Poetry

I'm currently reading through two poetry books. During the Forensics season I compete in Poetry Reading so I suppose you could call this research for "the" performance piece this season. The books I'm reading are Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry edited by Gary Glazner and Close to Death by Patricia Smith. The poems range from short haikus to lengthy narrative poems. I'm adding some of them to this post knowing you probably aren't familiar with them.

This poem is from Poetry Slam. It is a very strong piece (and better read out loud), similar in style and theme to a poem from Close to Death. Themes in these poems include (sudden) death, street violence, and sacrificial love.

Untitled
by Cass King

There is a kind of silence
That strengthens
As time lengthens
And Silence left unshattered is more golden than
That matter that the alchemists invented.

There is that silence where the I love you too bird
used to live.
I love you! I love you too...
I love you. I love you too.
I love you? I...

There is a silence that lives
Finely sliced between venetian blinds
A silence that separates a stranger's cries from the quickening glances
of safe, good people.
And as the rocks start to fly
a baby lies wailing on the quicksand sidewalk.
reached Mark Hi, you Andrew, and the home of Paul...
call We can't take yours
you we can't take right now.
Call
Home of

If you're calling about what happened...
what happened
what happened
what happened?

Stop! Silence. Full stop.
After that gauntlet lies dropped
In the valley of the gutter
In the alley
By the window
Where the mother and the daughter were huddled
Who knew his last word would be ________
A summing up silence of violence interrupted.

Behind a dumpster
as three young men were
beating him, kicking him...
and then there was one.
and the silent observation of two
was as deadly as the knife that slide into
My bleeding fresh/man of twenty one.

My air band Frank-n-furter,
high school principal kisser,
Unrequited lover
and forever, ever
anchor.

and now the Toronto Sun is blaring
"GOOD SAMARITAN" at me
and, staring out from the newspaper box
His eyes are forgiving
where mine are not.
I stick my
coins
into
the slot
and pick up
my copy of
Paul.

I will convince myself at his funeral
That we gather for his wedding
Expecting him to Lazarus down that aisle any minute, to throw over that casket like Jesus
And tell the carrion cameras to go to obstetrics
And report someone new, for a change.

He throws me on his Kawasaki
And his family sings turn, turn, turn
We sacrifice maple leaves under our tires
And his family sings a time to every purpose under heaven
And I scream
I love you.....
I love you.....
I love you.....

And from somewhere from through these years
I hear that little bird return.
I love you too.


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Undertaker
–For Floyd Williams
When a bullet enters the brain, the head explodes.
I can think of no softer warning for the mothers
who sit doubled before my desk,
knotting their smooth brown hands,
and begging: fix my boy, fix my boy.
Here’s his high school picture.
And the smirking, mildly mustachioed player
in the crinkled snapshot
looks nothing like the plastic bag of boy
stored and dated in the cold room downstairs.
In the picture, he is cocky and chiseled,
clutching the world by the balls. I know the look.
Now he is flaps of cheek,
slivers of jawbone, a surprised eye,
assorted teeth, bloody tufts of napped hair.
The building blocks of my business.

So I swallow hard, turn the photo face down
and talk numbers instead. The high price
of miracles startles the still-young woman,
but she is prepared. I know she has sold
everything she owns, that cousins and uncles
have emptied their empty bank accounts,
that she dreams of her baby
in tuxedoed satin, flawless in an open casket,
a cross or blood-red rose tacked to his fingers,
his halo set at a cocky angle.
I write a figure on a piece of paper
and push it across to her
while her chest heaves with hoping.
She stares at the number, pulls in
a slow weepy breath: “Jesus.”

But Jesus isn’t on my payroll. I work alone
until the dim insistence of morning,
bent over my grisly puzzle pieces, gluing,
stitching, creating a chin with a brushstroke.
I plop glass eyes into rigid sockets,
then carve eyelids from a forearm, an inner thigh.
I plump shattered skulls, and paint the skin
to suggest warmth, an impending breath.
I reach into collapsed cavities to rescue
a tongue, an ear. Lips are never easy to recreate.

And I try not to remember the stories,
the tales the mothers must bring me
to ease their own hearts. Oh, they cry,
My Ronnie, my Willie, my Michael, my Chico.
It was self-defense. He was on his way home,
a dark car slowed down, they must have thought
he was someone else. He stepped between
two warring gang members at a party.
Really, he was trying to get off the streets,
trying to pull away from the crowd.
He was just trying to help a friend.
He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Fix my boy; he was a good boy. Make him the way he was.

But I have explored the jagged gaps
In the boy’s body, smoothed the angry edges
of bullet holes. I have touched him in places
no mother knows, and I have birthed
his new face. I know he believed himself
invincible, that he most likely hissed
“Fuck you, man” before the bullets lifted him
off his feet. I try not to imagine
his swagger, his lizard-lidded gaze,
his young mother screaming into the phone.

She says she will find the money, and I know
this is the truth that fuels her, forces her
to place one foot in front of the other.
Suddenly, I want to take her down
to the chilly room, open the bag
and shake its terrible bounty onto the
gleaming steel table. I want her to see him,
to touch him, to press her lips to the flap of cheek.
The woman needs to wither, finally, and move on.

We both jump as the phone rattles in its hook.
I pray it’s my wife, a bill collector, a wrong number.
But the wide, questioning silence on the other end
is too familiar. Another mother needing a miracle.
Another homeboy coming home.


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Both poets use similar tools to make their poems successful. Their use of free verse is just incredible. The pieces maintain a beautiful sense of rhythm through alliteration and assonance. “A silence that separates a stranger's cries from the quickening glances /of safe, good people” (King). “In the picture, he is cocky and chiseled, /clutching the world by the balls. I know the look. /Now he is flaps of cheek” (Smith). They also masterfully use repetition to incite emotion in the audience. “If you're calling about what happened.../what happened/what happened /what happened?” (King) “begging, fix my boy, fix my boy/…./ Fix my boy; he was a good boy. Make him the way he was” (Smith).

I also really like how they play with words. It is more apparent in other works (Sweet Daddy, Building Nicole’s Mama, Biting Back) by Smith. At the end of “Undertaker” she plays with the word “home”, “Another homeboy coming home”. King, however, plays with words and phrases experimenting with order and punctuation. My favourite example of this is in the phone message, “reached Mark Hi, you Andrew, and the home of Paul.../call We can't take yours/you we can't take right now./Call/Home of.” This word play is just like in The Handmaid's Tale when Offred starts with a word and then has a paragraph or so of stream of consciousness thought about the various forms of the word.

Hills like White Elephants

Hemingway's story is filled with an underlying tension. He excludes the word "abortion" from the story creating the feeling of fear and ignorance. The way Hemingway writes this story seems to be more like a script for a short film than a short story. Short conversational dialogue dominates the piece. Also the scenery description is very sparse, practically to the point with no “fluff” description (the kind one would find in Romantic writing e.g. The Scarlet Letter.)

Although the language is colloquial there is some great meaning behind the simple words. The couple just jumps right into their meeting as if they’d had similar meetings before. Before any sort of greeting the girl is already there waiting for the man with the question that seems to distinguish each meeting, “What should we drink?” Hemmingway employs repetition of the word white. This could indicate his want to show the girl’s desire for purity. The white elephants/hills are also comparable to a pregnant belly. There is also impatience and a disconnection between the characters. The man snaps at the girl when she says that he wouldn’t have seen an elephant. Perhaps she is Hispanic (the story takes place in Spain) and this is an issue of background. Hemingway only says that the man is American and does not specify the girl’s nationality.

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It’s interesting that Hemingway chooses to call the characters “man” and “girl”, also contrasting the “girl” with the “woman” at the bar. This age discrepancy is important to the nature of their relationship. It seems that the man has been in that situation before; he knows all about the “operation” and how it goes. He insincerely promises to stay by her side. On the other hand she needs him to love her, “'And if I do it you'll be happy and things will be like they were and you'll love me?'” She also says she doesn’t care about herself. The girl is lonely and needs to be needed by the man.

The dialogue often says two things at once.

'And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.' (G) [Everything for the girl means the baby]

'What did you say?' (M)

'I said we could have everything.' (G)

'No, we can't.' (M) [Shows he truly doesn’t want the baby and thinks the girl should have an abortion]

'We can have the whole world.' (G) [The girl is still hopeful about the future. She insists the could have the baby and still maintain their relationship]

'No, we can't.' (M) [Guy says it’s either the baby or him]

'We can go everywhere.' (G) [They won’t have to hide their relationship]

'No, we can't. It isn't ours any more.' (M) [The baby isn’t theirs anymore- because of the abortion- or the decision isn’t theirs. Once again this could be an issue of clashing cultures. Perhaps the girl is afraid of facing the consequences in her community of being with a foreign man- a Romeo and Juliet situation.]

'It's ours.' (G) [The baby is theirs, so is the decision.]

'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.' (M) [Once they kill the baby, it will never come back. Or once they take your pride/reputation away you can never get it back.]

'But they haven't taken it away.' (G) [I still have the baby, I still have some pride]

'We'll wait and see.' (M) [I know you’ll have the abortion. I’ve been through this before.]

A Street Car Named Desire

The perfect storm of personality and tragedy come together in A Streetcar Named Desire.

What was the cause of Blanche's downfall? How did she become the was she is? What about Stella? Both of these sisters grew up with privilege in the Old South. They were educated, and learned the stiff manners of aristocracy. Because of this we can assume that they were quite dependent on their parents and their money. Once their parents became ill both sisters had to choose either fight of flight. Blanche was already a bit more domineering than Stella. She was a tough cookie, she fought. On the other side Stella was submissive and suppressive of emotions, she chose flight.

This was a clear turning point for both women. Each had issues with loss and abandonment/rejection.


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I do not believe one character was stronger than the other and each had her own delusions. Stella's delusions are that everything is okay; she is in love with Stanly, being hit is no big deal, and Blanche is that same southern belle sister she left at Belle Reve. Blanche's delusions are of being wanted by men, she is young, and life is as lovely as the clothes she wears. Both sisters refuse reality. Even Stella's act of getting a psychiatric help for Blanche is ironic because she takes this measure as a way of giving into her own delusions of being safe with Stanly.

Stanly's character reminds me of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby. They are very physically strong men with a "hulking" manor. Both command their household and assert their authority despite the delicate nature of the woman around them. Tom is described as "Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward...It was a body capable of enormous leverage-a cruel body. There was a touch of paternal contempt in [his voice], even toward people he liked." Stanly's body was also very dominating. Through the interactions during the poker nights Stanly's contemptuous way of speaking to his friends is clear. His body had leverage not only physically, but he had leverage over women because he was attractive. This leverage was played out through being able to attract/marry/stay with Stella. He also had leverage in the power struggle with Blanche. His body was proven most cruel when he raped Blanche.

The Orestia

Perspectives on Agamemnon

Did Agamemnon deserve to die? According to the Greek system of morality I would say no. He sacrificed his daughter for the cause of the war. While we would say this is despicable (which it is as is any kind of murder) the Greeks may have seen this as a good thing. His action was taken to cause the most good to the most people (utilitarian again) . By killing his daughter he would save many. Either way the killing was a sacrifice to a deity. This alone would be considered an honorable thing. Clytemnestra and Agamemnon were separated for many years. They were no longer "in love" or had any real relationship existing as evidenced by Clytemnestra's affair. Therefore his bringing home another woman was not the ultimate betrayal as one may think. Finally he is tricked into going against the gods by his hateful and cheating wife. He didn't deserve to die.



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Let's take another side. Clytemnestra gave birth to a beloved daughter. Her husband decided to go off to war and in preparation he decides he needs to make a sacrifice. So just as a precaution to ensure the safety of many men that are fighting for a cause she feels very little enthusiasm for Agamemnon kills the beloved daughter as one would sacrifice livestock. She sees her blood on the hands of the man she calls her husband. She is left alone for years. Then when this man, this killer, comes back from war he brings back a woman that is around the age of her dead daughter to be his concubine. In the end he defiles things that were meant only for the gods. He deserved to die.

The Garden Party

The start of this story reminded me of the style of Louisa May Alcott. Katherine Mansfield has such attention to detail that makes the story really come alive. For a short story I did not like that she took so long to get to some bit of action. Call me a minimalist, but it was a whole five pages of the gaiety of exquisite flowers and sandwiches. I suppose this makes for a more tragic contrast to the death of the neighbor man as well as shows the bubble that the rich upper class has made for themselves. The elaborate party was also reminiscent of Gatsby's parties of music and splendor.

Mansfield's characters aside from Laura seem excessively cold and frivolous. They have no shame for their actions. The mother and sister are utilitarian in reasoning to keep the party going. Although this is just a cover for their selfish nature. It is said "ignorance is bliss." However, I believe Mansfield disproves this notion in the end. For after all the dread and resistance to going to the neighbors', first from the mother and sister and then from Laura, she leaves with a feeling of joy... no maybe not quite joy, but shall we say peace?


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Repetition really pulled the piece together. When characters gave identical responses it made them seem to be a faceless representation of their class, a product of their place and time. Some of the most excellent examples of repetition include, "what a beautiful morning,""how very nice the workmen were", "[Laura] don't be so absurd." Also the Laura's early response to Laurie about the hat, "is it?" ties to the ending of Laurie responding to Laura's "isn't life" with "isn't it" could show the shift from the shift from the superficial to something more deep.

I think the most odd part of the story was when Meg started banging on the piano keys and busting out the depressing song:

" This Life is Wee-ary,
A Tear-a Sigh.
A Love that Chan-ges,
This Life is Wee-ary
A Tear-a Sigh
A Love that Chan-ges,
And then...Good-bye!

This Life is Wee-ary,
Hope come to Die.
A Dream-a Wa-kening."

The song just plops out of nowhere, a foreshadow of the death to come. It is interesting the song mentions a dream, relating to the end when the dead man is described as dreaming. (Biblical allusion to Mark 5 " This child is not dead but asleep." ?) The awakening is not of the dead man, but of Laura. (He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum!" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" ) She becomes alive learning that life is marvelous.

The Handmaid's Tale

We had a lovely book talk over The Handmaid's Tale. This book was very interesting. Although at some points I had to take breaks because it got so intense. One thing that was amusing that someone pointed out was how reliant we're becoming on credit cards or "plastic cards" as the book says. Now at school we are being forced to rely more on our i.d. cards not only for the library, but for the bus and the lunch room too (even if paying in cash.) The Handmaid's Tale warns against such reliance and such a separation from the common person and the greater system of how things are done.


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A few themes that were prevalent were isolation v community and emotional needs. It is scary to think of how separated people were in the urban/suburban area that they could not come together to resist the overthrow of the government. Also it was eerie how the government tried to manufacture ways to meet the emotional needs of people. The ceremonies, state religion, and control of communication made it difficult for the people to know what was real and what was going on.

In many ways the book was similar to Animal Farm, 1984, and Anthem. It made it seem more realistic to happen through the flashbacks to how things were before and the detailed description of the transition from our current reality to the dystopia of the book. Atwood used a lot of symbolism especially with color. The red of the Handmaids for fertility, the blue for the Wives for purity, green for Marthas and their jealousy of the other women, black for the Commanders and their evil control over the women, and Econowives multicolored because they had a diverse background.

Oedipus

Fate v. Free Will

The Greeks had a bleak outlook on life. Was Oedipus doomed from the start? Or did he bring about his own destruction? His parents tried to avoid the prophesy by trying to have him killed. Yet through odd circumstances he was spared. Then he tried to avoid the prophesy by leaving who he thought were his parents. Despite good intended decisions the gods did not favor Oedipus. He could not change what was prophesied. What he could change was how he reacted. He was very brash in calling down such an extreme curse upon the man who killed Laius. This was completely unnecessary. He made that curse of his own free will. So in part his fate was up to him.

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“Which creature in the morning goes on four legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening upon three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it be?” Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then walks with a cane in old age.

Why is this significant for Oedipus? Oedipus more than most babies had to crawl on all fours because his feet were swollen as a child. He learns to overcome this and "walks on his own two feet." In the end he blinds himself by gouging out his eyes, so the cane makes sense for two reasons. One is that he needs it to walk on his lame legs and two he needs the "blind man's" cane to see.

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The Story of an Hour

Commentary, picking out irony

In The Story of an Hour Chopin plays with irony. I'm just going to draw some of it out. Let's start with the opening. Chopin establishes that Mrs. Mallard has heart trouble within the first line. Because of this the reader can see that this fact is essential to the plot. The next bit of irony is spelled out in paragraph three, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once..." It is clear Mrs. Mallard does not grieve in the way that is expected of her. On a side note, the next sentence uses the phrase "the grief had spent itself," as if her grief had a definite limit. Given the time period of this story and Chopin's background, this could be a comment on expectations of women. In this story the woman was able to grief in her own way and then move on. Without her husband Mrs. Mallard could now have some individual identity. This is the opposite of the social norm of having identity through husbands and dependence on fathers, husbands, and sons.


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The following few paragraphs describe cheery sensations such as "delicious breath of rain", a singer's song, birds chirping, and patches of blue sky. Generally these are not images of grief. Even more shocking is in paragraph sixteen, "'Free! Body and soul free!' she [Mrs. Mallard] kept whispering." When someone dies there is a sense of being trapped by not having control over the situation. Ironically Mrs. Mallard feels free. Once again this could be a Chopin's comment of the entrapment that women feel in the accepted cult of domesticity.

Irony is most apparent in The Story of an Hour in the conclusion. Such care was taken to giving Mrs. Mallard the news while keeping her heart in good condition. She had come to be hopeful for a future of independence. Then her independence was no longer (because Mr.Mallard was alive), her hope was obliterated, and her heart failed.

The next logical question would be why did Chopin end this way? What is she trying to say? I believe Mrs. Mallard's reaction to Mr. Mallard's return was a way of saying that once Woman can see what their freedom could be they cannot live without it. Chopin articulates for women the American cry "live free or die trying," as New Hampshire's motto states (phrase originating in 1809 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Free_or_Die), and Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death!"

Chopin is very successful in keeping her story succinct and shows thought in the composition of the piece as a whole. The fact that the story takes place over an hour allows for an appropriate amount of detail while still keeping the plot simple enough to maintain attention. Each part is there on purpose: to develop some sense of character, foreshadow, etc. There is very little that could be taken out of the story and still maintain the same effect. This follows E.A. Poe's idea of having totality in a story as he stated in his review of Twice-Told Tales in 1842 Graham's Magazine, "without unity of impression, the deepest effects cannot be brought about"(http://www.eapoe.org/works/criticsm/gm542hn1.htm.)

I Stand Here Ironing

I found this story very touching. We were assigned to read this in Mr. Conrad's English 1h class. While rereading it this time it became a lot more clear the chronology and context. This narrator is a strong woman! She made so many sacrifices for her daughter, for survival. Tillie Olsen writes in a way that shows Emily's transition from thriving baby to sickly child to (almost) blooming young woman. Emily is potential. The narrator is love. They are both products of their time. I would like to explore the themes of love, sacrifice, and transformation in this piece for they are most prominent.

Transformation was very important in this story. The reader sees the process of how Emily came to be the person she is. It is also clear how the mother changes throughout. She learns how to mother through experience, not always getting things right the first time. The mother always does what she thinks is best by finding people to watch Emily while working (probably earning less than men because of the time in history). Emily is forced to learn self sufficiency.

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The mother shows her love for Emily through all the sacrifices she made. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails" (1 Corinthians 13). Mother was not self-seeking. She got a night job to spend more time with Emily, trusted her to be home alone, was not angry when she withheld affection.

It was a bit sad for he mother to have that person (a councilor perhaps) come in because they were concerned for her. At this point Emily found a niche, and the family was doing well. Also the action of ironing brought the narrator back to the room where she told the story, back to the councilor. It fit so well with the mother's character to be doing some chore, another little sacrifice for her children. "A mother's work is never done."

I think Emily needed a little Validation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao