Lecture 4: Some General Thoughts About Poetry

sample of Magnetic Poetry

i don't get it

In my face-to-face class, I begin this section having students read one of my favorite poems, "The Windhover," by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Please read it before you move on (it's in the textbook).

I have students take out a piece of paper and anonymously write "your thoughts about poetry--write anything you feel like." You could do this too, or you can just think about it.

Three of the most-common items that appear on these sheets are:

• I don't get it!
• It's just random emotions.
• I don't like it.

Some of you may (maybe not) have finished "The Windhover" and agreed with that first statement--"I don't get it!" It is a challenging poem. That may have triggered the third statement as well--"I don't like it." Poetry seems hard, certainly harder to "get" than prose. Sometimes the words themselves are unusual (if you were taking "The Windhover" seriously, you may have had to look up several words), but there are other techniques that seem alien to us; it just does not (usually) read like a story or a newspaper article. Some of these unfamiliar or unnatural (seeming) techniques can be off-putting to some readers, but, really, not all poetry is hard. Try this brief poem by Ogden Nash (who actually made money as a poet):

"Fleas"

Adam
Had'em

It's short and funny, but is it really a poem? It rhymes, it has a regular rhythm, it gets its point across in a compressed form; sure it's a poem. Is it a great poem? I shall leave that decision up to you. It is certainly not hard to understand.

what is poetry?

Poets and scholars do not agree on a single definition. Poetry is a lot of things. My favorite defintion is from an essayist named Jeremy Bentham (who happened not to like poetry); he wrote, "Poetry is when the lines do not reach the edge of the page." That defintion is almost always true, and this unusual typography (placement of words/lines on the page) allows us to recognize poetry from a distance, even if we are not close enough to read the words.

Most of you probably recognize poetry, and most of you probably love(d) poetry (past and present tenses). When you were a child, you may have sung skipping rhymes ("Blue bells / Cockle shells") or read nursery rhymes ("Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker man / Bake me a cake as fast as you can"). Many loved books like Goodnight Moon and Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends. The question is not did you like poetry, but what happened? Possibly nothing. I suspect most of you still love poetry; you even choose to memorize it when you sing along to your favorite songs on your MP3 players or smart phones.

Poetry is not just one thing. You may not have enjoyed the poetry trotted out in your English classes, things about irrelevant-seeming wheelbarrows and people standing at forking paths in the woods and ravens who somehow keep repeating, "Nevermore." You probably did enjoy the lyrics (poetry) of "Cheerleader" or "Take me to Church."

My goal is not to make you like all poetry. I don't like all poetry. Who does? But you do embrace some poetry as part of your past and part of your present, so let's see if we can figure out how poets choose to make sense in a different way from prose.

what about the second statement?

"It's just random emotions." Well, no. It isn't.

First, most poetry is not at all random. Some is (found poetry, for example.); however, even the magnetic poem at the top of the page shows the writer made quite a few choices. Poets work hard, often taking as long writing a short poem as a story writer takes to polish a longer story. There are lots of decisions to make.

Second, not all poetry is emotional. Look again at "Fleas" above. It is funny/intellectual, not emotional. Conversely, many prose works are emotional.

"l(a"

As I mentioned, poets use different techniques the way painters use different tools and color palettes (yes, many students agree they don't "get" art either, but I will let the other side of the campus help you with that language).

There is a very short, and very odd, poem by e e cummings that has appeared in nearly every English 102 anthology I have used or read (it is in your textbook as well). It is untitled, and when a poem is untitled, the first line of the poem is used to designate the name of the poem. This one is called "l(a" and it is a great place to start.

l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness

I know, some of you are thinking, "WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? THAT'S NO POEM!"

cummings (no cap) was a very playful poet. He loved manipulating typography (word/line placement) and punctuation to add meaning to his works, and the results are rarely as nutty-looking as this. But this poem took a lot of thought, and if we look at it closely, we can see that just seventeen characters can explode out into a lot of meaning.

I was not born in Japan, so I am not used to reading top to bottom (though East-Asian writing is also often situated horizontally, yokugaki in Japanese, for instance. So my first inclination is to make this look familiar to me. I will re-situate it so that is moves left-to-right horizontally:

l(a le af fa ll s)one l iness

Hm...

The breaks between groups of characters are odd, but I can make out some words here if I try. Inside the parentheses, I see, "a leaf falls"; outside the parentheses, if I move the "l" over, I see "loneliness."

WAIT JUST A MINUTE! How can you just move the "l" over? That seems random. But it isn't, and here is where that grammer that was taught back in elementary school finally comes into play. A parenthetical expression (expression inside parentheses; it could also be set off by commas) interrupts a larger phrase or clause (don't worry; an example follows, but THIS is a parenthetical expression). It is not necessary to the larger construction, but it does add what I like to call "bonus information." Here is a simple example:

John (who happens to be extremely handsome) is my teacher.

The root of that sentence is, simply, "John is my teacher." The stuff inside the parentheses does not change that. It only adds bonus description, so it can be lifted out, and what is to the left and right of this expression comes together to create the main idea.

That's exactly what cummings has managed, and it was certainly not accidental. "A leaf falls" is really an example contained within the larger idea of "loneliness." Does it make sense? Does a falling leaf really have anything to do with loneliness? When a leaf falls, it is separated from its leaf "family" in the tree, sort of like a young man or woman leaving home to go off to college. It's kind of sad. Making this comparison even sadder, when a leaf falls, it is no longer going to recieve nutrients from the tree; the student is on his/her own, which is hard, but the leaf has it even worse; it is, in effect, dead or dying :(

Who really needs poems about leaves and loneliness? Well, arguably, who needs much of anything? People like to try differnt forms of communication. The poet (like the painter) is taking an abstraction--loneliness. This is a feeling, so it cannot be fully expressed in words (or paint). The best that can be done is to make the un-known make sense through the known. The alien that everyone seems to talk about comes to earth and asks, "What is this thing you humans call 'loneliness'?" What could we say? "Well, when you are flying in formation with your space armada, you have communication and support, but when you have to fly a solo mission, you have only yourself to rely on, and that may cause un-ease." We use comparison to explain abstractions.

Fine, but why couldn't Cummings (with a capital C) not just have written easy-to-understand prose: "Loneliness is like a leaf falling" instead of the crazy column of letters? It seems like poets are trying to 1) hide meaning, 2) confuse us.

Or perhaps that crazy placement of characters on the page adds to the meaning of the poem, reinforces the main idea. If we look even more closely at the poem, other things emerge. Most "lines" are two characters long. The first is not (it contains the left parenthesis and two letters), and near the end there is a line with three letters, a line with one letter, a line with five letters. Do those last three lines add to the poem?

one - a number, singular, alone; Three Dog Night sang "One is the loneliest number..."
l - looks like the number 1; in fact, in the days of typrwriters, lower-case l was used instead of 1
iness - the state of being "i" (myself) alone

"le" and "la" are also singular pronouns in romance languages (French, Spanish).

Reading from top to bottom makes our eye follow the pattern the leaf falls.

Even the whole poem looks a bit like a big number 1 (that may be pushing it).

this is fantastic, or is it frightening?

It's proably a little bit of both. cummings managed to use just seventeen characters and reinforce his idea over and over and over; he compressed MAXIMUM MEANING into those very few characters. None of it was random or accidental, and it likely took him a very long time to compose these seventeen characters.

To make sense of it I spent nearly the time/space I devoted to analyzing the short story "A&P." But I was able to make sense of it. Two things were required:

1. Poetry needs to be looked at very closely, bit by bit. Trying to read a full poem and then immediately announcing, "This means XYZ" is not going to work. It requires thought, note-taking, picking apart lines and phrases and even words. You need to read that closely.

2. It often takes as long to read, analyze, explain a short poem as it takes to read, analyze, explain a short story. That does not mean you will always enjoy spending all of that time and effort, but it will allow you to understand how some of this works.

Does that guarantee you will all be able to make sense of all poetry at the end of this section? No. Like most complex things, it takes time and practice to hone your analytical skills. If you are pretty good at _________ (fill in the blank with hockey, guitar, lacrosse, cooking, weaving, whatever), remember what it was like when you first skated (your ankles throbbed) or first picked out notes on a Stratocaster (your fingers bled), and so on.

Lecture 4b: Reading Differently i

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," Frost

reading closely (revisited)

The last lecture emphasiszed that the way to make sense of a poem (if at all) first requires close reading. There are very easy poems that do not require much attention (the works of Dr. Seuss come to mind--they are delightful, but they are seldom challenging or ambiguous).

Some poems really seem straightforward, but when they are looked at closely, they offer up more to the reader.

I remember being singled out (not for the first time) in high school for my stupid interpretation of a Robert Frost poem, "The Road Not Taken." The English teacher was exasperated at my silly refusal to see what was obvious: this is a poem about someone (anyone) making a significant life choice (any significant life choice) that impacted that life hugely. The choice was the rebel/outsider/bohemian's choice; here was Frost, well before the Sumemr of Love (you can look it up), preaching anti-establishment action. Keep in mind I was in high school just around the Summer of Love, so my hippie teachers were enforcing their own brand of "establishment." Crazy :)

Admittedly, I was a bit of a wise guy, and I was a physics major; this poetry stuff was not my thing, but I still thought the teacher had got it wrong; he was not reading closely enough. Even then I knew that looking closely at things (in physics, math, art, whatever) was necessary to fully understand them.

Here is where the teacher's and my paths "diverged":

TEACHER: Look at the ending of the poem: "two roads diverged in the wood, and I -- / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference (ll 18-20).

He had a pretty good case. Even to a physics major, this was obvious/easy symbolism. The narrator reached a forking path and had to make a choice. He picked the less-traveled one (the one fewer people walked on, the non-mainstream one), and he later announces that his choice had a profound effect on him ("has made all the difference"). Had his dad told him to be an accountant and he, instead, went off to try to become a rock star?

ME: But you are not looking at the whole poem. Early on the speaker looked at his choices and decided to take one that he claims had "perhaps the better claim / Because it was grassy and wanted wear" (ll 7-8). The fact that there was more grass on it meant it was not the path most-often walked on, not the path most-often chosen. However, look at the next two lines: "Though as for that, the passing there / Had worn them really about the same" (ll 9-10). He just contradicted himself. He imagines they are completely different paths, but he then admits they are just "about the same." His choice was not between becoming an accountant and a rock star; it was between becoming an accountant and a banker or insurance salesman.

I stand by my "stupid" interpretation. You can't just ignore lines, especially in such a short poem. COULD a reader take away the meaning my teacher said was the right interpretation? Sure. But is that the only reasonable interpretation? Not if you consider the whole poem.

OK, so let's just imagine Teen-Corbally was right; after all, the lines do say what they say. The paths/choice were/was not all that different. How does the ending make sense?

And that is a terrific question. I asked you to look at all the lines, and you are forcing me to look at all the lines. Touche! My teacher asked me the same question, by the way.

ME: That makes sense if you look at these two lines--"I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence" (ll 16-17). He has ended up "somewhere," and he is much older ("ages and ages hence"). He is also sighing as he thinks back to that moment in the woods. There is almost a sense of a life that was not lived to the fullest, that was not exciting (*sigh*). Who would he be telling this too? His dead friends? His few remaining living friends? How about a grandson on a front porch (I made that part up, but that's how I visualize it). Why would an old geezer be re-telling tales of his life to a grandson and saying he made wild and crazy choices that had a profound effect when he really did not make wild and crazy choices? Old people sometimes look back, find their lives lacking, try to rationalize, justify, exaggerate. Young people do the same, but they do not fit the "ages and ages" hence phrase.

So we disagreed.

He still thought I was wrong (and a wise guy), but he acknowledged I backed up my interpretation with detailed examples. It required looking at the poem very closely. Looking at phrases, not huge chunks. Looking at patterns and contradictions and trying to apply them to the real world.

Read closely!

comparing and contrasting

Comparing and contrasting not only gives you more material to write about, but it often dictates how you will focus your analysis (your paper's thesis) and what parts of the work you will look at or not. For Paper 2 you will be comparing/contrasting three poems. Here we are going to look at the poem "Cinderella" and the folk tale on which it was based--"Aschenpeuttal" (the Brothers Grimm version of "Cinderella").

BE SURE YOU READ BOTH (they are on Etudes under Resources > Additional Readings). DO NOT think of the syrupy Disney version (based on Charles Perrault's "Cinderella") as you go through this part of the lecture. It is the wrong version; it will not make sense. Also, be sure you look up any words/phrases/references you do not know (by the way "blackjacks" is not a reference to a card game here).

Have you read both? Have you looked things up?

Sexton's modern poem is a re-telling of the classic tale collected by the Brother's Grimm. She retains the basic plot (absent father, wicked stepmother, prince inviting her to the ball, the gold, not glass, slipper, etc.), the supernatural element (the dead mother who looks after her from heaven and who calls on the birds, who do not sing, to pick up the lentils), and all of the violence (the partially-amputated feet and the eyes being pecked out by birds).

However, Sexton's poem has many differences as well. First, the language is modern and wise-cracky (satirical). She uses phrases like "gussying up" (l 45) and she keeps reminding the reader that they already know "that story" (ll 5, 10, 21, 109), and some of the references are odd and modern, such as the two stepsisters having "hearts like blackjacks" (l 29) and the ball being "a marriage market" (l 42). One reason is she is writing to a more-modern audience, and she has updated the language to meet the needs of current readers. There are other differences, though.

The first four stanzas of the poem are not in the original story at all. The examples of someone winning a lottery and making a fortune, the servant who marries a wealthy husband, the investor who is lucky enough to make a fortune, and the accident victim who calls up Larry H. Parker and collects millions of dollars in damages--these are all modern-day Cinderella stories, rags-to-riches stories. Other modern examples are seen in movies such as Pretty Woman.

All of these examples are real. Some people actually do make millions of dollars when they buy the winning Power Ball ticket, and their lives often change dramatically. This seems to reinforce the happily-ever-after ending often associated with various Cinderella stories, such as "Aschenpeuttel," where the poor girl is taken from her slavery and is made the beloved princess of the land, married to a dashing prince.

The examples, though, all happen fairly rarely. Millions play Lotto, but few win. Very few housekeepers or nannies actually marry their ultra-rich employers. Some invest and make fortunes, but the bursting of the real estate bubble and the tech stock crashes saw millions losing homes and life-savings. As often as not vicitms of extreme accidents are saddled with impossible bills, or they die. These added stanzas suggest that rags-to-riches is possible, but it is not likely.

Sexton also adds on a long section at the end of the poem. The narrator does not acknowledge the two are happy; she suggests it is just a rumor--they "lived, they say, happily ever after" (l 101). The manner in which they lived is described with an impossible list:

like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins. (ll 102-108)

Houses have dust; babies produce dirty diapers; real people sometimes disagree and sometimes repeat themselves; real peoples' bodies change; people do not always smile (nor do they live for eternity). In the end they are being compared to ideal characters in a children's story, and that is what they are--characters in a story, not real.

Certainly readers know that "Cinderella" (in its various forms) is a tale, not reality. However, Sexton is attempting to make readers see, that living a life expecting to win the lottery or expecting a handsome man (or woman) to come along and "save" them is unrealistic. Most people's problems do not magically go away. They need to work on them; they need to save themselves.

a final admission: you may have noticed...

My comparison/contrast here is not quite a full comparison/contrast. Yes, I do mention similarities to the story, but a fully-developed paper would also have drawn some documented/quoted examples from the story. Instead, I gave a very quick comparison so that I could get the the part of the analysis I thought the class would learn most from. I can only type so much, and you will only read/absorb so much. There is plenty here to give you the idea :)

Copyright © John Corbally