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Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (Ekphrasis (William Carlos…
Modern and Contemporary American Poetry
Ekphrasis
Maggie Nelson, Bluets (2009)
-Nelson is interested in "fictions" of intimacy through the color blue; Reimagining the color blue through the lens of intimacy
-There are many different ideas originally attributed to blue: sexuality, desire, obscenity vs. depression, listlessness, pain
-Bluets is somatic, demonstrated through playful and embodied language. It functions as a collage of images and ideologies, centered around the speaker's loss of her lover and her friend's accident
William Carlos Williams, Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems (1962)
-Ekphrasis as creating ownership of and mastery over Breughel's paintings
-Sharp clarity of image, precise details describes the paintings exactly
-An attempt to reimagine Breughel's paintings as poems without losing anything
-Is it desirable or even ever possible to fully recreate a work of art based in a different medium through poetry? Can this be accomplished without losing something of the original version, and is it possible to recreate a work of art without reinterpreting it through one's own lens? Williams brought different emotions to the pieces than Breughel did.
Animality
Marianne Moore, Selected Poems (1935)
-Moore was interested in biology and taxonomy, and animals represented a source of the "real" and "authentic" untainted by human constructs
-Why are animals more "authentic" than humans? It is interesting to look at the animals as metaphors for the world and human behavior, but also as a reflection of the genuineness in nature.
The Fish
-Assonance in the poem creates a "flowing" sensation which imitates sea life in the tide
-The "it" the sea grows old it could be fossils. If this poem is about fossils, it could be a framework for understanding past life, with fossils a representation of visible history and trauma
To A Snail
-The poem can be read as an ode or blazon, directly addressing the snail
-The poem mimics the "virtue of contractility" in praises in the titular snail. Also, the poem has no feet just as the snail has no feet
-The poem is precise and scientific
Bhanu Kapil, Humanimal: A Project for Future Children (2009)
-Unlike Moore's, Kapil's animal poetry can be a vehicle for self-expression
-The book is a "project for future children" because the girls were not considered human yet, and because it resists the ableist and colonialist narratives that would later affect Kapil and her father
-Humanimal reflects the jungle in its nontraditional and fragmented form
-Oppositional concepts of "Mother Nature" (mother wolf) and "Father Priest"
Repetition is used, as well as multiple "I"s, undermining the lyric "I"s of Romantic poetry
-Kapil indicates that humans are not exceptional. She proposes a spectrum between humanity and animality rather than a binary classification that privileges humanity and attempts to classify people in a colonial and ableist way
Abstraction
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (1914)
-To Stein, language is dependent on our associations between things and words. Abstraction breaks down these associations to get at the heart of the object, because signifiers have an arbitrary relationship to the thing they signify.
-Stein uses metonymy to bring other words to mind
-Sound is a place where meaning is conveyed, and makes meaning
Queer relationships were taboo in Stein's day, and abstraction allows her to express her sexuality while still obscuring it
A Center in a Table
-Linguistic and locational slips
-A center in a table = a centerpiece. Readers are forced to examine linguistic expectations- is the center locational or an object?
John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)
-With "self-portrait" the title prompts doubts about the possibility of representing the self through language
-The subject is not Ashbery, but the process of attempting to portray the self, and the distortion involved
-Exploration of depth and surface: distortion of the image
Themes: sea vs. sea bottom- oppositions between surface and depth; mirror and the artist; artist and the canvas; person and the soul
Constraint
Emily Dickinson, from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1890)
-Poems packed with emotional energy, titles and sometimes endings are omitted, em dashes and tight stanzas lead to a compact feel
-Imagery includes gardening and nature, domestic metaphors, Dickinson uses literary allusions to classicism and the Bible
-Her work is constrained because she was a woman poet at a time when this was considered controversial, and possibly as a reflection of her reclusive tendencies
After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes
-Opposed concepts, such as profound pain and the lack of pain in "a formal feeling"; organic and inorganic; motion and stasis
-Em dashes create stoppage, such as in nerves sitting ceremonious like tombs
-Sublimity through pain and its lack- the enormity of emotion
Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin (2018)
-Part of the constraint is the sonnet itself, which creates rules for the writer
I Lock You in a Room that is Part Prison, Part Panic Closet
-The poem is constrained through the objects within, such as a prison, panic closet, gym, music box, and sleeper hold
-"It is not enough to love you" refers to the poetic verse, which he distorts and in some ways destroys through the sonnet by foregoing traditional verse
-Not traditional sonnets, such as Shakespearean, but they do include voltas at the end
-The constraint reflects the experience of living as a black man in America for Terrence Hayes- living in an enclosed object with limits imposed, like a sonnet
Translation
Ezra Pound, Cathay (1915)
-Pound is not interested in preserving every detail of the text, but instead in making the text reflect a universality between Ancient China and Modern America. He did not speak Chinese.
-He wanted to capture a mood that transcended time and place, including the experience of exile and war.
The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter
-Time is distorted in the poem by the young wife's loneliness, and the poem accelerates temporally because she is growing impatient.
-The paired butterflies is a reminder that she is missing her husband, and their yellow bodies suggest Autumn and decay
-The "translation" also imposes Western stereotypes on the wife
Myung Mi Kim, Commons (2002)
-Like in Pound's Cathay, there is no pure translation, in that reduction in involved in all translation, which Commons recognizes
-The original is elevated in that it is something unique that cannot be recreated in another language
506: Pollen Fossil Record
-The title is connected with the idea of erosion and shows change over time
-Fragmentation of the text asks the reader to consider part and whole
-The untranslated parts give and bar access to language for the reader
-Ties back to the body, relating back to the commonality of the title
-Commons takes disparate forms of writing such as military writing, journalistic writing, botanical writing, and fragments and mixes them, muddling their perspectives.
Commons
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
-Whitman uses free verse poetry, ellipses, repetition, litany, and anaphora
-He is especially interested in embodiment, breath, and questions of spirituality and sexuality
-Part of the transcendentalist movement, Whitman is fiercely individualistic but also interested in the inter-connectivity of humanity
Song of Myself
-Material objects and work for working's sake are considered to sometimes be a barrier to interconnection.
-The soul and the body are equal and work together, are not part of a religious hierarchy but instead the experience of life
-Whitman's self is all-encompassing, incorporating the whole of humanity
-Advocates for democratization of and accessibility in poetry
I Sing the Body Electric
-Deliberately sexual poem, reflected in the use of words like "engirth"
-Electric bodies- the bodies are animated and alive with spiritual energy
Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems (1964)
-Influenced by Dadaism, is spontaneous and not academic, references popular culture and everyday life
-He was a prolific writer, but not interested in archiving his work
-His poetry is rushed and immediate, reflecting everyday life and giving his poems an authentic feeling.
-Emphasizes contrast, like Terrence Hayes uses turns at the ends of some of his poems. O'Hara shifts from mocking concepts to loving them.
The Day Lady Died
-Beginning of poem is stream of consciousness- features first person present verbs such as "I go, I went."
-Poem progresses quickly through the use of time and temporal jokes
-The poem eschews worldliness but proves it can be worldly through references to high culture negated by jokes such as "I go back to where I came from on 6th Avenue."
Ave Maria
-Comedic tone with a defined message- let children go to the movies to experience sexuality
-The soul is important, but the Christian soul is passed over here, preferring a soul marked by culture
-Like The Day Lady Died, Ave Maria plays with temporality
Poem (Page 70)
-Is in conversation with The Day Lady Died
-News is mediated through headlines and is less immediate than the rest of his poetry, just like in Day Lady Died
-Discusses the mundane, such as weather and small talk
Steps
-Oscillates between the serious and the sweet, like Tommy Pico's work
-The title can refer to architectural steps or dance steps, both of which are referenced here
-Movement and continuity are implied in the poem, linking back to other poems in the collection
Confession
Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965)
-Autobiographical poetry for the most part, but after Plath's death readers began to read her work through the lens of her suicide
Daddy
-The commitment to rhyme gives it a singsong sound, and the title indicates playfulness, in contrast to the darker imagery of the poem
-This confession is anchored in temporal chunks- "At ten you died/ at twenty I tried to join you."
-What does it mean for a confessional poem to give a false confession? Plath is not Jewish, but calls herself a Jew and her father a Nazi
-The poem is built around its emotional core- anger, fear of the abusive father and his rebirth in Plath's husband
Mourning
Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004)
-Like with Rankine, the distinction between speaker and writer can be unclear
-Presented as a documentary
-Rankine using the tragedy of others for creativity is a dilemma- is the work she is doing healing? Does this make using others' pain for art acceptable?
-Rankine's friend with Alzheimer's is an example of where the lines blur between speaker and writer. Does the use of the friend's writing give him a sense of agency, or is this appropriation?
Muriel Rukeyser, The Book of the Dead (1938)
-Was an involved political activist- protests ranging from the Scottsboro boys to the Vietnam War
-The book is as much a poem as a work of documentary. Rukeyser is interested in the experience of subjectivity and how it is recorded.
-Influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, but uses the voices of common workers
The Road
-Can be read as a call to action, where the speaker and reader participate in the landscape and connect to the people suffering from the tragedy
-Emphasis on the fact that the speaker and reader are outsiders
-The reader is being asked to bear witness to the pain of the miners and community
-In The Road deictic words point to the presence of the land and the people, and create a sense of immediacy
Mearl Blankenship
-Who is the speaker? Rukeyser seems to be speaking for Blankenship, but the shifts in voice bring an immediacy to the poem
-Mearl is humanized through the multiple registers of his voice as he voices emotion and speaks to corporations
-Is Mearl being objectified? Is he represented faithfully? We can watch him but he cannot watch us, and Rukeyser's and Blankenship's voices blur together.