The idea of robot poetry.

We can all agree that technology is improving at a rapid pace. What does this mean for the arts, mainly poetry(since we are studying it)? Well let us take a look at some other forms of art first to get an idea. Not too long ago there was something created call "Emi". This was a program written by David Cope to imitate music styles and create it's own adaption. Now he's working on something he's calling "Emily Howell", and this is said to create it's own original, modern music. One could say, "Sure that's possible, music is a system of rules anyways,..." Well,... I will post 2 links below that will show the difference between program constructed music and an actual piece. One is a Bach Invention, and the other is an imitation of a Bach invention. I was a piano student for about 6 years and I couldn't tell the difference between the two, and I even studied Bach Inventions for a time. I'd like to think a more experienced pianist would only know the difference because there is a finite number of Bach inventions, and if they never heard it before, it's likely to be the fake. But I don't really want to go any further into that. The real issue is if there is computer generated poetry, is this to be considered art or even poetry for that matter? I certainly think so, I mean I don't think poetry has to be created from human hands to be significant. There are many cases when people see sunsets, they consider that to be beautiful, and even art, we didn't create that. Poets choose their words for their own purposes, much like how one could think of as a set of rules. On this premise, I extend this out to programs. Programs will create their poetry, based on their own set of rules, or their own set of purposes. If you don't think machines can create such a thing, I could make a relation to such things as God. God created mankind and we are creating something that we consider as art, while God "programmed" us. Why in this case would we consider what we create poetry and not what the programs create poetry. Also, another way one could look at it is that the person who wrote the program is still the poet, and he is just using the program as the medium as to which to write his poetry. My thoughts on this could could go on, but I just wanted to put this idea out there and see how's it taken from outside the computer science department. Oh, I didn't mention that my initial search of poetry writing robots are coming up as nil, but so did my search of music creating robots. I only found this because we happened to discuss this in my ethics class recently, and this was a pretty hot topic.

Inventions

EMI -  http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ear/ugs302/invention.mp3

BACH - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjbqCDdj75g&feature=related

Rags

EMI -  http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ear/ugs302/joplin.mp3

JOPLIN

Mazurkas

EMI - http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ear/ugs302/joplin.mp3

CHOPIN - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8PJsjO1u5w

Some other links to check out if you're interested in the music stuff:
Emily Howell - http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-8507/

The Altar

After discussing the poem, The Altar, in class, I felt the urge to continue to look at it and make a blog post on it. As a Christian, I can relate to the tensions Herbert feels between being unworthy of God, while at the same time being sanctified and atoned by Him. We are fallen and all we can offer to Him is something that is broken. However, as Herbert notes, while we may only rear a broken altar cemented with tears, we have still been sanctified by the power of God. As the Bible says, “For it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:8)

At this point in the poem, we realize that close reading is not enough in allowing us to fully understand and grasp the true meaning and effect of this poem. The importance of looking at poetry in its historical context is apparent when discussing The Altar. By realizing that Herbert wrote the poem in 16^th and 17^th century during the Protestant Reformation, the reader can better appreciate and understand why this poem is so important. In using the altar as a metaphor for the human heart, Herbert illuminates the essence of poetry. By not changing the end line to “sanctifie this HEART to be thine,” Herbert keeps the poem from becoming just another paragraph or string of sentences. The poem begins and ends with the metaphor of the altar. While at first it was broken and worthless, in the end it has been sanctified and made whole by the work of the Lord.

Likewise, his use of the rhyme scheme reflects his efforts to present something of value and worth before God. Knowing God has sanctified us allows us to try and live a life worthy of Him, and Herbert reflects this belief in the use of his rhyme scheme in the poem. In the same way, Herbert uses the form of the poem to reveal the separation between God and man and how the altar serves to connect the distance. Rejecting the ideas of the Catholic Church of the time, Herbert claims that the connection between the two is done not out of human will or effort but instead through the sanctifying power of the Lord.

Thoughts on THE FIGURE OF THE YOUTH AS VIRILE POET by Wallace Stevens

As readers of poetry, we often struggle with the seemingly unanswerable question: What is poetry.

It's the sort of question that stops us dead in our tracks. We may think we know the answer, then inevitably someone asks it. That's when you realize that you have no idea.

The good thing is that no one really does.

In Wallace Steven's essay The Figure of the Youth as the Virile Poet, Stevens addresses this question, among other notions and misconceptions surrounding poetry.

A bulk of the essay deals with the differentiation between poetry and philosophy. From one perspective, they seem to be the same. Both work towards a higher reality. They are some dreamt up idea expressed in a way as to draw others to the same conclusion. Philosophy is truth over reason. Poetry is the same, but goes a step further.

Philosophy satisfies reason or imagination. It can rarely combine the two. Poetry however epitomizes both. It is a creative expression of truth. Good poetry satisfies both reason and imagination.

Another interesting topic brought up in the essay is the egocentric nature of poetry. The poet is ever present in his or her work. This is, in Steven's opinion, what makes poetry timeless. Philosophy changes and evolves with the poet. It is expanded upon, proven wrong, proven correct, fine tuned and manipulated until new philosophy becomes old philosophy and even newer versions take hold. Poetry, however, is the perfect expression of the poet's reality. It can't get any better. At least it can't be expanded upon. It simply is what it is in that moment, and it's permanence depends not on its perfection but on its level of connectivity. Stevens addresses this topic again when explaining the downsides of metaphysical poetry. The extremely abstract genre does not really allow for connectivity, and the poet is less connected. If the connection is present, it is intangible and thus subconsciously frustrating for the reader. In many cases, these are the poems that do not stay. The connection is not there. If engagement with the imagination is the aim of a poem, there still must be some level of connectivity, which is a fact often forgotten by metaphysic poets.

Steven's point in this essay is not to define poetry. In fact he argues that this is a fruitless ambition. What can, however, be defined is what makes a poem successful.

Home Burial

Home Burial expresses a grieving couple’s inability to communicate. The pair are torn apart not only by the death of their son, but also, by their different coping mechanisms. In the first two stanzas and into the third, the man tries to open communication with his wife/girlfriend regarding what she sees from the “bottom of the stairs,” but she does not want to talk about the death of their son in that context. It seems that just talking about the grave and its location is too matter of fact; she either wants to grieve alone or talk about her feelings toward the death of her son. After her husband/boyfriend tries to talk about their child and his grave, she feels suffocated in her home and is incline to leave. He then asks her not to go, but to talk to him about how she is feeling, but she does not believe that he knows how to talk to her about the child’s death, and thus, she does not give him the chance to try and understand. There is a barrier of conversation because the couple is grieving separately and in different ways. The woman is closed off to communication, but the husband just doesn’t seem to know what the right thing to say is. He says, “I do think, though, you overdo it a little.” This seems to be the absolute worst thing that he could say; this leads the reader to believe that his attachment to the child must have been much different than that of his wife’s, or in the time of loss, his way of coping is to try and move on and not dwell in the loss. The man goes on to say, “G-d, what a woman!” This again, is not remotely close to what would be appropriate to say. Neither the man nor the woman can put themselves in the other person’s shoes to understand the appropriate words to say. The phrase, “leap and leap in the air,/Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly” aptly explains the couple’s differing interpretations regarding the loss of their child. The woman interprets her husbands digging as something that was almost light-hearted, when really, the “leaping” of the dirt is out of his control. The repetition in the above lines seems to almost add agony, as if the digging of the grave will never end and thus the “wound” will always be open and the couple’s despair will never be quelled. The lightness of those two stanzas is ironic and almost inappropriate given the seriousness of Home Burial. However, I do think that it helps the reader to see the difference of interpretation between the man and the woman; it seems that the man can still find lightheartedness in his dealings, whereas the woman is continually pushed down by the death of her son (and understandably so). And then, he uses the fence metaphor; it seems that the man does not mean to be insensitive but his way of expressing his feelings is much different than the woman’s, and she is not in the right state of mind to understand what he is trying to communicate. In the final stanzas, it is clear that the man cares about his wife and wants to help her, but he is unsure how and all she wants to do is escape the pain of her home and the reminder of her dead son.

such small hands

e.e. cummings, "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond"

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
 
 any experience,your eyes have their silence:
 
 in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
 
 or which i cannot touch because they are too near
 

 
your slightest look easily will unclose me
 
 though i have closed myself as fingers,
 
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens 
 
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose  
 

 
or if your wish be to close me, i and
 
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, 
 
as when the heart of this flower imagines 
 
the snow carefully everywhere descending;  
 

 
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals 
 
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture 
 
compels me with the color of its countries, 
 
rendering death and forever with each breathing  
 

 
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
 
 and opens;only something in me understands 
 
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) 
 
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Such Small Hands

Mending Wall

Discussion today about Mending Wall had me thinking about a lot of possibilities and connections that the wall could mean. After reading "Metaphor and the Authenticating Act of Memory," I came across a line that said, "every metaphor is a riddle." In Frost's poem, it is the wall that is the riddle. We have already established that it is separating the neighbors, but it is doing this in a multiplicity of layers: literally, it separates them. Philosophically, it separates them. It is a segregation between two different intellectual capacities: one that can live with whatever comes his way, the other afraid to step outside the boundaries that "the way things OUGHT to be" have laid out for him. While the speaker is listening to his inherent and natural questioning of the wall's purpose, the neighbor is stubborn, ignorant, unwilling to undergo CHANGE.

While we were talking, I kept thinking of historical references: Why did people in the dark ages allow themselves to be ruled by a small group of elite people, fat with wealth and greed. How did they come out of the dark ages? By GRASPING change, not resisting it. By embracing a broken down wall and allowing the "gaps" to be explored as windows of opportunities to a new outlook on life. Positive events happened because of this change: the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, America's independence from England, and countless other things aside from European history. One can view the wall as the element of tradition, with it's firm foundation built "stone on a stone." But that "SOMETHING," whether it's a stream of unconsciousness, intuition, God's will, or an inexplainable force of nature, invites the speaker's curiosity to question....why?

"I could say "Elves" to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself." One interpretation of this could be that the speaker is suffering to see his neighbor not question the wall's existence, or (LACK of existence when it continues to fall.) He yearns for his neighbor to realize that "Elves" aren't "exactly" the explanation. It could be a martian or deranged gnome for that matter! The speaker is witnessing someone who is unable to think for himself and make his own decisions because he is haunted by "his father's saying." Even though the neighbor is not physically suffering, he may symbolically succumb to the oppression of the norm. And the norm may not always be the right path for everybody. People blindly follow the norms without realizing it, and won't realize they know something until somebody spoon-feeds it to them. The exciting part of a human's mental development is being able to engage in mystery of the unknown. How is it mystery if somebody tells you it's "elves?" There may not always be an answer for everything even though that is what we are constantly searching for.

Thoughts on Mending Wall

One of the first things I noticed when studying this poem was the fact that the things that break the wall down are all natural occurrences.

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun.

Nature is competing with the walls existence and essentially tearing it down. By repairing the wall year after year, the narrator is acknowledging that they are fighting with nature, which he clearly sees as fruitless. This fits into the viewpoint that the neighbor is existing in denial of nature - in denial of man’s innate desire for community, in denial of the temporary nature of life on earth, and consequently even in denial of death itself.

In a more concrete sense, even earthly happenings fight the existence of the wall - hunters who have no time to pass slowly through the barriers erected by the neighbors and who tear them apart without a thought, leaving them to be mended in the Spring.

Whatever the cause, the wall is constantly being broken down and repaired, although it is not necessary. Nothing is being walled in or walled out. There aren’t grazing animals or quickly expanding crops.

Another thing that I found interesting looking over the poem was that although the neighbors (or at least one of them) seem intent on living in segregation, they come together to build the wall. The wall is theirs; Neither is absolute owner. This is why the pronoun ‘we’ is constantly used in the poem. It seems as if this idea of the communal wall contradicts the entire context of the poem. It creates that tension that makes a work worth its while.

John Keats: Ode to Grecian Urn and Bright Star

John Keats: Ode to Grecian Urn and Bright Star

There is so much to say about John Keats and not near the time to say it. I actually had a lot of fun, YES fun, memorizing the section from Ode to the Grecian Urn. I wished I could have presented out loud, but I struggled to get the last 2 lines perfect. As we know, to mess up a word is messing up a whole lot more. If each word is chosen with care, to mess up a word is to be irresponsible with someone else’s hard work, effort, and care. I found the actual poem beautiful, and I don’t know the full details of why. I greatly appreciate the romanticism of it and the pace that the romanticism offers. The formalities Keats follows remind me of the formalities that one must follow to court a lady(especially from the time when Keats was alive). As we saw in Bright Star, John Keats was a hopeless romantic and fell for a romantic as well. The two together brought up great points for love and poetry in their conversations. So many quotes from this movie will forever stay with me. For example: when she looks completely disheveled and asks her mother, “Is this love?” I found this so striking, beautiful, and raw. I was jealous as a filmmaker how wonderfully they captured and conveyed the intensity of the love and loss so well. Every second in that scene was its own poem and its own photograph to me. Another amazing quote and metaphor from the film, was the amazing incite into poetry by viewing it as a swim in a lake. One does not just dive into the lake to immediately swim to the side and get out. One swims in the lake and “luxuriates” in the lake. This is something that I continually need to make myself aware of and practice at. I am so used to trying to plan my day out to the minute, and I never allow myself to luxuriate in much of anything, but when planning time for this class I definitely need to allow more time to indulge in the poems, perhaps their slow pace or their complexities that I do not immediately understand.

--Kelly J.

HTRAP: Ch. 2

Chapter 2: What is Poetry?

“A poem is a fictional, verbally inventive moral statement in which it is the author, rather than the printer or word processor, who decides where the lines should end.” Poetry is not defined by the use of rhyme or meter. I have previously been an ignorant reader of poetry and did not really understand what made it a poem if it did not rhyme. Now I am beginning to realize what makes a poem a poem, is the intension behind each piece of wording and form. Eagleton seems to break poetry into prose and poetry, as if to say that prose are not poetry, though he already said they were? This was confusing to me. For a long time I did not consider prose poetry. I would pretend they were and call them poetry, but I never really understood what made them poems. I am slowly beginning to shift my understanding and I recognize the intensions behind poetry better. Furthermore, I was both confused and intrigued by Eagleton’s comments on poetry’s unique stance on morality through a fictional sense.

--Kelly J.

The quiz on this chapter was interesting. I admit I didn’t feel like I answered confidently to the questions, which was good because it encouraged me to reread the chapter.

Though even after I read it, I still got hung up on the poem, “This is Just to Say,” by William Carlos Williams. I have trouble understanding why he wrote it. What it means? Why he would put such care into words choice only to say nothing important.

HTRAP: CH 5

This chapter addressed the concern that criticism is merely subjective. I found this particularly helpful, because I have a tendency to think of criticism in this light. When looking into the tone or mood of a poem, there are so many different interpretations with one could walk away. It is interesting how only a few ways to look into a poem can be formalized. Though this chapter came down to one sentence in the mark that it left on me. “we may note to begin with that being able to disagree over an issue does not necessarily imply pure subjectivism.” People can dispute over whether someone is ‘waving or drowning,’ this is not subjective though just because there is not a single universal call for the person that is drowning to follow. That is the analogy that Eagleton used and it really helped put things into perspective. Another point, I have not given much though until not, is that the title is part of the poem!! Also, it was helpful how Eagleton went through how and why different people perceive different tones or moods within the same poem. Even after reading this chapter I still think it is a challenge to understand the intensity and pace except through punctuation. I guess after reading this chapter, I really would try to look closer at the line breaks in addition to punctuation Furthermore it is helpful to consider such use of literary techniques like enjambment for pace. Though my favorite part of this book so far was reading e. e. cummings’s poem and discussing Punctuation! I love how much punctuation can do for a poem, or how much the lack of punctuation can offer to a poem! Sometimes punctuation can clarify pace, emotion, etc. Also the lack of punctuation could add a sense of delicateness and gentleness to the tone, such as in e.e. cummings’s piece. Overall Chapter 5, has been my favorite chapter in HTRAP, and one that I plan to reference throughout the rest of the semester and…perhaps life.

Thoughts on One Art

I was particularly interested when Kris mentioned the idea of Christian heavenly bodies, and more importantly, how we are not a heavenly body. When I read this poem in relation to this, I can not help but think of how this could be related to the idea of Buddhism. I read about Siddhartha Gautama, who people refer to as the father of Buddhism, and the way this poem is portrayed, I feel it could be a reflection to the trails and tribulations of one trying to reach enlightenment. The idea behind enlightenment is to cut off all wordly ties, and in the poem, this could be the art of forgetting. To go on this, a person would be able to forget or cut ties with trivial material goods easily, such as the lost keys. But as the things get more serious and more personal, then to cut the ties would become increasingly harder. The natural progression of the severity is how I would imagine someone going through the process would actually take. For example, I would think the process starts with losing physical worldly goods that one has acquired, then losing the sense of attachment to hometowns/country pride, and finally with the  detachment of the self. Even the Four Noble Truths give me some kind of insight to this poem: (here's a wikipedia rendition of them)

  - Suffering exists

- Suffering arises from attachment to desires

- Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases

- Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

We talked about how because she has this deep attachment, she suffers when it is forgotten. I just thought it would be interesting to read it in such a tone, and share actually how successful I felt the reading was. Although,... there were a couple stumbling blocks where the poem did not relate in this way, such as when she says she was looking for her keys for an hour, I don't think if one was trying to lose things intentionally this would of happened.

One Art Response

After reading One Art by Elizabeth Bishop, I had the sensation that I was losing everything in my life without realizing it. The poem indicates that losing is a slippery slope. It may start with the things that are easy to lose, such as your keys or an hour of time, but eventually it progresses to losing things of importance, such as cities and continents. These early losses rarely result in disaster, as Bishop notes, but as the poem progresses, the stakes get higher. I have always been a "spacey" or forgetful person, and the idea of losing the most important things to me without realizing it is very scary.

When I first read the first line, I thought that Bishop was talking about losing in a sports match or video game. I anticipated that the poem would be about sportsmanship and growing from adversity. However, Bishop uses the word "losing" vaguely. She uses it to mean several things ranging from physically misplacing something to wasting time to experiencing a disconnection from ones home. It appears the art of losing is all to easy to master for the poet, and has lead to her losing everything in her life.

As far as form is concerned, the poem features enjambment throughout, which lead me to feel as though I was stumbling through the poem awkwardly. When considering form, the last stanza stands out because it is four lines while the rest are three. This makes the last stanza stand out and draws attention to it, forcing the reader to consider it more closely. The content of the final stanza is also seemingly more significant than the rest of the story. It is clear that all the author's losses became progressively more serious building up to the last stanza, and in the final stanza she addresses the person for whom the poem is intended, the person whom she lost. But she goes on to say even losing "you" was ultimately easy, which can be interpreted as the authors final admission that she has lost so much that she can lose anything easily.

Ch 5 Part II HTRAP in connection with todays class

I just finished reading the second part of ch.5 of HTRAP. There were so many observations and connections with the poems we read today, that I decided to share them. Plus, it was pointed out that making connections to other literature or even our observations to other literature helps us develop a clearer understanding:

"Syntax is pressed into the service of a tenacious commitment to truth, as each proposition threatens to cancel out the previous claim in a dogged struggle to pin down just what the speaker feels." This reminded me a lot of Dream Song 29. We discussed how Berryman began sentences with prepositions and ordered the words of this poem in a strange, and unusual way. Not the same kind of way that we would read a poem by Keats. Authors all have their own way of formulating a thought similar to the way we formulate our word choice in conversations. It's important to understand syntactical differences to develop a flexibility in conversations as well as reading literature. Where some authors are fluid and rich in language others "left the untidy stitches on his tapestry visible."

This portion of the chapter also discussed the "doubts, shifts of viewpoint" that occur in a poem. One Art was a clear example of this because the casual tone at the beginning changed to a scattered and almost defeated one at the end when the speaker had to force herself to "(write it!)." When I read this I couldn't help but think about the "full circle" endings we so often witness in literature. Maybe the poem starts off in one way, but goes through a transformation rapidly and builds toward the end. This isn't to say that ALL poems do this, but it is another way which sets poetry aside from the prose of a novel. The shifts in viewpoint take a faster risk in poetry.

The shifts in viewpoint correspond to the paradoxes and ambiguity that is often present in poetry. Since poems "do not come readily equipped with material contexts" to define a certain "meaning," we have to be open observers of irony and tonal changes within the language. "The split between how you are and how you appear" also reminded me of One Art. The speaker attempts to appear to be fine and dandy, but what she is...is not.

Another interesting element of this chapter was about rhyme. Too often I end up writing poems that rhyme because of that "sense of security." Not that anything is wrong with rhyme, but it is important to know when to use it. For instance, if one was going to write of feelings about disassociation, alienation, disconnection, failure, the feeling that everything is falling apart....one might want to write with that style. Perfect rhyme endings can give that aura of truth and perfection, but "para-rhymes" can also change the atmosphere of a poem as demonstrated by the "eerie quality" of Wilfred Owen's poem.

Thoughts on One Art

Walking back from class today, I kept thinking about the poem One Art, which we discussed at the beginning of class. Outside of the classroom, I was able to take a step back and consider the poem from a new perspective. When I reread it, I started to wonder if perhaps whoever is writing the poem has been choosing to lose the items mentioned in the poem (this would require in some instances the idea of the items as symbolic). I started to think of some one who perhaps gave up all of the comforts of life for her art or her goals. I think that the tone could coincide with this idea - the sort of forced, carefree nature. I was looking at it as of the speaker was an artist. It is supported by the mentions of isolation, which could be considered to be self imposed isolation rather than a literal loss of community. It also is supported by the mentions of financial loss and loss of comfort.

Then, at the end it could be argued that whoever the person who was ‘lost’ is someone who fell by the wayside in the speakers search for success or vision, or whatever the unmentioned goal may be.

It’s out there, but I do think the support is present in the poem to make this a viable interpretation.

The New Criticism and Formalist Analysis

This article was particularly interesting. I like that it began by addressing a question that we all consider. Is literary analysis still relevant or is it just something of the past? I am guilty of occasionally getting caught up in thinking that literary criticism is something of the past, because I don't see tangible results from it in my life. Ultimately, I think that is serves a purpose and indeed is relevant for society. If nothing else the article addresses that studying literature is a way to apply morality and heart which is a timeless quality of literature.

The emergence of New Criticism is an interesting form. New Critics assert that the "sole task" of a critic is to understand exactly how through language and form meaning and is expressed and "impressed upon the reader." Pure New Criticism is rarely practiced. I think the other formalist views are interesting as well, such as the Russian Formalism.

Russian Formalism emphasizes the need for particular skills to analyze. They focus on plot structures, rhythm, sound, and syntax as revealing aspects of the meaning and to see the social function of the work. They look into how an author can make a concept "new and strange."

I found it interesting to learn about the New Critics approach. They focus on the text itself and not the emotional effect. In fact, this is called the Affective Fallacy. Many critique the New Critic approach, but it is hard to argue against the importance of form. If we find meaning in the poem, it is certainly relevant how we found such meaning, or how that meaning was conveyed.

Literature is different than other forms of expression in that is has a clear formal aspects and aesthetic qualities to consider. A beautiful claim is that literature meaning works not only on readers "intellects," but also their "sensibilities." To understand this meaning of what is being said, it is absolutely necessary to explore how this is done. Formalists think that the form of a literary work is always meaningful.

The dividing into genres is actually a task of formalists, because it is organizing based on unique qualities.

Of the entire article, I was most intrigued by the section over meaning beyond intent of the author. This addresses the intentional fallacy. According to such a concept: Writers do not necessarily understand or plan every aspect. A writer's intensions can be misleading because a work can change from the beginning to what it finally ends up as when its done. A work has more meaning than the writer can give it. A work must prove its own meaning.

Sincerity vs. Insincerity

While reading through the fifth chapter in HTRAP, I began thinking about the connection between sincerity and experience in a poets’ life. The poet does not necessarily have to feel something or see something to write a sincere poem about it. As Eagleton states, “sincerity and insincerity in poetry are qualities of language, not moral virtues.” This got me thinking about the authenticity of the poem and how at first, I was taken aback by how easily a poet can trick his reader into making them believe his sincerity in experience. However, the beauty of poetry is just that. The beauty is that a poet can use the language, tone, mood and pitch to create sincere meanings whether or not he actually experienced what he is writing about. This reminded me of a poem that I read in High School that is very applicable to what Eagleton discusses in chapter 5 of HTRAP. The poem is I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud by William Wordsworth. I copied the poem below so that if you wanted to read it and respond to it you could. Enjoy.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed--and gazed--but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

2-8-11

In class today I was almost provoke right out of my seat when Krzys mentioned the word "lens." He for a brief moment mentioned how you look at the poem through different lens. It sort of clicked something inside of me. I feel any filmmaker or photographer can have a special understanding from this. When using prime lens you have a certain shot in mind. There is not as much option for zoom, you simply focus in on something. I think this focusing is similar to the concept of close reading. But with each shot and when you switch lens you can see something different. You could perhaps see more surface with a wide lens. I think when first looking at a poem it is smart to utilize a wide lens or even a variable lens, one that allows zooming in and out, mentality. Though as you delve into understanding the connections and intricacies of language and punctuation of the poem, it is helpful to continue the process with the mindset and discipline of using prime lenses with longer focal lengths. Nothing is hidden when filming with different lens, just as nothing is hidden in the poem. It just can help to see something better or with better perspective when using different lenses. When filming a flower, just because the camera does not see the stem for a moment, does not mean that it went away or that is it not important. The flower cannot stand without the stem. Every aspect of the flower makes up the flower. As Krzys said, you can look at every detail of a flower and note every detail. You can note its environment and its place in its environment. Ultimately though, you need to smell it. The roots of a flower are hidden underground simply as a result of its nature. Poetry has elements that inherently seem hidden at first, but it just means switching to a prime lens and rearranging your position to see a little bit better.

- Kelly Johnson

One Art

After reading the poem One Art, Elisabeth Bishop I was reminded of a quote by Ernest Hemingway that says, "You know what makes a good loser? Practice." I have found this to be true in my own life, and have heard similar stories from many others. While being a good loser isn't something that we necessarily strive to be, it is something that we all have the capability to achieve. As Bishop says, it isn't hard to master. However there are different types of loses. The more insignificant ones we do almost everyday and feel no regret are the easiest to overcome, while the loss of a friend or family member is no so easy thing. As Bishop implies in her poem, by making herself, "(Write it!)" she is forcing herself to overcome the loss of something hard. The only way that losing something so special becomes easier is losing something of equal value again. Practicing losing is no fun task, however it is a thing that as we grow older, we become better at, since by living longer, one will have more practice in losing.

This idea of becoming a better loser is something that we must fight against. As Richard Nixon says, "you must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terrible angry, about losing." Fighting against losing is something that is hard for us since we want to forget about it and move on, but we must remember that we can not be complacent about losing. Once you do, the objects in which you already have lose their value.

HTRAP Part 1 Chapter 5 discussion

In a writing sample about Bright Star/"Ode to a Grecian Urn," I talked about how I think that writers must be inspired by their experiences, following the saying, "write what you know." However, in HTRAP 5 Eagleton says, "whether authors of fiction really did experience an emotion they write about is not the point." I understand this to some extent, like the example of Shakespeare not having to have felt "sexual jealousy" in order to write Othello, but at the same time I think that is a somewhat lackluster example. It is more likely than not that Shakespeare did, at some point, feel sexual jealousy, and while this may not have inspired Othello, it is a feeling that he possibly could have drawn from to better shape his characters. Authors have to fully understand a feeling in order to be able to flesh out that feelings when creating their characters.  Also, because writing is such a solo job, authors have to be continually self-reflecting and allowing that to, in some way, shape their writing. Eagleton does, however, make the point that we cannot assume that a writer's only influence is their personal experiences, and that there is no way to actually tell if their own lives are having an affect on the content of their work. This seems to make sense. Also, in this section he is talking about fiction writers, and I wonder if poetry is considered fiction or not; I can't recall there ever being a distinction with poetry, and I often find myself asking whether or not I think the protagonist of a poem is the author himself. Eagleton also states that poems "can be the occasion for emotion," but that "literary feelings are responses to poems." This seems like a very important distinction; while a poem can make you feel something, that is purely a response, and that response can differ based on the person. The idea that poems are interpreted in various ways is discussed on the first page of this chapter.

Reflection on Bright Star discussion and part 1 of ch5 HTRAP

I read the first half of ch.5 HTRAP today and felt like I was reading about the organs and functioning systems of how poems live and breathe. To me they really seem like living creatures: The human has a mind and a body...and somehow they are interconnected by some spiritual, nonphysical soul. Similarly, a poem has physical body structures like meter, rhyme scheme, syntax and language. And all these organs are linked with tone, mood, connotation and "feeling." Another statement reminded me a lot of Fanny in Bright Star: "It is also hard to see why we should think of our emotions as being "inside" us, and so shut off from public view." Today in discussion we almost ridiculed her outward expression of emotion and how she was helpless without Keats. But why shouldn't she feel that way? Our emotions don't have spatial locations like the organs in our body do. Nor are they meant solely to exist in the private. So we don't have perfect control over them. On the same note, Eagleton states that "tones and feelings are quite as much social matters as meaning." Why is it so hard for people to admit they are emotional nowadays? Odds are somebody else in the societal sphere has had similar experiences. Is this a result of being exposed to the deepness and complexities of poetry in a formulaic and mechanical way that our school system provides? The meaning of a poem couldn't possibly be a "private process" because the author of the poem doesn't always experience that process personally. And that doesn't mean they are restricted from writing about it.

Ah, happy, happy ode

In the third stanza, Keats uses the word happy six times in five lines. Throughout the poem Keats has shown that his vocabulary is extensive, so the fact that he chose to say happy six times seemed peculiar to me. It seems like he is trying to convince himself into believing that being frozen in time, and staying forever young is better then fading, and eventually dying. If he actually did believe this then there would be no need to repeat the word happy, he could easily illustrate it in other terms. Maybe, he's confused and cannot really seem to choose which is better, quietness or sound, frozen for eternity or alive if only for a moment.

ode to an ode

Keats' poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a speaker reflecting on his thoughts about an urn made in ancient Greece. A "foster-child of silence and slow time," an artifact that has been passed down through the ages and whose original creator is not alive nor likely known, tells unknown stories of people living at the time and holds only mystery to those who view it now. The speaker contemplates two scenes -- one depicting two people singing and piping, whom he interprets to be lovers, one pursuing the other, among trees in the springtime; the other, an emptied town, whose residents he believes have gone to some sacrificial ritual. It seems the speaker's biggest woe in viewing the urn is that the scenes it displays are forever frozen in time. The pursuing lover will never satiate his desire to be with the woman just out of his reach; the empty town will always be empty, with no one to explain why. I think the speaker also feels a sort of envy for the nature of the art, in that he wishes he could usurp time himself. He almost curses the object for its ability to "tease us out of thought" and make us feel, in effect, frozen in time. In the last lines, however, he realizes the good intention of the object and of all art to reveal to us truth through beauty, and vice versa.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

I attempted to flatten Urn today and it was difficult. It was hard to really break it up word for word, but I have a few theories about the poem. There seems to be a mental conflict between Keats, (or the observer of the Urn) and the Urn itself. However, it could also be a voiced argument that the observer is having with himself and what he is seeing. He could be both praising and condemning the Urn for its ideal imagery and its inability to exist as real events. It seems like the beautiful vase is the epitome of an Absolute Nirvana, and the observer is emotionally attached to it because he longs for that kind of life, but knows he can't have it because his soul is mortal. The Urn, or the one who painted it made an ambitious attempt to create an illusion of both an individual and communal Utopia. A "burning forehead and parching tongue" implies that Observer is envious of the fabricated image. Several times I felt sorry for the observer, but sometimes I laughed inside because I couldn't help but imagine a passionate guy talking to an Urn. But why not? Art talks to us, so it only seems fair to communicate with art. The "love" and "priest" indicate that the connection between the observer and the Urn is an emotional and spiritual one. Perhaps the observer was imagining himself as the living flesh of the urn's emotions and the worshipper of its beauty. But then there is the contradiction when he exclaims, "Cold Pastoral!" Does he love the urn for it's scene but hate that the scene never changes? There's a lot of mystery in this piece....

Ch.1 and An Essay on Criticism

In class we discussed how criticism and literature have a symbiotic relationship. I never approached Criticism in this way before. I have always ignorantly assumed that critics really served no purpose. The writers were geniuses and the critics were not creative enough to come up with there own work so they wrote about other people’s work. After reading Ch.1 of Eagleton’s How to read Poetry, it really lays out “The Functions of Criticism.” He early on addresses the idea that literary criticism is a dying art. I think that I am a classic example of why that would even cross his mind. I do not feel I was trained in this art, and as he suggests perhaps because my teacher was not trained in this art. I have been trained to close read. I think this may be why I struggle with reading poetry. As Eagleton demonstrates so often that people treat “the poem as language but not as discourse.” As I am beginning to see more clearly through this class, Poetry inherently must be approached as discourse because it draws meaning from everything and has a density unlike other literature. In fact, “poetry was pitted against rhetoric” for being not a battle of logic, but a battle “of the heart.” Additionally Eagleton makes comments on a belief that the value of Experience is dying. We like to rush for an immediate experience and focus only on the end result not the process leading up to it. Following such a claim was his commentary on Imagination. I found this to be inspiring. He points out that the reading of works can help make your own creativity and make your imagination more dynamic. After thinking about Ch.1 I tried to join that and Pope’s Essay on Criticism. At first I disliked the poem, I thought it was long, way to long. The more I read over it the more I tried to understand what Pope was saying and why he was saying it, the more I saw how it so beautifully related to Ch. 1. Rules of literature were derived from the ancient classics, and therefore it is necessary to study them. I felt like I picked up on an idea that most people are born with a certain taste, but it is the education we go through that kills that inside of us. Just as I feel Eagleton might agree Education kills students sense of Experience and Imagination. Overall, after reading Essay on Criticism I found the format more interesting. It is long, similar to the epic poems written by those he sites within the poem. He reference La Mancha from Don Quixote and that book is extremely long.

- Kelly Johnson

Wordsworth and the Paradox of Imagination

After having read Wordsworth and the Paradox of Imagination, I wonder what Pope would have thought of this critique/analysis of Wordsworth's poem. The critique isn't even so much of a critique until the second to last page when the author begins to speak in first person. Throughout the rest of the essay, judgments are made, as is analysis, but it seems quite fair. He sites other scholars and speaks of their thoughts in addition to his own. It seems balanced, and as though the author took the time to view the poem in its entire context. Yet, I still wonder if this would have been up to Pope's standard, and this begs the question of what does it mean to write a "good" critique? After reading Wordsworth's poem again after having read this essay, I have found that I have a much clearer understanding of the poem, so I suppose that this fact alone would make this a beneficial analysis/critique.

Essay on Criticism

After flattening out Essay on Criticism the other day, I sat down to work through steps two and three, bringing the poem back to life.

The first task I felt needed to be addressed were the italicized words. At first glanced, they seemed random and out of place, and almost made reading the poem awkward. I felt like some sort of verbal emphasis was meant to be placed on these particular words, as they were set apart from the author. Although I do not know for a fact the reason these words are italicized, one thought did cross my mind. Keeping in mind the poem's length and more flowery, Romantic language, it seems to me that the Author may have been attempting to keep the message of the poem intact. Look at the first words that are set apart (in the portion for memorization:

Writing/Judging

Patience/Sense

That/This

The words represent both sides of the scenario Pope is presenting to the reader. This separation is vague at some points, but I think it could be a factor in Pope's decision to italicize these particular words.

As far as the author's tone, it seems as if the subject of the poem is very personal. It almost seems as if the author's work was at some point wrongly critiqued. Also, although there is wit and humor scattered throughout the work, the tone is generally harsh. I found it interesting that although the language is very romantic in its nature, it somehow feels blunt when read.

The key message of the poem then - the warning to critics and detailed comparison - is contained in a tightly organized package. Somehow, though, Pope manages to retain a tension between the beauty of the poem and the sincere warning it represents - a tension that could easily be lost in such a formally structured and lengthy work.