Essay 3--part 1--ending with Alejandra Pizarnik

Audre Lorde, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost"

Notes by Isabella Costa:


First Stanza: This poem is not religious poem, it's actually referring to the spokesperson father. ;...Judgement eyes...":  is a trope for judging and not being its typical lovable self. implying that the spokesperson doesn't have happy relationship with her father. 

"...The great hands' print" : can be a visual, or tactile trope. Visual if actually seeing the father fingerprints after the father coming home from work at night. Tactile: if the father fingerprints is making print s.

"...Half turn...: could symbolize as half entering or involvement in their life emotionally,physically, and psychologically. 

."..Massive and silent as the whole day's wish...": Probably hoping for his unavailability.   

"...Ready to redefine each our shapes...": Possibly mean he wants to changed who we are. 

Second Stanza: "...different woman regular as his one quick glass each evening...": Either coping with the separation by having different woman come over. Or could it be a his frequent on one night stands. 

"...pulls up the grass...": could mean smoking pot or removing the weeds from the ground. 

"...different woman has my mother's face...": Either different women has similar or same expression or the mother has different personalities.

"...and he who time has changeless...": time kills you. 

Third Stanza: ...loving creation...": still loves him but still have his judgement eyes. Loving creation since the religious title even though he was a judgmental religious person. 

"...he lived still judgements..." repetition. In addition, he is still a part of her even after hos deat h. 

 Last Stanza:

"...Lest I go into du st...": It's a Catholic and Christianity trope for de ath.

Uses of metonymy, enjambment, and strophes.

Maarten Vos

Notes on Arctic Terns by Burt Kimmelman

Kimmelman is a self-professed objectivist. In "Arctic Terns" he adheres to a strict form of five-line stanzas (quintains), with every line consisting of exactly eight syllables. This forces him in many instances to end his lines with "hinge words", such as "but", "the", and "of" (see lines 4, 6-9, 19). We have to take into consideration, nevertheless, that this may be a deliberate result, as opposed to a mere consequence of the  poetic form. Enjambment accentuates the first word of the new line, so perhaps Kimmelman wants us to focus on these specific words. "Arctic Terns" is a unique poem, in that it is for the most part a narration of factual information. This style of poetry is embedded in the objectivist doctrine. It raises the question, "Can a poem give factual information?" The answer is: "Why not?" Kimmelman already did, while at the same time he forces the reader into research on the subject. The very first stanza of the poem, for instance, immediately presents a question only a select few of its readers would be able to answer without first researching the Arctic Tern: "Do they do this all in one day?" From that point on, list of questions only  accretes. Perhaps, instead of educating the reader, Kimmelman is merely attempting to arouse interest in the subject. After the second stanza one may ask "Why Africa OR South America?" The two seem so far apart. Then in the third stanza, it is not entirely clear what is meant with "a second season of days" (Lin’s 13), or what is the "rite beyond gravity" in the fourth stanza? Interestingly, in the final stanza he deviates from the objectivist doctrine (no ideas but in things), when he reflects upon the act of flying. If “flying MUST be an act of solitude,” then what is the “unfed longing”?

Notes by Nadeen Gonzales taken from Class Discussion on Inglan Is A Bitch by Linton Kwesi Johnson

The poem is written/spoken in Patois a English based creole language commonly known as the Jamaican native language.

He’s not writing in traditional british language but using his native tongue which shows his identity of Afro- Jamaican.

The poem itself can be a rebellion against the oppression of Afro-Jamaicans.

The speaker says in the third stanza that he has a job as a dishwasher ‘But w’en mi tek a stack,/ mi noh tun clack-watchah.” This can show that he's probably a little slower than what they would like which ultimately gets him fired and replaced with machinery. He speaks about the lack of educational opportunity and how they are being exploited by England and not educated, which is why they get these hard manual labor jobs that nobody else wants. He uses simile such as “ Mi did strang like a mule” to compare his hard work to the work of an animal. He also points out that no matter how hard he works he’s not appreciated. He also mentions how people have stereotypes about black men being lazy. Yet he says he works in abundance and yet he’s fired because they feel as if he's redundant and would be better of with factories and machinery that do most of the work.The audience appears to be primarily Afro-Jamaicans but can be extended to all people of color. The poem is most likely written to show the reality many Jamaicans face when they migrate to England for a better chance and better opportunities but instead become overworked, underpaid and underappreciated. The tone of the poem is frustration and irony. There is a transformation of rhyme scheme variation and repetition. For example the word bitch/bitch and it/it every other stanza. The word bitch when used does not appear to be derogatory like when used towards females but more to describe the toughness and hardness of England. 


THE GYRES by W.B. Yeats 

Identify the rhyme scheme and the meter, and google "Yeats" and "Gyre"

Notes by Sanjida Ridhe

Background info

“The gyres” possible greek root.

title is a Trope and image for the cycle of human life.

He died before hitler had invaded

He had lived an amazing life, lost his viriginity at 30 to a woman named shakespeare, he was in love with a woman who couldn’t love him back and soon he became heartbroken. Yeats was a conservative. He married at 52. When proposing for the first time at 51 he gets rejected and jokingly she says it’s for his own good so he can write better poetry. Finally he meets someone who is more like him who was into summoning spirits and ghosts and the great dawn, and he proposes and soon marries her. His wife speaks in tongue and he writes down everything she says and questions the spirits and the spirits respond with “we have come to give you metaphors for your poetry”. His wife knew Willy had married her during the rebound stage of his heartbreak so she exaggerates her interest in spirits. He soon becomes involved with the government that he becomes a Senate in Ireland. He was in office for 6 years and he’s a mystic who believes in spirits and raising ghosts from the dead.

The gyres are creation and destruction, a cycle.

Content:

8 line stanzas (octaves)

Old rocky face - great mountain. craterousous mountain. He’s speaking to a mountain which is a trope for wisdom. Ancient wisdom, eternity.

Things thought too long - if you think of something for too long, you cant think of it anymore it will be destroyed. Thought is created, destroyed, comes back again

Beauty dies of beauty - beauty doesn’t last. Beauty will die in time thanks to age and time passing by.  You cannot hold onto what you have, there is a constant cycle. The atheistic of beauty kills. It isn’t meant to last.

Worth of worth - temporal succession

Ancient lineaments are blotted out - a lineament is ??? anything old is blotted out by anything new.

Irrational streams of blood - blood as a trope would be life, war, sacrifice, passion. Blood is energy. Forces of history beyond philosophical reason destroys civilization.

It can also be considered that human beings through their irrationality destroy their own civilizations.

Empedocles - a greek philosopher, best known for reconfiguring the ancient system of 4 elements, existed around 5th century BC

Yeats reaches forward and backwards of philosophies and what he believes. Philosophers come and go and change peoples way of thinking constantly.

Hector is dead - Yeats refers back to mythology around the Time of the Trojan War. Hector was a greek hero and you would think there’s unhappiness but there’s happiness in troy. Tragic joy. Yeats had expected the apocalypse to occur but it never happened.

What matter - 3 repetitions. Does anything matter?

Numb nightmare ride on top - whatever bad is occurring does it really matter? Who cares? Civilization gets destroyed and will always get rebuilt.

Blood and mire (dirt, foul things) the sensitive body stain - war fare

A more gracious time has gone - The period where good things were occurring has left and once again does it matter?

Yeats continues to talk about how he used to get upset, and sigh around times where Pharaohs existed in ancient Egypt but it doesn’t matter to him anymore. You can’t go back to those days. He cried and wanted to go back but crying gets him nowhere. 

Out of cavern comes a voice - trope for out of the darkness in the cavern comes light.

Prophets tend to isolate themselves and preach to the masses in caverns.

Yeats is asking to rejoice because everything that falls will be built again.

What matter repeats once more in the final stanza.

Conduct and work grow coarse and course the soul - your soul becomes exhausted and changes. If your spirituality tanks, who cares?

The poem was said in a perspective of a man. He is not including everyone in his poem. Yeats was very sexist during Lovers of horses and of women, shall disinter

Disinter means to dig up. Anyone who dies, a person of rank can be resurrected because the civilization always rebuilds. People die and other people are reborn.

Marble of a broken sepulchre - Jesus. According to Jesus doctrine, Jesus was resurrected.

Betwixt the polecat and the owl - trope for skunk. 2 creatures of darkness. The sun lies in between these 2 creatures.

out of rich, dark nothing disinter. Anything that is destroyed is absence, out of absence comes presence. 

Unfashionable gyre - to fashion is to make, history has a fate. We must acknowledge our Fate.

This poem consists of half rhymes. 

AB AB CC

THE ONE WHO ENDURES by Andree Chedid

Three different views:

In each stanza, Chedid is using images perhaps to write about a god of some sort, especially along the lines of "death carries his grace."

My assumption is that she could talking about the Egyptian god Anubis, who is the god of embalming the dead. The poet alludes to many kinds of death, such as "footsteps of great illness."

Chedid is talking about Jesus; she is not religious but grew up in a religious household and respects the religion. Her tone is worshipful; she is amazed at the person's power. He has the whole world in his hands, but he treats people lovingly and died for us. He also experienced hardships when he was alive. 



TF: All of you see it as a superhuman figure, though Jesus is considered by Christian believers to be both God and man. And indeed, Chedid's "he" seems to have tremendous powers, but I think we want to notice the weirdness of some of the tropes/images, especially lines 3 and 4, to understand the unorthodox quality of this "worship" or "praise," and I find the last line to be significant in a way that might not support conventional Egyptian or Christian religion.



TOWARD A STATE OF SYMBIOSIS by Arlene Ang

The elements of life and death coexist, and blood symbolized throughout the poem is a typical zombie cliche. TF: But is the overall effect of the poem cliched, or does Ang's poetic imagination transcend expected images, tropes, and audience reactions? For example, I find the word "symbiosis" in the title interesting.

A poetic device that is used is oxymoron to highlight the life and death balance, which is what a Zombie symbolizes. 

What makes this poem different from Zombie movies are the mindfulness the zombies in the poem represent. Zombies in the poem are making living/conscious decisions, such as the three forming a triangle and playing a pitcher of blood in the space between them. They do this without the presence of a living being to teach them these things they should naturally forget. The poet also uses heavy amounts of imagery to express even though Zombies are mindless, they are capable of living action and emotion. Another device used is biblical allusion in the end. The poet ends the poem with a reference to Lazarus, one of the disciples Jesus brought back to life after death.

Notes by Antonyio

"Towards" in the title must play a special role in the theme of the poem.

SYMBIOSIS - (Definitions): interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association, typically to the advantage of both.

a mutually beneficial relationship between different people or groups.

- This relates to the poem becuase the Zombies are benefiting from the dead bodies. Cliche Zombie Theme.

-this poem uses heavy imagery with an Eerie mood throughout the entire poem!

·"Lipsticks of tsetse flies" - tsetse flies are very nasty looking flies that suck blood. The idea of Zombies wearing these lies as lipsticks is revolting.

·"form a triangle when they sit with their backs to each other. Place a pitcher of blood within this space and it is refrigeration." - these Zombie have the ability to make conscious decisions. They sit in formation like a ritual or ceremony. They place a pitcher of blood between them and they are so cold it fridgerates it.

·"One zombie cannot hatch an egg no matter how long it nests in the intestines of newly gutted cats" - placing the egg inside the intestines of the dead cat hoping it would hatch. But it never will.

·"The living heart must answer to the undead mouth" - The living heart must be eaten by the Zombies. Another Zombie Cliche.

·"Television Snow shares thw same sound" - Television snow is when the television statics with the absence of a channel or signal. Its a synesthesia because it is seen and shares the same sound as the following line.

·following line: "as a zombie scuffle for bones and half-digested nachos." - Scuffle is an Onomatopoeia. The Zombies eat the dead bodies and the half digested food inside of it.

·"By the dumpster and begin to call forth Lazarus" - the theme od a dumpster is where the dead bodies are and they bring the body back to life because Lazarus is the disciple Jesus brought back to life.


HOWL, Part 1 by Allen Ginsberg

Ginsberg's "Howl" has a sense of shock value that could be distasteful for some readers. His tone is very strong and blunt and obviously raw. The long lines convey different details and topics, beginning with "who," which ties back to the first line of the poem. It tells us who the people were and how they were destroyed. Factors contributing to the demise of these people were drugs, alcohol, sex--the major "vices." The poem was considered controversial due to the topic choice and brutal rawness of his words. To past readers outside his circle of Beat poets and artists (TF), this would be considered extremely shocking; now, to present day readers, there is an appreciation of his realness. Also, since we are in New York, we can visualize this very easily.

Notes by Cynthia:

- Written in free-verse

-"Howl" was the first impression of Ginsberg's new voice

- Ginsberg had poured his frustration into the poem "Howl"

- "Howl" was seemingly prophetic of todays modern society. 

- The poem alludes to the non-conformity of the Eisenhower years

- Ginsberg was inspired by the poets William Blake and Walt Whitman

Monday, Feb. 4, 2019

Sandy McIntosh, "For a Man Who Lost His Wife"

Is there any irony in the word "Lost" in the poem's title?
- His wife is actually dead, in terms of their marriage and in his life. She is lost. 


McIntosh visit--notes by Ashley:

This free-verse poem is autobiographical; it's about McIntosh's poetry teacher in college and grad school whose wife passed away. In strophe 2, the dialogue is between McIntosh and his teacher. He actually saw the horses in Michigan. 

Herding instincts can make a couple stay together even if they don't get along. The metaphors in the last 2 lines make these lines ambiguous; the "whip" can literally refer to what happens to the horses or figuratively to the human couple's experiences.

McIntosh's teacher told him that there are more people who write poems than actually read them.
McIntosh is not interested in producing poems with hidden meanings, but he does want to write poems that challenge him as a writer. He stated that the longer you write and read poems aloud to an audience, the more you will develop a clear sense of an audience.

Some of his poems about family and death in Cemetery Chess: New and Selected Poems can be compared to Audre Lorde's "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

Notes by Shyanon:

-The first strophe illustrates a strange relationship of a couple. Although they both shared the same roof, they had separated their domain by a locked door in between. The man lets the woman take the larger room and centers himself in a small space. It seems that he chose the small room to simply avoid an argument with his wife.

-The second strophe portrays the setting after the death of his wife. Even after her death, he prefers to live in the same small room. He says that he is too lazy to reorganize his stuff and also, he doesn’t want to misplace it.

-The final stanza uses the horses as a trope for the couple. He talks about his experience in Mackinac Island where he had witnessed two horses biting and kicking each other while pulling a wagon. He had asked why the driver was keeping the horses who were at war with each other. The driver answered that although the two horses are released in a pasture they would still stay together, fighting with each other. This suggest that although some relationships are in bad terms, choosing to live completely separately doesn’t solve anything.

Alejandra Pizarnik, "On Silence"

What is the poem's tone? Give an example of an abstract statement, an image, or a trope that conveys this tone?
- The tone of the poem is a combination of somberness and anxiety. "I'm frightened of the grey wolves."

There are various colors in the poem. What function do they serve? 
- Colors create imagery and set a tone. Blue and grey are commonly associated with sadness and fear. They also give context to the commentary she makes on color in poetry.

In the final part, there is a reference to a "you." Does this give an indication of the problems represented in the first 2 parts of the poem, or is the "you" another aspect of the "I," the speaker?
- The "you" is an indication of the speaker represented in the first two parts of the poem. 

Notes by Haniya: ON SILENCE by Alejandra Pizarnik

Pizarnik was born in Argentina but she wasn’t actually an Argentinian. She was 36 when she wrote this poem. She killed herself due to suicidal depression. This is a poem of darkness, somberness and depression. The poem shows a lot of negativity. Pizarnik is trying to show how one goes through depression thinks about. During the second part of the poem, “No one paints in green. Everything is orange. If I am anything, I’m cruelty. Colors streak…colors, bitterness, lucidity…” The colors symbolizes green as in growth or fresh and orange could be something negative because it is close to red. She is using the bitterness and lucidity together. When we think of bitterness, it is a negative, hasty feeling. When we think of lucidity, it is purity and clearness. Maybe she is talking to herself, her feelings put into words of what she is going through. The tone of the poem is emotional, anger, depressed. The tone of the poem shifts into many emotions as we go through it.  

 Notes by Jeremy:

art 1 of the poem starts out light and somber in tone.

Not presenting a narrative.

Orange is represented in a negative way, opposed to is usual cheerful vibe.

Surreal images that reflect the shifting tone of the poem.

Themes of depression, with the tone moving from anger, to sadness respectively representing the shifting of a disturbed mind.

Use of the triatic harmony colors such as Orange, Green, and Purple.

Imagery using color, for example blue and gray being used to portray sadness.

The end of the poem has the speaker commuting suicide,  almost foreshadowing the real life suicide of the author.