My Favorite Poem in the class (at least as of now)

My favorite poem in the class so far has to be Edward Taylor’s “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly.” No, it’s not just because I am able to understand it—however, it does help a lot since it is maybe only one of a handful that I did really understand. It is my favorite poem because it certainly relates to me as a seeking Christian. I call myself a seeking Christian because even though I’ve had a strong foundation at a church, an education at a Catholic school, and beliefs and morals that match many of Jesus’ teachings, I am still seeking as to exactly who I am.

At times, I would feel like the fly, trapped and hopeless, and even dead to society. Other times, I would feel some kind of supernatural strength helping me fight through tough times in school or with family. Taylor presents the poem really well with the different scenarios of a wasp and a fly being caught in the spider’s web. The poem helps to create visual images that can be disturbing—“And hind the head/Bite dead”—but also revealing and hopeful—“Thy grace to break the cord, afford” (Taylor 24-25, 43).

Another reason as to why I like Taylor’s poem is because it is familiar to what I am used to seeing in poetry. I know this may be because I am very narrow-minded in the field of poetry, but I like how there is a specific structure to the poem. There are 5-line stanzas with the rhyme scheme of ABACC in each stanza and the syllable counts as well (I observed these myself!).

I’ve learned to appreciate this poem a lot more as we progressed in this class because we got into the more modernist poetry and lots of poems that I just could not understand. I would ask myself, “Why would O’Hara write these poems?” Honestly, I’d try to fool myself into an answer that is somewhat satisfactory, but I still have no idea. Moreover, Marianne Moore and Harryette Mullen are two other examples of poets who I still have no idea as to what the purpose was in their writing. As for Taylor, I understand that he is trying to glorify God’s grace and almighty power to the world. In his poetry, Taylor praises God as the one who can help you out of the vicious deaths in meaningless activities on earth. “Upon a Spider Catching a Fly” certainly holds a lot of meaning in its short lines and I certainly do like this poem.

I really do hope that I continue to read poetry, even though I was discouraged a lot this semester by all the complex poems we read. I also hope that you, as well, will continue to read poetry.

Coping with the Waste

After studying for the final exam, I realized how Wendy Cope's name is so fitting for her poetry. For example, the first poem we read is called "Engineers' Corner" and it describes the harsh life of an engineer when the poets seem to have such a grand time. It is as if she is trying to help engineers by recognizing their hardships and helping them cope with the problems. Moreover, she points out specific differences between the lives of poets and the lives of engineers such as a "statue in the Abbey" and "must be hell" (Cope 12, 15). It's funny how Cope would point out these differences when she herself is a poet.

In the second poem, "Waste Land Limericks,” Cope helped me cope with trying to understand what Eliot’s “The Waste Land” was all about. She follows the five section patterns, but very briefly describes the sections. At first, it may seem like it's just a parody and there really is of no importance to her poem in relation to Eliot's poem. When I read it over again, I see how accurate her sections are to the actual "The Waste Land." She points out the death in the fourth section, the typist's encounter in the third section, the two couples in the second section, and the different speakers in the first section.

Although Cope’s poems are in a way mocking and fun, her points do get across. I would not be surprised in the Renaissance if there were many engineers who lived unnoticed because they were overshadowed by the writings of poets. I would not be surprised if people were able to understand Eliot’s poem just a tad better because Cope explains it with more pedestrian language. In addition, the parody format helps to lighten up the mood and not make it seem like an assignment.

Why do I bring up Cope? Well, she brings me hope to the final. Her style of poetry is kind of the life that I want to be able to live: Recognizing the hardships in life, but being able to live through them by poking fun at them. As finals week dawns upon us, may we be able to see some of the humorous aspects of our lives rather than just slaving over the textbooks.

Authors

I noticed that Andrew came up with a list of the poems we studied in class this semester with his summaries next to them so I thought I could post a list of authors and some of the things that help me remember who wrote what.

Gerard Manley Hopkins
-rhyming at the end of each line
-some alliteration
-religious poetry

Emily Dickinson
-lots of dashes, ones in the middle of the line or at the end
-weird capitalization, capitalization of the first word of each line, and capitalization of nouns
-something about death
-short lines
-slant rhyme

William Cullen Bryant
-medium length lines
-some dashes
-talks about nature and how nature is a comforting figure
-capitalization of the first word in each line

Thomas Traherne
-angels
-describing a world someone first enters
-about birth/rebirth/afterlife

Edward Taylor
-about spiders
-very short lines with a specific format (indentation)
-
Christopher Smart
-the line starts with the word “For”
-talks about cats

T.S. Eliot
-dialogue
-foreign languages
-references to foreign places
-
Wendy Cope
-short
-easy to understand
-talks about the wasteland (the few parts I understood)

Marianne Moore
-animals, using specific scientific names
-not much punctuation
-complex sentence structures, very long sentences
-quotes that you won’t notice are quotes unless they are quoted
-things about nature
-things about humans and their relationship to nature

William Carlos Williams
-some poems have very short lines, like a few words short
-some poems have middle length lines
-almost no punctuation (except dashes and commas, sometimes there are periods)

Kenneth Koch
-long lines, sentences
-humorous
-reminds me of the plum poem

Langston Hughes
-about Harlem,
-examples of dreams deferred
-African Americans
-italics
-some onomatopoeia
-short lines

Frank O’Hara
-food
-lunchtime
-seemingly trivial activities
-New York
-foreign places
-vulgar language

John Donne
-love and the lover’s world
-“thou”, “thee”
-Shakespeare-ish language (I forgot what it’s called, Middle English?)

Robert Duncan
-complete sentences
-describes a place (the meadow)
-talks about writing (Structure of Rime)

Lorine Niedecker (I don’t have much to say)
-very short poems
-a little random

Harryette Mullen
-incomprehensible
-sometimes paragraph form
-specific patterns (ex. Sentences start out the same way, lines start with same letter of the alphabet)

Review

Since we have not studied any new work in the past week and the final is coming up, I’m sure everyone cares more about the final than anything else connected to poetry. Here’s a list of the works and authors we have studied. The summaries are not to be taken seriously, just a mnemonic device to help me remember what they are.

Hopkins
God’s Grandeur- even as light of the world disappears, it will always return, as God Is eternal.
The Windhover- talks about how mighty and beautiful that bird is.
Pied Beauty- praise God for all things, regular and exotic, generic and specific.
Spring and Fall- addressing Margaret, comforting her from the grief of a departing friend.

Dickinson
After Great Pain- After the grieving period, the person take cares of chores in a mechanical manner.
Twas Like a Maelstrom- some dreadful imageries—pain, torture, and the likes.
I heard a fly buzz- narrator dies, but is constantly annoyed by a buzzing fly.
Because I could not stop for death- death comes and ferries the narrator away.

Traherne
Wonder- The guy on shrooms thinking how like an angel he came down. Also seeing many colors.

Taylor
Upon a spider catching a fly- Fly gets caught, wasp escapes—referring to level of religious devotion.

Smart
Jubilate Agno—the cat poem.


Bryant
Thanatopsis—land of the dead. People return to nature once they die.

Eliot
The Waste Land—people become mechanical. Loss of individuality. Lots of rape. Lots of quotes.

Cope
Waste Land Limericks—parody of the Waste Land.
Engineers’ Corner—parody of engineers—engineers have it hard whereas English majors seem to have it easy

Moore- A bunch of stuff about observable phenomena particular concerning nature. The following are her poems:
The Jerboa
The Monkeys
Critics and Connoisseurs
An Octopus
Poetry
He ‘Digesteth Harde Yron

Williams
Spring and All—defy convention—“plagiarism” and create new things from personal imagination.

Koch
Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams—parody of Williams and how everything seem to be so frivolous and mean-spirited.

O’hara
Lunch Poems- bunch of poems that does not seem to particularly bear much weight.

Hughes
Montage of a Dream Deferred- Black people. White people. Beats.

Donne
The Good Morrow- addresses the lover. Compare their love to the world.
The Sun Rising- Sun, don’t bother my mistress/wife/lover and let us enjoy our morning.
The Canonization- some more lover’s stuff. Particular interested in imagery of sexual climax.

Duncan
Often I am Permitted to return to a meadow- some guy who wants a piece of mind.
The structure of Rime I- A guy talking to a woman who epitomizes sentence.
The structure of Rime II-A guy disguised as a lion talking to a lion.

Niedecker
(A bunch of poems we never analyzed and of which I hope isn’t on the final)

Hass
Skipped

Mullen
Sleeping with the dictionary- trying to be incomprehensible.

General announcements/reminders

1. The exam is in 20 Wheeler (in the basement, lucky us!) on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2 pm.

2. If you haven't picked up your marked-up draft yet, it's in my mailbox in 322 Wheeler, which is open M-F 9am-noon and 1-4pm.

3. Optional exam review is on Friday 9-10 am in 400 Wheeler, where I hold my regular office hours. If you're longing to know what your colleagues would say about a Williams poem, this is the time and the place.

What is the meaning?

I've been thinking, with all that we critique and analyze in class, we come up with a lot of possible explanations to answer why a piece of work is the way it is. And at times we come to really good and valid conclusions, and at other times we fumble around in the dark.

But I've been thinking, is there always an intention or a meaning behind everything that the author or creator makes? Two recent examples that got me to considering this are of Frank O'Hara and Harriette Mullen. Much of O'Hara's writing seems to be merely portraying a particular incident or observation of his on that given lunch day. Mullen creates her poetry through the ispiration of dictionary games.

In analyzing these poems, we come up with many key points and ideas behind them. But is it possible that they could have been written just for the sake of putting pen to paper? Maybe there were no thoughts or underlying reasons for doing so, but they were just created, perhaps aimlessly.

One instance that brought this to my attention was during pin-ups for Environmental Design 1, where we showcase our work on the wall. The reviewers (professor and GSIs) interpretted various works and possible reasons for why the collages were a certain way, and sounded very astute in their observations.

One comment was, "the hint of pink used throughout this collage perfectly accents the dimmed lights within the museum, and it really carries across well to the viewer. We get a sense of colors blending in together due to the lighting." It was something to this extent. "Was this why you chose to include this color?"

"No... my printer was just running low on ink..."

And this GSI stood there, stumped, with many annonymous giggles to highlight the embarrassment. And this happened on numerous occasions, with similar responses, such as "No... I ran out of cardboard" or "I didn't have anymore photos to include." We all found this hilarious :]

So my question is, is it always necessary to find meanings behind everything (especially for Mullen) ? It seems like sometimes we may just be swinging in the dark.

treatment of machines in the waste land

In the tale of the typist, in The Waste Land, Eliot makes clear that the typist has no will; she is “indifferent,” and “hardly aware,” and the two seem connected to her “automatic” motion. More interesting to me, however, is the action of the lover, the man the majority of our class felt was a rapist.


He is “patronising” upon leaving, which would indicate that although he is aware of her lack of desire – that he knows her “indifference” is not in his favor. The typist never resists, though. She never makes a negative motion; indeed, she makes no motion at all. She never exercises her will, never seeks to control her circumstances. Her actions are automatic, robotic, machine-like, and he treats her as such.


The question I would raise, and which I believe Eliot is raising through this passage, is whether the atrophy of will is simultaneously the atrophy of humanity. On the basest level, it is necessary to show consideration for the impact an individual’s actions will have on others. If those others are not capable of feeling, of being affected by one’s actions, or at the very least not capable of voicing their concerns, do they still deserve consideration? Do their desires, their preferences, still matter, at least in the context of how their preferences impact our decisions?


Eliot does not deign to answer this question directly; rather, his example of the typist points out that whether or not the lover is morally in the wrong for caressing the typist with the knowledge that his “caresses” are “undesired,” the action is still carried through. This is a key point – the lover continues to act. Where are the repercussions for his violation? Where are the checks to his desires? If she would speak, the typist would say no, but she does not speak, and so he continues – and this is no one-time occurrence, for he is an “expected guest.”


There can be no morality in this new world because although all of us are humans, not all of us have that intangible quality of the will. Those of us who do can hold our own, can speak out, but those who do not are indistinguishable in the “crowd”; these machines walk, talk, and look like us, but they are susceptible to the same violation as the typist – their preferences effectively mean nothing for they cannot express their will upon reality.


In a sense, this de-humanization speaks more about those who do have will than those who do not. How do we treat our machines? How do we, who have the ability to make and carry through decisions, treat those lesser than us, who cannot speak up for themselves? From the point of view of absolute morality, we rape them. But in reality, if an issue is intangible, without visible symptoms, and its sufferers do not voice their pain, the healthy cannot be blamed for failing to take the appropriate action.

Are they simply words?

The most basic idea of a structured society is usually composed of a high class, middle class, and low class. When we discussed Mullen’s “Mantra for a Classless Society, of Mr. Roget’s Neighborhood,” it was discovered that the seemingly simple poem actually had more substance to it than initially thought. When I first read this poem, I thought there wasn’t much to it, Mullen probably just grabbed a thesaurus and put synonyms together and structured the lines so that it would become a poem. I thought it was impossible to get some sort of meaning out of it, but I was completely wrong.

We established in class, several ideas that I agree with. The lines of synonyms actually have some sort of order, one that can be considered to be modeled after a social hierarchy. It starts out with words that describe “the wealthy,” or people higher up on the social ladder. They are “cozy” in their “shelters” and “protected concealed” most likely in gated communities. At the fifth to sixth lines the words begin to transition into descriptive words of the middles class. Immediately after that line, Mullen begins a description of the lower class. It was interesting to notice that there are less lines describing the “wealthy” and more lines describing the “poverty-stricken.” This led to the reasoning that there are wealthy people but they are the few compared to the majority of people who live under “uncomfortable” situations.

I was beginning to see that this poem had so much potential for interpretations. I could sort of make a connection between the title of the poem and its overall meaning. Obviously there seems to be some sort of contradiction because the title says a classless society yet for many reasons, when I read this poem the most dominate aspect of it is that there seems to a rough description of a social hierarchy which deals much with status and class. Since Mr. Roget’s Neighborhood is a reference to Roget’s Thesaurus, perhaps Mullen is trying to show that these words that she puts together are not just words. Usually, we do not see words as being separated into groups of words that are better than other words; that is the classless society. However, when the meanings are considered, can we truly say that because this word would describe the wealthy is a word higher up on some status quo for words? Mullen cleverly manipulates the words and structures them so that make a status quo out of something that is classless. In the end we forget that they are just words.

'Pataphysique and Oulipo

I was just reading the wikipedia article on OuLiPo when I stumbled on something called " 'Pataphysics ". From my understanding of the article, 'pataphysics is a sort of meta-meta-physics, and a parody of modern science and philosophy. It turns out that Oulipo started out as a sort of sub-committee at the College de 'Pataphysique, and so I was wondering what the relation was between the movement and its ideological origin.

Even the central tenets of the "college" are paradoxical and slightly amusing: "The real 'pataphysicist takes nothing seriously, except 'Pataphysics... which consists of taking nothing seriously." The whole movement is almost a big joke, and yet it produced some very pertinent and powerful work, for example, the Oulipo that we have been studying. This just goes to show that parody and criticism truly are powerful and constructive tools in the literary world.

Something I noticed, however, is how similar this whole abstractions of abstractions concept (the "meta-metaphysics") sounds to Marianne Moore's "works so derivative as to become unintelligible". In the end, I find that the Oulipo poets sometimes differ only very little from those poets who like to fill their work with quasi-indecipherable metaphors and all sorts of esoteric literary allusions.

While Moore criticizes poets who go so far from reality as to make it disappear amongst the complexity of the allegory, I think that the Oulipo poets sometimes stray so far from the standard forms of poetry that the initial concept is swallowed up in the lists of words or structural games. With moderation, the constraints that these poets use can yield very interesting results, for example, Mullen's "Mantra for a Classless Society" seemed to have a point, and it was analyzable, to some extent. On the other hand, "O 'Tis William" just seems like silly wordplay, and I find it almost impossible to delve into the poem's meaning or point at all, I'm just not interested!

Oulipo, and writing with constraints, represent some interesting concepts, and I like how these poets and authors tried to explore the language mathematically and systematically, but sometimes it just seems like they go over the top. The idea is interesting, (for example, the N+7 thing can produce some interesting results), but the actual product is not necessarily a literary triumph (Anyone can look through a dictionary and systematically change the words of a poem.

N+7: The most useless constraint ever?

So I read the inside cover of Sleeping with the Dictionary hoping that it would lend some clarity to Mullen’s incomprehensible poems (it didn’t), and in doing so I ran across the N+7 technique. The technique was pioneered by the Oulipo; and if Wikipedia is correct, it involves looking up each noun of a text in the dictionary, and replacing it with the noun seven entries after it. I figured I would give this a try, so I used Dickinson’s poem “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” in hopes that I could lighten the poem’s mood in the process. I also made it completely incomprehensible (is that a success?).


After great paintings, a formal fellatio comes --
The Nest Eggs sit ceremonious, like Tommy Guns --
The stiff Hearth questions was it He, that bore,
And Yoga, or Cerebral Cortex before?

The Fellows, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground Squirrels, or Aircraft, or Ought --
A Wooden weakfish
Regardless grown,
A Queen continental shelf, like a stop --

This is the Housefly of Leaf Mold --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing perspectives, recollect the Snowfall --
First -- Chinatown -- then Subalpine -- then the leviathan –


Of all constraints, the N+7 technique seems like the most ridiculous and pointless. What is the goal of this constraint? It doesn’t introduce anything truly original; it’s just a careless combination of an already good text and the dictionary. But at least it transformed Dickinson's poem into a slightly more entertaining read!

Poetry in Art, in Music

I was at a friend's house last night just chilling and hanging around. Some of the walls had paintings on them, done by one of the house mates, and one in particular caught my eye. My first thought when I looked at it was modernist. The correlation was striking to me; it just seemed to scream modernist. But why? How could a painting remind me of poetry? It's hard to articulate this because I can't really do justice to describing the painting, but I'll do my best. The painting was definitely abstract; that might have been one of the cues I took as a relation to modernist poetry. However, I could make out something. It seemed to be a lone eye, looking into what I could only guess was a small mirror, and behind the eye was an object I could not discern. It was as if this painting was just presenting something to me to be appreciated, and not necessarily something to be read too deeply into. It was not a conventional beauty, as of a landscape of a meadow with a stream or something of a more "romantic nature". It was just a beauty you could appreciate for its own - kind of hard to describe.

Additionally, a lot of the music I listen to reminds me of poetry, in particular modernist poetry (I listen to a lot of weird music). For example, this song by Mum, titled "We Have A Map of the Piano":

Please don't flow so fast
You little mountain hum
I'll take a bottle down to you

Please don't flow this fast
You hold a little hum
I'll bottle sounds of me for you

Please don't flow so fast
You little mountain din
I'll bottle piano sounds from you

Please don't flow so fast
You little mountain noise
I'll close my eyes and bite your tongue

If I were to to have read this in a poetry book, I would not blink for a second and think this actually wasn't a poem, but lyrics to a song. It just seems like something I would read from a more modernist poet. I really can't for the life of me discern what is actually being talked about here, and the title is strange to because nowhere is there a mention of a map in the lyrics. And why the deviation in form in the last line of the last stanza? What does all this mean? Ah, maybe I'll never know, and in that respect it just reminds me so much of modernist poetry. It is beautiful, but perhaps you're just not quite sure why.

18th century fairy tale Variant

After reading Mullen’s European Folk Tale Variant, I was surprised at how she could tell the folk tale in such a serious tone, as if Goldilocks committed a very serious crime. I guess breaking and entering into the bears’ house isn’t something that we should teach little children but the way Mullen tells this story is just hilarious. It reminds me of the poem that Williams wrote about eating plums, except he apologized for a seemingly serious situation in a light tone while Mullen told a light story in a grave tone. After reading the variant, I tried to come up with my own variation on a story.

Once upon a time, in a little town in the meadows lived a lonely lupine who knew nothing of the world’s evils. One day, a family of swine moved in to the forest not far from the meadow. Upon noticing the lone lupine, the King of the swine came up with a malicious plan. He sent his little swine soldiers to the meadow, and there they started their construction, their trap.

As they were building, the King went to the young lupine and told him of the little swine friends that would befriend this friendless lupine. Upon learning this, this naïve lupine went to find his new neighbors, bringing with him home baked cookies, hoping that he could make some friends. He walks along, and sees the first house, an unstable house made of dry stalks. He then walks up to the house and begins to knock on the door. Suddenly, a gust of wind comes from nowhere and blows the house down. Out from the house dashes a young swine who runs to the nearest house. The young lupine, bewildered by the swine’s action, decides to follow him to the next house. This house, like the one before, is also a little rickety and shaky but could withstand the wind. This time, the lupine successfully goes up and knocks on the door. But the house couldn’t withstand his knock and fell apart like the first house. This time, from the shambles, rushes out two swine. These swine dash toward the third house, which is made of red stone slabs.

So the lupine decides to visit the third house. After knocking on the door, a voice inside tells the lupine that the door is broken and that if the lupine wants to be friends with him, he should come in through the chimney like Santa Claus. Upon hearing this, the lupine becomes very excited because thinks he can finally make a friend. So he climbs the roof and too his dismay, he falls into a pot of boiling water and dies. And gathered around the pot, are the three little piglets, with napkins around their necks and forks in their hands.

The End

Are changes really necessary?

As the conventional wisdom goes: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But the modernist and the Oulipo are anything but conventional; they defy the traditional style. The modernist focuses on the changes in semantics and the Oulipo on formalism. But are such changes really necessary?

Williams argues that as times changes, so do people’s ideas and perceptions. The associations that the people make from the olden times become anachronistic and those associations are unreal and inapplicable to people in different age-- Sounds perfectly rational to me.

As for the Oulipo, Lionnais questions tradition of repeating the same forms: “Must one adhere to the old tricks of the trade and obstinately refuse to imagine new possibilities? The partisans of the status quo don’t hesitate to answer in the affirmative” (Lipo: First Manifesto). The restrictions are no longer useful, hence, should not be placed. Formalism gives rise to meaning, and if it’s there for the sake of being there—well, it’s unnecessary. Again, perfectly rational.

So why are works from such school of thoughts so difficult to comprehend? We’ve been ingrained with the ideas of the traditionalists. We need those high sounding interpretation and those easier meters like the iambic pentameter. In that sense, the old associations and the old forms are NOT anachronistic, we’ve been learning them! Newness is destroying our ability to think! It is ironic how the modern poems are suppose adapt to the modern thinking, but when we think of poetry, we still refer back to Dickinson, Shakespeare, or even as far back as Homer.

So why change? It does break away from clichés and repetition of the old stuff. It does give depths to poetry when there’s actually meaning in form and in associations. But at what cost?

Times are indeed changing, but it is more than just the evolution of poetry. The common stigma of modern poetry is poor and poets are not honored as greatly as Shakespeare. To the untrained ears, modern poetry is pretty much blabbering nonsense. The moderns delve into meaning differently from the traditional—and not many people are actually trained to undertake such an escapade.

However, it isn’t necessary that traditional poetry would fare any better. As times change, going to a theater to watch a play no longer is the supreme form of entertainment—entertainment is now wide and diverse. Poetry takes a back seat to what science can do—to create computers and televisions and others. Perhaps traditional poetry would catch less attention, but at least they would be spared of the ridicule from uninformed individuals.

So is it all necessary? It is ironic that Williams notes the exclusiveness of writers when they don’t follow conventional methods, yet the moderns exclude the readers from “difficult” reading material. The newness filters out those with passion for poetry and those don’t. Perhaps it is better this way.

Some strange ramblings

This week in class, we have been talking a lot about seemingly incomprehensible writing, as Harryette Mullen seems to demonstrate, and a lot about writing constraints, as seen in our reading about Oulipo. So I thought it would be interesting to try to come up with my own restraints and incomprehensible writing, similar to our free write on Wednesday. I have decided on a story to tell, the question is, can you figure out what the story is? This actually took a lot of time, since I had all these new constraints, and I didn't use the normal constraints, like grammar etc... And when you go against the normal, the almost no brainer constraints, you have to be conscious of the constraints at all times. This is what, I think, makes Mullen's writing so good, and interesting. It doesn't have to tell a story, or even make sense, it is just about experiencing the new constraints.
In my writing, some constraints that you should notice right away, are that every other word is a little scrambled, but if you think about it, it is scrambled uniformly... think back to third grade... and talking in a "new" language. Another constraint is that there are no complete sentences, just punctuation where a complete sentence would theoretically end, or to show expression. And the final constraint, I will leave to you to figure out, although I hope it would be fairly obvious. :)

Some strange ramblings
uTsideoay dark, idslay quiet,
oudlay!!! 4:40am!!!
arbagegay? heavy. leepsay,
sleep, leepsay. running,
oolcay, water, reathbay! must ebay
a, extnay scene. rolickingfay, horse, lephanteay
an-- beep! oneday dream. gHuay, bed, etway,
dry. oooay, paIn,
ffoay. feetS, lIStersbay. did ouyay
know, idn'tday. wondering, amplay,
brush, kayoay. More,
openaY. cold, onay, hot,
onay, cold. interWay,
summer, ahay. sweater, shirttay. grEen
acefay, harDeNs... Etway.
tingleS. igglegay. tap
aptay tap. iay love
ucylay. Don't iAseraY, tired. lasscay to.
arkday, light,
circles, glyuay. no asMay! lOst,
eRyvay, coNfuzled. asheslay,
none oobay. sING, andfordSAy
no lasscay. Grrrr. inkcAy,
ouch. ullenmay, what?
oooay, what, ahay, tv,
icenay. emmbarrasing,
wicetay no ay third, uchoay,
tumbling Gianay. clickeriay,
failed. rETtypay, homework,
omehay, no. Imetay, good,
eturnray, elephanTs?

Well I know what it says... do you? Here is a hint, the biggest hint is virtually the answer, which is in the unmentioned constraint.

Female Empowerment

Since we watched a video yesterday about yogurt and women getting targeted by the marketing people, I decided to look up other products that are targeting women. And these were some of the articles I ran across.



Tobacco industry targeting women
In this page, there is a picture of a woman in a superhero outfit, and the title reads, "We make Virginia Slims especially for women because they are biologically superior to men."

Pasted from : http://tobaccodocuments.org/pollay_ads/Virg16.18.html?ocr_position=hide_ocr


The second page that I found features a woman smoking a cigarette. She looks like she is a successful woman because of the atire that she is wearing ( formal business suit). The title for this picture reads, "Here's to women who can light their own cigarette."

Pasted from : http://tobaccodocuments.org/pollay_ads/Wins13.13.html?ocr_position=hide_ocr

The Cigarette companies do not want ot show that their product kills, but just wants to target women in a way that seems like they are being impowered by smoking. Is that fair?



The next place where I found women being targeted are cotton commercials.
From the article itself,

"Women buy over 80 percent of all apparel and home furnishings, and many of life's firsts happen to women between the ages of 18 and 34. They often get their first job and their first apartment, get married, have their first baby and buy their first house during this period,” Worsham says. “Each of these major events involves a heightened interest in learning new things and in purchasing textile products.”
The two new “Feel of Cotton” commercials, which premiered Presidents' Day weekend during the Olympics, feature people at work, and at play in a hotel setting, dressed in fashionable, dressy casual cotton clothing.
Using a real office and hotel, instead of a studio set, allows Cotton Incorporated to showcase a wide variety of different people all in the same kind of dressy casual cotton wear, and all dancing. Because clothing is a form of self-expression, the creators of the commercials pushed that idea of self-expression through dance."

Pasted from : http://westernfarmpress.com/mag/farming_feel_cotton_ads/


Why is this a problem? I actually saw similarities in things the yogurt lady said, and what this article was talking about. The main point of this article was that women are getting targeted by commercials because all the company wants to do is promote their products in such a way that women can automatically relate to it. People love being comfortable, and by portraying that women can wear comfortable clothes anywhere if they wear cotton, it is easy for women to fall victim to that mindset. I am not saying every women on th face of the earth would fall for this marketing scam, but if people can relate to something, that is more likely going to be in their mind, and even persuade them to buy cotton.


The list of products goes on an on. But my question is why women? Does society consider us weak that we can be exploited that easily? Whatever society thinks of women, I think we need to change the way we are viewed.