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.

Question about Duncan

Consider “The Structure of Rime I,” by Robert Duncan, which has a “she,” named in this poem as “a woman who resembles the sentence” that the author is in the process of blindly reformatting. His conversation with this woman seems of an introspective bent; she speaks in response to his assertion that he is her “master, who [comes] to // serve.” Her words are italicized, not quoted, so we know the text stems from Duncan himself; her speech is repetitive, the sequence of rhetorical “Do I [not’s]” lead into the answer to her question “Why” do you not “take the actual world for granted.” There is a clear progression from speaker to speaker; first Duncan, then the woman, and so on, and she has the final say, focusing her tirade on his desecration of literary “Law.” “Rime II” is of a similar phrasing, but the woman vanishes; instead, we have the image of a “Lion” as a “Messenger,” but in this case Duncan shifts his focus to consider not the sentence but the source of the sentence. The final line, “the meaning of the music of the spheres” stems from the clearly dated notion that the heavens in their motion generated “music.”


The words and phrasing sound purposefully archaic. The man was writing in the 1960s, after the Modernists we’ve been reading, and yet he speaks with structure, with purpose, in words that promote the kind of “high-sounding” interpretation that Moore detested. I found it amazing that a post-Modernist writer could bring himself to give the reader even the semblance of a conclusion, a final defining thought. Yet, in “Often I am permitted to return to a meadow” that is exactly what he does. Duncan states “that is a place of first permission, // everlasting omen of what is,” bringing together the focus of “permission” and “eternal” places with the new, fully interpretable “omen of what is.” He even gives the reader structural landmarks, capitalizing the first word of each sentence – having sentences in the first place – it’s like he cares if the reader is following along. The poem itself, its setting and its thematic imagery, are meant to be decipherable; his modern perspective only comes into play through the references to “she,” the “Queen Under The Hill,” the only reference in the poem that is even partially indecipherable.


I don’t fully understand the literary regression; is Duncan trying to make a point or merely appease the average reader with 95%-decipherability? Is Duncan taking the opposite route of Williams, lulling us into a sense of complacence instead of provoking us into reading further? That sounds too paranoid; but ultimately, the older tone of his writing is what makes it stand out in the midst of the modern literature we have been reading, and knowing the reason behind his tone will greatly help me understand his poems.

As promised, a link to the video about yogurt that we discussed in class today.

The blinking cursor disease

Writing six to eight pages can be a frightening task. The beginning of my writing process usually begins with a staring contest with the infamous blinking cursor on my disturbingly blank laptop screen. Racing thoughts of my how I should embody my thoughts into words are usually marred by the overwhelming notion of writing a long six to eight pages of my defense of those thoughts.

To this day, I have difficulty starting a written piece. This isn’t only because of the length, even though that does contribute its own fear factor, but also because of my desire for my work to reflect my thought process…my ‘genius’. I know this sounds selfish and conceited, but I think that most people who want to succeed write selfishly. This perfectionist quality is a blessing and a curse. Although it takes me a long while before my fingers begin hitting the keyboard’s keys, I end up with something I’m proud of, and something others will appreciate just as much (every writer’s dream come true). It does not matter whether it’s a fear or writing a long paper or if its just a fear of putting something that you think wont reflect your clever ideas (OR probably both), starting to write has plagues many amateur writers. So the question remains: what’s the best way to start writing?

I answer with a vague, “depends on how you like to write and what you want your work to reflect.” However, the ability to begin writing begins with the writer’s courage to get past his/her own needs; in that, he/she should not be intimidated about hitting the ‘bulls-eye’ on their first shot. We do, after all, have revisions. I found that if I start my essay with random thoughts and putting down whatever comes to mind instead of writing and re-writing my first line several time, then it becomes much easier to piece my thoughts together and go over the aesthetics later (which is much easier to change than the coherence of an essay.)

This advice, while useful, is much harder than it sounds. Letting go of the mindset with which you want to write your essay and the mindset that you think will make your essay ‘good’ is a very difficult task. A writer has to learn what it means to write not for the sake of one’s own pride before he can actually write to give his/her ego a little boost. I’ve been told this a thousand times over, and I’ve only recently taken it into account; I always thought I would, in some way, compromise my essays worth. It’s most definitely a difficult thing to do, but I urge those who want an experiment to try to see if they can be more time-efficient and, perhaps, even more proud of what they write.

Done with Donne?

Not quite. I have a couple of comments and I am still wondering about how Donne is one of the Modernists' favorite poet.

Ever since T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” we have been reading modern poetry, almost nonstop. I have come to conclude that Modern poetry is very unique, abstract, and almost random or spontaneous at times. From Williams to Moore, and from Hughes to O’Hara, poetry has notably changed from our much earlier readings of Hopkins or Bryant. After reading Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara, we transitioned into reading John Donne, a more conventional writer, at least I thought so. Class discussion revealed to me that Donne was actually an inspiration to modernist writers. At first I thought how could that be? I thought that the Modernists were against the traditional forms and were in search of something new and refreshing, something entirely new and unique. After reading a couple of Donne’s poem, I felt pretty sure that those poems were pretty traditional. The topics were not as traditional as I thought because of the way he executed his work, but his use of language was.

The Modernists succeeded at bringing out new material in the literary field but at the same time, were still able to admire the work of Donne, seemingly the antithesis of Modernist work. It seems almost impossible, but a closer analysis at Donne’s techniques and style is able to lead a reader towards seeing Donne in a new light, perhaps the light in which Modernist writers saw Donne. Donne’s poems were love poems, though not straight forward, they can easily be identified as being love themed. It doesn’t seem like a topic that modernist writers would be interested in since most of what we’ve read that were part of the modern era focused on societal issues, death, and personal thoughts. From the modern poetry we have read, I couldn’t really grasp the main ideas of the poems. I rather enjoyed the fact that Donne’s poems were not filled with seemingly random comments with potential high sounding interpretations, but has high sounding interpretations that can be put up for discussion.

Even though I was confused about how the Modernists came to admire Donne, I tried to make sense of that possibility. In class, I tried to reason that out by saying that Donne seems a bit sarcastic. However, I now feel that he has somewhat of an insulting tone, which I took as sarcastic, that is extremely witty. The cleverness of his poems could possibly be the reason why the modernists admired his work. There are bits of humor throughout his poems even though the topic of love seems rather serious. “The Sun Rising” was amusing. Donne would sound as if he is insulting the sun for waking him. He even goes as far as undermining the Sun’s powerful rays by say that “[he] could eclipse and cloud them with a wink.” How bold!

The Obscurity of Poems

I have to admit, that when I first came into this class I guess I was what you call "naive" when it came to poetic interpretation. I had this preconception that, no matter how confounding or obscure a poem may seem to be at first, at the heart of it there was always simplicity and clear meaning. Then we hit the modernists: Moore, Eliot, and Williams. Their poems took obscurity to a whole new level. At least with Williams, a large portion of his poetry was laced with prose so we had a general sense of where he was going, but often with Moore and Eliot we just had vague, scattered fragments of ideas as to what they were talking about. My friend once asked me if we were reading poetry from the likes Dickenson, Frost, Poe, Keats, etc, but I told him that right now we were reading more modernist poetry. He asked me what that was like and I, in a somewhat cynically joking way, replied something along the lines of "modernist poetry is the art of taking the written English language and obsfucating it so as to be completely incomprehensible, and then calling it poetry." Obviously this is an exageration, but there were times when I felt that some lines were so nonsensical as to be almost arbitrarily written that way based on impulse alone.

While I was considering what poem(s) to choose for the last paper, I decided to read some of the introduction to The Waste Land. I found this, Eliot's view on The Waste Land towards the end of his life, rather interesting: "I think that in the early poems it was a question . . . of not being able to -- having more to say than one knew how to say, and having something one wanted to put into words and rhythm which one didn't have the command of words and rhythm to put in a way immediately apprehensible. That type of obscurity comes when a poet is still at the stage of learning how to use language. you have to say the thing the difficult way. The only alternative is not saying it at all, at that stage . . . . In The Waste Land I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying."

It's a little shocking, although possibly not entirely surprising, that even Eliot himself admits he didn't bother to understand everything he was writing. While this by no means renders The Waste Land just an arbitrary work of nonsense, it does bring up the question of whether or not you can truly understand what the poet is intending to express (assuming that they first understand what they're trying to express!).

Assignment for Monday

Decide which text(s) you're going to use for your final paper. Select two passages you intend to discuss and say why they seem important.

Poem Compilations

So I've begun to notice something about my preferences in poetry. For some reason, I've grown a taste for these compilations of short poems that we've been assigned to read. But I wonder why I feel this way. I'm sure I'm not basing this preference on subject matter that the poem entails, or deeper meanings, or poetic crafts and techniques.

Looking at it, I'm mainly basing this preference on the style of the poem. And I've come to this conclusion: I am a fan of the short poems.

In today's reading (11/13), we had to read the "Loraine Niedecker Collected Works" of which contained numerous short (and at times very short) poems. And I found this particularly pleasing to read. So I've decided to investigate...

When we eat food, we take it it in chunks. We take bites, small or large, but typically manageable bites. We go on to chew this food, where it is further broken down by enzymes within the saliva in our mouths. So by the time we swallow the food, we've converted it into components that is easy to digest.

I think this is a perfect analogy to my preference in poetry. I like my poetry in small, manageable chunks, that I can easily digest. When confronted with an entire watermelon ("Jerboa") and slices of watermelon ("Montage of a Dream Deferred") I would easily prefer the latter. It may just be a matter of taste, but I like my poems (and food) in comprehensible parts.

I find it helpful to have a pause in the text, with a point to stop and reflect on what I have just read. When the author gives us a point at which to separate ideas, we too are able to differentiate between ideas and information that we are given. We, as readers, are able to better analyze the text, and thus have a better understanding and experience of the poem as a whole.

I like slices, not whole pies :)

SA #10: Duncan

Write a paragraph describing Duncan's style. You may find it helpful to compare his style to O'Hara's, but this is not required.

Music as Poetry

As opposed to some people who listen to music for the overall sound, I’ve found that I focus on the lyrics. I often find the songs more satisfying than written poetry, because it’s as if the poet is reading his or her own work, with accompanying music to provide further entertainment and meaning. Most artists I would not consider poets (I don’t consider songs explicitly referring to sex, drugs, and rock & roll poetry), but occasionally there are a few meaningful and entertaining songs (those two adjectives rarely cross paths). I’ll mention Lucy in the “Sky with Diamonds” by the Beatles as an example because it seems everyone in our class is desperate for poetry that describes a drug trip (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/beatles/lucy+in+the+sky+with+diamonds_10026681.html).
The subject of this blog post, however, is a much less famous song by Leonard Cohen, “Democracy.” The lyrics are too long to include, so I’ll just give a link: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/democracy.html (Also the source for all the quotes). I’ve always pondered the meaning of this song, so I figured I would analyze it for my blog post. Here goes:
The song argues that democracy in the USA doesn’t actually exist. Cohen describes the country through homophobia, and class, gender, and racial inequalities (stanza 1 & 2), suggesting that America isn’t exactly they home of freedom and equality it’s played out to be. He mentions Tiananmen Square and “wars against disorder,” (stanza 1) which brings to mind tyrannical governments. Also, he repeats the line “Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.” to indicate that democracy isn’t yet present. He makes several religious allusions that possibly hint at America’s religious roots, and he states: “It’s coming through a crack in the wall;/ on a visionary flood of alcohol;/ from the staggering account/ of the Sermon on the Mount.” It seems as if Cohen might also be questioning the judgment of our founding fathers by introducing the idea of alcohol into the creation of the constitution.
The majority of the poem serves as a description of America’s current state of affairs from Cohen’s perspective, but the last stanza represents his opinion. He says “I love the country but I can’t stand the scene/…I’m junk but I’m still holding up/ this little wild bouquet:/ Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.” Even though he recognizes the turmoil within his country, he’s still patriotic and hopeful for the future.
The one downside I’ve noticed with artists like Leonard Cohen can be paralleled with that of Marianne Moore. While Moore’s originality and depth inhibits the clarity of her work, Cohen’s relative poetic abilities (with respect to other musical artists) hinders the catchiness of his music. For example, I don’t think this song could ever be as popular or catchy as Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” but I still prefer Cohen to that mind-numbing garbage!

beat poets

It may have been a minor discussion in class, but I also was unsure of what a beat poet was, so I did more research into it. Some of what I found was covered in class, but I figured I would just relay all the information that I got.

Beat poets originated in the 1940s in NYC and on the west coast, but San Francisco became the heart of it in the 1950s. The purpose of this new form of writing was to "changing consciousness and defying convention." It turns out that drugs, hallucinogenic ones, were often used by beat poets, and we know how our class enjoys discussing poets and drugs. Buddhism was also followed by many members of the beat generation.

One of the beat generations most famous works, Howl and Other Poems, was brought to court for its obscenity, though the judge ruled that the book was not obscene (upholding freedom of speech) and brought a lot of attention to the beat poets.
(http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5646)

It seems that many of the different periods of poetry, like the beat generation or the Harlem Renaissance etc, were in response to social turmoil and the writing was supposed to represent a defying of conventions.
This is definitely good for poetry. With all these writers continually "defying convention" we are sure to continue to get something new out of writing and poetry, not just the same old structure and topics. Good thing all (well, most) artists want to be different, we, the readers/viewers get something new every time. :)

Romantic? Cheesy?

In class the other day, we talked about how John Donne’s poems are very different from the poems we have been reading for the past few months. First of all, Donne’s poems are one of the few poems we’ve read that uses “thee” or “thou” instead of “you”, reminding me of Shakespeare. An interesting thing someone said (this might not be exact but is something along the lines) was how Donne’s poems are a break from reading about death or the modernist’s theories on literature. His poems are about love and his lovers and seem more sincere than the other poems we’ve been reading. In my opinion, his poems are a little cheesy, especially the one called “The Good-Morrow”.

When I read this poem, I pictured the poem as a love poem some person wrote for his girlfriend or person he admired. The poem can be deemed as pretty sincere but some parts of it are over sincere that I think it becomes fake. There are a few lines that makes me to think this.

1. “I wonder…what thou and I/ Did, till we loved?” (Lines1-2)-This question is pretty easy to answer, eat and sleep of course! Those things are pretty important, so is going to the bathroom.
2. “If ever any beauty I did see,/ Which I desired, and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee.” (Lines 6-7)-Wow your lover must be really flattered by your comment; I really hope she’s beautiful. I guess beauty really is in the eyes of the beholder.
3. “For love, all love of other sights controls” (Line 10)-if this line means that love controls what they see or if they only see each other then that’s a little scary. I would want to be able to see other things, other people.
4. “My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,” (Line 15)-Your face must be really small. This reminds me of those really cheesy and fake cartoons where the character’s eyes turn into heart shapes.
5. “If our two loves be one, or, thou and I/ Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.” (Line 20-21). There’s no such thing as immortality, not unless your freeze yourself. I don’t think they had that kind of technology back then.

So my point is, if you look at parts of the poem from this point of view, the poem is a little cheesy and fake. It really seems that Donne is trying to be romantic but is failing, pretty badly. This could have been considered romantic during his time, (imagine Shakespeare with his Romeo and Juliet) but if we read it now, its cheesy.

Why the sun?

On Friday our class discussed the poem "The Sun Rising" and why the speaker was addressing the sun about his love life. I am still not sure why the speaker was talking to the sun, but there are many theories. Personally I think he was annoyed about morning coming... I mean a lot of people hate morning, they would rather stay asleep in their dream world, or just skip right to the afternoon. So I think initially the speaker was just responding as a lot of us would by telling the sun to just go away. But as he began to talk to the sun, maybe he just kinda went with it, and continued the conversation as if with a person who would care enough to listen.

Another theory, one discussed in class, was that he has some insecurities, and feels the need to prove to the sun that he is better than the sun, and in talking "smack" to the sun which can not reply he may temporarily feel better about himself. This would make sense since he was trying to make himself look more powerful or better than the sun by saying, I can close my eyes and you no longer affect me, that is how little power you have. However I think there is a major flaw in that argument, for if the speaker was awakened by the sun, that must mean that the sun can penetrate at least somewhat through your eyelids, otherwise he would not have been wakened by the light. And it must have been the light because the sun does not make sound, although I suppose it would have made him too warm. But we still know that we can detect light even with our eyes closed.

In class we talked a lot about what the speaker was saying, and why. For example, we decided that the speaker was in his own little world, and the sun was interrupting him, so he said look, if your not going to go away, revolve around us, because we are the world. We would try to address why the sun? but end up talking about why what he said instead. I don't think that we ever really reached a conclusion on why he chose the sun to talk to instead of his lover or a friend. I think he was really talking to himself in a sense, talking out loud about his feelings in a way that doesn't make him vulnerable. If he talked to a real person about his relationship or the world he created, he becomes more vulnerable to criticism etc... but if he talks to something that doesn't respond, the worst that could happen is that he stares into the sun too long and is temporarily blind. This relates also to the idea that he has insecurities, and why he has to prove his worth to the sun. If he is that insecure of course he won't want to talk to an actual person that responds to what he says.

So I think that the speaker is speaking to the sun for the simple reasons that he is initially just annoyed with it for disturbing him, but also because he seems to be an insecure person that wouldn't talk about any of the things he says with a real person, nor who could prove his worth to anything that can respond. So the sun is a convenient opponent, that is already on his mind and that doesn't respond.