- What is Poetry paper (FINAL; rough draft)
- Against Forgetting paper (FINAL; rough draft)
- Postings of the Individual Poetry Project assignment:
- Comments
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Evaluation Index
Throughout the next 24 hours or so (hopefully less), the remaining sections of various writings will show up here. This will serve as an index once everything is posted.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Pablo Neruda - A Less-Rough Version
Note: It may appear that elementary English capitalization conventions are not followed in the Spanish titles of some poems. Neruda often capitalized only the first word in his poems’ titles; I have followed the majority opinion of the cited sources in leaving his capitalization intact. English translations of titles are capitalized according to usual English convention.
Tony Miller
Prof. Ann Hostetler
English 210
23 March 2011
Pablo Neruda: A Poet of Chilean Communism
For a decade after World War II, the Communist Party was outlawed in Chile. But while the party could not meet openly and many of its members were forced into hiding, that period gave rise to one of the 20th century’s most notable poets. Despite the prohibition of Communism, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda became a global household name in the 20th century, even prompting American diplomats to grant him a visa into the country in 1966 when Communists were barred from crossing American borders (Marzán 675). In short, Pablo Neruda was a notable Latin American poet of the mid-1900s because he was not just a Latin American poet – his poems were globally interpretable, even if they were based on the South American continent.
An example of Neruda’s poetry transcending national borders, even though it does so in a less-than-favorable light, is in his “Canto general,” a sort of Latin American history document published in 1950. The third section, “Los conquistadores” {The Conquerors} fittingly covers the Spanish conquerors of the colonial age, who first took much of Latin America from the natives and continued to rule it until the 19th century. In his article, “Redefining Civilization: Historical Polarities and Mythologizing In ‘Los conquistadores’ of Pablo Neruda's ‘Canto general,’ ” commentator Mark Mascia remarks that Neruda looks at the incoming Spaniards as having committed heinous crimes on the land. In that interpretation, the Spanish went as far as “corruption, rape, and dismemberment […] upon the uncorrupted soil of Latin America's original inhabitants” (Mascia, “Redefining” 140). It is never popular to argue that a government has built a trusting relationship and then violated it, no matter how far that government has been removed from ruling; that is, however, what Neruda did here. The poem that prompted such remarks was published after the Communist Party had already been banned. When someone publishes an unpleasant allegory while in disagreement with another, quite often the second person perceives themselves as the allegorical aggressor, then responds that way. Thus, with the publication of that section, Neruda criticized the oppressive Spanish government and did himself no favors with the anti-Communist Chilean one.
“There is no insurmountable solitude” (qtd. in Stavans np). These words are taken directly from Neruda’s acceptance speech for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, and they can be interpreted as speaking to the months in 1948 that Neruda spent hiding in a friend’s Valparaíso basement before crossing the border into Argentina. These months were just a few in a slightly absurd life trajectory, one which produced some results that do not seem to fit with the image of a world-famous poet and Nobel laureate. Putting things a bit more bluntly in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ilan Stavans writes, “to be sure, Neruda also left us a large dose of bad poetry. How could he not, when his [complete works total] 6,000 pages? His late works are passable at best and disheveled at worst” (“A Life Consumed”). Stavans proceeds to note that when he published a Neruda anthology in 2003, a year before the article quoted here was published, multiple translators chastised him for including the full arc – low-quality to high-quality to lower-quality – of the poet’s work, preferring to look only at the top section of the curve and ignore the dregs below it. An all-too-literal interpretation of “dregs” brings to mind one of the poems included in that section of the curve, “The Great Urinator,” which begins “The great urinator was yellow / and the stream that came down / was bronze-colored rain,” and whose quality only falls from there. The final lines of that poem are the following:
I am a pale and artless poet
not here to work out riddles
or recommend special umbrellas.
Hasta la vista! I greet you and go off
to a country where they won't ask me questions.
It is worth noting that I don’t have an advanced poetry degree, but the tone of the final section is fairly clear: “I point this out, and then cut you off and leave before I have to explain why I notice it.”
Neruda, it is well-known and several times above referenced, was a fervent Communist. The lesser-understood implication of this is that he would support that party almost unfailingly, a position which almost always put him at odds with the Republican, Cold War¬-era United States government. Perhaps nowhere is less explanation required of Neruda’s stance toward America than in the title of his 1973 book: Incitación al Nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena {A Call for the Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean Revolution} – although, of course, Nixon would soon destroy his own political career with skillfully-placed erasures. Ilan Stavans notes that Fidel Castro was another Neruda favorite, giving rise to what the biographer calls “cheap propaganda” such as “Fidel, the people are grateful/for word in action and deeds that sing.” To further beat this dead horse, by the time of his death, the mythical stickers on Pablo’s suitcase included Communist Cuba, socialist Chile, Spain under Franco, North Vietnam, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. In short, if there was a government making the world unsafe for democracy (to borrow from Wilson entering World War I), Neruda had been there. That he was permitted entry to America in order to speak at Columbia in 1971 is nothing short of a minor miracle.
While the poet in question was born in Chile, he maintained an international appeal because he traveled extensively and saw his leftist political views embodied at least in part by many other groups/ A portion of Neruda’s traveling, certainly, was diplomatic, as a Nobel laureate or the Chilean ambassador to France (Marzán 675). But another large section of that traveling was not undertaken by the poet himself. Stavans refers to him as a torchbearer, his poems popping up in the ’60s counterculture and the anti-Reagan liberalism of the ’80s. And this traveling from a Latin America propped up in many cases by a Republican U.S. government before his birth to speaking out against a Republican U.S. government after his death was just some of the traveling Neruda’s poems did.
As you can see, Pablo Neruda was a force of 20th century Latin American poetry because he was Chilean only in a geographic sense. Indeed, he maintained his residences there for most of his life, but the poems that emanated therefrom went far beyond their origins in South America to speak to conflict throughout the world. In addition, Neruda’s odes to the minute details of everyday life possess a sort of every-man appeal – to use a distinctly American perspective, who hasn’t grown up in a world where things like plates, cups and backyard cookouts are taken for granted? That was exactly the form of these odes, drawing attention to the little things that never get credit. Put another way, it shone a spotlight on the pawns. Writing from lands that were so often pawns, first in imperialism, then in the Cold War, Pablo Neruda certainly managed to find the spotlight.
Works Cited
Agosin, Marjorie, and Ruth Morales. "A Poet's House Of Happiness." Americas (English Edition) 50.1 (1998). MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Chasar, Mark. "The Theater of the Unattainable: Hope and Bitterness in Antonio Skarmeta's The Postman." The Midwest Quarterly (2000): 53-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Cooke, Stuart. "Singing up Country in the Poetry of Judith Wright and Pablo Neruda." Australian Literary Studies (2008): 407-21. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Maier, Linda S. "Between Modernismo and Vanguardismo: Tradition and Innovation in Pablo Neruda's Crepusculario." Romance Notes 45.3 (2005): 357-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Marzan, Julio. "Pablo Neruda's Dilemma." The Massachusetts Review (1999): 675-81. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Moran, Dominic. "‘Cuerpo De Mujer’: Neruda’s Sex Education." Hispanic Research Journal 10.1 (2009): 56-69. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Stavans, Ilan. "Pablo Neruda: a Life Consumed by Poetry and Politics." Chronicle of Higher Education 50.43 (2004). MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Tony Miller
Prof. Ann Hostetler
English 210
23 March 2011
Pablo Neruda: A Poet of Chilean Communism
For a decade after World War II, the Communist Party was outlawed in Chile. But while the party could not meet openly and many of its members were forced into hiding, that period gave rise to one of the 20th century’s most notable poets. Despite the prohibition of Communism, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda became a global household name in the 20th century, even prompting American diplomats to grant him a visa into the country in 1966 when Communists were barred from crossing American borders (Marzán 675). In short, Pablo Neruda was a notable Latin American poet of the mid-1900s because he was not just a Latin American poet – his poems were globally interpretable, even if they were based on the South American continent.
An example of Neruda’s poetry transcending national borders, even though it does so in a less-than-favorable light, is in his “Canto general,” a sort of Latin American history document published in 1950. The third section, “Los conquistadores” {The Conquerors} fittingly covers the Spanish conquerors of the colonial age, who first took much of Latin America from the natives and continued to rule it until the 19th century. In his article, “Redefining Civilization: Historical Polarities and Mythologizing In ‘Los conquistadores’ of Pablo Neruda's ‘Canto general,’ ” commentator Mark Mascia remarks that Neruda looks at the incoming Spaniards as having committed heinous crimes on the land. In that interpretation, the Spanish went as far as “corruption, rape, and dismemberment […] upon the uncorrupted soil of Latin America's original inhabitants” (Mascia, “Redefining” 140). It is never popular to argue that a government has built a trusting relationship and then violated it, no matter how far that government has been removed from ruling; that is, however, what Neruda did here. The poem that prompted such remarks was published after the Communist Party had already been banned. When someone publishes an unpleasant allegory while in disagreement with another, quite often the second person perceives themselves as the allegorical aggressor, then responds that way. Thus, with the publication of that section, Neruda criticized the oppressive Spanish government and did himself no favors with the anti-Communist Chilean one.
“There is no insurmountable solitude” (qtd. in Stavans np). These words are taken directly from Neruda’s acceptance speech for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, and they can be interpreted as speaking to the months in 1948 that Neruda spent hiding in a friend’s Valparaíso basement before crossing the border into Argentina. These months were just a few in a slightly absurd life trajectory, one which produced some results that do not seem to fit with the image of a world-famous poet and Nobel laureate. Putting things a bit more bluntly in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ilan Stavans writes, “to be sure, Neruda also left us a large dose of bad poetry. How could he not, when his [complete works total] 6,000 pages? His late works are passable at best and disheveled at worst” (“A Life Consumed”). Stavans proceeds to note that when he published a Neruda anthology in 2003, a year before the article quoted here was published, multiple translators chastised him for including the full arc – low-quality to high-quality to lower-quality – of the poet’s work, preferring to look only at the top section of the curve and ignore the dregs below it. An all-too-literal interpretation of “dregs” brings to mind one of the poems included in that section of the curve, “The Great Urinator,” which begins “The great urinator was yellow / and the stream that came down / was bronze-colored rain,” and whose quality only falls from there. The final lines of that poem are the following:
I am a pale and artless poet
not here to work out riddles
or recommend special umbrellas.
Hasta la vista! I greet you and go off
to a country where they won't ask me questions.
It is worth noting that I don’t have an advanced poetry degree, but the tone of the final section is fairly clear: “I point this out, and then cut you off and leave before I have to explain why I notice it.”
Neruda, it is well-known and several times above referenced, was a fervent Communist. The lesser-understood implication of this is that he would support that party almost unfailingly, a position which almost always put him at odds with the Republican, Cold War¬-era United States government. Perhaps nowhere is less explanation required of Neruda’s stance toward America than in the title of his 1973 book: Incitación al Nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena {A Call for the Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean Revolution} – although, of course, Nixon would soon destroy his own political career with skillfully-placed erasures. Ilan Stavans notes that Fidel Castro was another Neruda favorite, giving rise to what the biographer calls “cheap propaganda” such as “Fidel, the people are grateful/for word in action and deeds that sing.” To further beat this dead horse, by the time of his death, the mythical stickers on Pablo’s suitcase included Communist Cuba, socialist Chile, Spain under Franco, North Vietnam, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. In short, if there was a government making the world unsafe for democracy (to borrow from Wilson entering World War I), Neruda had been there. That he was permitted entry to America in order to speak at Columbia in 1971 is nothing short of a minor miracle.
While the poet in question was born in Chile, he maintained an international appeal because he traveled extensively and saw his leftist political views embodied at least in part by many other groups/ A portion of Neruda’s traveling, certainly, was diplomatic, as a Nobel laureate or the Chilean ambassador to France (Marzán 675). But another large section of that traveling was not undertaken by the poet himself. Stavans refers to him as a torchbearer, his poems popping up in the ’60s counterculture and the anti-Reagan liberalism of the ’80s. And this traveling from a Latin America propped up in many cases by a Republican U.S. government before his birth to speaking out against a Republican U.S. government after his death was just some of the traveling Neruda’s poems did.
As you can see, Pablo Neruda was a force of 20th century Latin American poetry because he was Chilean only in a geographic sense. Indeed, he maintained his residences there for most of his life, but the poems that emanated therefrom went far beyond their origins in South America to speak to conflict throughout the world. In addition, Neruda’s odes to the minute details of everyday life possess a sort of every-man appeal – to use a distinctly American perspective, who hasn’t grown up in a world where things like plates, cups and backyard cookouts are taken for granted? That was exactly the form of these odes, drawing attention to the little things that never get credit. Put another way, it shone a spotlight on the pawns. Writing from lands that were so often pawns, first in imperialism, then in the Cold War, Pablo Neruda certainly managed to find the spotlight.
Works Cited
Agosin, Marjorie, and Ruth Morales. "A Poet's House Of Happiness." Americas (English Edition) 50.1 (1998). MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Chasar, Mark. "The Theater of the Unattainable: Hope and Bitterness in Antonio Skarmeta's The Postman." The Midwest Quarterly (2000): 53-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Cooke, Stuart. "Singing up Country in the Poetry of Judith Wright and Pablo Neruda." Australian Literary Studies (2008): 407-21. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Maier, Linda S. "Between Modernismo and Vanguardismo: Tradition and Innovation in Pablo Neruda's Crepusculario." Romance Notes 45.3 (2005): 357-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Marzan, Julio. "Pablo Neruda's Dilemma." The Massachusetts Review (1999): 675-81. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Moran, Dominic. "‘Cuerpo De Mujer’: Neruda’s Sex Education." Hispanic Research Journal 10.1 (2009): 56-69. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Stavans, Ilan. "Pablo Neruda: a Life Consumed by Poetry and Politics." Chronicle of Higher Education 50.43 (2004). MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Individual Poetry Project
Tony Miller
English 210
Prof. Ann Hostetler
February 25, 2011
The World and Its Natural Wonder
An endless warm October day. Owls flying across the sky. Geraniums crunching underfoot. The growth of offspring from toddler to child. These are all moments in life usually enjoyed and recalled fondly, but rarely given much significance from a literary perspective. These are also the moments which Todd Davis relishes, as evidenced by the content of his 2007 book, Some Heaven – more accurately, the evidence is contained in the endorsements on the back cover of the Michigan State University Press edition, which suggests that both the author and the reviewer thought it to be true. Davis’s love of nature is evident throughout the volume; in addition, the settings in which he has lived are the same settings about which he writes. In this paper, several of Davis’s poems and his biographical information will be used to examine the ways in which these things are evident in his work.
Some Heaven is a collection of 106 poems divided into four parts. Several of the longer poems are further subdivided into sections, an arrangement which mimics the divisions of flowers and petals on numerous plants. For clarity, this paper will refer to the book’s divisions as “parts” and the divisions of poems as “sections.” The work is the second of Davis’s trio of published books, joining Ripe (2002) and The Least of These (2010); in addition, five of his poems were included in A Cappella, an anthology of Mennonite poetry published by the University of Iowa Press in 2003.
As mentioned above, Davis references extensively his own locations in his work, as well as events that occur in his life. There is one major caveat to that statement, however: these events are not used as biographical in the sense of telling the story of his life, but rather to tell the story of a life through the lens of one person’s observations. Because his observations are set in and around his various hometowns, then, it is important to note that Davis was born in Elkhart, Indiana, where he graduated in 1983 from Concord High School after spending part of his childhood in Massachusetts; after a stint in the English department at Goshen College, he now teaches at The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, in the Appalachian mountains of that state’s center. Davis was raised in the United Methodist Church, the son of a lay minister, but had joined the Mennonite Church by the time his first collection was published in 2002; this accounts for his inclusion in the Mennonite-poet anthology a year later.
Moving from the poet’s life to its effect on his work, Davis’s descriptive and naturalistic writing style is notably evidenced in “12 Songs for a Long Winter,” a poem from the third part of Some Heaven. Loosely speaking, each of these parts has a seasonal theme to it, although sometimes these seasons correspond more to parts of life cycles or other, more specialized seasons rather than the calendar month. The first part, conveniently, is about beginnings, such as the morning dew, the first snow of winter, or the first steps of a fawn. The second part deals with growing up, the proverbial part of the year when pleasant spring transforms into warm summer. Here, Davis speaks of going to school, the groundhog from his hole emerging, or the firm but gentle discipline of a parent. The third part is a tome of winding down and getting ready – preparing to pick potatoes, steeling oneself for surgery to correct an eye defect, receiving a pass in the free-throw lane and envisioning the two points to follow. Finally, the fourth part speaks of packing up and leaving, traveling across states, hiking the Appalachian Trail, or watching geese in migration.
However important the structure of the book may be, it is still not a substitute for the structure of the poem and its meaning. Like nature itself, “12 Songs for a Long Winter’s Night” is sectioned off into smaller parts, each of which is organized; these sections come together to form a coherent poem or world, but taken individually do not seem to fit together. In the case of this poem, the sections vary between six and 18 lines each, but have no standard meter or line length; even with this variety, none of the sections seems out of place. More notable from the poem, however, is the description. To ensure that I have your attention, the second section includes Davis’ description of animals roosting behind the house: “Come morning / the ground is littered with shit: / muddy-yellow, black against white.” If the reader and this writer have thought patterns that are at all similar, this description is vivid enough that the usually-tolerable concepts of passing by an occupied toilet or seeing peanut butter next to milk will be difficult for the next couple of weeks.
Moving to less-evocative descriptions, the poem’s title itself could serve as an example. As every member of English 210 will know from their time at Goshen College, many nights from November through February feel as though they will never end. Elkhart, located in the same county, experiences a very similar phenomenon enhanced by dilapidation and abandoned factories – this makes an Elkhart native such as Davis a perfect choice to write of the never-ending perils of dreary, monochromatic gray-white skies and fields. The neutral, dull shades of winter permeate nearly section, mixing sky with earth and blurring the horizon with the falling snow. The line between human and animal is also blurred, as it is frequently hard to tell the exact antecedent of a particular pronoun. In certain cases this is intentional; a den in section IV could be the dwelling of an animal narrator or the room where my dad falls asleep with the television on. In either case, stepping in the wrong place could have dire consequences.
While the concept of avoiding the profane in that paragraph was almost entirely undone by the final clause, Davis’s poem “Building Walls” will have no such problem as it is that poem’s sound I wish to discuss. The poem consists of four stanzas, each with five lines of varying lengths in free verse. To a relatively untrained ear, it sounds less like Shakespeare’s classical iambic poetry than Jim McKay or Al Michaels waxing poetic about the thrill of victory, each with only his voice to carry through the airwaves. Like the world of broadcasting should be, the poem is already in comprehensible terms, but unlike any traditional broadcaster of which this writer is aware, the poem has a noticeable lisp from its enormous contingent of “s” sounds – 12 of them begin words alone in the poem’s 20 lines. But is that sibilance and simplicity not reflected in nature itself?
The world is a place of amazing natural beauty and simplicity, and most of the time it can make sense with no additional symbolism added to it. These attributes are reflected in the content of Some Heaven by Todd Davis as well as noted in the front-cover endorsement by author Jim Harrison. Harrison says that”[m]any poets feel that they know the natural world, but Todd Davis has absorbed this world fully into his heart and mind. He is a fine, rare poet.” His work may not conform to traditional standards of four lines to a stanza, five iambs to a line, et cetera, but when it comes to describing the world around him, I would certainly agree with Harrison’s assessment.
Davis Bibliography
Davis, Todd F. The Least of These: Poems. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2010. Print.
Davis, Todd F. Ripe: Poems. Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog, 2002. Print.
Davis, Todd F. Some Heaven: Poems. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2007. Print.
Anthology Appearance
Hostetler, Ann Elizabeth. A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa, 2003. 140-46. Print.
References Referenced But Not Cited
Davis, Todd. "Todd Davis." Penn State University. Web. 07 Feb. 2011.
"Todd Davis - Mennonite Poetry." Mennonite Poets. Web. 07 Feb. 2011..
English 210
Prof. Ann Hostetler
February 25, 2011
The World and Its Natural Wonder
An endless warm October day. Owls flying across the sky. Geraniums crunching underfoot. The growth of offspring from toddler to child. These are all moments in life usually enjoyed and recalled fondly, but rarely given much significance from a literary perspective. These are also the moments which Todd Davis relishes, as evidenced by the content of his 2007 book, Some Heaven – more accurately, the evidence is contained in the endorsements on the back cover of the Michigan State University Press edition, which suggests that both the author and the reviewer thought it to be true. Davis’s love of nature is evident throughout the volume; in addition, the settings in which he has lived are the same settings about which he writes. In this paper, several of Davis’s poems and his biographical information will be used to examine the ways in which these things are evident in his work.
Some Heaven is a collection of 106 poems divided into four parts. Several of the longer poems are further subdivided into sections, an arrangement which mimics the divisions of flowers and petals on numerous plants. For clarity, this paper will refer to the book’s divisions as “parts” and the divisions of poems as “sections.” The work is the second of Davis’s trio of published books, joining Ripe (2002) and The Least of These (2010); in addition, five of his poems were included in A Cappella, an anthology of Mennonite poetry published by the University of Iowa Press in 2003.
As mentioned above, Davis references extensively his own locations in his work, as well as events that occur in his life. There is one major caveat to that statement, however: these events are not used as biographical in the sense of telling the story of his life, but rather to tell the story of a life through the lens of one person’s observations. Because his observations are set in and around his various hometowns, then, it is important to note that Davis was born in Elkhart, Indiana, where he graduated in 1983 from Concord High School after spending part of his childhood in Massachusetts; after a stint in the English department at Goshen College, he now teaches at The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, in the Appalachian mountains of that state’s center. Davis was raised in the United Methodist Church, the son of a lay minister, but had joined the Mennonite Church by the time his first collection was published in 2002; this accounts for his inclusion in the Mennonite-poet anthology a year later.
Moving from the poet’s life to its effect on his work, Davis’s descriptive and naturalistic writing style is notably evidenced in “12 Songs for a Long Winter,” a poem from the third part of Some Heaven. Loosely speaking, each of these parts has a seasonal theme to it, although sometimes these seasons correspond more to parts of life cycles or other, more specialized seasons rather than the calendar month. The first part, conveniently, is about beginnings, such as the morning dew, the first snow of winter, or the first steps of a fawn. The second part deals with growing up, the proverbial part of the year when pleasant spring transforms into warm summer. Here, Davis speaks of going to school, the groundhog from his hole emerging, or the firm but gentle discipline of a parent. The third part is a tome of winding down and getting ready – preparing to pick potatoes, steeling oneself for surgery to correct an eye defect, receiving a pass in the free-throw lane and envisioning the two points to follow. Finally, the fourth part speaks of packing up and leaving, traveling across states, hiking the Appalachian Trail, or watching geese in migration.
However important the structure of the book may be, it is still not a substitute for the structure of the poem and its meaning. Like nature itself, “12 Songs for a Long Winter’s Night” is sectioned off into smaller parts, each of which is organized; these sections come together to form a coherent poem or world, but taken individually do not seem to fit together. In the case of this poem, the sections vary between six and 18 lines each, but have no standard meter or line length; even with this variety, none of the sections seems out of place. More notable from the poem, however, is the description. To ensure that I have your attention, the second section includes Davis’ description of animals roosting behind the house: “Come morning / the ground is littered with shit: / muddy-yellow, black against white.” If the reader and this writer have thought patterns that are at all similar, this description is vivid enough that the usually-tolerable concepts of passing by an occupied toilet or seeing peanut butter next to milk will be difficult for the next couple of weeks.
Moving to less-evocative descriptions, the poem’s title itself could serve as an example. As every member of English 210 will know from their time at Goshen College, many nights from November through February feel as though they will never end. Elkhart, located in the same county, experiences a very similar phenomenon enhanced by dilapidation and abandoned factories – this makes an Elkhart native such as Davis a perfect choice to write of the never-ending perils of dreary, monochromatic gray-white skies and fields. The neutral, dull shades of winter permeate nearly section, mixing sky with earth and blurring the horizon with the falling snow. The line between human and animal is also blurred, as it is frequently hard to tell the exact antecedent of a particular pronoun. In certain cases this is intentional; a den in section IV could be the dwelling of an animal narrator or the room where my dad falls asleep with the television on. In either case, stepping in the wrong place could have dire consequences.
While the concept of avoiding the profane in that paragraph was almost entirely undone by the final clause, Davis’s poem “Building Walls” will have no such problem as it is that poem’s sound I wish to discuss. The poem consists of four stanzas, each with five lines of varying lengths in free verse. To a relatively untrained ear, it sounds less like Shakespeare’s classical iambic poetry than Jim McKay or Al Michaels waxing poetic about the thrill of victory, each with only his voice to carry through the airwaves. Like the world of broadcasting should be, the poem is already in comprehensible terms, but unlike any traditional broadcaster of which this writer is aware, the poem has a noticeable lisp from its enormous contingent of “s” sounds – 12 of them begin words alone in the poem’s 20 lines. But is that sibilance and simplicity not reflected in nature itself?
The world is a place of amazing natural beauty and simplicity, and most of the time it can make sense with no additional symbolism added to it. These attributes are reflected in the content of Some Heaven by Todd Davis as well as noted in the front-cover endorsement by author Jim Harrison. Harrison says that”[m]any poets feel that they know the natural world, but Todd Davis has absorbed this world fully into his heart and mind. He is a fine, rare poet.” His work may not conform to traditional standards of four lines to a stanza, five iambs to a line, et cetera, but when it comes to describing the world around him, I would certainly agree with Harrison’s assessment.
Davis Bibliography
Davis, Todd F. The Least of These: Poems. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2010. Print.
Davis, Todd F. Ripe: Poems. Huron, Ohio: Bottom Dog, 2002. Print.
Davis, Todd F. Some Heaven: Poems. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 2007. Print.
Anthology Appearance
Hostetler, Ann Elizabeth. A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa, 2003. 140-46. Print.
References Referenced But Not Cited
Davis, Todd. "Todd Davis." Penn State University. Web. 07 Feb. 2011.
"Todd Davis - Mennonite Poetry." Mennonite Poets. Web. 07 Feb. 2011.
Longer Poem Analysis
Tony Miller
English 210—Intro to Literature
Prof. Ann Hostetler
February 14, 2011
Davis’s “12 Songs For A Long Winter”: A Treasure Enjoyed(?) Alone
“12 Songs for a Long Winter” is a poem from the third section of Todd Davis’s 2007 volume, Some Heaven. The poem, as its title indicates, is itself divided into 12 parts, one of several from the book that include Roman-numeraled sections. Four of these sections have ten lines, but that is where any regularity in the structure of this poem ends—the other eight sections vary in length from six to 18 lines, and there is no standard meter or line length. The title, “12 Songs for a Long Winter,” could be applicable to any location in the northern half of the United States. Davis was raised in Elkhart County—and as any member of English 210 will know, there comes a point when one wonders if a Michiana winter will ever end, so an Elkhart native would be particularly suited to writing about it.
Attempting to return to analyzing the poem from cracking wise about it, one of the first major themes the reader will notice is the consistent appearance of snow and the gray, grim appearance that occurs in nearly every stanza. The second major theme is the use of animals, and it is ambiguous in certain places whether a given pronoun refers to a human, a bear, or even a deer. The ambiguity appears to be intentional: by way of example from stanza IV, while the mention of a den appears to suggest the dwelling of a non-human narrator, I also know that in late fall and winter, dead leaves are some of the less annoying objects that blow or are tracked into the entrance of a personal domicile.
The location of this poem is never stated, but the several mountain references would indicate that Davis, who frequently draws explicitly in Some Heaven on first-person pronouns and his own experiences, set “Winter” closer to his present location in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains than either of his childhood homes in Indiana or Massachusetts. This interpretation agrees with stanza III’s description of a nor’easter sweeping inland over the mountains, but does nothing to satisfy the people of this area who may wish to claim Davis as their own.
Description runs rampant throughout the poem, from the “doe [that] steps gingerly across the white crusts” of lines three and four to the ground littered with muddy-yellow and black excrement (Davis eschews “excrement” in favor of a word less appropriate for this paper) in stanza II to the snow scattered in soiled banks in the stanza which closes the poem. In between, the language of a silent observer with his notebook in the woods evokes the quote on the book’s front cover – “Todd Davis has absorbed this world fully into his heart and mind.”
Let us for a moment leave aside the commentary of others. This mimics the laying aside from Davis of others’ work – while poetry allusions and homages are certainly not the forte of this writer, I cannot find any reference to the work of another poet – scarcely is mentioned even the activity of another human besides the narrator’s family – which suggests a belief that nature is an individual relationship, just a person and the wild. In a sense this is logical, as it is the throngs of people working on assembly lines in Detroit that popularized the automobile which now spews megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but in a sense it is inexcusable, for why would something so valuable be restricted only to one person?
In a sense, the previous sentence is applicable to much of the poetry of Davis, of which this is just one example. He writes of a naturalist world where everything falls into place – a sort of utopia in which everyone living could simply get back to the basics of life. But in order for that to happen, the population would need to remain small to prevent overdeveloping the land.
That dilemma is the principal point that sticks from “12 Songs for a Long Winter.”
English 210—Intro to Literature
Prof. Ann Hostetler
February 14, 2011
Davis’s “12 Songs For A Long Winter”: A Treasure Enjoyed(?) Alone
“12 Songs for a Long Winter” is a poem from the third section of Todd Davis’s 2007 volume, Some Heaven. The poem, as its title indicates, is itself divided into 12 parts, one of several from the book that include Roman-numeraled sections. Four of these sections have ten lines, but that is where any regularity in the structure of this poem ends—the other eight sections vary in length from six to 18 lines, and there is no standard meter or line length. The title, “12 Songs for a Long Winter,” could be applicable to any location in the northern half of the United States. Davis was raised in Elkhart County—and as any member of English 210 will know, there comes a point when one wonders if a Michiana winter will ever end, so an Elkhart native would be particularly suited to writing about it.
Attempting to return to analyzing the poem from cracking wise about it, one of the first major themes the reader will notice is the consistent appearance of snow and the gray, grim appearance that occurs in nearly every stanza. The second major theme is the use of animals, and it is ambiguous in certain places whether a given pronoun refers to a human, a bear, or even a deer. The ambiguity appears to be intentional: by way of example from stanza IV, while the mention of a den appears to suggest the dwelling of a non-human narrator, I also know that in late fall and winter, dead leaves are some of the less annoying objects that blow or are tracked into the entrance of a personal domicile.
The location of this poem is never stated, but the several mountain references would indicate that Davis, who frequently draws explicitly in Some Heaven on first-person pronouns and his own experiences, set “Winter” closer to his present location in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny Mountains than either of his childhood homes in Indiana or Massachusetts. This interpretation agrees with stanza III’s description of a nor’easter sweeping inland over the mountains, but does nothing to satisfy the people of this area who may wish to claim Davis as their own.
Description runs rampant throughout the poem, from the “doe [that] steps gingerly across the white crusts” of lines three and four to the ground littered with muddy-yellow and black excrement (Davis eschews “excrement” in favor of a word less appropriate for this paper) in stanza II to the snow scattered in soiled banks in the stanza which closes the poem. In between, the language of a silent observer with his notebook in the woods evokes the quote on the book’s front cover – “Todd Davis has absorbed this world fully into his heart and mind.”
Let us for a moment leave aside the commentary of others. This mimics the laying aside from Davis of others’ work – while poetry allusions and homages are certainly not the forte of this writer, I cannot find any reference to the work of another poet – scarcely is mentioned even the activity of another human besides the narrator’s family – which suggests a belief that nature is an individual relationship, just a person and the wild. In a sense this is logical, as it is the throngs of people working on assembly lines in Detroit that popularized the automobile which now spews megatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but in a sense it is inexcusable, for why would something so valuable be restricted only to one person?
In a sense, the previous sentence is applicable to much of the poetry of Davis, of which this is just one example. He writes of a naturalist world where everything falls into place – a sort of utopia in which everyone living could simply get back to the basics of life. But in order for that to happen, the population would need to remain small to prevent overdeveloping the land.
That dilemma is the principal point that sticks from “12 Songs for a Long Winter.”
Short Poem Analysis
Tony Miller
English 210, Literature and Writing
January 31, 2011
The first thing that strikes me about Davis’s “Building Walls” is its blocking on the page. An example stanza looks like this:
There are other functions of the structure I notice as well. The poem consists of four stanzas, each with five lines of varying lengths in free verse. To a relatively untrained ear, it sounds less like classical poetry and Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter than Jim McKay waxing poetic about the thrill of victory with only his voice to carry through the airwaves. This distinction is also eminent in the vocabulary; the poem needs no translation to layman’s terms as it is already in them written, just as it would be heard in a normal, narrative fashion. “Walls” could be construed as slightly sibilant, counting a dozen or more “s” sounds among its score of lines, but without looking up the data it cannot be noted whether these sounds are unusually prevalent here. The poem seems also very literal – the stones are stones, no more, no less and with no other possibilities.
English 210, Literature and Writing
January 31, 2011
The first thing that strikes me about Davis’s “Building Walls” is its blocking on the page. An example stanza looks like this:
Rusted wheelbarrow carries what will be today’s last load,The indent of the last two lines evokes the staggered pattern of bricks in a wall, where the joint between two members of one row is bridged by one member of the next.
and together, where our field ends and the world begins,
we touch,
shoulder to shoulder,
fitting stone upon stone.
There are other functions of the structure I notice as well. The poem consists of four stanzas, each with five lines of varying lengths in free verse. To a relatively untrained ear, it sounds less like classical poetry and Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter than Jim McKay waxing poetic about the thrill of victory with only his voice to carry through the airwaves. This distinction is also eminent in the vocabulary; the poem needs no translation to layman’s terms as it is already in them written, just as it would be heard in a normal, narrative fashion. “Walls” could be construed as slightly sibilant, counting a dozen or more “s” sounds among its score of lines, but without looking up the data it cannot be noted whether these sounds are unusually prevalent here. The poem seems also very literal – the stones are stones, no more, no less and with no other possibilities.
Pablo Neruda - A Rough Draft
Tony Miller
Prof. Ann Hostetler
English 210
23 March 2011
An example of Neruda’s poetry transcending national borders, even though it does so in a less-than-favorable light, is in his “Canto general,” a sort of Latin American history document published in 1950. The third section, “Los conquistadores” {the conquerors} fittingly covers the Spanish conquerors of the colonial age, who first took much of Latin America from the natives and continued to rule it until the 19th century. In his article, “Redefining Civilization: Historical Polarities and Mythologizing In ‘Los conquistadores’ of Pablo Neruda's ‘Canto general,’ ” commentator Mark Mascia remarks that Neruda looks at the incoming Spaniards as having committed heinous crimes on the land. In that interpretation, the Spanish went as far as “corruption, rape, and dismemberment […] upon the uncorrupted soil of Latin America's original inhabitants” (Mascia, “Redefining” 140). Characterizing a government, no matter how far removed from governing, as one which builds a relationship upon trust and then uses that trust to take advantage of that people has never been popular. The poem that prompted such remarks was published after the Communist Party had already been banned. When someone publishes an unpleasant allegory while in disagreement with another, quite often does the second person perceive themselves as the allegorical aggressor and respond as such. Thus, with the publication of that section, Neruda criticized the Spanish government and did himself no favors with the anti-Communist Chilean one.
“There is no insurmountable solitude.” These words are taken directly from Neruda’s acceptance speech for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, and they can be interpreted as speaking to the months in 1948 that Neruda spent hiding in a friend’s Valparaíso basement before crossing the border into Argentina. These months were just a few in a slightly absurd life trajectory, one which produced some results that do not seem to fit with the image of a world-famous poet and Nobel laureate. Putting things a bit more bluntly in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ilan Stevens writes, “to be sure, Neruda also left us a large dose of bad poetry. How could he not, when his [complete works total] 6,000 pages? His late works are passable at best and disheveled at worst” (“A Life Consumed”). Stavans proceeds to note that when he published a Neruda anthology in 2003, a year before the article quoted here was published, multiple translators chastised him for including the full arc – low-quality to high-quality to lower-quality – of the poet’s work, preferring to look only at the top section of the curve and ignore the drivel below.
Neruda, it is well-known and several times above referenced, was a fervent Communist. The lesser-understood implication of this is that he would support that party almost unfailingly, a position which almost always put him at odds with the Republican, Cold War¬-era United States government. Perhaps nowhere is less explanation required of Neruda’s stance toward America than in the title of his 1973 book: Incitación al Nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena {A Call for the Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean Revolution} – although, of course, Nixon would soon destroy his own political career with skillfully-placed erasures. Ilan Stavans notes that Fidel Castro was another Neruda favorite, giving rise to what the biographer calls “cheap propaganda” such as “Fidel, the people are grateful/for word in action and deeds that sing.” To further beat this dead horse, by the time of his death, the mythical stickers on Pablo’s suitcase included Communist Cuba, socialist Chile, Spain under Franco, North Vietnam, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. In short, if there was a government making the world unsafe for democracy (to borrow from Wilson entering World War I), Neruda had been there. That he was permitted entry to America in order to speak at Columbia in 1971 is nothing short of a minor miracle.
While the poet in question was born in Chile, he maintained an international appeal because he traveled extensively and saw his leftist political views embodied at least in part by many other groups/ A portion of Neruda’s traveling, certainly, was diplomatic, as a Nobel laureate or the Chilean ambassador to France (Marzán 675). But another large section of that traveling was not undertaken by the poet himself. Stavans refers to him as a torchbearer, his poems popping up in the ’60s counterculture and the anti-Reagan liberalism of the ’80s. And this traveling from a Latin America propped up in many cases by a Republican U.S. government before his birth to speaking out against a Republican U.S. government after his death was just some of the traveling Neruda’s poems did.
As you can see, Pablo Neruda was a force of 20th century Latin American poetry because he was Chilean only in a geographic sense. Indeed, he maintained his residences there for most of his life, but the poems that emanated therefrom went far beyond their origins in South America to speak to conflict throughout the world. In addition, Neruda’s odes to the minute details of everyday life possess a sort of every-man appeal – to use a distinctly American perspective, who hasn’t grown up in a world where things like plates, cups and backyard cookouts are taken for granted? That was exactly the form of these odes, drawing attention to the little things that never get credit. Put another way, it shone a spotlight on the pawns. Writing from lands that were so often pawns, first in imperialism, then in the Cold War, Pablo Neruda certainly managed to find the spotlight.
Chasar, Mark. "The Theater of the Unattainable: Hope and Bitterness in Antonio Skarmeta's The Postman." The Midwest Quarterly (2000): 53-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Cooke, Stuart. "Singing up Country in the Poetry of Judith Wright and Pablo Neruda." Australian Literary Studies (2008): 407-21. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Maier, Linda S. "Between Modernismo and Vanguardismo: Tradition and Innovation in Pablo Neruda's Crepusculario." Romance Notes 45.3 (2005): 357-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Marzan, Julio. "Pablo Neruda's Dilemma." The Massachusetts Review (1999): 675-81. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Moran, Dominic. "‘Cuerpo De Mujer’: Neruda’s Sex Education." Hispanic Research Journal 10.1 (2009): 56-69. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Stavans, Ilan. "Pablo Neruda: a Life Consumed by Poetry and Politics." Chronicle of Higher Education 50.43 (2004). MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Prof. Ann Hostetler
English 210
23 March 2011
Pablo Neruda: A Poet of Chilean Communism
For a decade after World War 2, the Communist Party was outlawed in Chile. But while the party could not meet openly and many of its members were forced into hiding, that period gave rise to one of the 20th century’s most notable poets. Despite the prohibition of Communism, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda became a global household name in the 20th century, even prompting American diplomats to grant him a visa into the country in 1966 when Communists were barred from crossing American borders. In short, Pablo Neruda was a notable Latin American poet of the mid-1900s because he was not just a Latin American poet – his poems were globally interpretable, even if they were based on the South American continent.An example of Neruda’s poetry transcending national borders, even though it does so in a less-than-favorable light, is in his “Canto general,” a sort of Latin American history document published in 1950. The third section, “Los conquistadores” {the conquerors} fittingly covers the Spanish conquerors of the colonial age, who first took much of Latin America from the natives and continued to rule it until the 19th century. In his article, “Redefining Civilization: Historical Polarities and Mythologizing In ‘Los conquistadores’ of Pablo Neruda's ‘Canto general,’ ” commentator Mark Mascia remarks that Neruda looks at the incoming Spaniards as having committed heinous crimes on the land. In that interpretation, the Spanish went as far as “corruption, rape, and dismemberment […] upon the uncorrupted soil of Latin America's original inhabitants” (Mascia, “Redefining” 140). Characterizing a government, no matter how far removed from governing, as one which builds a relationship upon trust and then uses that trust to take advantage of that people has never been popular. The poem that prompted such remarks was published after the Communist Party had already been banned. When someone publishes an unpleasant allegory while in disagreement with another, quite often does the second person perceive themselves as the allegorical aggressor and respond as such. Thus, with the publication of that section, Neruda criticized the Spanish government and did himself no favors with the anti-Communist Chilean one.
“There is no insurmountable solitude.” These words are taken directly from Neruda’s acceptance speech for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, and they can be interpreted as speaking to the months in 1948 that Neruda spent hiding in a friend’s Valparaíso basement before crossing the border into Argentina. These months were just a few in a slightly absurd life trajectory, one which produced some results that do not seem to fit with the image of a world-famous poet and Nobel laureate. Putting things a bit more bluntly in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ilan Stevens writes, “to be sure, Neruda also left us a large dose of bad poetry. How could he not, when his [complete works total] 6,000 pages? His late works are passable at best and disheveled at worst” (“A Life Consumed”). Stavans proceeds to note that when he published a Neruda anthology in 2003, a year before the article quoted here was published, multiple translators chastised him for including the full arc – low-quality to high-quality to lower-quality – of the poet’s work, preferring to look only at the top section of the curve and ignore the drivel below.
Neruda, it is well-known and several times above referenced, was a fervent Communist. The lesser-understood implication of this is that he would support that party almost unfailingly, a position which almost always put him at odds with the Republican, Cold War¬-era United States government. Perhaps nowhere is less explanation required of Neruda’s stance toward America than in the title of his 1973 book: Incitación al Nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena {A Call for the Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean Revolution} – although, of course, Nixon would soon destroy his own political career with skillfully-placed erasures. Ilan Stavans notes that Fidel Castro was another Neruda favorite, giving rise to what the biographer calls “cheap propaganda” such as “Fidel, the people are grateful/for word in action and deeds that sing.” To further beat this dead horse, by the time of his death, the mythical stickers on Pablo’s suitcase included Communist Cuba, socialist Chile, Spain under Franco, North Vietnam, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. In short, if there was a government making the world unsafe for democracy (to borrow from Wilson entering World War I), Neruda had been there. That he was permitted entry to America in order to speak at Columbia in 1971 is nothing short of a minor miracle.
While the poet in question was born in Chile, he maintained an international appeal because he traveled extensively and saw his leftist political views embodied at least in part by many other groups/ A portion of Neruda’s traveling, certainly, was diplomatic, as a Nobel laureate or the Chilean ambassador to France (Marzán 675). But another large section of that traveling was not undertaken by the poet himself. Stavans refers to him as a torchbearer, his poems popping up in the ’60s counterculture and the anti-Reagan liberalism of the ’80s. And this traveling from a Latin America propped up in many cases by a Republican U.S. government before his birth to speaking out against a Republican U.S. government after his death was just some of the traveling Neruda’s poems did.
As you can see, Pablo Neruda was a force of 20th century Latin American poetry because he was Chilean only in a geographic sense. Indeed, he maintained his residences there for most of his life, but the poems that emanated therefrom went far beyond their origins in South America to speak to conflict throughout the world. In addition, Neruda’s odes to the minute details of everyday life possess a sort of every-man appeal – to use a distinctly American perspective, who hasn’t grown up in a world where things like plates, cups and backyard cookouts are taken for granted? That was exactly the form of these odes, drawing attention to the little things that never get credit. Put another way, it shone a spotlight on the pawns. Writing from lands that were so often pawns, first in imperialism, then in the Cold War, Pablo Neruda certainly managed to find the spotlight.
Works Cited
Agosin, Marjorie, and Ruth Morales. "A Poet's House Of Happiness." Americas (English Edition) 50.1 (1998). MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.Chasar, Mark. "The Theater of the Unattainable: Hope and Bitterness in Antonio Skarmeta's The Postman." The Midwest Quarterly (2000): 53-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Cooke, Stuart. "Singing up Country in the Poetry of Judith Wright and Pablo Neruda." Australian Literary Studies (2008): 407-21. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Maier, Linda S. "Between Modernismo and Vanguardismo: Tradition and Innovation in Pablo Neruda's Crepusculario." Romance Notes 45.3 (2005): 357-65. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Marzan, Julio. "Pablo Neruda's Dilemma." The Massachusetts Review (1999): 675-81. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Moran, Dominic. "‘Cuerpo De Mujer’: Neruda’s Sex Education." Hispanic Research Journal 10.1 (2009): 56-69. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
Stavans, Ilan. "Pablo Neruda: a Life Consumed by Poetry and Politics." Chronicle of Higher Education 50.43 (2004). MLA International Bibliography. Web. 16 Mar. 2011.
What Is Poetry? A Rough Draft
Tony Miller
English 210
April 15, 2011
This non-restrictive definition is similar to the one espoused by Lyn Hejinian in her introduction to The Best American Poetry anthology in 2004. Hejinian is also the author of My Life, a rather small and autobiographical work which we studied earlier in English 210. On first glance, the work seems to be more prose in form than poetry: words are arranged with punctuation into forms that look like sentences, and these sentences are placed into blocks of text that strongly resemble paragraphs. When one looks at the content, however, it becomes clear that the text is not at all prose, as the sentences do not form nicely into paragraphs or chapters – although they eventually combine to tell the story of a woman that may or may not actually be the author, at times those items which I have been referring to as sentences fail to satisfy the grammatical requirements for that name. From My Life, it is clear that Hejinian’s definition of poetry is based more on form than on content.
For the editor of the previous year’s Best American Poetry volume, Yusef Komunyaaka, the traditional poetic form is not as important as the issues of which it speaks. In his introduction, this poet explains that he feels words spoken or verses written simply for the purpose of creating them – to borrow an art history term, art for art’s sake – are just words and that they cannot mean much unless they make a point. This is similar to another English 210 text, G.C. Waldrep’s Disclamor. In the BOA Editions text, Waldrep dispenses with the traditional notions of stanza and flow, instead creating works which are awkwardly spaced across the page and embody a stream-of-consciousness format that is occasionally more intelligible backward.
Given the constraints imposed on poetry by the above sources, it seems prudent to combine the three reference definitions and say that poetry is this:
Imaginative or creative literature in verse which responds to a social issue, tells a story, or reflects on the actions of an individual or group.
This seems to incorporate all three of the works included above, while still including the vast majority of the Thoreaus, Frosts and Eliots we are taught in grade school. A major consideration there is that of literature in verse – this is the gate that lets Longfellow’s Paul Revere through but keeps out Ebenezer Scrooge.
Both my Against Forgetting poet, Pablo Neruda, and my Individual Poetry Project poet, Todd Davis, align more closely to a mainstream poetry definition akin to the additional wordsmiths above rather than the style of Hejinian or Waldrep. Neruda in particular was known to broach a number of social causes, being a fervent Communist in an era when Chile was particularly anti-Communist; Davis sings a song of the environment in an era when all of us know it is changing, but fewer of us want to change our behaviors to reverse this. Both of these poets deserve to have more written about them, and they will get their time when this paper’s rough draft is not competing with other final drafts.
Hejinian, Lyn. My Life. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon, 1987. Print.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.
"Poetry, n.". OED Online. March 2011. Oxford University Press. Web. 14 April 2011.
Waldrep, G.C. Disclamor. Rochester, N.Y.: BOA Editions, 2007. Print.
English 210
April 15, 2011
Poetry: What Is It?
Poetry, as one of the most versatile literary media, is a device that everyone thinks they can understand in some form – in fact, an argument could be made that many people’s definitions of poetry falls along the lines of “the subset of things that might be poems which I comprehend.” The Oxford English Dictionary tries to lend some clarity to the matter, stating that poetry is “[i]maginative or creative literature in general; fable, fiction;” “[t]he art or work of a poet;” and “[c]omposition in verse or some comparable patterned arrangement of language in which the expression of feelings and ideas is given intensity by the use of distinctive style and rhythm; the art of such a composition” (“Poetry”). While this is a noble attempt by the dictionary to be inclusive, the Oxford definition is such a non-restrictive clause (pardon the pun) that it is hard to use to pinpoint the bounds of the poetic realm.This non-restrictive definition is similar to the one espoused by Lyn Hejinian in her introduction to The Best American Poetry anthology in 2004. Hejinian is also the author of My Life, a rather small and autobiographical work which we studied earlier in English 210. On first glance, the work seems to be more prose in form than poetry: words are arranged with punctuation into forms that look like sentences, and these sentences are placed into blocks of text that strongly resemble paragraphs. When one looks at the content, however, it becomes clear that the text is not at all prose, as the sentences do not form nicely into paragraphs or chapters – although they eventually combine to tell the story of a woman that may or may not actually be the author, at times those items which I have been referring to as sentences fail to satisfy the grammatical requirements for that name. From My Life, it is clear that Hejinian’s definition of poetry is based more on form than on content.
For the editor of the previous year’s Best American Poetry volume, Yusef Komunyaaka, the traditional poetic form is not as important as the issues of which it speaks. In his introduction, this poet explains that he feels words spoken or verses written simply for the purpose of creating them – to borrow an art history term, art for art’s sake – are just words and that they cannot mean much unless they make a point. This is similar to another English 210 text, G.C. Waldrep’s Disclamor. In the BOA Editions text, Waldrep dispenses with the traditional notions of stanza and flow, instead creating works which are awkwardly spaced across the page and embody a stream-of-consciousness format that is occasionally more intelligible backward.
Given the constraints imposed on poetry by the above sources, it seems prudent to combine the three reference definitions and say that poetry is this:
Imaginative or creative literature in verse which responds to a social issue, tells a story, or reflects on the actions of an individual or group.
This seems to incorporate all three of the works included above, while still including the vast majority of the Thoreaus, Frosts and Eliots we are taught in grade school. A major consideration there is that of literature in verse – this is the gate that lets Longfellow’s Paul Revere through but keeps out Ebenezer Scrooge.
Both my Against Forgetting poet, Pablo Neruda, and my Individual Poetry Project poet, Todd Davis, align more closely to a mainstream poetry definition akin to the additional wordsmiths above rather than the style of Hejinian or Waldrep. Neruda in particular was known to broach a number of social causes, being a fervent Communist in an era when Chile was particularly anti-Communist; Davis sings a song of the environment in an era when all of us know it is changing, but fewer of us want to change our behaviors to reverse this. Both of these poets deserve to have more written about them, and they will get their time when this paper’s rough draft is not competing with other final drafts.
Works Cited
Hejinian, Lyn. Introduction. Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2004. New York: Scribner, 2004. 9-14. Print.Hejinian, Lyn. My Life. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon, 1987. Print.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.
"Poetry, n.". OED Online. March 2011. Oxford University Press. Web. 14 April 2011.
Waldrep, G.C. Disclamor. Rochester, N.Y.: BOA Editions, 2007. Print.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Comments
Here are links to the first comment of mine I could think of on other ENGL210 blogs. There may have been others about which I've forgotten.
- barbaric, vast and wild
- blogspot4english
- Intro to Lit. (Roth)
- Indroduction to Poetry
- jenica's thoughts on poetry & other things (does "& other things" fall within the preposition or simply the possessive?)
- Modern Poetry
- Modernism Revisited
- Poetry
- The Poetry Party
- Too New To Handle?
- Puzzling Over Pound
- words to no wear
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
N+π: The Raven
When we first mentioned constrained poetry in class, my thoughts immediately jumped to the poem "Near A Raven," Mike Keith's takeoff on Poe's "The Raven."
"Near A Raven" begins thus:
Poe, E.
Near a Raven
Keith has imposed a purely mathematical constraint based on the number of letters in each word. Beginning with "Poe, E." and continuing throughout the poem's 740 words, each one represents a digit or two of pi. One through nine letters indicate the digits 1 to 9, ten letters indicate a 0, and eleven or more letters represent two consecutive digits (usually 11 or 12).
"Near A Raven" begins thus:
Poe, E.
Near a Raven
Midnights so dreary, tired and weary.
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
"This", I whispered quietly, "I ignore".
Perfectly, the intellect remembers: the ghostly fires, a glittering ember.
Inflamed by lightning's outbursts, windows cast penumbras upon this floor.
Sorrowful, as one mistreated, unhappy thoughts I heeded:
That inimitable lesson in elegance - Lenore -
Is delighting, exciting...nevermore.
Keith has imposed a purely mathematical constraint based on the number of letters in each word. Beginning with "Poe, E." and continuing throughout the poem's 740 words, each one represents a digit or two of pi. One through nine letters indicate the digits 1 to 9, ten letters indicate a 0, and eleven or more letters represent two consecutive digits (usually 11 or 12).
N+7: The Roanoke Not Taken
A few notes on form:
What follows is inspired by Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled." I have taken each noun - pronouns of four of fewer letters not included - and replaced it with the word found seven later on the wiktionary.org word list (link to "R"). If this word is not a common noun, I have advanced to the closest word that is.
A special case arises for compound words nearly right off the bat. There are 54 words on the list that begin with "road", so I have taken the last such word and advanced seven from it. This principle will be followed when the word given in the previous paragraph has the original word as a root.
Two roanokes diverged in a yellow wool,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one travois, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undeservedness;
Then took the otitis, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better clair de lune,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morocoy equally lay
In leaks* no sterculia had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another dazzlement!
Yet knowing how weakening leads on to weakening,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sighting
Somewhere aggies and (ggies hence:
Two roanokes diverged in a wool, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difficultness.
What follows is inspired by Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled." I have taken each noun - pronouns of four of fewer letters not included - and replaced it with the word found seven later on the wiktionary.org word list (link to "R"). If this word is not a common noun, I have advanced to the closest word that is.
A special case arises for compound words nearly right off the bat. There are 54 words on the list that begin with "road", so I have taken the last such word and advanced seven from it. This principle will be followed when the word given in the previous paragraph has the original word as a root.
Two roanokes diverged in a yellow wool,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one travois, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undeservedness;
Then took the otitis, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better clair de lune,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morocoy equally lay
In leaks* no sterculia had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another dazzlement!
Yet knowing how weakening leads on to weakening,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sighting
Somewhere aggies and (ggies hence:
Two roanokes diverged in a wool, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difficultness.
*Leaks, the plural of leak, replaces leaves, the plural of leaf. Leaves does not appear in the list.
I think I'll try this sometime with an abridged dictionary -- it should separate the original and the result a bit more.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Feeding the Pear
"Feeding the Pear" in Waldrep, Disclamor, Rochester, N.Y.: BOA, 2007; page 64.
In high school AP English, the guiding light of our poetry analysis was "stay as literal as you can for as long as you can." That approach is nearly useless here -- no logical person would attempt to feed a pear, which of course means it is the perfect subject for a poem. Similarly, carrot sticks are the first things offered to the pear; even without questioning why the poet has carrot sticks at church, I would have tried countless other things (up to and including Carrot Top) before carrot sticks.
Will we ever know for certain why the poet chose carrots and sugar as foodstuffs? Short of finding G.C. Waldrep on the street in Lewisburg, Pa., quite likely we will not. Will we ever comprehend what the pear represents or why it must remain in the room (or, for that matter, how the poet obtained sugar from the fellowship hall given that constraint)? The same answer above also applies to all three of those.
Of course, that will never stop me from making (slightly-)educated guesses. I think the pear could be an ego, soft and easily bruised; of course, if those had to stay in one place, the world would be much simpler ... and we'd stay out of Alaska. Is it a debate? Those, too, hurt feelings, but similarly are nearly omnipresent.
The identity of the pear hasn't yet come to me. Maybe it will soon. Or maybe it will come in a dream during the next 5 a.m. downpour.
Maybe that's too grandiose . . .
Maybe
. . .
In high school AP English, the guiding light of our poetry analysis was "stay as literal as you can for as long as you can." That approach is nearly useless here -- no logical person would attempt to feed a pear, which of course means it is the perfect subject for a poem. Similarly, carrot sticks are the first things offered to the pear; even without questioning why the poet has carrot sticks at church, I would have tried countless other things (up to and including Carrot Top) before carrot sticks.
Will we ever know for certain why the poet chose carrots and sugar as foodstuffs? Short of finding G.C. Waldrep on the street in Lewisburg, Pa., quite likely we will not. Will we ever comprehend what the pear represents or why it must remain in the room (or, for that matter, how the poet obtained sugar from the fellowship hall given that constraint)? The same answer above also applies to all three of those.
Of course, that will never stop me from making (slightly-)educated guesses. I think the pear could be an ego, soft and easily bruised; of course, if those had to stay in one place, the world would be much simpler ... and we'd stay out of Alaska. Is it a debate? Those, too, hurt feelings, but similarly are nearly omnipresent.
The identity of the pear hasn't yet come to me. Maybe it will soon. Or maybe it will come in a dream during the next 5 a.m. downpour.
Maybe that's too grandiose . . .
Maybe
. . .
Friday, April 1, 2011
"Battery Alexander" - Waldrep
After several read-throughs of G.C. Waldrep's "Battery Alexander," the clearest thing to me was that George Calvin Waldrep's first two initials are identical to those of Goshen College. Then I wondered if the poem would make more sense written backward -- though I did not know it at the time, this reformatting technique is similar to one used by my classmate John Miller. In a fit of 1:30 a.m. rage, I made the rather strange decision that this would be a good idea to test and see what happened.
I decided to simply invert the order of the stanzas rather than the words within them to avoid creating a hodgepodge of random sentences in out-of-order groupings. The result is linked here, as Blogger cannot properly handle the spacing required.
I feel like the reversed version tells more of a story than the original does! True, this may be a placebo effect induced by the fact that I had actual influence in the revised production, but the flow feels greatly improved when the stanzas (stanzae?) are reversed. The spacing is unorthodox and really rather annoying, but I do appreciate the stairs-landing-stairs effect of the descending lines directly above the final dividing symbol.
Waldrep used a different symbol there -- I replaced it with the radioactive sign because it was the closest thing I had.
I decided to simply invert the order of the stanzas rather than the words within them to avoid creating a hodgepodge of random sentences in out-of-order groupings. The result is linked here, as Blogger cannot properly handle the spacing required.
I feel like the reversed version tells more of a story than the original does! True, this may be a placebo effect induced by the fact that I had actual influence in the revised production, but the flow feels greatly improved when the stanzas (stanzae?) are reversed. The spacing is unorthodox and really rather annoying, but I do appreciate the stairs-landing-stairs effect of the descending lines directly above the final dividing symbol.
Waldrep used a different symbol there -- I replaced it with the radioactive sign because it was the closest thing I had.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Moodle Cross-Reference Guide
Below I have linked the responses I cross-posted from Moodle. The dates with which they appear on PPP are the dates on which they were posted, but this provides a place-marker for them when they were added to this site.
9/11 Poem Responses (Jan. 19)
T.S. Eliot Responses (Jan. 28)
"Heritage" vs. J. Alfred Prufrock (Feb. 4)
9/11 Poem Responses (Jan. 19)
T.S. Eliot Responses (Jan. 28)
"Heritage" vs. J. Alfred Prufrock (Feb. 4)
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