"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
. . .
Showing posts with label poem response. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poem response. Show all posts
Monday, April 4, 2011
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.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
9/11 Poem Response
(CROSS-POSTED FROM MOODLE -- 3/6/11, 23:13)
My first thought upon finishing "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" is that Zagajewski never mentions how the world is mutilated -- the second thought was that I usually see the negatives (the exiles whose homes are overrun, for example) rather than the positives, perhaps more of an optimist/pessimist dichotomy than Zagajewski would have preferred.
In "Alabanza," coming to the poem with a knowledge of baseball history, the juxtaposition of the 9/11 airplane with Roberto Clemente's DC-7 in 1972 struck me. Clemente was flying to Nicaragua for relief efforts after an earthquake; his plane went down and all on board were killed, but it had no effect on the intended recipient. The attackers of September 11 knew into what they were getting, but the recipients had no clue what was to come.
"Dropping Leaflets" feels almost more like a collection of phrases than a more traditional poem; I think that enhances its mood, as especially in moments of crisis but often in the rest of our life as well we think not in long chains but short bursts. Particularly in the aftermath of 9/11 as I recall it, the only length to be seen was the path of those who (figuratively speaking) ran around in circles screaming.
My first thought upon finishing "Try to Praise the Mutilated World" is that Zagajewski never mentions how the world is mutilated -- the second thought was that I usually see the negatives (the exiles whose homes are overrun, for example) rather than the positives, perhaps more of an optimist/pessimist dichotomy than Zagajewski would have preferred.
In "Alabanza," coming to the poem with a knowledge of baseball history, the juxtaposition of the 9/11 airplane with Roberto Clemente's DC-7 in 1972 struck me. Clemente was flying to Nicaragua for relief efforts after an earthquake; his plane went down and all on board were killed, but it had no effect on the intended recipient. The attackers of September 11 knew into what they were getting, but the recipients had no clue what was to come.
"Dropping Leaflets" feels almost more like a collection of phrases than a more traditional poem; I think that enhances its mood, as especially in moments of crisis but often in the rest of our life as well we think not in long chains but short bursts. Particularly in the aftermath of 9/11 as I recall it, the only length to be seen was the path of those who (figuratively speaking) ran around in circles screaming.
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