I'm Dying...So Here's a Poem About a Flower...

So if memory serves me right--and I think I'd remember if we did--Professor Hague scratched D.H. Lawrence off the schedule to spend more time on James Joyce's "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." I wasn't sure what to write my last blog on but then I decided to look at D.H. Lawrence. Why not? We didn't cover him but the poems are actually interesting. It went back and forth on which poem to write about: "Piano" or "Bavarian Gentians." Boy, are they on different ends of the emotional scale!
"Piano" is an interesting poem. Not too sad and all about longing for the past--a concept we became familiar with previously this semester. It's because of the familiar theme that I considered writing about it but the other poem is equally fascinating.

"Bavarian Gentians"
By D.H. Lawrence

Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime torchlike with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
     gloom,
ribbed and torchlike, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-glower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dio, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off
     light
lead me then, lead me the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
Let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of a flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, in from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the
     lost bride and groom.


So...for some reason...there are tons of versions of this poem online, all of them with several endings! It's really frustrating but I'm just ready to give up and say here's one of the versions. I'll post a link to a youtube reading of the poem at the bottom of this blog. It's really interesting to listen to it.

So, it's a really, really depressing poem, right? It's one of Lawrence's most famous poems about death. It was published posthumously in a collection called Last Poems, published in 1932. D.H. Lawrence (David Herbert Lawrence, b. 1885 d. 1930) wrote this poem after being diagnosed with TB and learning that he would likely die from it soon. I don't particularly want to analyze this poem like we usually do, talking about what kind of poem it is and all that because honestly, the research for this poem has proven somewhat inconsistent. I chose to write about it merely to bring to our attention a dark attitude towards death through such vivid imagery that we've not really been presented with  in this modernism period. It wasn't about conforming to the current style of poetry at the time. Lawrence was facing his mortality and gave it all he had to write this poem and a couple more. He put his heart into it. The imagery in this poem is incredible! It's not very black and white though (maybe black and blue?) but what I mean to say is that it's not a general description of a scene. It's very deep, requiring a lot of thought to recognize the merging of the beauty of a flower with a Greek/Roman mythology in a way that illustrates a depressing outlook on life.

I found this picture when googling Persephone.
One can almost picture Bavarian  Gentians growing at her feet.

The flower--which has a torchlike shape--becomes a mode of transition to a myth famous for it's symbolism for life and death. Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of the Harvest, and was stolen away by Hades or in this case the Roman counterpart, Pluto, to be his wife. After being tricked into eating a pomegranate in the realm of Hades, Persephone is bound to Pluto. She is bound to stay in Hades with him but allowed for a period of 6 months, I believe, to return to the surface and reunite with her mother. This story corroborates the changing of the seasons. Spring symbolizing rebirth. However, it's really about Persephone's constantly having to descend into the darkness that Lawrence is touching on. Like all mortals, it is inevitable that Persephone travel to the Underworld.

Basically, Lawrence is contemplating life and death, imagining a vast darkness to come. It's a complex story that he writes and I'm not sure if I'm up to the task to interpret it word for word. But here's one thing that really drew me in...could he have used the words dark(ness) and blue(ness) a couple more times!?! I wonder if it's that kind of repetitiveness where he just went with the flow and wrote his emotions down, not caring if he was repetitive because that's how he felt, blue (depressed) and consumed by the darkness to come.

photo credit: 
Persephone: http://browse.deviantart.com/?offset=552#/d20ql8f
The Flower: http://www.edwardbach.org/Research/creative_Poetry_gentian.htm 

http://youtu.be/9caKhhq8TIw

Am I a puppet? Who's pulling the strings? Are there strings or is it a game of chance?

So...I'm going to be honest...

And--honestly--why wouldn't I? I wasn't too excited about having to do a blog for one of my classes at first. I had just hoped that I could do the readings, papers and tests and that would be the sum of work for this class. But it has been fun. I think I've really embraced blogging and putting my thoughts out here. There's a lot more freedom and I'm not afraid to put more of myself into these posts rather than just boring people with a cut and dry analysis. I do realize that it probably comes off as a cheap way of reaching my word limit but I hope that it just shows how much I enjoy this assignment.

However, this is the next honest part--and I expect you don't really care, if you're reading this you're either my professor or your a peer who's looking for a blog post to comment on to fill your comment quota--my head is not really into this blog post this week. My laptop broke last weekend and since then my productivity level has been incredibly low. So...let's get this over with--it's the only productive thing I'll be doing this weekend and it's already Sunday.

My default mode is to just look at the poems we read this last week. I tuned in and out various times throughout the week and so it makes sense that the only thing that really stuck with me and caught my attention came at the beginning of the week.

"Hap"

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Does it say something about my work ethic that I always choose shorter poems? Honestly...kind of. I have a really good work ethic and it shines when the pressure is on (ergo...procrastination is key to a good grade--not really words to live by). But maybe it says more that basically I'm not a big poetry person. I'm studying Creative Writing to write fiction not poems. So I suppose I could say that my attention span for poetry is short. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, not all poems are epic poems so there is a great supply of shorter ones. I also think shorter poems are great at getting their point across if they only have two or three stanzas. Every word is important.

"Hap" is a sonnet written by Thomas Hardy in the year 1898. The rhyme scheme is a simple ABAB CDCD EFEFFE. The word "hap" can be taken to be a shorter version for the phrase "that which happen by chance." As we discussed in class, the poem has an "If..then..." premise that is completed with the optional "...but." This type of structure is complimented with three stanzas starting with each word. The title and "if, then, but" structure really drive home the meaning of the poem when reading into it.



A vengeful god pulls the strings of your life?
"Thou suffering thing,/Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,/That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
Dance, Puppet, Dance...SUFFER!

In the first stanza, Hardy or the speaker mentions the idea that possibly there might be some vengeful god (not Christian God but a general deity) who basically has it out for him, controlling his life and causing him the pain and misery he experiences in his life and revels in making him suffer. If there is...see the next stanza...

In the second stanza, he then says that he'll just grin and bear until death--knowing that there is nothing he could do to change and improve his life because a higher power has control over it. How lazy! That's a kind of scapegoat isn't it? "I really wanna write the next Harry Potter but some god has it out for me and won't allow it to be published so I'll just remain a starving artist and never really apply myself. If there wasn't a vengeful god out to make me suffer, it wouldn't have been rejected by the one and only publishing company I sent it to." Obviously, not true in that instance. Everyone knows that getting published is by trial and error.

The third stanza is where Hardy completes the poem by saying that the if...then statement is not the case. Capitalizing words like Casualty, Time and Doomsters--to me, suggests the idea that there are other powers at work, in keeping with the polytheistic idea of a non-specifically-Christian God. He seems to assert that his life has been met with both sorrow and joy and a god is not responsible for the coming and going of these experiences but rather it is by happenstance, chance or "Casualty" which is neutral. "dicing Time" means that it is random and unexpected, further supporting the claim of chance having the power.

Basically, the speaker might almost prefer knowing that there was some powerful force controlling his suffering and events that cause it in his life so that he could be put at "half-ease[ed]" that it was out of his control. Rather instead, the speaker admits the likelihood of this is not very high and instead he is subject to a life of chance that would just as quickly deal him a card of happiness and joy or one of pain.

Does this all make sense or am I rambling? Like I said, I'm not completely focused. I found the poem really interesting though as it examines the idea of fate and higher powers. I'm sure it no doubt reflects many people's ideas of fate vs. free will.

photo credit: http://rogersroadrash.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html

A Romantic Poem from the Victorian Era?

These blog assignments seem to always catch me by surprise. Just when I think all I really need to do this weekend is write a paper for another class of mine, I realize on Friday morning that I have another blog to do. *sigh*

I thought I might do it on Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover” because the name sounds interesting but I think I might save that for the Victorian Era exam essay…

I at least made the decision that I would do it on a Robert Browning poem. I chose “Home-Thought, From Abroad.” It’s short. I didn’t chose it because I was lazy...although I am. I chose it because if it’s short I can insert the whole poem into this blog and talk about the whole thing and not just a piece.

“Home-Thoughts, From Abroad”

Oh, to be in England,

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England - now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows - 

Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge - 

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children's dower,

- Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

It's interesting, this poem. It seems very similar to those we read at the beginning of the year during the Romanticism era in that it speaks of nature. There's not much that I can say to you that can't be discerned by a simple reading of Browning's simple language. It's really all about nature and what England is like in the spring around the months of April and May. The imagery is fantastic about the countryside, singing birds and flowers blooming. Browning clearly is attempting (and succeeding) at making the ordinary ways of spring sound magical (as if he's describing nature through Disney-fogged glasses). In writing this poem he has taken up a role as a homesick traveler longing for home. Biographically, this poem was written in 1845. This strikes close to home as Browning had been away from England in Italy for quite a time.

The form is that of a short lyric with an easily detectable rhyme scheme of couplets with an odd man out in line 7. This odd man out is where there is a stanza break. The rhyme scheme is ABABCCDD then AABCBCDDEEFF. The stanza break also allows for a structure in the story-line. The first stanza reminisces about the joys that are taking place at home but in the second stanza, Browning admits a sense of resignation that England is so far away.

Photo Sources - 

Spring: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/signs_of_spring.html

Snow White: http://blogs.cofc.edu/thelilitheffect/2011/02/16/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-who%E2%80%99s-the-lamest-princess-of-them-all/

Opium in Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone"

SPOILER ALERT for anyone who hasn’t read The Moonstone.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A picture of a yellow diamond, because some of us can only dream...

I’d heard that people had decided to write character analyses but I have instead decided to examine the role of opium in Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone.

Wilkie  Collins’ own opium addiction started at the age of thirty, when he began to suffer from gout. Both his legs and eyes were greatly affected, so he continued to turn to laudanum (opium concoction) to ease the pain, carrying it around in a sliver flask. According to my research, Collins consumed enough opium mixture to kill 12 people. So I suppose he’d be an expert on the effects of opium…

In his detective novel, The Moonstone, opium is the key to the crime. Here’s the general gist of the crime as it was revealed: Rosanna revealed through a letter to Franklin that he must’ve stolen the diamond because of his nightgown being stained with paint. However, Franklin didn’t remember stealing the diamond. Ezra Jennings, an opium addict, suggests that it is possible that he was under the influence of the drug the night he stole the diamond. It is revealed that even Rachel, who loves Franklin and was the new owner of the moonstone, saw him take the diamond. After recreating the theft, it was proven that after quitting his smoking addiction and anxiously talking about the diamond, drugged with opium, Franklin stole the diamond. But he didn’t have it. When he took it, Franklin saw Godfrey and asked him to take it and put it in his father’s safe. Godfrey was the one who’d drugged Franklin’s drink as per Mr. Candy’s request—so that he could prove opium was a sleeping aide. Due to financial trouble, Godfrey took the diamond and pawned it. A year later, he’s killed by the Indians who take the diamond back to India. The End.

Essentially, the opium was meant to put Franklin to sleep but instead led to him to sleepwalk and steal the diamond. I was curious about how Collins used the opium. It almost seemed like a scapegoat to me. How convenient! He was drugged and that’s why the diamond was stolen in the first place, not out of desperation and dishonesty but worry. If the purpose of doping Franklin was to put him to sleep, this must’ve meant that this was the effect opium should’ve had on Franklin. He should’ve slept soundly…unless…is sleepwalking also a side effect of opium? I did a little research.

Raw opium...looks questionable to me...more like earwax.

The purposes behind using opium are to relax, relieve pain and anxiety, decrease alertness, but also impair coordination and cause constipation. The effects of opium last up to four hours and are things such as euphoria, absence of pain and stress, altered mood and mental processes, sleepiness, vomiting, loss of appetite sweating, inability to concentrate, impaired vision and death. Considering this, I reevaluated Franklin’s reaction to the drug. I think it’s possible that while Mr. Candy intended for the opium to put Franklin to sleep, maybe the anxiety Franklin experienced over Rachel’s refusal to lock up the diamond led to his taking it in the night time. Also the only excuse for Franklin’s actual sleepwalking might be a result of the altered mood and mental processes side effect.

But who am I to really judge what a person can or cannot do under the influence of opium? Wilkie Collins’ own addiction to opium is the only redeeming factor of this argument. He knew firsthand what could and could not happen under the influence of opium. He’s more of an expert than I would ever presume to be simply because of some quick Google search.

sources:

http://www.qub.ac.uk/imperial/india/wilkie-background.htm

http://www.opiumaddiction.com/

photo credit: http://famousdiamonds.tripod.com/tiffanyyellowdiamond.html (diamond)

                    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Raw_opium.jpg (opium)

Last Blog about the Romantic Period

So of course, I've waited until one day before the deadline to write this blog. This blog is supposed to be on a subject from the Romantic period which is defined on the timeline between 1780-1830. We've read poems and essays from writers like Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France), William Wordsworth (“Tintern Abbey”), Samuel Coleridge (“Frost at Midnight”), Percy Shelley, and John Keats (“Ode to a Nightingale”). Typically, I should be writing this blog on a poem that we just recently read. Unfortunately—because my blog wasn't due until this Sunday and I’m a professional procrastinator—we've moved on from Romanticism. Any poem I decided to look at is old news.

Because Pocahontas loves the wind, no matter what direction it comes from.

So let’s look at Percy Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.” There were at least three questions on the exam about it, one of them being the passage identification. This poem is obviously an ode with a complex rhyme scheme known as terza rima. A little research further informs me that terza rima (Italian for “third rhyme”) is most familiar with Dante’s The Divine Comedy. This style defines the form of grouping the lines in three-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme of ABA BCB CDC etc. Shelly makes ending the poem easier by adding in a couplet after every four 3-line stanzas. Shelley also borrows from the book of Dante’s tricks in dividing the poem in Cantos which is equivalent to Italian chapters in poetry.

Selecting a passage from a ‘longer’ poem, I decided to use the passage we students were presented on the exam, which is the fifth and last Canto.

“Ode to the West Wind” –Percy Shelley

[ I, II, III, IV… ]

V

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own?

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,

Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

I was able to identify the passage simply because of the mentioning of wind. I knew who the author was with the assistance of another question about the poem. Hopefully, Professor Hague doesn’t read this and decide to make it harder to identify passages in the future. ;-) On the test, I discussed the poem’s purpose as being about the loss of youth and the impact an individual can leave on Earth and while the wind may strip the leaves from trees and bring on winter and death, spring is sure to come again and rejuvenate nature. I kind of took a stab in the dark on the test, going off what was in the passage and what I could remember. Professor Hague commented that it was “more about Shelley asking the west—or autumn—wind to lift him up and make him forget earthly concerns.

I’ve reread the poem. Shelley addresses the West Wind as the force that brings Autumn to town, eventually followed by Winter. This poem is about the seasons; the death and resurrection of nature. The speaker wishes he were part of the cycle.

In Canto V, Shelley asks that the West Wind could turn him into an instrument that should be affected and played by the breeze. In asking that he be turned into an instrument, he compares the lyre to tree branches losing their leaves, indifferent to the loss and setting a tone of melancholy. Shelley wishes for the Wind to inhabit his spirit and spread his ideas. By the end,  the speaker is asking “O Wind,/If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” While simply questioning the sequence of events by which the seasons play out, the speaker contemplates whether after the death and decay, will something new be born in its wake. He hopes so.

Click to view full size

Animation credit: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/pocahontas?before=1344104121 
Photo Credit: http://rankerx.deviantart.com/art/From-Winter-to-Spring-318501517

Percy Shelley's "To Wordsworth"

So, up until two days before this blog was due, I had planned to write it on Percy Shelley’s sonnet “England in 1819.” It was practically finished. But then we were handed our Romanticism essay prompts. One of them, the easiest one I was likely to choose, was explicating one of three sonnets. Sure enough, one was Coleridge’s “To the River Otter,” Keats’ “On the Sonnet,” and Shelley’s “England in 1819.” If I chose to write this blog about Shelley’s sonnet, I would have to write my essay on Keats’. But “England in 1819” was so interesting.

The first time I read it, I wasn't really paying attention. It was late and I had other homework. I also knew that we'd talk about it in class the next day so I wasn't completely dedicated to analyzing every word. But then Professor Hague read the poem aloud and I realized the message, the anger. Wow! What a vocabulary. So I did some research, and was well on my way to being done. But at the last minute, I decided to change my mind and wait to write it for the essay. So what to write about this time…maybe Keats’ sonnet? Maybe next time; I read it. I liked it. So now I’ve wasted 200 words telling you what I was going to do…

In keeping with the Shelley vibe, I explicated the sonnet, “To Wordsworth”

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know

William Wordsworth

That things depart which never may return:

Childhood and youth, friendship, and love’s first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.

Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:

Thou hast like a rock-built refuge stood

Above the blind and battle multitude:

In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

At first, I thought this was a poem to celebrate Wordsworth after he had died. But he wasn’t dead. His career was, sort of; he’d stopped writing poetry and taken a government job. He’d lost his touch, and might as well “cease to be.” Of course, it’s a sonnet with a regular rhyme scheme up until he says multitude. It doesn’t really rhyme with “stood” unless you’re forced to change your pronunciation of it like one sometimes does when trying to rhyme ‘again’ with ‘train’ or ‘gain’ or ‘rain.’

Percy Shelley

As a “Poet of Nature,” Wordsworth’s technique is used against him by Shelley. The poem is dedicated to praising what Wordsworth once was, only to strike it down—subtlety using words like “lone star,” “frail bark,” and “blind and battling” Shelley suggests weakness—and say “You’ve changed, Hollywood” (ßa reference no one is likely to get but still how I see it). He used to write about “childhood and youth, friendship, and love’s first glow,” and yeah, people liked it. But those are “common woes” and nothing special. In short, Shelley’s poem is a backhanded compliment to Wordsworth. When he was a struggling poet, living in poverty, Wordsworth had his dignity and his voice and work thrived on his telling of “truth and liberty” but he’s deserted these values. People like Shelley would grieve this loss but in writing this poem, Shelley shows the public that he’s there to fill the shoes left behind.

Photo Credits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley

http://myopicpoets.blogspot.com/2011/04/william-wordsworth.html

To the River Otter - A Sonnet by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The last time I ever wrote a blog it was to answer discussion questions for a history class in my junior year of high school, and right now as I start to write this blog, I’m ambivalent about what is expected of me and which was easier: a history blog or one for English. Of course, because our grades in this class depend on it, I will give it my best shot. :-) Are smiley faces allowed??

I’ve decided to write the extra credit blog first. After reading several or Samuel Coleridge’s poems for class, which I will most likely write about later, I decided to look for another poem by Coleridge. Also, because it was the weekend, I looked for a short poem.

Another kind of otter...

Sonnet: To the River Otter

Dear native brook! Wild streamlet of the West!

How many various-fated years have passed,

What happy and what mournful hours, since last

I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,

Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep impressed

Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes

I never shut amid the sunny ray,

But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,

Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,

And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,

Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way,

Visions of childhood! Oft have ye beguiled

Lone manhood’s cares, yet waking fondest sighs:

Ah! That once more I were a careless child!

At first when you read the title, you assume it is a sonnet to river otters...wrong! Only after research did I realize it was actually a sonnet about a river named Otter in Blackdown Hills, Somerset, England. Written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1793, this poem is part of a pattern. Around the same time, other poets such as William Lisle Bowles and Thomas Warton wrote similar sonnets such as "To the River Wensbeck," "To the River Itchen" and Warton's "To the River London." As stated before, this is a 14-line sonnet with what, I think, (I may be wrong) is the rhyme scheme: ABBAACDCDCDECE. The theme of this poem is the yearning of lost innocence. That's one way I can think of phrasing it. However, that is not to say that something terrible has happened to the speaker's innocence, rather he has simply grown up. So really, the theme is probably the yearning for the innocence of childhood.

The River Otter - Blackdown Hills, Somerset, England

The sonnet's purpose overall is to observe the view of the river Otter--a brook presumably from Coleridge's childhood--from the perspective of a child. Like "Tintern Abbey," the speaker thinks of the river as a memory revisited after "many various-fasted years have passed." The speaker specifically misses skipping rocks across the water and though he'd never shut his eyes against the sun, he could perfectly imagine the scenes--the colors--that are abundant around the river: "all their tints thy waters rise," "bedded sand that, veined with various dyes." What's interesting is that the only actual color he says is "grey," which is the color one associates with old age and depression, which gives one the idea that to long for youth and innocence means to acknowledge you don't have it. The last four lines are where the speaker returns to the present perspective of an adult. Again, we have that theme of the memory of a beautiful nature scene being a distraction from a "Lone manhood's cares." At the end, the speaker confirms the theme in wishing he "were a careless child!"

I guess that's it. Hope I did alright.

Photo Credits-
http://themetapicture.com/youre-making-me-blush/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:River_Otter_Devon.jpg