The Wonderful World of Poesy

To my baby: an introduction to great poetry. I hope your journey through language and meaning brings much joy and happiness, and most importantly some peace of mind.

Poetry to Poets:

From John Keats: "In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. First, I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity-- it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. Second, its touches of beauty should never be halfway, thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the sun come natural to him-- shine over him and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be than to write it-- and this leads me to another axiom. That if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all..."

William Wordsworth: Poetry is simply, " the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions " (From the Preface to Lyrical Ballads)

Poems:

Excerpt from Augeries of Innocence
by William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.


The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats
(This is one of Mom's favorites)

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.


288 by Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one's name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!


Sonnet XVIII by William Shakespeare
(Shakespeare's Most Famous Love Poem)

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

How do I love thee? Let me count the Ways by Elizabeth Browning (I'm sure you've at least heard the opening lines/title of this one..it seems have penetrated our culture as it's used as catch phrase quite often.)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.


The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went
down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn
all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.


Excerpt from On the Beach at Calais by William Wordsworth

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.


since feeling is first by EE Cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis


This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving for
breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


In the Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound
(Short eh'?)

The apparition of these faces in a crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough


A Martian Sends a Postcard Home by Craig Raines

(K, this is one of my favorite poems because it's like a puzzle. The Martian uses long elaborate metaphors to describe everyday things as it is the best way for him to explain our planet to other martians back home. Try it out I'll help you with the first one. Here's a hint: Caxton refers to William Caxton who published the first book.)

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings--

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly,
but sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the properites of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside --
a key is turned to free the world for movement,

so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist or kept in a box,
ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it to their lips
and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves --
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

“ When Imitation is used as Racial Propaganda ” or “ Unconscious Subliminal Messaging through Obtuse Entertainment ”

Whether or not the myth of “Jump Jim Crow” is true, the outcome as Robert Christgau points out has reverberated through generations of American Culture and helped source early American racism. Through ‘black face’ and minstrelsy we find the art of imitation used to exploit the identity of other human beings, the early white Euro-American using the theatre to take away human qualities of the Afro-American race through deriding depictions. The affect that ‘black face’ had was astounding; something that today seems so outlandishly cruel, back then “ the craze would dominate American show business until the end of the nineteenth century ” (20). Although racism was very prominent and existed until the civil rights movements in the 1960’s these overtly racist performances seemed to invoke in the audience a true representation of the Afro-American culture. The inability to identify such hatred in these performances against Black Americans seems to be masked in the performance. When something is performed it is distanced from reality, from the world we live in. In the minds of the audience, there is a belief that the dramatic stage and the everyday stage of life are two opposite worlds. By veiling the connection under the guise of ‘theatrical performance’ the common Euro-American Viewer was able to enjoy the performance without feeling any guilt. 'Black face' was for many of the Northern Euro-American Viewers a novelty, because they were not exposed to the same slavery down south; the performances were a way for them to find out about the ‘Other’ for the first time. Freudian effects of such dramatic displays are astounding. On one level you have a white appropriation of a black farm hand caught “ doing a grotesquely gimpy dance ”, that is in turn played by a white man, in front of a majority white audience. The layered effect of masking and performing unveils the powerful subconscious effect. In representing the Other, ‘Black Face’/Minstrel performances force a hegemonic social identity for Afro-American slaves and settlers. By putting on the ‘Black Face’, putting on a mask that signifies a race not your own, and then enacting in a bias performance presented to a patron audience, severly distorts the truth of the matter; it produces an affect that gives a false illusion of someone, someone who isn’t even there to validate or reject your mimetic representation of them. The liberation of Black America in the 1960’s may have given Blacks individual freedom, but ‘Black Face’ took away their freedom of identity. ‘Black Face’ performance is a representative metaphor for racism, it speaks for the Other before the Others speak for themselves, represents the other before the Other represents himself/herself. Philosopher Frantz Fanon explains in Black Skin, White Mask that “ a Negro is driven to discover the meaning of black identity. White civilization and European culture have forced an existential deviation on the Negro... what is often called the black soul is white man's artifact ” (pg. 14 Fannon). “Jump Jim Crow” is a prime example of white man’s artifact, a fabrication of white perception that eternalizes hatred, fear, and prejudice. The appropriation of “ Jump Jim Crow” by Dartmouth “Daddy” is a symbolic metonym for ‘Black Face’ in general: A mythic story about the roots of imitative performance about the false representation of Afro-Americans.

Black Rain

Lyrics from the song "Black Rain" on Ben Harper's forthcoming album " Both Sides of the Gun "...

"Black Rain"

You left them swimming for their lives
Down in New Orleans Can't afford a gallon of gasoline
With your useless degrees and contrary statistics
This government business is straight up sadistic

Now you don't fight for us
but expect us to die for you
You have no sympathy for us
but still I cry for you
Now you may kill the revolutionary but
The Revolution you can never bury

Don't speak to us like we work for you
Selling false hope like some new dope we're addicted to
I'm not a desperate man but these are desperate times at hand
This generation is beyond your command

And it won't be long
'til the people flood the streets
To take you down
One and All
a black rain is gonna fall

2:36: an ode to Bukowski

2:36

On the side of my computer is skoal
The LONG CUT
In my mouth the LONG CUT
And I’m typing this out
It’s 2:36
And counting

My trousers are down
Undone
And I’m still
Wet down below

Not in a rush
I’m in no rush
My trousers are down
And I’m still
Wet down below

Woolfish Modernism

Upon reading and talking about Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse:

Looking at the opening scene we get James Ramsay presented with two ways of looking at the world. One from his mother, that of optimism, hope, and faith, and the other from his father that of logic, reason, and disbelief.

" Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow, " said Mrs. Ramsay. " Mrs. Ramsay is the harbinger of hope for James who wishes very much to go to the lighthouse the next day. Mrs. Ramsay sees the good in providing faith and hope to her son, while Mr. Ramsay insists " 'But,' said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, 'it won't be fine.' "Mr. Ramsay's pessimistic view of the weather shapes the way he sees the world and how he wishes his son to view it as well. Life is not fair, and of course as a man of the late Victorian period Mr. Ramsay as a boy had his belief in faith dashed as a child, and does not want his son to suffer from a similar experience (Eliot's Prufrock feels the same way).

The book sets up such dichotomies of man and woman, and faith versus empirical reasoning, yet Woolf more importantly, as do many modernists, suggests that by setting us up with a third-person omniscient stream-of-consciousness narrator we are left alienated from the Dickens and Trollope and Eliot we were so used to seeing in Victorianism. Does Woolf suggest the need to feel alienated as a reader? Should we side with Mr. Ramsay and his pessimism, or opt for belief and hope in a world, where we orient ourselves towards a lighthouse: a goal, a vision through a narrative that opts for subjectification through it's characters ?

A Depression-filled Confessional or The Self-Deprecate Seeks Solace in Sympathy

Sometimes my head isn't screwed on that tight
My vision is out of focus,
I see objects that
overlap each other.
Life's sketches are all wrong. I'm looking through
an abstract painting, when I want to be seeing
something more tangible.

My words don't come out very well
either. Kind of like spilled
milk.The deviation of
my narration is - unintentional
I'm sorry.

Trying my hand at Poetry

I Saw An Old Man the Other Day


From his rugged chin worn
That looked as rough and tattered as his leather boots
Climbing up the whiskered path to his lips, luscious no more,
Merely dry and cracked
His nose was bent up not quite in it's place
It reared to the side
Like an arrow pointing somewhere far off on a deserted road.

At the end of the line of this ageless treasure
Were two "Chinese fans" at the edge of his eyes
That made him squint close together
I was astonished to find in this fixed sight -
A feeling of tranquility that passed through my body
The glaze of his iris seemed to catch my attention
It led to a sublime other dimension
A sea of secrets, magic, and wonder, in store
So many faces, and places he'd been to before.

As I stood there in awe, pondering what to think
That old goddamn chap just gave me wink
Then slowly moved from his motionless stance
One foot, then the other
Like my youth at the high school dance.
With that jig in his stride and a smile on his face,
That old man left, and a young boy took his place.

Back at it!

I went to a poetry reading during the holidays with my girlfriend and really fell in love with the language. My two favorites of the evening were written by recently deceased Charles Bukowski and much deceased Sylvia Plath read by a pair of University Professors (U of To I presume). So in sharing with the wealth of the experience here is....


Charles Bukowski - " sexpot "

"you know," she said, "you were at
the bar so you didn't see
but I danced with this guy.
we danced and we danced
close.
but I didn't go home with him
because he knew I was with
you."

"thanks a bunch," I
said.

she was always thinking of sex.
she carried it around with her
like something in a paper
bag.
such energy.
she never forgot.
she stared at every man available
in morning cafes over bacon and eggs
or later
over a noon sandwich or
a steak dinner.

"I've modeled myself after
Marilyn Monroe," she told
me.

"she's always running off
to some local disco to dance
with a baboon," a friend once told
me, "I'm amazed that you've
stood for it as long as you have."

she'd vanish at race tracks
then come back and say,
"three men offered to buy me
a drink."

or I'd lose her in the parking
lot and I'd look up and she'd
be walking along with a strange man.
"well, he came from this direction
and I came from that and we
kind of walked together. I
didn't want to hurt his
feelings."

she said that I was a very
jealous man.

one day she just
fell down
inside of her sexual organs
and vanished.

it was like an alarm clock
dropping into the
Grand Canyon.
it banged and rattled and
rang and rang
but I could no longer
see or hear it.

I'm feeling much better
now.
I've taken up tap-dancing
and I wear a black felt
hat pulled down low
over my right
eye.



Sylvia Plath - " A Winter Ship "

At this wharf there are no grand landings to speak of.
Red and orange barges list and blister
Shackled to the dock, outmoded, gaudy,
And apparently indestructible.
The sea pulses under a skin of oil.

A gull holds his pose on a shanty ridgepole,
Riding the tide of the wind, steady
As wood and formal, in a jacket of ashes,
The whole flat harbor anchored in
The round of his yellow eye-button.

A blimp swims up like a day-moon or tin
Cigar over his rink of fishes.
The prospect is dull as an old etching.
They are unloading three barrels of little crabs.
The pier pilings seem about to collapse

And with them that rickety edifice
Of warehouses, derricks, smokestacks and bridges
In the distance. All around us the water slips
And gossips in its loose vernacular,
Ferrying the smells of cod and tar.

Farther out, the waves will be mouthing icecakes ---
A poor month for park-sleepers and lovers.
Even our shadows are blue with cold.
We wanted to see the sun come up
And are met, instead, by this iceribbed ship,

Bearded and blown, an albatross of frost,
Relic of tough weather, every winch and stay
Encased in a glassy pellicle.
The sun will diminish it soon enough:
Each wave-tip glitters like a knife.

A touch of TrAnSfOrMaTiOn

Elias Canetti - Crowds and Power

This mysticism and the unexplainable notion of how the Bushmen are able to sense and predict when someone is approaching is incredible, and yet so very true and human. If I reflect on my own experience, and consciously remember things, I do believe that occurrences like these happen to myself all the time as well. When there is somebody that I am waiting for coming over to my house for instance, I can sometimes sense their arrival seconds before they knock on my door. Now this doesn't happen always, but they seem to be far too many in number to be chalked up as mere coincidence. And yes, it seems to be unexplainable. It's a mystical sense, felt in the body.


In regards to the myths of the bushmen, the relation of cannibalism and transformation parallels the myth of Dracula, and the aspect of gothic creatures like Vampires who are initially human, but are transformed into Vampires when they are bitten by other Vampires; And then can only survive by drinking the blood of living organisms. In folklore there is this organic tendency to transform. As Canetti points out, it seems to be innately human to have this urge to transform.

Another concept I enjoyed in the article is that man is the ultimate simulator and thus "the lord of the animals" (372). Man is the only being able to dissimulate as the myth of the Washerman and the donkey reveals. So in a sense he is able to use animals through simulation in order to benefit for his own survival or play. The whole origin of simulation seems to be triggered from the man and animal relationship. As well as the idea of masking which is essentially a form of dissimulation. It is conceivably only that of a living organism that man can essentially simulate. The idea of simulating a tree for example seems to be almost too inconceivable, thus the idea of simulation and wanting to transform must have originated from the studying of animals. This would be a possible explanation for the Australian myths of the bushmen and many other myths passed down from ancestors of aboriginal tribes all around the world connecting the relationship of man and animal.

Wolf-Alice

The Angela Carter story was intriguing. It was a very gothic and reminded me of something written in the romantic era like Dracula or Frankenstein. The idea of transformation is very key in this story. Wolf-Alice starts out as a wolf in a woman's body who slowly transforms into a mother-like womanly figure at the very end of the story. Wolf-Alice's transformation takes place with the help of the mirror in the Duke's Castle. Wolf-Alice is able to visually gaze at her bodily appearance. Initially she believes it is a friend, but it is in fact a surrogate self that mimicks her actions. And indeed she sees that it has breasts and notices that she does as well. The figure as she finds out is in fact mimicking every action that Wolf-Alice displays. Although she is not keenly aware that the image is indeed herself, through a reflection she does identify with it in some way. Interestingly her transformation from her primitive state to a more human-like role needs triggers such as the bride's dress and the connection with the Duke along with the visual display of her human body. All these object things are human, and paradoxically these elements help transform her even though as primitive as she may be, she is able to identify their use without any human example. Of course we can assume that the nuns tried to show her how to act like an appropriate young lady, and then ideas of what it is to be human may have laid in the subconscious. This is not the main focus of her transformation though, it is the fact that although she masks herself in this animal state she eventually becomes her humanness represented in the mirror. Her true identity underneath the mask. She becomes her appearance. Although acting like an animal she is in all appearances a woman. Carter is suggesting that her resolve is not through relating signs (the bride's dress to a seeing woman in dresses) from her past, as I have suggested as a logical answer for the transformation. She seems to say that there is this mystical power of love that actualizes her identity. Both the Duke and Wolf-Alice sheath their animal-like behaviour and become human through a pseudo-sexual interaction; completing the male-female puzzle. This explanation, follows in the same suit with philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau who believed that man would remain primitive without the interaction with a fellow man. Thus 'Society', this 'togerthiness' is what humanizes (human?) Wolf-Alice and the Duke. Without which they are mere primates. At the end of the story when the Duke's reflection in the mirror appears for the first time, Carter uses this to highlight the Rousseauian come-full-circle humanization of both the Duke and Wolf-Alice. If the two are lost at sea (in a level of semiotics) in each others presence will their identity be actualized.

Carter for arguments sake may be commenting more on the connection between man and woman, but it either case a sense of 'togertherness' is a common element in the process of transformation. The difference between solitute and a being in a crowd perhaps is that without the presence of another individual one cannot undergo a transformation. It may be the influence of another person or the mere presence that evokes a type of change. Indeed in all of the stories in the readings for this week each transformation took place in the presence or of the influence of at least one or more individuals.

Doubles and Doppelgangers

" Zelig " - By Woody Allen

In respect to the Zelig the Woody Allen film, the product itself is an imitation. The fact that Zelig is a 'mockumentary' so to speak ( a fictionalized movie in the form of a documentary) is in itself copying. I enjoyed the movie tremendously. There was a very creative element to the film. In that sense it was poignantly original. The element of transformation to invariably 'fit in', as Zelig does, and does so well is shown and scrutinized by Allen as something that is innately human. When we are in groups we try to fit in. The character of the doctor shows how there is a disorder in the way that this idea has turned Zelig into a chameleon. Ironically, Zelig who tries to blend in with everyone else, is actually very different. He is alone because he does not have an identity. The idea of a human chameleon intrigues people, but in it has a circus-like spectacle air to it; Just as we adore celebrities today (and even in the 30's the time of Zelig) Zelig is has the adoration of everyone because he is different. This juxtaposition of difference and sameness in the idea of transformation shows not only the positive elements of transforming, but the negative elements as well. As we see when the doctor cracks Zelig by mirroring his actions (showing himself to himself so to speak), Zelig transforms into a person becoming of identity. It is when his celebrity status as the human chameleon catches up to him and he has an abundance of lawsuits thrown at him that he changes back into his original state. Allen shows us here that like animals who use blending in as a means of survival, so to do we. Zelig blends in not only to feel like he's a part of something, but also as a survival tool, to avoid being imprisoned.

Warner "Doubling" from Metamorphosis and Other Worlds

I thought this was a fantastic article about the history and mythology of the doppelganger portrayed through western culture. The idea of the inner eye intrigued me. Everyone sees an image or shadow of oneself, a sort of likeness. It really does make sense. It reappears regularly in our literature and in our art. There are so many examples throghout the ages from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Peter Pan to Fight Club. The inner eye seems to be a Freudian world though, one of the superego, one seen in fantasy in dreams. It is interesting how it surfaces. For the sake of argument, how does it surface? How is one even able to conceive of an idea if it belongs only in the back of our minds. How does it reflect on our conscious mind?

Another element of the article I enjoyed was the part about James Hogg's novel the "The Private Memoirs" where the main character ponders whether he "had a second self, who transacted business in (his) likeness, or else (his) body was at times possessed by a spirit over which it had no control". And he asks how would that be possible to be "in a state of consciousness and unconsciousness, at the same time" (181). It would seem impossible, and yet it is still explored. We see the same idea in Fight Club where the main character (the narrator) paradoxically has a doppelganger (Tyler Durdin) that is in actuality his (the narrator's) unconscious-self that operates in his body when his conscious body is asleep.

Platonic and Aristotlian Display

Ok, I've finally put the blogs up. They should be coming now on a regular basis. Please, I insist on harsh critiques, ideas, comments, concerns, arguments...FEEDBACK in any way is pleasurable. Cheers, Aidan


On Republic Book Ten:

I have always enjoyed Plato and the way in which he fashions his arguments. Again in this excerpt from his famous Republic we have him talking with Socrates on the notion of art and poetry, and the theory or standards of it. I find it quite fascinating how he breaks down the idea of mimesis or imitation rather, and subordinates this type of artistic representation. He rejects or downplays what the artists and poets do by reappropriating something solid like the example of the bed: an object made by God, and then founded and physically duplicated by men such as carpenters. As he argues if God is the author, then the carpenter is second removed from the original, and finally the artist by representing the object rather than manufacturing it is “ at third remove from reality ” (425). Although, as I aforementioned I quite enjoyed this piece of literature, I agree with one of the two arguments that Plato puts forth. I agree that yes there is this distance from the tangeable object, and what the artist does in imitating it through a different medium, but I disagree that this is altogether a bad thing. Plato seems to be worried that art will corrupt society. In my experiences as someone living few thousand years after Plato I have found that art has enhanced the mental environment and social environment through it’s ability to make us think, and think creatively, and it has also been an effective tool for keeping corporate and political powers in check.

On Poetics:

I have read Poetics in the past, and it is a great guide to anyone studying Shakespeare or Greek Tragedies, Comedies, and Epics. Aristotle does a good job of categorizing and defining the specific species of the early literary genres. Focusing on the idea of imitation I found it interesting that Aristotle felt that in connecting humans with literature, and what we gravitate towards is rhythm, language and melody. As he states this happens “ either separately or in combination ” (4). It is therefore not that strange that music seems almost second nature to us. Music and language are obviously very interconnected, and the creation of poetry at such an early period of humanity seems fascinating. Origins gave a brief but logical explanation of why we imitate objects around us, and I agree, I think it is because we seem to have this need to understand and then define everything. We try to categorize, explain, and therefore control our environment; there is this feeling of power that is attached to accumulating knowledge.