering glare" (11)
- everything on page 27
- "we don't do much ourselves but fuck and think" (30-31)
- "I was made in the image of a sissy truck driver" (31)
- "you don't get crabs that way" (40)
- "you aren't so popular in China though they fuck too (42)
- "that's the meaning of fertility hard and moist and moaning (43)
- "since arriving in Barcelona I can freely shit" (48)
- "subways are only fun when you're feeling sexy" (50)

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm offended by all this (I think some of it is pretty funny :] ). But as I mentioned earlier, this language hasn't really surfaced much in the literature that I've encountered, so I just find it strange. Did this jump out at anyone else? I found it really interesting that this be integrated into these poems.

SA #9: O'Hara

How does Frank O'Hara's style differ from that of Langston Hughes? Be specific.

Help is available

So first of all, let me start out by saying that whenever we have an assignment due for English RA1 class, I usually do not do it until the night before (yeah that is not a good idea). But for some reason the thought of a five to six paged essay made me change my ways which is really interesting because procrastination was my favorite thing since who knows when. Well, our last assignment, the “short” five to six paged essay (“short” should not be the term used to describe that essay) was my first real non-procrastinating assignment, and I was surprised by the result at the end.
So I knew about this essay a long time ago, but did not really bother to work on it, until I actually read the assignment from our course reader. that is when I knew I had to stop being lazy and start working on the first draft. So a little over five days before the assignment was due, I sat infront of my computer ready to being the essay. But when I was about to start writing, my mind went completely blank and that reflected on my paper. After starting at the computer screen for about 30 minutes, I knew I needed help on the essay, and my best source was our teacher.
Then my next task was to set up an appointment date with her, and after two days of waiting (one day before the actual assignment was due), I went to 400 wheeler, and started talking to Natalia about the essay. And even though I had almost three pages typed up the night before, after my discussion with Natalia (a very long discussion indeed that lasted almost two hours), I had a better idea about what to write, and that night (Thursday night), I wrote the last two pages, made some changes and was ready to read the essay to my classmates.
But when I listened to my fellow classmates’ essays, I was so afraid of reading my essay because I knew it was nothing compared to their (yeah that made me feel bad). But my group did not care about the fact that I didn’t want to read my essay, so I was forced to read it. And to my surprise, they told me a lot of positive things about my essay, and gave me tons of ideas on how to make the essay better (THANK YOU SO MUCH). I was so happy after we were done doing the peer revision because I got so many good pointers on how to develop my essay to make it better.
So the point of me rambling about my essay writing process is the fact that if anyone ever gets stuck or is having a hard time with an assignment, I think the best idea is to go get help. I know everyone tells you to go get help, but trust me, it does help when you can understand something after someone explains it to you (at least it does for me). So everyone should make some effort to get help if they are ever stuck on anything. I am not saying, bombard Natalia with two hour discussion session (Opps) but if anything does not make sense, you should always make use of all the resources provided to you.

IN CONCLUSION, IF I CAN GO GET HELP, SO CAN YOU!!!!

Writing about Moore and Nature

So when I was preparing to write the short analytical essay, I didn't think I needed to start until Thursday afternoon, because it was a short analytical essay. And I guess "don't assume", but I figured it would be like 3-4 pages like the rest of the papers had been.... well... I looked at the syllabus and saw that it was supposed to be 5-6 pages, and got a little scared because it was Thursday night and the paper was due in the morning. So I realize I should always start my papers earlier than that, but I forgot about it during the week, esp. since we didn't talk about it in class because we got so deep into our discussions. So anyway in my frantic attempts to crank out 6 comprehensible pages by morning I read over Moore's Poem the Octopus, and highlighted a bunch of quotes to use in my paper. Starting the paper was definitely the hardest part, because I didn't exactly know how to define nature, esp. since it is such a broad topic, and many of the definitions fit the poem... So I eventually picked a few definitions and began writing. I came up with a few ideas of what nature could be defined as but they don't really make sense by themselves and it was hard to pick one to write about.

One definition was the earth and all of it's inhabitants, the objects that make up the world. This definition is hard to explain because we see a tree and say that it is IN nature not that it is nature, but if it is in nature, what is nature? the tree is in the world, is the world nature? And also we say that the forest is nature, etc.. some environments etc.. we call nature, we call the forest a part of nature, but what is the entire nature. And if the forest made up of trees is a part of nature than aren't the trees a part of nature not just in nature..... So you see it is hard to define nature and explain it just on the surface level, the "easiest" part of nature to define has already become really complicated. (try writing about that at 2am... I know I did that to myself... :) )

Another definition of nature is that is is an entity that is a part of the earth and watches over 'nature' or the plants and animals and environments... mother nature. That it is something with feeling and ability to make decisions and have emotions. But this doesn't really make sense either, how can a tree cry? But it is a common idea that nature is and entity with its own decisions and emotions, it is often described in mythology and storytelling, as something like a person.

Yet another definition of nature is the balance between good and evil, and imaginative and reality. People often talk of nature in terms of good vs. evil. and sometimes even describe it as human nature as our instinctive survival skills that is blind to morals.

There are so many aspects of nature and so many definitions it is hard just to narrow it down, an then you through in Moore's work "an octopus" and it could be representing almost any one of these definitions, which makes it hard to write a paper on which one it could be representing.

Writing methods

I noticed after reading many of the blog posts that a lot of us talk about our methods for writing essays so I thought I’d share some of my writing experience.

When we first learn to write essays, we were always told to brainstorm ideas of what we want to write about, usually drawing one of those diagrams that I don’t really remember the name of. We usually write out our thesis in the middle circle and then from there, we add our “concrete details” and our analysis to it. So because I was taught this way, this was how I would start my essays; formulate a thesis then start from there. But soon, I found out that sometimes my thesis is flawed and isn’t even supported enough by the text. When that happens, I usually have to change my thesis and pretty much rewrite and rethink my whole paper. Besides doing this, I jot down phrases and words that might be appropriate for my paper so that I don’t have to go look in a thesaurus for other words. I also keep a list of transitions that I can use to help my paper flow.

That was my first method, but after a while, I got tired of rewriting pretty much my whole essay and decided to change my strategy. I would start my paper with coming up with textual evidence that relates to my topic and then formulating my thesis based on the evidence I find. This way, I don’t have to worry about my argument not being backed up by the text. But this limits my writing a little because I may ignore the rest of the text. This worked for the papers I had to write during high school but now, I’m using a combination of the two methods. First, I read the prompt and get a general idea of what I might want to talk about in my paper and look for evidence from there. Second, I write (with a pencil, I find that I’m more efficient when I actually write down things rather than just staring blankly at that the blinking cursor on my computer screen) a general outline of my essay including my thesis and the textual evidence I find and jotting down phrases and words that pop up in my mind on the side. Then I actually type/write my essay and hope that everything works well. If it doesn’t, then I just continue with my essay and fix the rest later.

I guess I will keep using this method until I find a better one.

Reading with a Perspective

Sometimes,  I begin to read a poem, but can glean no insight out of it whatsoever. I just can't seem to place the information or even understand what the author is talking about. I've found that with just a small piece of preliminary information, a "hint" about the poem, I can finally begin to construct some ideas about it. For example, "The Burial of the Dead," the first piece of "The Waste Land," made absolutely no sense to me as I read it for the first time. I understood individual sentences and managed to gather pieces of information, but I couldn't form them into any kind of coherent whole. During discussion, however, we started talking about memory and desire, and how Elliot deals with the almost gruesome and sinister renewal that happens in springtime. When I re-read the poem later that week, I slowly started to make sense out of it, and I felt like I could flesh out some good insights of my own about this piece.

This means that with just a small nugget of information to begin with, I could read the poem based around this information and make more sense of it. But doesn't this also mean that I was reading the poem in a different context? Rather than reading it with no pre-conceptions, a kind of reader bias is introduced, because I base most of my assumptions around the context that I am using (consciously or unconsciously).

I found this effect again just last week, as I was rereading "An Octopus" for my Analytical essay rough draft. I jotted down a bunch of quotes about nature that I found interesting, and eventually discovered a pattern in the way that Moore was presenting the poem. I wrote down an experimental thesis for my essay, and then re-read all the poem. All of a sudden, the poem was full of evidence for my claims, and I felt like I was beginning to make sense of all the quotations and natural metaphors that she employed in the poem.

But the insight that I suddenly gained was really a byproduct of my thesis: I was reading the poem in a new context, under a new perspective. In a way, by assuming that my thesis made sense, I was biased as I re-read the poem, looking for evidence and examples of my ideas.

This just goes to show that there are many ways to read a poem, and that the sometimes abstract nature of poetry leads us generate meaning that isn't really there (or, at least, was not consciously placed there by the author).

Poetry versus Prose

Referring back to my diagnostic essay again (it’s the perfect representation of what I thought of poetry at the beginning of the semester), I said that poems were more advantageous to use in the past and only persisted to today because of the association with it to art. Poems are shorter and easier to memorize and duplicate than prose, but are less useful with the introduction of printing press. Eventually, poetry will die out and prose will take its place.

Then comes Williams and his baby Frankenstein Spring and All, which contains both prose and poetry.

“Is what I have written prose?” (140).

By the standard of how you yourself define prose? Yes Williams, yes it is.

As he puts it, “Prose, relieved of extraneous, unrelated values must return to its only purpose; to clarify to enlighten the understanding” (140). In contrast, “Poetry is something quite different. Poetry has to do with the crystallization of the imagination—the perfection of new forms as addition to nature—Prose may follow to enlighten but poetry--” (140).

Williams defines many things explicitly: what imagination is, what poetry is, what prose is. He is trying to prove his point as clearly as possible. He is telling the reader what he’s thinking—and how they should think—without personal interpretation of his text—without imagination. Then comes the seemingly random poems and their images, which, by themselves, can almost mean anything.

WHAT!? “What in God’s name do you mean? Is this what you call poetry? Poetry that interpreted our deepest promptings, poetry that inspired… you moderns!” (88). That’s right, damn you moderns! Just when things are clear and good to go, why do you must make things more confusing? I want to have one clear answer to each thing, to stop speculating and accept things as they are. I want to be told to cry at someone else’s suffering, to laugh when everyone else is laughing, and to applaud on game shows when the applaud sign flashes.

There are already enough choices in life, can’t I get a break? I should consider joining a cult.

Yes, not everyone wants to use the sense of imagination. Most people are probably more comfortable being told what to do. Williams challenges this, and expects some negative feedback from the traditionalists. But unlike Eliot, Williams actually states his point in his prose then feeds his poems into the readers’ imaginations.

In a sense, then, Williams is both lecturing and holding a forum of discussion. He wants the readers to understand what it is he’s trying to say, but not contradicting himself by limiting them to a single train of thought.

Could he have done it poetry alone? Maybe, but it would be as long as the Aeneid. He can have a poet that “Kill! Kill! The English, the Irish, the French, the Germans, the Italians (especially them) and the rest” (90), escape from the seduction of Moore to found his kingdom of imagination, and travel to the land of the dead to visit Edgar Allan Poe. Surely, that would be something to see.

More on montage

My selection of clips for the recent short assignment may have given the false impression that all montages were training montages.

Here's a clip from the Gene Kelly musical Singin' in the Rain (1952). At about 3:30 there's a one-minute montage that is supposed to represent Hollywood's sudden transition into sound film (talkies). Singin' in the Rain is approximately contemporaneous with Montage of a Dream Deferred.



The film history being presented is misleading, by the way; it suggests that Hollywood converted to color film musicals overnight, which wasn't the case. For context, here's a clip from the film usually considered the first talkie, The Jazz Singer (1927).



There's another kind of montage, which also uses sequences of short shots but which doesn't necessarily indicate compressed time, used in Soviet avant-garde film. Here's an example from Eisenstein's October (1928).



While we're on the subject of film, I'd like to make a plug for the Pacific Film Archive, located next to the Hearst Gymnasium across the street from the Berkeley Art Museum. Screenings are cheap for Cal students, and they're running several exciting series this semester. The PFA often screens films you can't see anywhere else. I highly recommend it!

Breaking out of the Bubble?

While writing our third essay, I've begun to notice some changes in my normal approach to writing.

While each of us have different methods and approaches to writing, I think what can be said for most of us is that we always start with our own, unique approach for each and every paper that we write. What I mean is that, most likely in high school when we start more intensive writing, we create a kind of recursive formula for writing that we begin with for each new paper we must write. For example, I know some people always start with mapping out an outline, like our high school teachers always told us to do, and then proceed to write the paper once the general ideas are outlined. In the actual writing process, some people will perhaps start from beginning to end and put down all their ideas, like a stream of writing, and that is what would be called their rough draft. Others may just start writing whatever comes to mind, even if it's the middle of a body paragraph, and proceed writing in this scattered way until all the pieces have been written. In any case, we generally tend to go about writing a paper in the same way every time, because that is what we are comfortable with.

For me, my usual "formula" is to sit down, read and understand the prompt, and just think about what I want to write about for a while. Normally, some kind of argument or insight comes to me fairly quickly, and then I think about what support I would use that would form the body paragraphs. Then, once I have a general idea of what to write, I begin writing, always in a linear fashion: beginning, middle, end. I start with my introductory paragraph containing my thesis, move onto the supporting paragraphs, and end in a conclusion. Additionally, I have a hard time writing "rough" drafts. I'm a very slow writer because I tend to be very picky about how I write. I'm particularly bad at just writing whatever comes to my mind; this lends itself to very slow writing because I need to be satisfied with how I've worded my sentence and if it's clear or too convoluted or cliche or prosaic etc etc. (As I write this now I realize I am rereading every sentence I'm writing and forcing myself not to dwell too long because it's supposed to be a blog and I should be writing my actual essay right now). It can take me over an hour just to get my introductory paragraph the way I want it. Hence, I seem to have an OCD like inability to just spit out a rough draft. I've used this general approach for every essay I've written since junior year. Until now, that is.

While writing this essay, I struggled (am still struggling?) just to formulate a clear argument. As I said before, normally I can think of what I want to write pretty quickly (one of the few things I'm pretty quick at). But I find these prompts are on a much more difficult level, partly because they are very broad and mostly because the poems they deal with are much more abstract and hence it is much harder to compose a clear, definitive, and consistent argument. Because I've had trouble formulating my starting point, the point after which the rest of my essay normally unfolds, I've found that my usual formula just isn't as applicable to this situation. So, I've kind of had to step out my bounds or my comfort bubble if you will, and tread into new waters. I'm taking a scattered approach - just writing what I can and then seeing if I can piece everything together - and not worrying about perfection, because quite frankly if I write how I usually do it would not only take an inordinate amount of time but I may very just end up scrapping it in the end because my thesis isn't even fully developed. Unless the long awaited afflatus comes, this will invariably end up being my first truly rough, rough draft.

Anyway, I would elaborate on this a bit more and then conclude how it's probably a good thing that I'm stepping out of my comfort zone and exploring new methods of writing, and that it would probably be beneficial to all developing writers to do something similar, but this is already getting a bit long winded and since I've already spent too much time writing this and not my essay I should sleep so tomorrow I can bang my head all day on "Spring and All".

SA#8: Langston Hughes

“Montage” isn’t a term usually applied to poetry; it’s a film term. A montage is a quick succession of shots that usually indicates compressed time. Here are some examples of montages:

From Disney’s Beauty and the Beast:



From Rocky:



(Funny how filming the learning process always seems to require a montage...)

Hughes calls this collection of poems Montage of a Dream Deferred. Write a paragraph in response to the following question:

How is the assigned selection similar to and different from a cinematic montage?

William Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow

There is one poem that stuck out to me in William Carlo's Spring and All: XXII. I knew I saw it before, but I did not think it was William Carlos Williams. Instead, I thought it was e.e. cummings based on the simplicity and lack of punctuation. Moving on...

XXII
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Let's look at some of the quick observations:
- No punctuation
- No capitalization
- Stanzas in sets of 2 lines (couplets)
- 4 stanzas
- First line of each stanza contains three words and 3-4 syllables
- Second line contains one word and two syllables
- No rhyme scheme
Just from this list, it seems like the poem is small and very shallow. Honestly, what can you do with a total of 22 syllables? Even reading over the previous poem is of no real help except to show that Williams' choice of subject is very random. However, we did discuss a lot about Williams' work in class and the overall topic of Spring and All. To understand XXII, it is important for one to note how Williams believes in imaginations. Such a simple poem depicts the reality of a red wheelbarrow and the description allows one to imagine the whole picture: chickens, rain glaze, and a wheel barrow. I can clearly picture the image that Williams is trying to portray, yet I also know that not everyone's image is going to be the same. One of Williams theme in the poem is also creation. Anyone can create the image of chickens and wheel barrows, but are any two the same? It is this idea of creation coupled with imagination that Williams points out.

On the other hand, our class discussion also spent a large amount of time on Williams' idea of plagiarizing. Is it wrong to plagiarize? What if we know that someone else had already said something in the best way possible, would it not be best to just copy that person's work? In a way, I framed that last question to relate to Williams' idea of plagiarism. His example of wiping out the whole world and starting anew is to show how even in a new start, we would end up where we are now because that right now is probably one of the "best" situations. In addition, there has been so much trial and error already that having a new world would simply mean more trial and error that makes it similar to the world were living in now. For example, if I were to say, "Draw a tree," what would one draw? Is there a brown trunk with roots on the bottom and branches on top. Then some green leaves covering the top of the tree? Couldn't there be a tree with no stump, just lots of dirt? It is through nature and evolution that the tree we think of today with the trunk and leaves to be the best combination of gathering resources for itself. In relation to the analogy, it is most likely that if trees were to be wiped out and start anew, after some evolution, it would end up like the trees that we know (or at least very similar).

Back to the poem itself, people can imagine certain pictures about chickens and a wheel barrow. Although some may be different, most of them will have very similar characteristics. Does this mean that someone plagiarized someone else's work? Or is it simply because that's just the main preception of chickens and wheel barrows?

Reference: Williams, William Carlos. Spring and All. Imaginations. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1970.

Effect of lectures

The point of students learning styles has been brought up before, and I think it’s a very interesting and important thing to consider. There are students who learn most effectively by listening; then a lecture should be a very effective study tool and a breeze to get through. There are also students who learn only by doing. These students get more from being personally involved. Moreover, doing entails messing up; there is nothing that would teach better than making a mistake, which is what I think the idea behind the whole ‘learn by doing’ phenomena.
These dual ideas are hard to apply in teaching a classroom full of students. Being considerate of individual students learning methods is impossible, so the only true criterion for lecture vs. non lecture should be the class subject. Some classes, like the sciences, on which the entire study is based on basic facts, should be lectured on. They deal with abstract concepts that could only be explained by someone who understands them and can, thus, explain them in manner more easily digested by students who have never before been exposed to the topic.
I am wary of the idea of lecture for an English class, however. An English class is meant to develop the student’s critical thinking skills, which would mean that the students have to develop ideas about a poet’s message, which is often cryptic, and then choose the best, or one that everyone agrees on, from among those ideas. I would argue that this process may sometime be fruitless, especially in a fifty minute class. It is not fruitless in that we don’t think about a poem and develop ideas about it. I feel, however, that sometimes we leave class unresolved about a certain poem, or an interpretation of that poem. I think that a short lecture, such as the one we had last week, would be perfect to direct our discussions throughout the week. A lecture that introduces the ideas of the time period, such as the ideals of modernism, or about the author and his/her ideas and about their life would shine a new light on their writing. It would narrow our perspectives, and focus in on ideas that might be more relevant. All in all, I think it will direct our discussion into what is hopefully the right direction.

The Other Side of Williams

So we read a short (a very short) poem by William Carlos Williams in class on Friday. This little poem really popped out at me, although I can't recall the title...

But anyways, I remember a comment made on it by Alistair, that it was "refreshing." And yes this poem was indeed refreshing. We're so used to either confusing observations about nature (Moore) or death (just about everything else), that a simple poem about eating someone's chilled plums was a pleasure to read.

One, the poem provided an escape from norm in subject matter.
Two, the poem was short.
Three, thee poem was simple.
Four, the poem was funny.
Five, the poem proved that even a nice and easy poem can provide discussions for college students.

And I hope we read more of these types in the future. :]

This was an especially surprising entry for it came from the same author as Spring and All, which turned out to be very hard to comprehend and was a completely different experience. Spring and All was lengthy which made it difficult to digest. Also it was full of figurative language that obscured the meaning of much of the poetic sections. I'm sure that the explanatory sections would have cleared things up, but yet again there is so much to digest that it doesn't come so easily.

We followed with a discussion of the sun beams in Spring and All.

And in having the two in front of us, both the one about the plums (I still can't recall the name...) and Spring and All I saw two completely different styles. One was very simple and the other very complex.

So in comparison to all our other poems, I see that just about everything we've read to this point falls towards the more complex side. This other side of Williams was perhaps the most refreshing read of the semester.

Lectures

Last week, we had a first lecture for class. It went by quickly, was concise and presented a lot of ideas, I noticed, that we discussed in class and also new ones that really got a hold of my interest. In a way the lecture could be looked upon as a poem; short, but at the same time, was able to present so many ideas. Lectures are usually like long articles (ie. physics), which many people may find repulsive. However, the English lecture was like a poem, everyone is glad to follow through with it. It was especially helpful with the ideas brought up about “The Waste Land.” I hadn’t really got the whole idea that T.S. Eliot was trying convey, but after the lecture, I feel quite sure of what that could be now.

A lot of helpful historical facts were included in the lecture and that I found to be probably most helpful and it was extremely relevant to “The Waste Land.” Without the description about what Modernist ideals are, I wouldn’t have really understood the connections being made during lecture. I clearly remember that the Modernists are in fear of what is to be made of their work because they try to seek new grounds for literature and explore the frontier, tired of the traditional ways of poetry. “The Waste Land” could possibly be an allegory for this Modernist struggle. Right from the very beginning, Eliot describes how Spring is the cruelest season for making lilacs grow out of the dead. This line itself has already described the main ideas of the Modernist concerns. They are breeding new ways of writing poetry and don’t know how that will turn out, or how people will react to it, basically, they don’t really know what they’ve created yet. Since writing is progressing and doesn’t really start from scratch when someone decides to change the popular writing style, “lilacs,” the modern way of writing, are being evolved from the traditional methods.

This brings up the two levels in which “The Waste Land” can be read. The lecture revealed, to me, more meanings to what “The Waste Land” can stand for. Prior to the lecture, I hadn’t a clue what the meaning was, but knew that there was some sort of idea that Eliot was trying to convey. Now I see that at two different levels, a reader can evoke the idea of a deteriorating society or the more personal story of the Modernist struggle. Modernists were at a critical point in literary history and were faced with a challenge of creating something new when it seemed almost impossible to do so. They made an impact that changed the literary world. The heavy metaphors and symbols serve to generalize or be opened to relating to more than just one idea, as the “The Waste Land” can be read on two separate levels with very few relations to each other.

lecture aids discussion

In class, we were asked if lectures would help us understand the material better. I looked around online and found that the teaching community has a lot to say about this subject. Specifically, I found a paper concerning undergraduate classes and the debate between discussion/lecture style learning, with the control being students in lecture and the experiment being a discussion-centric learning model. The study in question (linked below) found that the discussion group was more attentive and interested in the class overall, but the lecture group did slightly better on tests.


A general overview of the pros and cons of both lectures and discussions is also linked below. The conclusion of this overview seems to be that different students have different learning styles and that while those students who learn aurally, by listening, tend to do better in lecture, students who learn better with a more hands-on approach find lectures boring and appear to benefit far more from a discussion section. The consensus seems to be that a dual lecture/discussion teaching model is in order; while a teacher prompting a discussion (interactive learning predominantly between students) might garner a better picture of how well the class has understood the material, a teacher lecturing (taken in this sense to mean less instructor-student interaction, more a data dump) ensures that a certain necessary amount of information has been transferred. Which is more important – making sure the students really understand the material or stimulating their curiosity and intellectual thought-processes by making them figure it out for themselves?


This is a tricky question; the only example I can think of in favor of the lecture model is that of a physics class. The teacher lectures, describing the discoveries of such scientists as Newton or Einstein – discoveries no one would expect the students to make on their own. Then the teacher assigns homework to get the students to think about how to apply these discoveries – and there are many more applications than there are discoveries – and the students work collaboratively in discussion sections to figure out the problems. Clearly, this example is in favor of a duality as well, but its applicability to an English class might be limited; there are no end-of-chapter problem sets in our poetry anthologies, making effective use of the duality just a little bit harder.


If we are just told what is right and what is wrong about a poem, or how to think about it, sure… we understand – in the same way a student who copies a physics
problem from a solution key “understands” the problem: not very well, and not for long. If we attempt to puzzle it out for ourselves, there are two possible end-results: either we truly get it, or we fail to make the necessary conceptual leaps. This is the quandary – should a teacher aim for meaningful understanding or short-term comprehension, and how can a balance be reached?

Overview: http://kendrik2.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/lecture-vs-whole-group-discussion/


Specific Study: http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED136741&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED136741

Forgot to write one last week (Opps)

(I forgot to write a blog last week. so I will write one this week and then another next week.)

Title : My personal View

When we started reading, The Wasteland, by TS Eliot, I was lost from the beginning. I had no clue what that poem was. But once we started discussing it more and more in class, it became more clear to me. By the end, I understood a lot more about the poem.

And, now I am on the same path again. Like The Wasteland, Spring and All is also very confusing. While there are some parts that I understood, I had a hard time comprehending the rest of the poem. Now that we are almost halfway through the poem, I do understand a lot more compared to the beginning.

The one thing that I like about this poem that I hated about The Wasteland is the fact that this poem is not as creepy and bone chilling like The Wasteland. After reading that poem, I actually started disliking spring because of how Eliot portrayed spring. I like spring just because new things come to life, and everywhere you look, you see color, and a new glow. But after reading the first line in The Wasteland, I started thinking about spring, and what he said is true. Everything that grows in spring does come from dead things (A very terrifying thought).

There were other things that I did not like about The Wasteland, but the first line was something that I would never forget. I was so glad when we were done with The Wasteland because it was ruining everything that I loved about the world.
Then we started reading Spring and All, and I liked this version of spring way better. Main reason because it did not make spring seem all gross and creepy. This poem affirmed showed the beauty and power of the world that everyone loves in contrast to Eliot's grim gloomy reflection of spring (thank you Mr. Williams, you saved spring for me.) I personally feel like Spring and All is better than The Wasteland just because it is a little bit more uplifting and less pessimistic in the way that it represents things, even though they are equally confusing and frustrating.

But even with that, I am still having problems with this poem. It is not that this poem is confusing, well it is confusing, but the part that I am having problem with is just understanding where he is coming from, and why does he write things the way he does? Well I hope this poem becomes clear to me at the end, because this poem actually seems like something that I would like if I understood everything that it is talking about.

Upcoming poetry events

Tuesday, Oct. 21, 7:30 pm
Moe's Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley

Omnidawn Reading and Book Party

*Maxine Chernoff & Paul Hoover
*Lyn Hejinian
*Hank Lazer
*Tyrone Williams



Regent's Lecturer Norma Cole

Wednesday, October 29th, 5pm Geballe Room, Stephens Hall: Poetry Reading

Thursday, October 30th, 5pm Comparative Literature Library, 4337
Dwinelle Hall: "Instances of Time: Poetry and Performance"

Wednesday, November 5th, 6pm 4337 Comparative Literature Library, Dwinelle Hall: "Why I Am Not a Translator"

Quotations in Moore's writing.

While writing up Short Assignment 6 last week, I thought about the interesting effect that quotations have on "An Octopus", and what Moore was really trying to do by including them in her work.

When I began working on the short assignment, I started out by searching for all the most unlikely sources of quotations I could possibly find. I eventually settled on my Physics and Math textbooks, a Sci-Fi book by Iain Banks, and a pack of Milano chocolate biscuits. I then compiled a list of quotations to use in poem, and built up my text from there, occasionally changing or removing a quote when I couldn't find a way to make it work. This made me wonder: how did Marianne Moore decide on which quotations to include in her poem? They integrate well with the poem, but is this simply because she built the poem up around them? Or maybe she had an idea in mind, and then painstakingly searched through pamphlets and random literature until she got the effect she was shooting for...

This collage of quotations reminds me a little bit of the algorithmic poetry and "Erika T. Carter," the programmed poet, in that Moore uses phrases and words fabricated by others and combines them to form her final work. The words are programmed into her poem, in a way, but she still somehow manages to bring it together as a cohesive whole. I find this interesting because when we study poetry we often assign a lot of importance to the author's "voice", but then what do we make of a poem that is composed of "voices" other than that of the author? Maybe she is making a point about "plagiarism" and originality, like William Carlos Williams in "Spring and All".

Although it might be a little hard for me to understand what drove her to use this writing technique, I can nevertheless see how it affects the poem: "An Octopus" has a kind of recycled feel to it (hmm, interesting... She speaks of nature and her quotations come from forestry pamphlets. Maybe she is trying to convey a message about sustainability? Or maybe I've just been spending too much time re-reading my L&S C30U notes...) The quotations add to the constant flow of the poem because they dovetail into each other almost seamlessly: if the quotation marks had not been there, the poem would have felt quite natural and uninterrupted. Moore grabs these pieces of text and fits them into her work like she would fit pieces together in a jigsaw puzzle. Another metaphor: the text inside the quote marks are like quick snapshots of something else, views into the valleys and forests described by the pamphlets. This  gives the reader the feeling that there is a vast background story to the poem, and her original writing serves only to aid in the flow of images.

Poetry

Of all the poems we have read this year, “Poetry,” by Marianne Moore, is by far my favorite. The poem pricked my interest by the first line, “Poetry… I, too, dislike it”: is it the perfect poem for the inexperienced college student frustrated at the complexities of poetry? Has the plea for reprieve finally been answered? Could it be that finally a poet admits “There are things that are more important beyond all this fiddle?”
Strike one, two, and three. Moore threw a curveball. The poetry is possibly even more frustrating than ever before (unless you just finished with “The Waste Land”). Read past the first line and you will find yourself in the pathless abyss of those dreaded allusions and hidden meanings. But if you successfully maneuver through the poem, you will emerge with a greater appreciation for the art form.
Even though “Poetry” proved a difficult read, I preferred it to other poems, because of the connection I felt with the poem. Oftentimes poetry does not interest me because I do not associate with the subject matter, such as in the case of religious poetry (I am an atheist). Dickinson, especially, I find tiresome, due to her constant references to death. But I could understand where Moore was coming from, because I have similar opinions of poetry (though obviously not as well articulated).
I suppose I find Moore’s convoluted poetic style reasonable because it reinforces her status as the expert. If she were to, like me, merely complain about poetry, she would be dismissed as having no appreciation for the arts. But Moore is a poet, so she has the advantage of criticizing the system from within. But at the same time, it’s reassuring to know that she’s on my side.
It has always displeased me when people string long words and meaningless symbolism together and called it poetry. Even in writing this I’m having trouble enunciating what exactly I dislike about certain poems, which is why “Poetry” holds so much value: it makes my argument for me. So instead of having me attempt an incoherent criticism of poetry, just read Moore’s poem.
I didn’t enjoy “Poetry” because it was a simple restatement of my thoughts, however. Moore expanded my view of poetry, and helped me refine my inner grievances. Also, I liked her approach and the examples she uses, such as “Imaginary gardens with real toads in them” because they are so novel. She manages to avoid overused metaphors, and, as William Carlos Williams says, (I will have to agree with the second point) “She escapes. The incomprehensibility of her poems is witness to at what cost.”

SA#7: Williams

Consider the poem titled "VIII" (pp. 109-10).

1. Suppose you had to add periods to mark the ends of sentences. Where would you put them?

2. Now that you've identified the first sentence and marked it with a period, paraphrase it. Then list the images that are being introduced as metaphors.

3. How difficult did you find the sentence to paraphrase? What made it difficult or easy to paraphrase?

A way to understand Moore

Reading this article took me a long time. I still remember looking at this article on Thursday afternoon, scared by its formidable length. After much time and effort reading the article the night before, I wake up to find out that reading this article had become optional. But nevertheless, this article has brought me some insight on Moore’s writing and thoughts.

Through reading this article and many of Moore’s poems, I learned that Moore really likes to write about animals and sometimes parallel/compare their behavior to humans, like in “The Jerboa”. In the poem, she first describes how humans like to use objects to display their power and material happiness then contradicts it to the jerboa, whose lack of material is its source of happiness. The article also talks about Moore’s poem “He ‘Digesteth Harde Yron’”. In this poem, the ostriches exemplify great courage as they protect their chicks from danger, but the humans kill these ostriches, not because of human’s heroism but because of their greed. Using these examples, the article argues Moore’s tendency to take two drastically different things and put them together to show connections that we otherwise would not notice. I especially like how the author argues that Moore aims “to accomplish more than merely the appreciation that art museums seek: they also teach a lesson, as science museums aim to. She asks her readers both to marvel at the objections she lays before them and to learn lessons from them”.

After learning this, I “The Octopus” seemed a little clearer to me. If Moore likes to take two things and show their connection, then there must be some connection between the octopus and the Greeks that she mentions in the poem. I thought the octopus is actually referring to the snow near the top of a volcanic mountain. The descriptions of the rat, the “thoughtful beavers” are all animals that live on this mountaintop. The volcano is “composed of calcium gems”, “alabaster pillars”, “topaz, tourmaline crystals, and amethyst quartz” and that it’s “‘a mountain with those graceful lines which prove it a volcano,’/ its top a complete cone like Fujiyama’s”. The animals live happily and blissfully on this volcano, unaware of the dangers it can bring but the Greeks are not so happy because they are aware of danger. This led me to conclude that Moore might be arguing that innocence/ignorance is bliss. In the second stanza, she talks about a “power as Adam had and we are still devoid of”, which may be referring to innocence/ignorance. She also talks about how “guns, nets, seines, traps and explosives…are prohibited” and how “disobedient persons being summarily removed/ and not allowed to return without permission in writing”. This refers to the laws we set up to protect ourselves because we know of selfishness and fail to trust others.

Overall, by reading the article, I found a general way to read Moore’s poems, to take her animals and connect them to whatever comes after.

Williams’ Parallel to Kundera

While reading Williams’ Spring and All, I cannot help but liken it to Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. They both have war and religious (or rather, sacrilegious) themes in them, presented in an exaggerated manner that is close to sarcasm. Both have the propensity to play the devil’s advocate and are not reserved in their criticisms. Moreover, their central messages seem to be interconnected with each other.

I was going to bring up this point during discussion today, but I seriously doubt that anyone—aside from Natalia—would recognize my reference. Furthermore, to anyone who has read Kundera’s book, it would all seem inappropriate and awkward to bring up such a point. Alas, I would need the courage from my other persona-- which exists only when I’m safe in front of the computer screen—to write out my thoughts.

Kundera compares two opposing traits—the lightness and heaviness in personality. Those who are “light” are carefree and frivolous whereas those who are “heavy” are serious and dramatic—but there is no indication that one is more profound than the other. Williams is on the lighter side, for he is criticized in the following way:

“You seem to neither to have suffered nor, in fact, to have felt anything very deeply… They are heartless, cruel, they make fun of humanity. What in God’s name do you mean? Are you a pagan? Have you no tolerance for human frailty? ... You have not yet suffered a cruel blow from life. When you have suffered you will write differently.” (pg.88)

The critic is of the heavy side, for he seems to understand suffering as an essential element of art. Everything must be serious-- must be melodramatic. I believe we have a colloquial term for people as such in the modern day: the critic is “emo”.

Why must Williams look at the bleak part of life? Why must he be pessimistic? He needs no sympathy to write about imagination and he certainly needs no sympathy to criticize people’s lack of imagination. He is not rigging people’s emotions—since, we all know, it’s kind of hard to criticize someone’s suffering. Instead, he dances around, writing down what is on his mind: what if—

Kundera, too, does not appeal to people’s sympathy; he is, after all, writing to make a philosophical point. Kundera, who is oppressed under Soviet Russia, has certainly had his fair share of suffering, probably more than many authors who write about pain and death but has never experienced such. But he is “light”, and so is his protagonist. Kundera makes his point about the conflict of heaviness and lightness with irony and sarcasm—but that does not detract from the value of his work. It is merely a different approach.

Well, I suppose it’s altogether fitting for a cynical person like me to appreciate Kundera and Williams more than others. It is ironic that many of the poems that appeal to the sense of pity come off as fake for me. Then, I suppose I can deem myself “light”—though by no means am I a frivolous womanizer or an insensitive jerk (I might concede to the latter, though).

Kundera and Williams both come off as insensitive, demonstrated by the following passages.

“Kill! Kill! The English, the Irish, the French, the Germans, the Italians and the rest: friends or enemies, it makes no difference, kill them all. The bridge is to be blown up when all Russian is upon it… I speak for the integrity of the soul and the greatness of life’s inanity; the formality of its boredom; the orthodoxy of its stupidity. Kill! Kill! Let there be fresh meat…” (Williams)

“Not until 1980 were we able to read in the Sunday Times how Stalin's son, Yakov, died. Captured by the Germans during the Second World War, he was placed in a camp together with a group of British officers. They shared a latrine. Stalin's son habitually left a foul mess. The British officers resented having their latrine smeared with shit, even if it was the shit of the son of the most powerful man in the world. They brought the matter to his attention. He took offense. They brought it to his attention again and again, and tried to make him clean the latrine. He raged, argued, and fought. Finally, he demanded a hearing with the camp commander. He wanted the commander to act as arbiter. But the arrogant German refused to talk about shit. Stalin's son could not stand the humiliation. Crying out to heaven in the most terrifying of Russian curses, he took a running jump into the electrified barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp. He hit the target. His body, which would never again make a mess of the Britishers' latrine, was pinned to the wire… Stalin's son laid down his life for shit. But a death for shit is not a senseless death. The Germans who sacrificed their lives to expand their country's territory to the east, the Russians who died to extend their country's power to the west— yes, they died for something idiotic, and their deaths have no meaning or general validity. Amid the general idiocy of the war, the death of Stalin's son stands out as the sole metaphysical death.” (Kundera)

But the points are not about the dying soldiers in the Great Wars. Instead, it’s about the pointlessness of death—something emphasized by detaching ourselves with the initial shock of the horrible results of wars.

However, I still want to repeat the notion that those who are light are not less profound. Surely, Kundera and Williams both understand the importance of human lives and frailty. But, unlike others, they see no point in repeating the same thing over and over again.

Algorithmic poetry and reputations

Recently a couple of students put together an online "anthology" by collecting the names of about 1500 poets, most of them living, and attaching them to poems generated by an algorithm. (One of the compilers, Stephen McLaughlin, gives the story at Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog.)

Note:

1. The poems were automatically generated by a computer program.

2. The poems had nothing to do with the poets listed in the anthology.

Some people, like the well known Language poet Ron Silliman, were irritated. Although his blog post on the anthology begins in an amused tone, noting the project's "quirky" quality, by the end he posts one of the authors' home contact information and adds,

I might note that the last time I felt ripped off by an on-line stunt, I sued – as a lead plaintiff in a class-action case brought by the National Writers Union. And while I can’t discuss the suit, as a condition of the subsequent settlement, I will note that we could have gotten a pretty good major league middle infielder for the final amount. Play with other people’s reps at your own risk.

In the lengthy comment thread, the flarf poet Nada Gordon countered with

Whoa. It's OBVIOUS that this is an art project. A rather clever one, to my mind. It's anarcho-flarf, maybe, but not vandalism. It's not "playing with other people's reps." The poems in this anthology will neither make nor break the reputations of anyone except perhaps Stephen and Jim, who should be lauded for the grand scale of their conceptual art piece, which no doubt entailed a lot of work.

Many, many people in the poetry world have commented on it (after all, 1k+ of them are "included" in the anthology!) -- for instance, here and here. Some have even said they wish they'd really written the poems that were attributed to them!

What do you think?

Can a computer-generated block of text be a poem?

Did the compilers do something wrong in using the names of real poets (including Ron Silliman and Nada Gordon, but also poets like Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare)?

Is it funny? A stupid stunt?

MOORE VS. ELIOT

I think that Moore's work relates each introduced topic in a very "stream of consciousness" way. So when you look at the poem, just skimming it, you may not understand how Moore got from point A to point B especially with all of the quotes that are thrown into the mix. But if you take the time to read the section in question carefully, you can kind of follow Moore's train of thought, so you might not see every connection but you can at least see the general path from point A to point B.

For Example Lines 75-81, the reader might be skimming along and ask the question "how does Moore get from talking about a 'Big Snow Mountain' to a 'nine-striped chipmunk'" this comparison does not make since if it is just read picking out only those phrases in connection to the two ideas about a mountain and an animal. But if you were to read the entire sentence, in this case only 1/2 of a sentence, you will see that the mountain is "a home of a diversity of creatures" such as the "nine-striped chipmunk" (summarized). Moore is able to include all of this to help us understand. But Eliot may have just said, there is a "Big Snow Mountain" the "nine striped chipmunk running...." with nothing in between the to phrases and ideas. When stated like that, we do not have as clear of an idea of why the poem is first talking about a mountain and then talking about a chipmunk.

I think that Moore's writing flows from one idea to the next, where as Eliot's ideas seem to jump around, unrelated to one another and unconnected. Moore's thought process is made clear but with Eliot it can be hard to see the connection (if you can see one at all) between 2 ideas. Both Eliot and Moore go from point A to point B but they do so in different ways, with different approaches.

Another way to put is would be that Eliot seems to leave out all of the middle stuff, the thought process, and just jumps from point to point, probably just assuming that you are following the same thought pattern as he is. But Moore includes all of the middle stuff, her entire thought process is presented to the reader so that we can make a connection between each idea given.

This is where I think students get confused. I think that because Moore includes all of this middle stuff, the students may be getting lost in all of the information, so they look back at Eliot's work and think that they would rather try to see the connections in his ideas than sort through Moore's thought process to find the connection that is given.

Another main difference between Moore's work and Eliot's work, is their structure. Moore has a very odd way of structuring her work, she kind of breaks all of the rules with structure. Moore's lines do not align with her sentences, and there are very few stanza breaks. But Eliot's work, although the sentencing is sometimes strange or incomplete, at least follows a "normal" structural pattern. His work has many line breaks and several stanza breaks, his work is even further separated into sections of ideas. This makes Eliot's work appear more organized and normal.

However I still find Moore's work easier to read than Eliot's work. Even though the structure is odd, I can see the connections between ideas in Moore's work and I can break it up into sentences to further understand the work. But with Eliot I still do not see many of the connections between his ideas, and I can't just take one sentence and analyze it, because there are very few complete sentences.

"In the Basement of the Ivory Tower"

I came across this article written by an anonymous private college and community college English/writing professor ("Professor X") in the northeastern U.S. (he teaches at two colleges), and it brought up some points that I thought were interesting. It's a long article so I won't post it all here, but in case any of you want to read it, the link is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college/3

It seems like nowadays people generally think that everyone should go to college; everyone would be more educated, making America better, and so on and so forth. One of the points that "Professor X" brought up was that sometimes people just aren't college material. One of the incidents that caused him to decide this was the failing grade he had to give to a woman who had to pass some courses in order to get a promotion at her job. After personally trying to help the woman she turned in a paper that was clearly not college level; the woman didn't even know how to use the word processor right, as he describes:

"There was no real thesis. The paper often lapsed into incoherence. Sentences broke off in the middle of a line and resumed on the next one, with the first word inappropriately capitalized. There was some wavering between single- and double-spacing. She did quote articles, but cited only databases—where were the journals themselves? The paper was also too short: a bad job, and such small portions."(X)

The professor argues that in this case the woman needed to pass the class in order to get a promotion; thus suggesting that although jobs may not require college degrees, supervisors may expect some educational experience in this day and age. So what happens to those that simply aren't college material? This article kind of made me feel sorry for the woman, because obviously she is slightly hopeless.

But the author did bring up a good point that I agree with fully; he stated that a knowledge of good literature and poetry not only would help the careers of his students (most of his students are only taking his class because their jobs required them to go back to school, such as police officers, state troopers, social workers, etc), but it would also help them broaden their understanding of the world within their job:

"Reading literature at the college level is a route to spacious thinking, to an acquaintance with certain profound ideas, that is of value to anyone. Will having read Invisible Man make a police officer less likely to indulge in racial profiling? Will a familiarity with Steinbeck make him more sympathetic to the plight of the poor, so that he might understand the lives of those who simply cannot get their taillights fixed? Will it benefit the correctional officer to have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? The health-care worker Arrowsmith? Should the child-welfare officer read Plath’s “Daddy”? Such one-to-one correspondences probably don’t hold. But although I may be biased, being an English instructor and all, I can’t shake the sense that reading literature is informative and broadening and ultimately good for you. If I should fall ill, I suppose I would rather the hospital billing staff had read The Pickwick Papers, particularly the parts set in debtors’ prison."(X)

Works Cited:
Professor X. "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower." TheAtlantic.com .

SA #6: More Moore

Write a paragraph (about 250 words) in the style of "An Octopus." Use as many quotations as you can. List the sources of your quotations at the end.

The topic can be anything you like.

Poetry: Do I Dislike it?

Here's my reaction to Marianne Moore's "Poetry." What caught my attention before even reading the poem was the physical structure that is evident Moore's poetry. Although I know I should not judge a poem by the way it looks, I enjoy the variety and different types of structure such as e.e. cummings and Moore. In "Poetry," it is just indentation; however, I also believe it serves to guide the reader/speaker. It seems like random nonsense to be indenting and creating a new stanza in the middle of sentences, but the enjambment is one type of poetic device among many that are used in numerous styles of poetry.

As we freewrote in class, I made the connection between the structure of the poem as a zoo and the content of the poem as the "real toads." While I did some of the reading by Catherine E. Paul, it referenced to Moore's experience with the museums and it got me thinking about animals and zoos. While I am a sucker for "imaginary gardens," there has to be some substance in the poem itself for me to genuinely enjoy it. There has to be something real (toads?) to give the poem meaning. Anyways, this paragraph contains the main part of my free-write, and I want to discuss more about the poem.

I didn't want to get into deeply during the discussion we had in class; however, the poem struck me not only as guidelines to poetry but as guidelines to life. Life is something I can "dislike" and have contempt, but is also necessary to understand its "rawness" and genuinity. There are people living half-lives: not knowing exactly what they want to do, but following the motions. Then there are those fully living within the moment of the "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." These people know they are living in a temporary world for 80 maybe-so years, but truly experiencing it. It is like an imaginary world, but their souls are real because they live with a purpose. I am not saying this is Moore's intention at all about the poem, but my connection with poetry. Poetry is an artistic expression of one's thoughts and views on life. I also believe that since there are so many forms and kinds of poetry, everyone can find his/her own style.

"Poetry for me" - Daniel Kim
I, too, enjoy poetry: your voice, your style, your
life wrapped into words.
Showing who you are to those around you and to
yourself by means of poetry.
Poetry: Just live it.

What does "An Octopus" mean?

At this point I don’t really feel qualified to comment on the nature imagery and/or quasi-sarcastic fluff (did we really decide on it in class?) comprising the majority of “An Octopus.” The conclusion of the poem, however, stood out to me because of its distinct break from the flood of images.

The idea that “the forest … by its beauty // stimulates the moral vigor of its citizens,” is almost immediately juxtaposed alongside an allusion to Adam, and where the rest of humanity was lacking with respect to him – specifically, in our “Emotionally sensitive,” “hard” hearts. The argument is presented that by breaking from the beauty of nature human simultaneously break from morality, that we lose “happiness,” that “spiritual substance,” of the “soul itself,” in establishing a “remote” interaction with nature. This same remoteness is described as “damned,” in relation to the “fossil flower,” and further extended to include one Henry James, “damned by the public for … // restraint,” where “restraint,” is described as distinct from “decorum.” In “He Digesteth Harde Yron,” Moore asserts “the power of the visible // is the invisible,” which I read as follows: what we miss, or overlook, defines the narrowness of our vision, and therefore the prejudices and biases that we rationalize into our personal interpretation of that which we do see. Similarly, in overlooking the beauty of nature we also cut ourselves off from moral accountability in our dealings with nature – we lose sight of the happiness that our soul could be “persuaded” towards, and our wisdom becomes “remote,” of the same derived, “high-sounding,” utterly useless variety described in “Poetry.”

I also read a sense of finality in the repetition of the statement, “Neatness of finish!” The exclamation invoked a strong image of robotic behavior – of mechanical, inhuman efficiency. The idea that the ice-octopus, the glacier, with its limited “capacity for fact,” acts with “Relentless accuracy,” was rather chilling; in our drive for “[neatness] of finish,” and “relentless accuracy,” are we similarly crushing everything in our path? The final images of the poem depict “flattened mats of branches shrunk in trying to escape,” with “this glassy octopus,” described as “a claw.” These images, juxtaposed alongside earlier descriptions of “bear’s ears and kittentails,” (I realize I am generalizing here) present a striking contrast.

To summarize, I am unclear as to the author’s intention; nature is lauded as providing a moralizing avenue for mankind to appreciate, but our blindness to its beauty is linked to physical remoteness, mechanical efficiency, and moral failing that are perhaps further linked to the potential for glacial destruction. I also note, however, that the description of nature in the earlier stanzas is not entirely happy and cheerful; there is a certain element of destructive potential in the nature imagery as well.

Your thoughts on my interpretation are appreciated; if we don’t get to go over this in class I would still like to have a clearer understanding of “An Octopus,” and its intricacies.

museum exhibitions and poets

Thursday, October 2, 2008, the homework on the syllabus included more on Moore’s poems and the article, “Discovery, Not Salvage,” by Paul. I read through the poems first and then moved, confused from the poems, to the article. I wasn’t aware that the article was no longer an assigned reading because I failed to read my email that day. On Saturday, October 04, 2008, I read through my email and found that the reason why we didn’t discuss the article on Friday was because that part of the assigned reading was canceled. Reading the article was just as difficult as reading the poems in that the article’s length was not appealing at all. However, the reading of the article, some very interesting ideas about Moore’s style of poetry were brought up. I liked how the article was able to answer some of the questions I had about Moore’s topics and consistent animal subjects. She has a very distinctive style that dominates throughout each of her poems which includes the most obvious, or not so obvious, obscure presentation of themes.

At first, I thought that Moore was sort of battling T.S. Eliot for the title of “most obscure poet.” Then I realized that she totally has reasons for what she does as a poet, according to information I got out of the article. I’m not sure if Eliot was the same way, but he was a poet frequently mentioned throughout the article. I read through and found that Moore actually was inspired by museum exhibitions, most of them of animals. In her poems, with animals dominating as the subject, she actually sat in an exhibition where collectors arranged animals in an environment made to resemble the one of the exhibiting animal’s habitat. That is where I saw Moore’s inspiration to write detailed descriptions of an animal in natural settings.

What stuck to my mind the most was that the article brought up this idea where the person who created a piece of artwork, the collector who arranged artwork to showcase, and the person visiting the exhibition are all artists. In a way, this point is relating to the way Moore writes and also Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” In “The Octopus,” Moore used many quotes, in some ways the poem seemed to be almost entirely comprised of quotes, quotes, that I learned came from travel brochures. The article shows that Moore, herself is an artist, one that curates and arranges so as to create a new piece. The same idea also is fit for Eliot.

I’m glad to have realized this from reading the article. It was really helpful in providing a bit of insight into Moore’s poetic style.