zaaaBlogging the Literary Life - Period 5/6 - AP College English

We Real Cool

This poem by Gwendolyn Brooks is short although very powerful.  It is about seven pool players she observed at a pool hall and writes the poem in sort of a mocking way from their point of view.  The poem reads:

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

As Brooks writes, the first think that we see is the language.  The phrase "We real cool" shows that the drop out students cannot even speak correctly, most likely being attributed to their lack of schooling.  Another very striking think about the poem is that it is not written in a normal way.  The "We" is not at the start of each line, it is at the end.  I think that was done to make the reader stress the "We" every time.  Stressing the "We" could really help grasp the image of this group of students.  Then the most obvious striking line is the last one, "We die soon."  I feel that this was not a literal reference to dying, but more of an idea that if these kids do not go to school, they will crumble without the knowledge they could recieve at school.  This lack of knowledge would hurt them in the long run, effectively killing them and their dreams.  This poem is so strong that I think that if I was a drop out and I read it, I would be in school the next day.  It is straight to the point, and I'm sure it has had a great influence on who ever has read it.   

Theme for English B

Langston Hughe's poem, "Theme for English B"  on 373 caught my eye. I remember last year in my English class we discussed this poem briefly and my understanding was that it was a fairly popular poem. Basically, the poem is based off an assignment:

Go home, and write                                                                                                                       a page tonight.                                                                                                                               And Let that page come out of you--                                                                                          Then it will be true.

That is exactly what Langston does, and he first describes his living situation and background. My favorite part is the dialog he has. It's, "I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page. (I hear New York, too.) Me--Who?" I feel like he's speaking to his Harlem roots yet also at his instructor at the same time. He then goes on to prove that normal human pleasures appeal to him even though he is black. He says, "I guess being colored doesn't make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races." It's interesting that here he doesn't make it a black/white issue at all, just all races in general compared to his own race. His main message despite racial differences, we all should learn and understand from each other. Hughes is in a position to badmouth whites at this time, yet he doesn't toss aimless blame around. He reminds the audience, the American people, that color doesn't define nationalism and that empathy from each other should be desirable.

Viscera Eyes

I don't know if there are any other big Mars Volta fans in our class, but I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that there are... Anyways, I'm not the greatest at interpreting poetry, but this should qualify. Their lyrics are normally a bit weird, and I've never stopped to take the time to look into them further, so I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity. These lyrics are from the song Viscera Eyes off of their new album, Amputechture:

Wait
I've seen the arc shake from your mnemonic tongue
But the braille that you weave of itself, it shall read aloud
Yes it will
I said, she's falling, she's still falling
But no one wants to come
She's crawling, she's still crawling
On your burial ground
She's falling, she's still falling
But no one wants to come
I said, she's crawling, she's still crawling
On your burial ground

I'm not going to go too far in depth with these lyrics, but when I listen to or read these lyrics, I picture a blind woman mourning the loss of a loved one at a grave. Perhaps this person was an aid to her through her life, which is why she is described as "falling" with no one to come help. The one line that I want to hear interpreted by someone (because I'm having some trouble) is the third line. That's where I got the blind woman idea from, but who knows what they actually meant when it's taken out of the context of the nine minute song.

Cut .x

I don't have the book, so I found a really interesting poem called Cut by Silvia Plath. At the top of the poem, before it actually begins, she wrote "For Susan O'Neill Roe". I discovered that this woman was Plath's nanny for a time and once suggested to Plath that she write in the early morning hours (thus, Plath produced her poem 'Ariel'). I don't think it has anything to do with Susan herself, but I guess it's just dedicated to her. Keep in mind Plath was pretty nuts, although an amazingly powerful and creepy writer.

What a thrill ---

My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of a hinge

Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz.

A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ---

The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when

The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump ---
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

I understand how she is comparing her thumb and the blood and the bandages/gauze to all of those other historial groups, etc., but the part that confuses me the most are the last two stanzas:

The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence

How you jump ---
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.

I'm having a hard time seeing what's going on because sometimes she uses words that I confess I am unfamiliar with. However, I love the way it flows and pulls you into the images. Any other thoughts on such an intense poem?

Song of the Powers

The poem Song of the Powers by David Mason on page 75 caught my eye. When you first read the poem it seems to be simply about the game rock, paper, scissors. However when you read it more carefully it carries a much darker meaning that you would expect a poem about rock paper scissors to have. Each paragraph is about the different options in the game. Each option says that theirs is the best at that it will destroy all the others. Words like crush, smother, and gashing are used. A very dark tones is used as well. Each thinks that they are the most power  and will brutally destroy the others. The last paragraph is what  shows the theme of the poem. It says that at the end they will all end alone. I think the theme of this poem is that no matter how highly you think of yourself, or how much power and force you have, you will end up alone:

So heap up your paper
and scissor your wishes
and uproot the stone
from the top of the hill.
They all end alone.
as you will, you will.

I really like how the author chose such a simple thing and used it to convey such a strong message.

Sadie and Maud

I chose the poem "Sadie and Maud" on page 348. This poem interested me because it is fairly short and simple but says a lot. It is about two women, one went to college while the other stayed home to raise a family. And by the tone of the poem, it is almost as if the author thinks you should stay home with a family rather than go to college. Maud, who went to college lives all alone, while Sadie lived with her two daughters happily.

I also liked the line "Sadie scraped life with a fine tooth comb." Like she got the most out of life and didn't miss a thing. It is like Sadie got to experience so many things in life because she didn't go to college like Sadie. I don't particularly like this poem because I don't agree with what message it is getting across. Did anyone agree with the poet in this case?

Cross

The poem is Cross on page 48-49. Written by Langston Hughes. In the beginning, the speaker states that he has a white father and a black mother. Then, he explains his attitude toward both of them. The speaker says he would take his curses back when he cursed his father. On the other hand, there is a tone of regret when he takes about cursing his mother. The speaker would curse his mother and wish she were in hell, but later he'd feel sorry and wish her well. Why does he apologize to his dad right away and doesn't do that with his mother? Maybe the speaker did not like the fact that his mother was black and he thought of himself as a white man who just happens to have a black mother. But what makes him feel sorry for making that evil wish?I think that the speaker is confused and does not have a definite identity. He is neither black not white, what is he then? What does his society consider him? If there could be a person who is black and white at the same time, does that mean that one of them is better than the other?

I'm really bad at interpreting poetry by the way.

"Diving into the Wreck" Myself

This is the second time I've typed a long thoughtful post and then I hit the post button and my Internet disconnects. I shall have to take precautions. <Deep breaths> ...... But life is good, because I read an awesome poem, and I will summarize what I previously wrote about it for you...

I was thinking of writing my poem about SCUBA diving by a shipwreck at night. Then I happened to flip to a poem in the book called "Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich (p. 297-300). The experience described in the poem is very similar to the one I had, except that I was with my Marine Biology II group, and the diver in the poem is alone. Also, the diver is searching for sunken treasure; I was there to observe the marine life.

Rich describes details of the experience: the cumbersome equipment, descending the ladder, adjusting to the pressure. It all brought back vivid memories for me. The thing that Rich conveys best is the sense of oneness with the sea. I know it sounds corny, but that is what I remember best. I felt like I lost my sense of self-awareness, and I forgot that I even existed. I was just a presence drifting through a dark, saturated abyss. It was very ethereal.

In Medias Res

This is a great poem, by Michael McFee on 259-260.  In the abstract, it's about a man who has developed a gut and the poem addresses his feelings toward his new-found paunch. 

His waist,
like the plot,
thickens, wedding
pants now breathtaking,
belt no longer the cinch
it once was, belly's cambium
expanding to match each birthday,
his body a wad of anonymous tissue
swung in the same centrifuge of years
that separates a house from its foundation,
undermining sidewalks grim with joggers
and loose-filled graves and families
and stars collapsing on themselves,
no preservation society capable
of plugging entropy's dike,
under the zipper's sneer
a belly hibernation-
soft, ready for
the kill.

A couple things that are cool:
The poem starts off with puns -- pants that take your breath away, belt no longer the "cinch", etc.  Then it just collapses into awful images of futility, over and over again.  It goes from dry wit to lack of any humor at all.  I feel like this is how the object of the poem might respond to his weight problem.  On the surface, he'll joke around about it with everyone else.  But it's actually eating at him (no pun intended).

The poem's structure - it looks like a belly.

While primarily about some guy's stomach chub, the poem also comments on the inevitability of decay for a lot of things.  Years, McFee argues, eventually destroy lots of things: houses, sidewalks, and graves, but also families and stars.  Depending on how far you want to take this, the poem can be really depressing.  No amount of preservation can plug the waters of disorder.  All things break down sooner or later.

I don't really get the last couple lines, though.

Happy or Sad?

I found a poem that I thought could have several different meanings. Well, obviously, most poems can and do have different meanings to different people, but I almost immediately saw some different ways this poem could be interpreted. I read “Pity me not” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (page 382 in our text).

The speaker seems to be someone at the end of her life, and she is asking her audience to not show sympathy (i.e., pity) because all the things that made her life pleasurable are gone. One could see this poem as regret over a life wasted on pleasures (the sunset, nature, love), or joy at a life well spent. The last two lines are:

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn

What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

What stands out is that every “sentence” except this one begins with “pity me not;” here, the speaker, given my two interpretations, is primarily upset because she never learned that there is more to life than pleasures, or that she is joyful because she didn’t rush through life but enjoyed it fully.

Barbie Doll

The poem Barbie Doll on page 117-118 of Sound and Sense speaks a lot about the conception of beauty in our society.  It tells of a girl who played with baby dolls and lipsticks when she was little.  Then, as she got a little older, her classmates started telling her she had a big nose and fat legs. 

She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.

This stanza just emphasizes that she had plenty of other good qualities about herself, and yet everyone only saw her fat nose and thick legs.  She poem goes on to say that she tried to conform by exercising and dieting.  She finally got worn out and ended up cutting off her nose and legs.  At her funeral, everyone viewed her in the casket.  She had a putty nose and everyone thought she looked so pretty.  The last line of the poem is, "To every woman a happy ending." 

This poem really resonated with me.  It demonstrates that people want to look perfect and therefore are willing to essentially sacrifice what make them unique.  Even if it kills them in the process, they are satisfied because they look pretty.  I think that it teaches a very valuable lesson and seems to be a sad critique of society.

Tigger!

I chose a well-known poem which has always fascinated and intrigued me. It's William Blake's "The Tiger" on page 346 (admittedly, I thought it was called "Tyger Tyger").

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night

I love those two lines. Obviously, the subject is a certain striped feline. But further into the poem, there is an acute sense that Blake is using the tiger as a metaphor. But for what ? There appears to be a religious undertone - but you'll have to walk me through it, since I don't quite understand.

On what wings dare he aspire? ...

Whose wings? Who is he? Is the "tiger" something created with something else in mind?

When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaves with their tears
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

He being God? But isn't the pronoun for God generally capitalized? Why is Lamb capitalized and not "he?" When did the stars throw down their spears? You'll have to excuse me. I know precious little about Christian mythology/symbolism.

The Red Wheelbarrow

I chose "The Red Wheelbarrow" written by William Carlos Williams on page 14. It's a very short and simple poem but has a vivid imagery in it. I think it is unique in it's structure, because if you write it out, it is only a sentence. So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. It's much drier and more boring in this way. I guess the stanza structure helps us a lot to get the sense of poetic rhythm and imagery. What do you think depends upon a red wheel barrow?

"On Reading Poes to a Senior Class at South High"

As I was skimming the poetry book, I came across a title that caught my eye, "On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High" (344-345). I think it was just becuase the title seemed to say it was about seniors in high school and I could relate to that. I started to read the poem, and found it to be pretty interesting. The author, D.C. Berry uses an analogy of fish to fellow students. Some of my favorite lines were "I noticed them sitting there as orderly as frozen fish", "I herd the sounds of fish in an aquarium", and "the bell rang puncturing a hole in the door". These lines really showed the analogy of fish. They were all trapped, like in an aquarium, until the bell rang, puncturing a hole in the side of the aquarium letting the fish out.

"Those Winter Sundays"

While reading, Those Winter Sundays, a poem by Robert Hayden (pg. 64-65), I came across many instances in which ideas about connotation, denotation, and imagery could be seen.  Each word Hayden used was meticulously chosen and carries various connotations with it.

In the first stanza, Hayden writes that the coldness the speaker's father experienced was "blueblack".  Because these colors are often associated with the colors of bruises, they add a sense of harshness to the cold.  By using the word "weekday" as an adjective for the weather that had hardened the speaker's father's hands, the speaker gives the reader the impression that his father worked every day of the week.

In the second stanza, the word "splintering" struck me particularly.  The word "splintering", although referring to the coldness in the air, brings up images of labor.  Splintering is a word often used to describe the breaking of wood.  In addition, because the speaker has already established the fact that his father is a laborer whose hands have been "cracking" and "aching", the reader is also presented with a picture of hands "splintering" from work.

At the end of the poem, the speaker mentions that his father had even polished the speaker's good shoes.  This line id important in the story because it shows the extent to which the author's father cared about his son and getting jobs done for his son.  It gives the author's father as a stature of pride.

"Ending"

One poem I liked just from skimming the book, is "Ending" by Gavin Ewart on page 177. A true romantic at heart, this poem was deep and had a tone that makes it seem like Gavin [or whoever the author is] lost a love.

My favorite lines are the last two:

Romance, expected once to stay,

has left a note saying GONE AWAY.

Throughout the poem he talks about the kisses, hands, feet, and eyes, but at the end talks about the overall romance, which is nice. It is a sad poem though!!

We Real Cool

I choose a moderatly short poem by Gwendolyn Brook, and since it is quite short I'll write it out as well: "We Real Cool" (p188)

The Pool Players.  Seven At the Golden Shovel

We real cool.  We left School.  We lurk late.  We strike straight.  We Sing sin.  We thin gin.  We Jazz June.  We die soon.

I really enjoyed this poem becuase it is very straight and to the point...no beating around the bush.  It is the story of young pool players, who ditch class, stayed out late, listen to defiant music, drink, and rebel.  Concequently these rebels will face the lighted tunnel at a much earlier age.  Like I said...straight and to the point!

Is This Love?

After catching up on everybody's thoughts about Ada and her men, I have my own thought.

Back up a minute, and answer me this. What if Ada did not take Baines' offer for one key per visit? If not, would she have fallen in love with her husband? Yes I am aware that she would still be mad that he sold her piano, and she would still have a reason to go over to Baines' house. But they would not have that deal, thus, she would not be forced to participate.

Maybe I'm going out on a limb, but I think that if she was at Baines' house playing the piano, and he did what he did, I think it would have had a different outcome than what actually happened. Maybe she would have ran to her husband and told [wrote] what happened, and maybe he would do something. What are your thoughts?

Sexual Harassment in The Piano?

So here's a modern-day parallel for The Piano:

Ada works for and is married to real estate tycoon Steward.  She is only truly happy when making copies on her own xerox machine.  She is assigned to a middle management position and becomes boss of one of Stewart's friends, Baines.   Ada is showing Baines how to make duplicates on the company's new machine when he kisses her on the back of the neck.   Shocked, Ada is about to leave and tell Stewart when Baines offers to trade the xerox machine (which Stewart gave to him) one gear at a time for sexual favors.  Ada, in a lose-lose situation, decides to let him repeatedly grope, kiss, and sleep naked with her in return for her beloved photocopier.  Somewhere in the process, Ada realizes that she prefers Baines's passion to Stewart's insensitivity (he's preoccupied with his business), and they fall in love.

Here's my point.  We have a tendency to forgive Baines for what he does for a couple of reasons.  He's lonely, single, and middle-aged.  Besides the sexual molesting, he's a nice, sensitive guy.  Finally, it sounds like he really does love her.  He terminates the lessons, and when Ada returns anyway, he admits that he can't stop thinking about her, and asks her to leave if she doesn't love him.  By the end, he's no longer sexually preying on a helpless woman.

And I do think that should be noted.  Kudos to Baines for having a turn of conscience.  But you can't condone what Baines did, or dismiss it as loneliness or hormones or something else.  I think most people have a problem with sexual harassment, and what happens in The Piano is dangerously close to that.  Do you think that a relationship that starts out with sexual harassment (by definition, non-mutual) can end in love?  It's worth thinking about.

I did not mean to trivialize the significance of the piano in The Piano by comparing it to a xerox machine, and for the record, I really liked the movie.

Piano as a Symbol

When I was thinkig about the piano as a symbol, I came up with different ideas. The piano could symbolize Ada's past. It was the only meaningful thing that she brought with her, and obviously meant a great deal to her. It could also symbolize her pain and suffering. When she had it, it was a constant reminder of her old life, including the death of her husband and the pain she was put through with Baines. The last thing that I think it could symbolize is her voice, or restraint of her voice. When she has the piano shes speaks through it, but maybe after she dumped it overboard her voice can come out since she has no other way to express herself with sound anymore.