Seamus HAYney

I really enjoyed Seamus Heaney. I thought he used a lot of great imagery. One poem in particular that stuck out to me was "The Otter." It reminded me of Hughes' "Thought-Fox" and wasn't really like any of Heaney's other poems that dealt with punishment or Ireland. At the beginning of the poem we get this image of a playful otter in the water. "Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders/ Surfacing and surfacing again/ This year and every year since." Then there is an image of the speaker of the poem sort of embracing the otter: "When I hold you now/ We are closed and deep." The end of the poem brings us to the conclusion that the otter is simply a cherished memory "In the pool of the moment." Then, as swift as it had come, "suddenly you're out,/ back again, intent as ever,/ Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,/ Printing the stones."

The way I interpret this, the otter is a memory or thought in the speaker's mind. It swims about, to and fro, in and out of the water. The very end where the speaker talks about the otter's "freshened pelt" could be the fact that the speaker is now able to look at this thought, or memory, in a new or different way before it goes away, "printing the stones." Like in Hughes' "Thought-Fox," I feel like the otter is a sort of muse for the speaker, allowing him to take a thought, swish it around, and consider it from all angles. I would also like to add that since I love Romantic poetry, this poem's naturalness triggers something of an echo from the Romantic period and I just really liked it.

Heaney and His Bogs

I love Seamus Heaney's poetry from The Bog People, especially the element of truth being uncovered from beneath a dark and miry surface. This theme seems present in more than a few of his poems, but especially in his "bog" poems--my favorite of which is "Punishment."

In it, Heaney describes a bit of the story of a girl whose body, naturally preserved by the bog, was discovered beneath the "peat." Apparently she was entombed there as punishment for adultery in the 1st Century a.d.--of which it cannot be determined whether or not she was guilty, but it can be safely doubted with the knowledge of the extreme gender prejudice of that time. Heaney illustrates her body, grotesquely and yet delicately: "...the wind / at her naked front. / It blows her nipples / to amber beads, it shakes the frail rigging / of her ribs. / I can see her drowned / body in the bog..." (3-10).

Through the excavation of this once "flaxen-haired, / undernourished" (25-26) girl, Heaney discovers, or rediscovers, the same barbaric (and likely undeserved) punishment done unto women who have "kept company" with British soldiers. Just as the acknowledgment of the preserved, "Little adulteress" (23) is ignored and hidden beneath the bog, the acknowledgment of these punished prisoners, "[weeping] by the railings" (40), are ignored and hidden beneath the miry bog of Ireland's war-state. Heaney finds himself unable to reconcile his sense of "civilized outrage" (42) with his desire for "tribal, intimate revenge" (44).

Seamus Heaney

I enjoyed most of Seamus Heaney, but I was a little confused. In some cases, the footnotes were not enough, and I had to do a little extra research. “A Hazel Stick for Catherine Ann” had me very confused! Catherine Ann is his daughter, and it seems like she is becoming her mother in this poem. In the poem, it sounds like her mother died, but I could not find any information stating if this is why he wrote it.

Another poem that I found interesting is “Punishment.” Heaney uses vivid, disturbing imagery in this poem. “Brain’s exposed.” “I can see her drowned body in the bog.” “Shakes the frail rigging of her ribs.” These are all terrible images! You can just imagine this awful scene. The girl did not do anything but love. This punishment is unjust. It doesn’t seem like Heaney agrees with this punishment, but he didn’t do anything to try to stop it. “I who stood dumb” makes me think that he regrets doing nothing. The title could refer to both the girls who are being punished and the people who are watching them being punished.

I liked the way Heaney wrote “Station Island” with the ghosts from his past visiting him and giving advice. It read more like a story rather than a poem. Heaney seems to doubt himself in this poem. He is given advice, but will he follow through?

Seamus Heaney

Though it was not part of our readings, I really enjoyed Heaney's "The Underground." His simplistic style of writing is what makes his work so different than the other poets we've read this semester. Though I don't always seem to be interested in the subject matter he wrote about, I definitely respect his ability to write about things we may easily pass by as being "boring."

For me, "The Underground" reminded me of a specific time I was trying to catch the L train in NY. My friend and I were late for our lunch reservation, so we were running through the subway. The poem was so vivid that it brought me back to that place two summers ago. I recall sitting on the train looking at a woman across from me with her child and her husband, who was holding his daughter's pink bicycle.

It was really interesting how the most simplistic poem could be the one poem that makes you remember a little happening in your life. I never had that type of a connection with a poem before. Thank you, Heaney.

Bogland

I liked the concept behind “Bogland” and “Bog Queen.” I’ve never seen bogs and I was kind of intrigued. I checked out google images and I have to say the images ranged anywhere from beautiful (of the Irish countryside) to disturbing (think “Bog Queen”). I can see how the concept of bogs and the poet’s ties to the Irish landscape would go hand in hand.

“Bogland” opens with the comparison between Irish landscape and American landscape. He talks about how “the eye concedes to/Encroaching horizon” (3-4) as opposed to a vast, unending horizon that we image out west. It is the first time that I have ever gotten a visual picture by contrast and I liked it. He continues that image with a description of the horizon being “wooed into the cyclops’ eye/Of a tarn”(5-6). Again, we see how the landscape (and possibly the history) of Ireland is drawn inward.

The next stanza we get the image of an Irish Elk being drawn, somewhat preserved, from the peat. He begins to remember a time when they found butter that had been recovered, “salty and white” (15). This can be seen as reflective of the history of Ireland, the preservation of natural history and also of humankind.

Finally, in the last two stanzas, Heaney describes the pioneers stripping through the layers of the bog, never able to reach a bottom. He describes the bogholes as “Atlantic seepage” (26), which is “bottomless” (27).

Hughes

At first, I wasn’t sure if I liked or disliked Ted Hughes- I’m beginning to think I am leaning more towards like. There were some poems that I completely disliked. Then there were the few that I enjoyed. The crow poems were interesting and challenged me to think deeper into the text. Although other poetry made me do that, I kind of liked the subject matter more when it came to discussion about the crow and his relationship with God. We discussed some interesting theories in class and, although I am still clueless as to why he wrote the poems and what he meant by them, I still think our interpretations where pretty great. I think each of the poems involving the crow gives a different message, but I’m sure if we pieced it all together and really studied it, some sense would come out of it all.

The Birthday letters made me extremely sad. Some of the lines were kind of heartbreaking. From what we know about Sylvia Plath and looking at some of the lines in Hughes poetry I got the impression that even if Hughes stayed with her, the same end would come to Plath. She was unsteady all of her life. Even though I think Hughes could have felt more emotion toward the situation-I think it’s good enough that he at least felt something. I mean he had to be upset if he wrote so many poems on the subject. I think over Christmas break I’ll read all of Hughes poetry along with Plaths and see what I think (don’t worry, I won’t get depressed. I’ll make sure I read in a bright room and have Christmas music on).

Haunting "Punishment"

I was most interested in Seamus Heaney's Bog Poems. Mummies have always fascinated me, and when reading his poem "Punishment" I became engaged by the imagery, the subject, the elements of humanity--I find it all so interesting. I felt a lot of emotion when reading this poem, I think Heaney writes in an empathetic way that made me sympathize with the young girl. The description of her body, recognizing that her head was shaved, noting her undernourishment, yet all the while commenting on her beautiful face and young age is heart wrenching. I also love this poem because of its honesty:

"I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

of your brain’s exposed. . . "

He is describing all of these awful and grotesque things that appear so violent and immoral, yet he recognizes that his judgement is not completely correct. If he would have lived during her time, he would not have saved her. He may not have been casting the"stones" that killed her physically, but he would have tossed the stones of silence (the stones of indifference) and therefore he is implying he would have been just as guilty as those who killed her. I find this to be a harsh reality. I think it challenges us presently, in what ways do we remain silent and indifferent in our present day and age? I think the brilliance of this poem is the connection between the past and present. We still struggle to speak out against social ills, and we fear doing so. What would have happened to the person who would have tried to save this girl? Perhaps their fate would have been the same as hers. Furthermore, the girl's execution for adultery does not seem a fair punishment. Where is the male with whom she was engaging? Was he involved in her victimizing? The poem exposes the brutalities of society, and they haunt every age of civilization.

Seamus Heaney's "Punishment"

I was impressed with Heaney's “Punishment” before our class discussion, but after Dr. Johnson showed us some of the facts related to the social unrest during Heaney's time, I appreciate the poem even more. One of Heaney's “bog poems,” “Punishment” tells the story not only of a woman who had been buried in the bog for hundreds of years and then exhumed, but also of women from Heaney's time. Yet, it's not just the story that makes this poem good, but also the way Heaney uses the poem to explore human tendencies, examine his own culpability in different social events, and make a call for change.

Use of the footnotes helps explain the way Heaney explores human tendencies throughout this poem. Beginning with a description of a young woman who has been murdered for adultery, Heaney (as the footnote explains) reminds us of ancient Germanic peoples. Yet, when he turns his attention to the mistreatment of the “betraying sisters,” women from his own time, Heaney connects the two time periods. Both sets of women, despite the hundreds of years that separate them, are treated brutally for acting outside of what society considers acceptable; therefore, the juxtaposition of these women displays Heaney's belief that humans have the tendency to judge others harshly regardless of the time period in which they live.

Indeed, Heaney does not exclude himself from an exploration of our tendency to be over judgmental and harsh. He realizes his own guilt in having “stood dumb” while Irish women are “cauled in tar” for having relations with British soldiers. Guilty of in-action, Heaney considers his own part in the human mania for judgment as he can mourn the loss of the ancient Germanic woman, but stand passively by as his own contemporaries “[weep] by the railings.”

Nevertheless, despite his momentary self-chastisement, Heaney does take action in the end by calling readers' attention to these terrible human tendencies. One way this is accomplished is through his reminder that even in our “civilized” age, mistreatment can occur. He sarcastically refers to the treatment of his contemporaries as “civilized outrage,” but then reminds readers that such a term is misleading and is actually nothing but “tribal, intimate revenge.” Therefore, by connecting the actions taking place around him to the brutalities of more tribal, instinctual times, Heaney shows that we cannot hide behind the guise of civilization, but must cease such actions before we could ever truly be humane, civilized people.

Ted Hughes

I am not a huge fan of Ted Hughes’s poetry. I am more interested in his personal life. It is difficult to imagine that both of his wives killed themselves in the same way. What did he do to these women that made them commit suicide? I would think that he might have thought he had something to do with their deaths and perhaps felt like a failure. Someone had mentioned in class that Hughes could be the crow. I think this is a great analysis. In “Crow’s First Lesson,” crow is a failure. He was unable to please God no matter how hard he tried. Perhaps this was Hughes’s way to express his own feelings of disappointment.

Crows are not seen in a positive light. Crows are usually associated with bad omens, problems, and death. I cannot find one positive poem dealing with Crow. I was surprised that Hughes was initially writing Crow as a children’s book. I would never associate Crow with children. Everything Hughes writes is depressing. The Birthday Letters were shocking to me. I thought they would be uplifting, but I should have known they wouldn’t be after reading Crow. “The Dogs Are Eating You Mother” is bizarre. The title itself is disturbing. He talks about her body being destroyed by vultures. He just seems very angry in the poem. He has the same negative attitude throughout all his poetry. I can’t say that I enjoy reading such disturbing poetry.

Last Letter

I’m really intrigued by the relationship between Plath and Hughes. Apparently there was a poem entitled “Last Letter” that was initially one of the “The Birthday Letters” but was withheld from the original publication. It was published recently. I hope everyone will check out the link to some information on the poem. I really enjoyed the news clip that was on the bottom of the page. It talks about the relationship between the two and also contains excerpts of “Last Letter.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/10/long-lost-ted-hughes-poem-focuses-on-sylvia-plaths-suicide.html

Here is also a link to the full text poem.

http://lovingsylvia.tumblr.com/post/1263482483/last-letter-by-ted-hughes

I can absolutely see how many people would blame Hughes with his infidelities for the death of Plath. I do think it is hard to ignore, however, that obviously Hughes suffered tremendously from her death. The very fact that he wrote “The Birthday Letters” seems to suggest that he never fully recovered from the loss. This is definitely emphasized by “Last Letter.” The last few lines just gave me chills! “Then a voice like a selected weapon/Or a measured injection/Coolly delivered its four words/Deep into my ear: ’Your wife is dead.’” (see link above)

I was also really touched by how Hughes lamented the loss of Plath as his children’s mother (“Life after Death”). He is really ripped apart by the position that his son is put in after Plath’s death. He says, “Great hands of grief were wringing and wringing/ His wet cloth of face…But his mouth betrayed you – it accepted/The spoon in my disembodied hand.”

Ted Hughes

I was pretty sure that after we were done with Auden (who I didn't really enjoy at all) I would be able to enjoy poetry again. So when I read Ted Hughes, I was at first confused. I didn't really understand his poetry and it seemed to be all over the place; a mixture of word vomit, strewn all over the page. But after I continued reading, poem after poem, I started to appreciate this so-called word vomit. It turned into more of a melting pot of words. And then I could finally start to extricate some kind of meaning. (Even the poems that I still don't understand, I can now appreciate for their aesthetic value).

The Crow poems were probably my favorite. Hughes takes Crow and puts him into unusual situations. The first Crow poem I read was "Crow's First Lesson" and I was amused by this re-telling of the birth of Man and Woman. The more Crow poems I read, the more Crow became a character. I can see Crow as starting out as a children's character, but turning rogue, so that now his stories should only be read by adults. As we read more and more, we learn more about crow. For example, in "Crow's Theology," Crow realizes that he only exists because God loves him. "The Door," could be an explanation of where Crow comes from, "A black doorway:/ The eye's (earth's) pupil." "Crow's Fall" describes how Crow got to be black.

All of those little anecdotes about Crow help to build him as an actual character and I was kind of reminded a little of Aesop's fables. (of course, without a moral) But because these simple stories sounded kind of childlike, almost like the way mythology tries to explain, for example, where the sun goes at night (or something like that). I'm having trouble putting my finger on the correct terminology and phrasing for what I'm trying to relate Crow to, but that's the best I could come up with.

Ted Hughes

Over the readings, I really tried not to allow my feelings about Hughes' life with Plath get in the way. However, it is almost impossible not to refer to their relationship because Hughes makes references to Plath in some of his work. For instance, Hughes' "Red" gives numerous hints that it is about Plath. Hughes used red and blood imagery throughout the poem which Plath used a lot in her work. The poem also has a similar tone to that of Plath's poetry--death. Since a good deal of inspiration and emotions came out of Plath's death, regardless of their relationship prior, no one can really deny Hughes his right to express what he was feeling during that moment in time.

I feel as though the life of Hughes was just as big, if not, bigger than his poetry. It is important to separate the two but it is also important to understand the relationship between his work and his life because they truly intertwine. I have learned a lot more about Hughes' work and life in the past few weeks. By doing so I got a better understanding of Hughes and Plath's life together, as well as their work referring to each other. Before reading Hughes' work I thought of him only as Plath's moronic, womanizing ex-husband. Reading his poetry allowed me to realize that he is human, even though I still believe he is was a jerk. His poetry gave me better notification as to what his deeper feelings may have been throughout his life.

Thoughts on Ted Hughes

I like Ted Hughes' poetry, but I really don't know why. Like I said in class, I think it's simply because it's so different from all the other poetry we've read. Hughes really pushes the envelope with some of the things he touches on in his poetry, especially "Theology." It's great for a poem to be beautiful and moving, but sometimes I like to read stuff that really shakes things up, and Hughes' poetry is a great example of that.

I'd like to know more about his marriage to Sylvia Plath. This is the first time I've read Hughes' poetry, but I've read Plath's before and liked it as well--the marriage didn't work out, but the time they did spend together must have been quite interesting, to have these two extremely dark and offbeat souls bonded together in marriage!

Birthday letters Ted Hughes

life after death:
Ted Hughes Life after Death of the Birthday letters was one of the most powerful of the collection. Hughes describe the events and the emotion he went through with his children. like many loved ones of a suicide victims their life is torched and each one of them try to cope and move on from the horror. he begins with the words " what can i tell you that you do not know of life after death"
then goes on to describe his son cries and tears for his mother as he feeds him in his high chair. he also says how even though he is crying his mouth betrays you as he continue to cry and take the food. then he goes on describing the coms state of his daughter as he dresses her and the presence of her death continue to wound her. and later describes how the wolves mourn for them and visit them night after night..and they sing for two orphans as he states "where wolves singing in the forest for two babes, who have turned in their sleep into orphans besides the corps of their mother" which recalls the night she gassed her self while the children were sleeping and slept while their mothers corps was laying on the kitchen floor.

Reconstructing Eden: Comparing Hughes' "Theology" and "Crow's First Lesson"

Ted Hughes, unreligious as he is, uses "blasphemous" imagery and "heretical" rhetorical in much of his poetry. In a few of his poems, he even recreates biblical accounts, forming them into (perhaps not anti-biblical, but) almost "de-biblical" accounts.

For instance, in "Theology," Hughes retells the story of "the Fall," which the speaker claims is "simply / Corruption of the facts" (3-4). In the biblical depiction, the serpent tempted Eve to the apple (who ate), who then tempted Adam (who also ate), all three of whom were found by God, naked and ashamed, and then cursed by God. Hughes' version, however, is not slightly altered:

Adam ate the apple.
Eve ate Adam.
The serpent ate Eve.
This is the dark intestine.

The serpent, meanwhile,
Sleeps his meal off in Paradise--
Smiling to hear
God's querulous calling. (5-12)

The Bible tells the Fall of man as the separation from God due to sin, and "Theology" also tells of a separation from God, but of a different kind. Here there is no sin, no "seduc[tion]" (2), no temptation whatsoever. The serpent merely ate the woman who had eaten the man who had eaten the apple: these are "the facts" (4). There is nothing else to it. Hughes expresses here that mankind has been separated from God from the beginning: there is no "Paradise" (1o) to which we can or should return. The place we find ourselves is "the dark intestine" (4), and not due to sin, but due to the facts, and God is a bumbling fool, several levels removed from us, in this garden we cannot reach, and in which we are nowhere to be found.

The themes of "Theology" (the poem which, in part, inspired Hughes' book, Crow) carry over into many of the poems of Crow. "Crow's First Lesson," for example, is another sort of reconstruction of the Fall, another version even further removed from the original story. In this rendering, God is attempting to teach Crow to say the word, "love." According to the Bible, the purpose for which all things were created is love: to love God and to love one another. So God, after this fashion, attempts to assimilate Crow into that created structure: but Crow is unable.

"Love," said God. "Say, Love."
Crow gaped, and the white shark crashed into the sea
And went rolling downwards, discovering its own depth. (2-3)

From the beginning, Crow can neither receive nor recapitulate this notion of "love." Instead, when he opens his mouth, voiceless descriptions of death come flowing out: vicious predators of the sea and disease-carrying insects, "Zoom[ing] out and down" (7). God attempts a third and final time to teach poor Crow, and this is where the most obvious connection to the Fall appears:

Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and
Man's bodiless prodigous head
Bulbped out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,
Jabbering protest--

And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.
And woman's vulva dropped over man's neck and tightened.
The two struggled together on the grass.
God struggled to part them, cursed, wept--

Crow flew guiltily off. (10-18)

In this way, Hughes completely deconstructs both the story of man's creation and man's curse. Rather than God making man at all, man and woman were both "retched" out of Crow's innards, vomitted out of Crow's dark, distorted, dismembered, and defeated attempt to say, "Love." Crow who cannot create love, created man and woman, and in this, they were borne in strife and forced to love in the only way that Crow's own "dark intestine" can conceive: struggling forever. The sexual imagery of "woman's vulva" tightening around "man's neck" depicts sex as the concrete signifier of this struggle, as well as the perpetuation of that love (through reproduction) thereafter.

God, helpless to part them (as He was helpless to find them in "Theology"), gives up: He curses and weeps. God's curse here is not from the position of sovereign authority, as the biblical account described, but from the position of submissive futility. He breaks down and cries because He cannot make love (pun intended) in them as He desires, for the love from which they were borne was from the convulsive stomache of the Crow. "Crow," then "flew guiltily off" (18), knowing he had made a mistake (mankind), but unable either to remedy the situation or to console the now grieving God. So Crow leaves God behind, off to find something other than God or Love by which to define himself.

Figuring out the Crow

Due to the fact that we will be discussing Ted Hughes' use of the crow in class today, I thought it would be a good idea to find some more insight into this interesting character. The following ideas I will be presenting are coming directly from the web. I do not want to take credit for insight that is not mine.

Diving back into the poem "Theology", Hughes introduces his own interpretation of the Bible's God. For Hughes, this God is imperfect, is not all-knowing, and He does not appear as the powerful God responsible for all of creation. The snake in the poem seems to be unknown to Him, and through the snake's trickery, the snake appears to hold godlike power. After investigating "Theology", and doing a bit of research, Hughes has been likened to a mythic poet. "Through myth he had access to all the intensity and drama of life and death; to universally recognisable patterns of human behaviour; to the powerful energies of gods and devils; and to ritual frameworks which have been used for centuries to contain such powerful energies and emotions. Yet, for him, myth was more than a thesaurus, it was also a divining-rod, a tool for channelling and controlling the energies he worked with, whether they were conscious or subconscious energies, sacred or profane, good or bad" (Skea). Thus, enters the Crow.

"Hughes, for the first time, wrote a sequence of poems within a framework which took the form of a folk-mythology of his own construction. Through the quasi-human figure of Crow, he continued his own journey of exploration into the human psyche and, at the same time, his handling of the death/rebirth theme in his poetry began to be more complex. It took on the aspect of a quest, a Shamanic journey to the underworld, which Hughes believed to be the basic theme in many folktales, myths and narrative poems" (Skea).

Hughes spoke on the creation and development of the Crow on BBC:

"He was created by God's nightmare. What exactly that is I
tried to define through the length of the poem, or the
succession of poems" (Hughes).

"The first idea of Crow was really an idea of style. In folktales the prince going on the adventure comes to the stable full of beautiful horses and he needs a horse for the next stage and the King's daughter advises him to take none of the beautiful horses that he'll be offered but to choose the dirty, scabby little foal. You see, I throw out the eagles and choose Crow. The idea was originally just to write his songs, the songs that a Crow would sing. In other words songs with no music whatsoever, in a super simple and a super ugly language which would in a way shed everything except just what he wanted to say without any other consideration and that's the basis of the style of the whole thing" (Hughes).

This is interesting because his earlier (pre-Crow) poetry makes several references to horses, and I can see how this ties together, from the beginning of his writing, he was on the journey of developing Crow.

In conclusion, By adopting and developing this trickster figure of the crow, Hughes was extending his exploration into his own mind the human mind in general. In so doing, Hughes extended the death/rebirth theme of his poetry to include the idea of spiritual growth and rebirth for Man.

In Crow, Hughes redefines God, adopts Biblical language and style, recreates the Biblical Genesis story, perverts the message of the supreme power of God's love and cast Crow in the role of "crucified" and reborn hero (''Crow and the Sea'') and survivor of the Apocalypse. It has also been said that Crow was subjected to teaching and to tests, he was meant to learn humanity and wholeness, to develop a soul, but only in poems published in a later poetic sequence did he achieve real progress on his quest. "Crow is Everyman who will not acknowledge that everything he most hates and fears - The Black Beast - is within him" (Skea).

Correction on my last post

It looks as if the websight won't format the poetry to sit side by side on the page, but instead mixed them together. I'm not sure how to fix this, but if you look on the handout Dr. Johnson gave us the two poems are right beside each other and you can compare their different styles there.

Hugh's Style

As I was reading the “Crow” poems, I found myself intrigued with the way Hugh’s uses them to turn traditional stories upside down. One particular poem we brought up in class is “Crow’s First Lesson.” I believe I heard the word “sacrilegious” come up in relation to this poem, and I’m pretty sure that it does apply to this twisted, perverted version of the biblical creation. However, one particular poem which stood out to me not because it twisted an easily recognizable story, but because I could make no connection with it to another story, was “Crow’s Vanity.” As I said, I could find no story to go with this particular poem, but after a little bit of reflection I realized that it’s still very much like the rest of Hugh’s poetry.

Now, to follow my argument you’ll have to agree with me that the “story” of Hugh’s collective poetry is its structure. One might say that the “story” of Hugh’s structure includes short lines which sometimes are enjambed but often have punctuation, a lack of end rhyme, the occasional use of alliteration, and un-uniform stanza length. Understanding, then, that Hughs likes to twist stories, “Crow’s Vanity” could be an example of Hughs twisting the “story” of his own typical structure. Consider, for example, the fact that there’s no punctuation in “Crow’s Vanity,” but that Hughs relies on white space to form the pauses throughout the poem. I’ll put two stanzas side by side to show you how they look different structurally.

“Crow’s Vanity” “Oedipus Crow”
Looking close in the evil mirror Crow saw A gravestone fell on his foot
Mistings of civilisations towers gardens And took root-- Battles he wiped the glass but there came He bit through the bone and fled.

Clearly “Crow’s Vanity” looks a lot different than the more typically structured “Oedipus Crow.” Therefore, by twisting his own structure, Hughs takes the easily recognizable story of his own style and turns it upside down.

Dylan Thomas

Although I haven't been to class last Wednesday, and I know "Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night" was dissected, I still want to give a general comment about it.
It is one of the only poems where I feel the overall message almost obliterates the little subtleties from within the poem completely. Each stanza talks about different kinds of people who are facing death (wise men, good men, grave men, etc.) but since there is such a strong common denominator they don't really stick out individually.

The prospect of the inevitability of death plagues all humans uniformly. The different kinds of circumstances each one of us faces at the end, doesn't really change all that much in terms of the nature of experience. Dylan Thomas tries to convey, from my standpoint, that everyone should live life to its fullest. It's a modified "Carpe Diem." The "rage" is really a quiet rebellion against death. What we do in life is the full expression of that rage. If we "go gentle," meaning we just wait for death, then we squander life. If we live life to its fullest, we do the best we can with our situation.

The Hand That Signed the Paper

Like a lot of other people, I was really torn over Dylan Thomas. I wish I would have been in class last Wednesday to go over some of the poetic techniques that Thomas used as I think it would have made me better appreciate a lot of the poems. One of the poems that I did enjoy at face value was "The Hand That Signed the Paper." I think that though it is describing the acts done by kings, it can be applied to today's presidents and prime ministers as well.

Stanza number one shows the destruction that can be brought about by simply signing a document. Cities can fall, people can be taxed, populations can be cut in half, and leaders and be assassinated. Signatures can often bring about all of these dramatic and devastating consequences.

The second stanza seems to imply that though the hand that signs the paper has an almost infinite amount of power, the person behind it is still human. This hand can lead to a sloping shoulder and be cramped with old age just like any other hand. Why should a hand like any other hand wield such immense power?

I think that the final stanza talks about the almost impersonal nature of our leaders. "The five kings count the dead but do not soften/The crusted wound nor stroke the brow." They are not able to truly help their people. Also, they cannot feel for the people they control. The last line reinforces this idea: "Hands have no tears to flow."

I feel like the poem, as a whole, is a powerful commentary on politics.

Dylan Thomas

I have mixed feelings about Dylan Thomas. There were poems that I enjoyed, and there were poems that I did not particularly like. The poems that I enjoyed are the poems that I could understand. Some of his work was so confusing that I could not make any sense of it. The two poems that stood out to me are “Fern Hill” and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” seemed very much self-explanatory. In the first stanza, he is telling his father to stay energetic and hold on to life. The next four stanzas describe different types of men who are trying to hold on to their lives. In the final stanza, he tells his father to be the fierce man that he once was. He does not seem ready to loose his father into the good night.

In “Fern Hill,” the speaker is a man who is looking back on his childhood. In the first stanza, he has control over his environment and easily moves as if he owns everything. As a child he did not seem to understand the meaning of time and how time passes. He reminisces on all the good memories of his childhood. Although time will eventually run out, he will always have these beautiful memories as a child.

Most of the other poems are depressing. “The Hunchback in the Park” is a poem about all the pain and suffering of a hunchback. “Twenty-Four Years” is another depressing poem. There is not one uplifting poem that we have read from Thomas. Thomas uses a lot of repetition throughout his poetry. I have noticed that the first lines of the majority of his poems start with the title. This was very monotonous. I’m sure he could have come up with more creative titles.

Crafting Poetry

I wanted to write this post on our activity in class today. I really enjoyed searching for the poetic techniques Dylan Thomas used in his poem "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London". When first reading through his poem (well, his poetry in general), I arrived at the end saying "what"?! Part of my struggle with Thomas was the fact that his poetry is anything but straight-forward. However, after re-reading and really diving into his work, I appreciate it a lot more.

Thomas truly had a craft, and I believe his poetry was created difficult on purpose. I think by using the techniques he did, he weeds out readers that are distant. When first reading through his poetry, I remained on the outer boundaries of his work. It is pretty much impossible to breeze through Thomas' poetry, and I think his choice in taking away the "easiness" of his poetry forces the reader to do one of two things: engage with the work, or walk away without understanding. My first reaction was to walk away not understanding; however, after searching for alliterations, personifications, metaphors, internal rhymes, etc. I really began to see the genius behind his words. After today's class I have a higher regard for his work. Thomas presents depth, craft, and skill! He really packs a punch with his poetry! I look forward to trying to identify some of these other elements in future poetry we study. Even if I don't "get" the meaning, understanding poetic techniques exposes the craft of the work :)

Dylan Thomas and Death

I cringe to say it because it’s just so obvious, but one of the common themes I noticed in Thomas’ poetry was death. Now, having stated that obvious fact, I wanted to talk a little bit about something specific I noticed about Thomas’ use of this theme. In two of his poems, “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” and “A Refusal to Mourn the Death…”, Thomas’ takes an interesting approach to the topic of death. Certainly, each poem is optimistic in its own rights, but when they are examined together, they present an almost irresponsible attitude towards death.

“And Death shall Have No Dominion” certainly has a more optimistic approach towards death than is typical. The idea of death as an event within a continuum rather than a finality is definitely a positive approach. Likewise, “A Refusal to Mourn…” echoes this optimistic approach with the final line which reads, “After the first death, there is no other.” In both of these poems Thomas takes the power away from death by either 1.) declaring that it may come as an event, but it may not take dominion over or possess those who die, or 2.) refusing to acknowledge it through mourning. Therefore, on the one hand, this could be seen as a strong, optimistic view of death. Yet, on the other hand, it almost seems irresponsible. Thomas refuses to acknowledge the power of death, and in the end we get a poem such as “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” in which he cannot let go of his father or allow him to have a peaceful death despite the fact that it is time for him to go.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, yes, it’s fine for Thomas to have this optimistic approach to death, but he shouldn’t be so unwilling to acknowledge its power an inevitability that he is not able to accept it when the time comes. He has a strong approach towards death, but when it’s put to the test of reality, it fails.

Dylan Thomas

Reading Dylan Thomas poems i could not help but see it's similarity with Sylvia Plath. his poems in general are very dark with a lot of grotesque imagery and rhythm. After reading the Hunchback of the park i was very confused. so i read it a second time as a new Critics would, it was then i was able to appreciate the poem not for it's meaning but for the strong scenic imagery and the beautiful language he composed as he describes in line7-12 "eating bread from a newspaper, drinking water from the chained cup, that the children filled with gravel.."
even though i was not sure how all of it fit together, because to me there were too man things going on at the same time. never less as i was reading it i could definitely see a picture and scene from the different sections.
he is not one of my favorite poets maybe because i have a hard time connecting his poetry to myself or anything else i'm familiar with.

Last comment on Auden

I wanted to reiterate this one point that I've already made in one of my last posts about the inevitability of the passing of time. I see "As I walked Out One Evening" a confirmation of that sentiment. The poem is told from the perspective of the person who addresses his loved one and yet the message seems to be more universal than what a generic romantic poem usually produces.

After the author affirms his love in the fifth stanza, the poem takes a turn. "But all the clocks in the city began to chime...You cannot conquer Time."(line 24). It's worth noting that not only is there a clear distinction between the first part and the second part of the poem, but the capitalization of the word "time" gives the concept an almost omnipotent stance. Time cannot be conquered and for all our efforts, it moves our lives on.

And yet, despite the fact that time is the primary cause of our aging (And wonder what you've missed" line 40) and our demise, the author affirms the view that life "remains a blessing" despite our helplessness in trying to slow down. "The deep river runs on" and everything continues in conformity with time's passing, but I believe Auden is making our mortality into something much more special. In his view, as I read it, not being omnipotent as time is, is what makes life special; otherwise being stuck in a changeless state (independent of time) life soon begins to lose it appeal.

May the Force Be with You

Dylan Thomas' "The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" is, in my estimation, a poem about the paradox regarding the inextricability of life and death.

The poem begins: "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age." These two lines convey the irony that life's natural destination is death. The same essence or "force" that can be called life is what has thrust the speaker toward death, like an arc-shot from the cannon of birth, forever aimed at the target of death. The speaker goes on to express that he is "dumb to tell the crooked rose / My youth is bent by the same wintry fever." I see this as a declaration that time affects all living things. As the winter season may "bend" the rose, so the winter of old-age makes "crooked" men, hunched over with a cane.

The next two stanzas follow this pattern, but become slightly less clear. From stanza two: "The force that drives the water through the rocks / Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams / Turns mine to wax." Again, I see this as a statement on the unity of all living things under this paradox of life and death. The "force" that causes streams to flow is the same force that causes them to dry up is the same force that causes the speaker's blood to flow and causes his veins and mouth to dry up. The stanza concludes: "And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins / How at the same mountain spring the same mouth sucks." Stanza three follows suit, explicating the relationships between the speaker's body, "my clay," and "the hangman's lime" (which was used when burying criminals to increase the decomposition of the body, from which the earth would then receive nutrition and create more lime).

Stanzas four and five break the pattern slightly:

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

This is probably the hardest part to explicate. On the one hand, it is obvious that, again, these conclusions reveal the interconnectivity of life and death, as well as the interconnectivity of all living things beneath that umbrella. On the other hand, I almost see a sort of refutation of religion and the afterlife in the last four lines of stanza four, but the metaphors seem a little too ambiguous for me to extrapolate anything specifically, other than I feel the speaker claiming that God and the afterlife are a human construction developed over time, time which has "ticked a heaven round the stars."

Love, which "Drips and gathers," he seems to say cannot be eternal. For, despite "the lover's tomb," "the same crooked worm" eats at all rot, indifferent to love.

Reattempted Auden Post

I wrote this last week and posted it, but somehow it didn't work, and I've not had time since then, so I'm trying again now. It will probably be a tad abridged.

~

A theme I found in some of W. H. Auden's poetry was that of the depth of a person. At least two poems of his, in my mind, speak to the layered nature of human beings, and that a surface-level understanding of a person is insufficient to knowing him or her fully: "Who's Who" and "The Unknown Citizen."

"Who's Who," a sonnet separated into an octet and sextet, opens up saying that "A shilling life will give you all the facts." According to footnotery--yes, footnotery--a "shilling life" refers to a "cheap book or pamphlet," and the title apparently refers to a "book of capsule biographies of famous people." So although it cannot be ascertained from the poem about which person Auden is writing (if indeed he is writing about anyone in particular), the point is not the person's name. Stanza one essentially runs through a list of "struggles" ("How Father beat him, how he ran away") and achievements ("climbed new mountains; named a sea"). And, as the footnotes suggest the intention of the pamphlet is, readers are supposed to now have a biographical understanding of this particular person.

However, in the turn at line nine, Auden juxtaposes this superficial understanding of the person, and adds some additional, more personal insight: his habits, his ability to whistle, etcetera. These random piccadilloes, though perhaps insignificant, are the intimate qualities of a person which can only be known through experiencing that person. Though a "shilling life" can perhaps "give you all the facts," it does not give you a personality, a soul. Though it may describe someone, it cannot define them.

"The Unknown Citizen" is another excellent example of the juxtaposition between the superficial understanding of a person versus perhaps a "truer" sense of knowing a person. As opposed to "Who's Who," however, "The Unknown Citizen" is almost entirely composed of "the facts," save the last two lines. Almost in an exaggerated version of "Who's Who," Auden creates this exhaustive list of data on Citizen "JS/07/M/378." Almost everything that can seemingly be known about a person is on record: his conduct, war history, employment history, Union reports, congeniality, hospital records, even the appliances he owned were on file. Everything the unknown citizen did was documented, evaluated, and approved by the state. So he must have lived a good life, right?

In the final two lines of the poem, Auden writes:

"Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard."

This stark contrast, this satirical conclusion, displays how little the federal record of one's life, the "facts" of a census, can actually convey the depth of an individual or the type of life one leads.

Auden

Auden is probably my favorite poet so far. I like that he uses various themes and that his poems are all very different. Some of the themes he writes about include politics, love, personal issues, and social problems. My favorite poem is “The Unknown Citizen.” It can apply even in today’s society. Allowing the government too much control is dangerous. Individuals are losing their identities in the world because of new technology. We are all just numbers. Auden does not use a name in this poem. He describes this person in ways that the government would approve. I don’t think this was written about a specific person. It can apply to anyone. The government does not care who we are or what we do as long as we follow the rules.

The other poem I enjoyed is “As I Walked Out One Evening.” This is an example of how different each of his poems are from one another. Time will conquer us all eventually. Auden does not believe that love lasts forever. The narrator says to his lover that their love will last until impossible things occur. (Oceans drying up) The lovers separate in the end. The love that they once had was beautiful, and it is now destroyed. Time is personified in this poem. Time has been around forever and knows that love does not last. Time has seen it happen. Time watches the mistakes that lovers make over and over again.

Dylan Thomas: A Change of Pace

This week we will be discussing selected works by Dylan Thomas. The selected poems are a lot different than what we've been reading. They are certainly darker; Poe-like. They are dramatic, yet in a simplistic manner. I thought it would be a good idea to listen to Thomas read some of his poems since it was noted that he liked his poems to be read in a specific way. By listening to some of his works and reading them again, the reader is able to gain a new level of understanding and appreciation of his work. The beauty of it is not only on the pages, but what is heard aloud. Dylan Thomas wanted his poems to be thought of as narratives; the poems take on a life of their own.

The most interesting part of his poetry is the way he uses and arranges words; his descriptions are very unconventional. He played with language and using slang, allusions, many types of rhymes, and even puns. The emotional aspect of his poetry is overpowering and seen throughout all of his work. It seems as though he was not concerned with the typical intellectual issues other poets, of and before his time, focused on. I think his work was self-therapeutic; it was a way for him to speak outside of his mind. His addiction to alcohol and his struggle can be seen within some of the works.

Auden's "Who's Who"

One of the poems that I really enjoyed that we did not talk about in class was Auden’s “Who’s Who” which refers to the popular “capsule biographies of famous people.” I think I was immediately drawn to the poem, being familiar with the various “Who’s Who” publications that exist today.

The first stanza describes the biography of an individual listed in a “Who’s Who” publication. The biography describes “how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night/Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea” (5-6). Auden describes all of the things that you would associate with an influential or famous person.

The turning point of the poem lies within line nine. “With all his honours on, he sighed for one.” He then goes on to describe the life of the “one” who, “did little jobs about the house with skill/And nothing else” (11-12) among other things typical of a typical man. I was a bit torn in how I took the sigh. On one hand I thought that the sigh could have meant that he pitied the man who never made a name for his self. He thought the man led a futile existence. On the other hand I thought that the sigh could mean that the “Who’s Who” subject was envious of the common man who got to enjoy all the little things in life. I think that when it was all said and done, I tend to believe the second evaluation.

The final two lines say that he “answered some/Of his marvelous letters but kept none” (13-14). I wondered if this meant that he was concerned with the practical aspect of answering the letters but as less worried about keeping the “marvelous letters” as proof of his abilities. He was the common man who never aspired to be a member of any “Who’s Who” list.

H.D. and Auden

Two posts in one here.

On H.D. :

I'm somewhat torn on how I feel about H.D.'s shorter length style of poetry. While I have no doubt that most of these poems hold a significant amount of meaning to H.D., I just can't seem to find it. I feel as if I'm being "jipped" out of something and there should be more to it, more to the story. It made it a little difficult to understand what she wanted to convey. On the other hand, this is what makes he poems intriguing. I enjoyed Oread and after our discussion I liked it more. Though very short in length, the poem consisted of vivid imagery and movement, almost like a painting. H.D., after all, is an imagist poets. But what I enjoyed most by H.D. was From Tribute to the Angels. Though not very religious myself, I loved the religious symbolism in this poem. As we discussed in class, she used the number 7 often. In Christianity, the number 7 has both positive and negative qualities: 7 days of Creation, 7 days of suffering to whomever kills Cain, and much more. She also mentions the 12 angels in it too. I think this makes H.D's poem interesting because it takes what is known into account and relates to the readers.The Book of Revelations is quite interesting itself, which makes for her poem to just as interesting.


On Auden:

In this post I wanted to discuss "September 1, 1939." When I first read it, I definitely felt the connect, as most did, to the September 11 attacks. The poem gives an eerily similar description of that day. And the fact that Auden wrote this in New York City makes it all too familiar. Obviously this isn't a poem about September 11 but I can see why people would take this and relate it to that day.

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
and darkened lands of the earth
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

This first stanza is full of feelings and emotions that most of us were expressing on 9/11. The "waves of anger and fear" and the "unmentionable odour of death" are two lines that immediately jump out at me and remind of how I felt on that day. I think it's amazing how a poem like this written in 1940 could have such a personal connection with people of today.

W. H. Auden - On This Island

Auden's intro states that T. S. Eliot was a major influence on him. "Auden said that when, at nineteen, he read The Waste Land, he discovered how he wanted to write and threw out his Wordsworthian verses." This is interesting because although I can see a bit of an influence from Eliot, I enjoyed Auden a lot more than Eliot. I think Auden's use of "prosey" diction and simpler ideas helped me to understand and like his works a lot more.

A Poem that we didn't really discuss in class but I think I liked the most is called On This Island. Not only does it paint a beautiful picture of the English coast, it is also fun to read! I really loved lines like "The leaping light for your delight discovers" and "That through the channels of the ear/ may wander like a river/ the swaying sound of the sea." Then we get the image of all the ships out in the water and we are told that with this full view of them sailing away, they move in our memory like the clouds "that pass the harbour mirror/ and all the summer through the water saunter." I just found this poem to be so beautiful. It really stuck out to me I think because of the sort-of romantic portrayal of the ocean. I loved it.

W.H Auden Spain

i his poem spain, Auden recalls his experience after visiting spain. the poem engages the audience into the war. what is interesting is that i did a lot of research on the spanish civil war and Lorca. what i came across was that like many other writers of the time, he was sympathetic to the republic. also it was interesting that Lorca was assassinated by franco's firing squad because of his homosexuality, as Auden was himself. it is clear from his other poems as well that he is driving by war.His poem is politically motivated, it also calls upon action. in his poems he stand against Fascist and Repression.

the Shield

As we mentioned in class, The Shield of Achilles seems to be a mixture of the old and new. As with the Unknown Citizen, in which Auden expresses how the individual is lost, the Shield of Achilles seems to have a similar message. I find it interesting that Auden chose weave the mythology of old into present day, perhaps suggesting that we never escape the problems of the past.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

I think this section of the poem is suggesting the idea of the lost "individual". "A million eyes, a million boots in line" sounds like a robotic formation, something mechanical, a mass body of people moving together not on their own accord, but through the orders of another. As these people wait for a sign, their lives are bleak and mundane; furthermore, no one is taking initiative to move on their own, or separate themselves from this robotic group.

Further in the poem, there is a line stating statistics determined their cause just, and the men keep marching, to their grief. From reading this, I feel like Auden was expressing how he saw the world as a bleak place. When it is later stated that "Achilles will not live long" I am led to think that this death Auden is referring to is a psychological and emotional death that steals a person long before physical death. Lastly, this may be far fetched, but what the heck. . . perhaps Auden is suggesting man cannot be shielded from this grief and the bleakness of the world. Although there was high hope for Achilles, he too was inevitably consumed by the drudgery.

A popuri post

As I discussed in my presentation in class D.H. Lawrence’s poetry was very diverse. Helen Sword (writer of my article) lays out a list of all other poets who can be compared to Lawrence when she says “[i]n his experimentation with free verse and his attention to poetic image as a concrete vehicle for abstract emotion, he resembles modernist contemporaries, such as Pound, Williams, H.D. and even Eliot. As an unabashed visionary, he fits into a Romantic lyrical tradition stretching from Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley through Whitman, Hopkins and Yeats. As a confessional poet, he forms a link in an unbroken chain that reaches from Whitman, Meredith, Hardy and Yeats through Robert Lowell, sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. And as a careful observer and awed explicator of nature, he finds common ground not only with twentieth-century ‘thing-poets’ such as Williams, marianne Moore, Rainer maria Rilke and Francis Ponge, but also with more recent writers such as Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes” (Sword 120). We are familiar with some of the mentioned poets so we can match up the styles that she’s discussing.

One poet that we recently discussed was H.D. She wrote some Imagism poetry, which we learned was short, described an action and painted a very focused picture. One of these poems was called Oread:

Whirl up, sea-

Whirl your pointed pines,

Splash your great pines

On our rocks,

Hurl your green over us,

Cover us with your pools of fir.

Oread is a nymph of the mountains and in this we are given imagery of water and mountains which I find really weird. I’m not too sure I enjoy Imagism, from what I’ve read. I’m disappointed to say... I don’t really enjoy H.D. Although I don’t like lengthy poetry, I don’t like short and abrupt poetry either. I guess I’m difficult to please.

The next poet on the list is W.H. Auden, who writes an array of different poems. His mix of different styles and subject matters makes it difficult to not find something you like. With such a selection, you are bound to find something. For me, there were a few. One of them was “The Shield of Achilles.” I’ve mentioned a few times before that I enjoy mythology. Although this poem isn’t difficult, it isn’t easy- you do have to put some thought behind it.

"September 1, 1939" & September 11, 2001, A Day We Should Never Forget

I couldn't help but comment on Auden's "September 1, 1939." It had such a resemblance to September 11th for me. Growing up a mere ten minutes away from Manhattan and waking up to see the beautiful city skyline was something I cherished. This particular poem of Auden's was recited during the time. It held great resonance with those affected by the attacks.

I remember every single moment of that day. I recall the sirens, the smoke, the horror, and the helplessness. The people around me clinging to anything they could: a cross, a church, their loved ones, strangers. No one had answers, so we looked to each other for support. It was a time in my life when I felt a true sense of community in the United States. We were all on the same page. When I moved to Pennsylvania that summer no one understood. It was almost like they didn't take it seriously or care about the monstrosities that occurred in our own country.

Since 2001 I refused to look at footage, newspapers, or be part of anything that discussed that day. It was only this September when I realized that I was trying to suppress what had occurred around me at age thirteen. By not watching and listening to what happened on September 11, 2001, I thought I could make it disappear from my memory like it never happened.

Reading "September 1, 1939" for the first time since I heard it recited on NPR in 2001 made me remember how I felt on September 11th. Each stanza contributed to a feeling or happening of that day. I couldn't believe how relatable the poem is. Stanza four in particular struck me most.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Though Auden is reflecting on the position of the U.S. before their involvement during WWII, I believe it holds relevance today. The morning of September 11, 2001 was a beautiful day. It was sunny, the temperature was perfect, and everyone seemed to be so happy--as people tend to be during nice weather. My middle school was on a hill that faced the Manhattan skyline. I was sitting at my desk looking out the window while my teacher was taking attendance; that moment was the last time I saw the towers standing. The buildings stood proud; they were powerful, an immediate view of success. Stability! I learned only a few minutes later, when I looked out the window again to see the blackest smoke I'd ever seen, that we were now unstable, powerless, and living in a fairy tale. The United States of America has never been the same since that day.

The Life of Hilda Doolittle

I enjoyed reading poetry by a female this week. Since H.D. was our first female poet in class, after I finished our readings I decided to do some research on her life. What I became aware of and found most interesting was the fact that Hilda Doolittle was a woman of her time who became noticed. I found that Hilda Doolittle was a Pennsylvania native and that she attended the University of Pennsylvania. While she was attending college she became friends with the well-known William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. It was through the help Ezra Pound that Doolittle began to experiment with Imagism. H.D. soon became the conductor of the Imagist movement and gained recognition, but that recognition was not universal.

Hilda Doolittle was disregarded during her lifetime mostly due to the feminist subject matter within her work. However, today Doolittle's work can be attributed to that of inspiration. It makes me sad to think that H.D.'s work was not held with high appreciation, but I am personally glad that a female poet can be considered great today. It shows how far we, as a society, have come.

Auden's Satire

Modern society seems to be a common theme among the twentieth century poets we’ve been studying. Whether it is J. Alfred Prufrock, basically lost and unconnected amidst all the people of the big city, or the speaker in Lawrence’s “The Snake,” who struggles between his natural instincts and what society has taught him is right, modern society is a topic common to much of the poetry we’ve read. Therefore, in going with this theme, I found Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen” to be a very interesting poem. This interest comes not only from how Auden’s poem compares to some of the other “society” poems we’ve read, but also in some of its own individual merits.

Compared to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Snake” I find that Auden takes a somewhat more satirical look at modern society. Take, for example, the final two lines of “The Unknown Citizen,” which read “Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: / Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.” Evidently some sort of government official, the speaker in this poem acts as if he knows everything about the unknown citizen. The speaker is even confident enough to state that the man’s happiness was a given, but readers can see the satire in the speaker’s delusion. Impossible for an official to know everything about an individual, Auden satirizes modern society/government in their very attempt to do so. The speaker seems to think the unknown citizen had everything he could ever need, “A gramophone, a radio, a car and a Frigidaire,” but readers realize that there is so much more to life than material possessions. Therefore, in reducing the citizen to one who needs nothing more than to have the right material possessions, Auden satirizes the shallowness of the modern age. Eliot and Lawrence also have their own complaints with modern society, but Auden is interesting to me in that he uses satire to make his own complaints.

Yet, even without comparing his poem to the works of other poets, Auden’s “The Unknown citizen” is interesting in its own rights. Take, for example, the title of the poem. When I first started this poem the title led me to believe it would almost be like an ode to someone who had died. And I suppose, in a small way, that’s what the poem is; however, it is certainly not presented in the manner one would expect. The speaker’s clinical, aloof way of talking about the citizen takes away all tenderness normally expressed in poems about one who has died. Therefore, by juxtaposing the tenderness the readers expect to the rough, modern approach of the speaker, Auden displays how cold and sterile modern society can be. Therefore, even based solely on its own rights, “The Unknown Citizen” is a very interesting poem.

All the poems we’ve read so far about modern society have been rather bleak. But, I suppose bleak times call for bleak poetry. Indeed, written during the very beginning of WWII, it is not much of a surprise that Auden would satirize modern society throughout “The Unknown Citizen.” Nevertheless, despite the bleakness of this poem, I still find that the comparisons it makes to other “society” poems and its own individual merits still make “The Unknown Citizen” a poem worthy of recognition.

Hilda Doolittle

I enjoyed studying Hilda Doolittle after concentrating on male poets over the last several weeks. Doolittle’s poetry is very different from all the other poets we have studied. Most of the poetry we have read has been complex and is left open for various interpretations. Doolittle’s poetry is complex in a different way. For instance, “The Pool” is only four lines, but without knowing the title, we most likely would not understand what she is describing. Her poetry is beautiful and full of imagery. “Sea Rose” is one of her poems that the reader can visualize a rose flying through the wind and landing in the sand. Most of her poetry relates to nature with flowers being a common theme.

“Helen” is another poem that struck my interest because we have discussed other poets that used Helen of Troy in their works. The one line that really caught my interest was “God’s daughter, born of love,” After reading Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,” I was under the impression that Zeus raped Leda and became pregnant with Helen. Therefore, Helen would not have been born of love. Aside from this, Doolittle describes Helen as a statue. “Still eyes,” “white face,” “white hands,” and “stands” all imply that Greece is staring at a statue of Helen. Greece hates Helen and blames her for starting the Trojan War. Her beauty was destructive and caused many deaths. It almost implies that the only good beauty is the dead beauty.

The Metamorphoses in "The Walls Do Not Fall"

The way I read the text is by focusing primarily on sections 4 and 6. Although each section is significant in its own way, 4 and 6 stand out for me. Section 4 talks about a sea- shell that withstands many of the abuses it undergoes in the ocean, while section 6 is presented from the view point of a worm which stands in contrast to the sea-shell. This is the alleged "metamorphoses" I see in the text. Both are metaphors for the human condition; going from being rigid and strong as a sea-shell, to complete vulnerability in the form of a helpless critter.

Seeing that the poem is placed within the context of WW2, maybe it's a description of the coping mechanism for those who were fortunate enough to escape with their lives. First, the rigidity is a facade of normalcy that people try to build in order to convince themselves and others that they remain unaffected by what has transpired. It is, as Victor Frankl described in his book "Man's Search for Meaning," a way of coping with an ongoing surge of pain by adopting antipathy. The sea-shell expresses its indestructability by saying "Infinite water can not crack me."(Line 112) .Second, when it becomes clear with time that human beings are not build like machines, that person becomes more attached to his/her "soft" side. The worm is "rain-swept (163) and "torn from a stem." It does what it does to survive but at the same time is aware of its finitude: "I know how the Lord God is about to manifest when I..Spin my own shroud." In other words the worm approaches the end of its life and comes face-to-face with its maker.

It's true that it might be a bit of a stretch seeing that there is a disconnect in terms of what the previous section expresses, but that is the only way I manage to make sense of it.

H.D.'s "Helen"

One of my favorite poems that we studied this past week was “Helen.” I know we talked about it pretty in depth in class, but after reading the link that Dr. Johnson had up on Angel, I became really interested in the comparison between H.D.’s Helen and Edgar Allen Poe’s Helen. By looking at the two poems, we can really see the distinct difference between H.D.’s version of Helen and Helen as an object of the male gaze.

Poe’s “To Helen”

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
to his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have broght me home
To glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window niche
How statuelike I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

Though both poems draw on the beauty of Helen, Poe seems to be commenting entirely on her physical appearance, almost romanticizing Helen’s role in history whereas H.D. is commenting on Helen as an object of hatred for “All Greece.” She is showing the reality of how Helen functioned. I feel like Poe’s picture of Helen relies solely on her physical appearance and H.D. is asking us to look closer. She is asking us to see more of Helen than just an object of lust, but as “God’s daughter” (12) and as a women who endured immense hatred against her.

Another thing that I find really interesting is the parallel between a type of statue imagery in both Poe’s poem and H.D.’s. Poe talks about “How statuelike I see thee stand” and in H.D.’s poem she talks about how “Greece reviles/the wan face when she smiles/hating it deeper sill/when it grow wan and white” (6-9). When I first read H.D.’s poem I didn’t see this as a reference to a state but after reading Poe, I can see a parallel. Both are referring to Helen as a statue but that statue functions in different ways.

H.D. and Imagism

After reading H.D., I can say that I don't mind Imagism in general, but I didn't particularly love H.D. To be specific, I mainly just didn't enjoy her war trilogy poems. I thought that the religious imagery was boring and I really struggled to pay attention in class on Wednesday. (Sorry, Dr. Johnson). The illustrations of Mary used in class were a little helpful and interesting, but at that point, my brain had just turned off.

What I did enjoy were the few other imagist poems of H.D.'s that reminded me of romantic poetry. I really like the nature aspect of those poems. "Oread" provided a nice little snapshot of the sea splashing on the rocks. I liked "Mid-Day" too because of the idea of the continuity of nature. At the end of the poem she says "O poplar, you are great/ among the hill-stones, /while I perish on the path/ among the crevices of the rocks." It's like she is saying that although we will come and go, nature will live on. There were other poems by H.D. that I kind of only understood bits and pieces of. For example, in "Garden" I didn't fully get the first part, but the second part I was able to sort of relate to. "O wind, rend open the heat,/ cut apart the heat,/ rend it to tatters" reminded me of growing up in Florida where you pray for a wind to break up the heat that is like a blanket at times.

H. D. Packing a Punch

I have found H.D. to be another poet that I am having a difficult time understanding. Nonetheless, I like how H.D. found a voice of her own through representations of imagery, and I enjoy her shorter works. She really packs a punch into a single stanza of writing; the Imagist movement was launched by her and I admire this. Her poem, "Tribute to the Angels" threw me for a loop, but here is what I have gathered from the poem thus far. . . First, there is a combination of holy women in the poem, H. D. seems to be synthesizing all women goddesses, Eve, and Mary into one combined "femaleness". Like D. H. Lawrence, H. D. seems to be taking characters familiar to us and giving us a different perspective. In the poem, Eve is carrying the Book of Life--this seems to be a redemptive transformation! Eve is "Psyche, the butterfly; Out of the cocoon", so there is a transformation that Eve undergoes, she is free and out of captivity, no longer defined by the sin of the fall. Perhaps H. D. was tyring to echo her own transformations through her poetry, perhaps reflecting what she gained from psychoanalysis, as it is clear she praised Freud.

I found a question H. D. proposed that reads "Do I wish myself, in the deepest conscious or subconscious layers of my being, to be the founder of a new religion?" Well, perhaps she was attempting to do this through her poetry such as "Tribute to the Angels". She does not establish a new religion, but she certainly gives new perspectives through the combination of Greek and Biblical women. Through her artistic journey, H. D. appears to be quite philosophical and spiritual in her own right.

It is difficult for me decide exactly how I feel about imagist poetry. In class we talked about how it is supposed to capture one concrete moment or image, and how it is not supposed to be about any certain concept or emotion. And, on the one hand, I can really appreciate this attempt at simplicity. Some poems are so weighed down with concepts and heavy language that they are difficult to read, but imagist poetry is much simpler than that. However, when I was reading Hilda Doolittle’s imagist poetry, I found that her brief “sketches” left me wanting more. It’s as if I felt a strange mixture of appreciation and dissatisfaction while reading her poetry, leaving me a little bit confused as to how exactly I feel about imagist poetry.

One particular poem where this occurred for me was while reading “Oread.” Being a bit of a nature lover, I really like H.D’s description of the trees and ocean. Perhaps my favorite line is the final one, which reads: “Cover us with your pools of fir.” I really like the imagery here, and can almost smell the sea-salt air mixed with the fragrant pines that Doolittle portrays in this poem. Therefore, in respect to her imagery, I really appreciate this poem. I think it does an excellent job of capturing one concrete moment in time. It’s almost as if we’re given a brief snapshot of time. Yet, for as much as I appreciate this little “snapshot,” I find myself wishing for more. I would like to know more about this landscape Doolittle has created, but the imagist genre does not allow for this. Therefore, I must be satisfied with the disappointingly small description “Oread” gives me.

It is this conflict between really liking what I read but still wanting more that leads to my confusion about imagist poetry. I think imagist poetry is an excellent way in which to poignantly capture a brief moment of time or beauty; yet, the moment is so brief that, if other readers are anything like me, we end up dissatisfied and wishing for more. I guess I just have a love/hate relationship with this type of poetry. I love the simplicity these poems’ briefness provides them, but at the same time I hate their brevity. Confusing? I know. But I guess it’s just something I’ll have to deal with as we read through the rest of H.D.’s poetry.

Lawrence

I'll admit, when I first started reading D.H. Lawrence's poetry I wasn't a fan. It was all over the place - he didn't have a distinct voice it seemed. Though as we discussed him in class, I liked him more. A lot more. His sexual undertones, which I didn't catch at first, is actually quite humorous (though gross at the same time - I.E. the whales and the turtles.)

"The English Are So Nice!" Is my favorite because it's so repetitious, arrogant and mocking - it's hilarious! It sort of reminds me of a Dr. Seuss story in a way. I also liked "Snake." When I first read it I saw it as an attempt to defy authority yet the speaker fails - and then regrets his actions after he threw the log at the snake. But I also see it as point to enjoy all things in life, or give the "bad" and "ugly" the chance to be enjoyable. This is where I think Lawrence's humanity comes through quite clear. "Snake" then in turn relates in these sense to "Butterfly" in that even beautiful things have their downfalls.

I like "The Bride" however I didn't think of it as a incestuous poem until we discussed it in class. I just feel that he had a very close relation with his mother - you can definitely categorize him as being a "mama's boy." I think the Bride idea could stand for the fact his mother is the only one in the world who truly loved him and that he truly loved, and that their bond is forever.

Lawrence

Lawrence is very different from the other poets we have read. His poetry is much easier to understand compared to the others. It was a quite a relief after reading Eliot. Lawrence didn’t write with a specific intention. He wants us to interpret it for ourselves. There are no wrong interpretations. For example, “Snake” can be read several ways. My interpretation is that the narrator was taught to kill poisonous snakes. He doesn’t exactly understand why he is supposed to, but he kills them regardless. One day he sees a snake peacefully drinking water. The snake is not harming anyone, so he is unsure whether to kill the snake. He felt obligated to kill it because of his upbringing. He attempts to kill the snake and regrets it in the end. He felt he had to attack, but he did not have a real reason behind it. Perhaps Lawrence was trying to get the message across that we shouldn’t be attacking other people especially without a justifiable reason.

“The Ship of Death” reminded me of Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium.” They both are about aging. Lawrence wrote this poem close to his death. His attitude about death is very negative. He is angry because he does not understand what is going to happen after he dies. He says that death is empty. It is a long voyage that we have to prepare ourselves for. I don’t think death is something that we can fully prepare for. We know it is going to happen, but there is nothing we can do to make it easier. Everyone has to deal with death, but it is very different when you are the one facing it.

A Cycle of Poetry about the Cycle of Life

When I first started reading Lawrence's poetry I was not impressed. My first thought was, "Oh great, more 'I-love-her-but-can't-have-her-boo-hoo' crap." Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with this kind of poetry, but there's so much of it out there it gets old after a while.

As I continued to read his poetry, however, it got better and I was more impressed. He has some very deep reflections on certain aspects of nature and life, which I find quite interesting. I especially liked "Piano"--I thought it was a very poignant reflection on the fleetingness of life and loss of youth, told from the perspective of someone having a flashback from their childhood.

I also loved "Medlars and Sorb-Apples", "Snake", and "Lui et Elle". Although it's hard to see what exactly he's saying in some of them, it's great how he can make such a beautiful reflection on such simple topics--fruit, a snake, and two tortoises, respectively. Most people see these things simply as objects, but Lawrence uses them to make parallels to real life--for example, seeing a female and male tortoise swimming side-by-side reminds him of human relationships.

"The English are So Nice!" was a good laugh--although it appeared at first to be a sappy tribute to the English, it turned out to be a clever, sly dig at them. I love this kind of satire.

"The Ship of Death" was by far my favorite. It reminded me very much of "Thanatopsis," being a reflection on the fundamental meaning of the cycle of life.

Overall, I saw Lawrence's poetry as a reflection of the cycle of life--his early poetry dealt with unrequited love, a common trouble of youth; his later poetry was more mature and meaningful, and his final poem dealt appropriately with death, the final stage of life.

Encountering the Snake

I want to do a bit of analysis on "Snake" before today's class, so I am turning to a scholarly article titled "D. H. Lawrence's 'Snake': The Edenic Myth Inverted", by David Thomas. Clearly, the encounter with the snake in Lawrence's poem is in contrast to the experience Adam and Eve had with the snake in the Garden of Eden; Lawrence gives us an "inversion" of the myth. Some of the examples of "inversion" in the poem include: no formal announcements of covenant, which normally parallel the Adam and Eve story. There is the "great dark carob tree" but it doesn't represent the "tree of knowledge" because it holds a minor significance in Lawrence's poem. In the poem, the snake consumes water, reversing the typical roles of consumption, suggesting that the snake is the one who suffers from the "fall". Furthermore, the snake is not the deceiver, and he is speaking to a man, not a woman.

As we have mentioned there are "tensions" in Lawrence's poetry, a tension in "Snake" is the idea that the man in the poem sees the snake as "one of the lords of life". With this, there is an effect that the person conversing with the snake has rejected the "life-divine", severing ties with potential redemption and salvation. The snake becomes divine rather than satanic, and the relationship between the snake and man is considered--through the reverse of the Biblical story. Therefore, I think Lawrence is (thus again) establishing tensions and complications often found in his work, through the poem "Snake".

Lawrence's Emotion

In the textbook’s intro to D.H. Lawrence, he is quoted as saying, “Poetry now a days seems to be a sort of plaster-cast craze, scraps sweetly molded in easy Plaster of Paris sentiment. Nobody chips verses earnestly out of the living rock of his own feeling” (321). Critical of more intellectual poets such as Yeats and Eliot, Lawrence sees their work as cheapened by their lack of true emotion. Clearly, Lawrence prefers to write from his own experiences and make emotion one of the driving forces of his poetry. This is especially evident in his poem “The Bride,” where the emotion of the speaker is evident throughout the poem.

The emotion is evident through his imagery, which includes descriptions of the woman’s “uncanny cold” hair, and her “still, winsome sleep.” Additionally, the speaker’s perception of her as her as one who “looks like a young girl,” even though in reality she is very old, demonstrates the speaker’s affection for her. The expression “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” applies in this speaker’s perception; the woman is certainly no longer in her prime, but his affection for her allows him to see “a young maiden […] smooth and fair.”

Yet, for as effective as Lawrence’s imagery is at portraying emotion, I must admit that my biographical knowledge of him makes some of this emotion difficult to accept/comprehend. It is difficult for me that this poem, which beautifully displays the speaker’s emotion at losing someone who presumably was a lover, is written in honor of his mother. If I didn’t know about Lawrence’s relationship with his mother I would probably assume the speaker was supposed to be an older man speaking for his dead wife, but it makes the poem harder to accept when I realize that the speaker is Lawrence bemoaning his mother’s death.

So, Lawrence certainly accomplishes his goal of infusing his poetry with emotion. It is hard to miss the feeling present in “The Bride”; yet, biographical information makes Lawrence’s emotions somewhat harder for readers to swallow. I don’t imagine that many people experience incestuous feelings; therefore, some of Lawrence’s emotions are difficult to comprehend and empathize with. The emotion is certainly there, but at times it’s just a little too much.