Current & Past Assignments

Current Assignments
Due 1/4/08 Six SOAPStone + Theme Response to Shakespeare's Sonnets
(Post responses in the comment box under "A few more things about WCW & an introduction to two other guys named William".)

Due 1/7/08 As I Lay Dying & Blog Comments
(Post comments under "As I Lay Dying Chat".)
*********************
Past Assignments
WCW (SOAPStone on the blog, Summer Work, [critic responses in the form of chat & post-its])
Whitman (SOAPStone, Explications, Summer Work)
Portrait (five scenes, chats, criticism response, in-class essay)
College essay revision
Not-for-college essay

As I Lay Dying Chat (In the Comment Box)

Because you'll be reading most of As I Lay Dying during the vacation. Here is a place where you can post comments and questions. Think of the comments box as the dry erase board. Think of your comments as post-it notes. I'd like to see four comments (post-it length) from each of you by January 7th or if you'd like to squish your comments into one long comment that'll work too. I'd like for all of you to ask at least one thoughtful question for others to pick up. I'd also like for all of you to respond to at least one post by a peer.

Think about motifs and their effect on the meaning and experience of reading.
Think about narration and language...
Think about themes, especially identity (how do we identify ourselves, with what do we identify) and alienation and love and death.
I'd like us to also start thinking about thematic and stylistic links between novels. (How would you compare As I Lay Dying to other works we've read this year and before?)

Ah, irony...

There I was talking on and on--explaining, explaining, explaining--the importance of direct sensory experience in Williams' poetry, the way the images he creates, the words he chooses, the music, the line breaks all contribute to the poem becoming an experience itself.

And yet instead of just reading more poems--experiencing more poems--I kept on explaining, explaining, explaining.

"Show don't tell" is the most common advice for poets and storytellers. Though teachers often have to show and tell (or explain), I should shut up, get out of the way, and show more often.

Here's a poem by Whitman that's about seeing-what-is-shown after hearing-what-is-said. Direct experience: that's the thing. [The lines that begin with ">" should be read as part of the preceding line. Uncle Walt loves the long line. WCW prefers the short one. This significantly affects the experience of reading the poems.]

When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in >columns before me; When I was shown the charts, the diagrams, to >add, divide, and measure them; When I sitting heard the astronomer where he >lectured with much applause in the >lecture room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by >myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to >time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

FYI: The Invisible Museum

Here you will find A Pocket Guide to highlights from The Invisible Museum

The Pocket Guide discusses The Cook Museum of Book Arts which was founded by Gregory Cook Sr. (no relation) and is now run by Gregory Cook III (a friend but not a relative). The Museum, Cook claims, is located in the Dorchester section of Boston but I have yet to find it.

The museum houses many of the finest examples of the book arts (art works that originate in literature), including "Dorian Gray" by Basil Hallward, "The Cormorant" watercolor on paper by Jane Eyre, "I Shall Never Hear..." chalk on paper by Emmeline Grangerford, and "Now It's the Women's Turn" (oil on canvas) by Rabo Karabekian.

If you find the Museum please let me know where it is.

A few more things about WCW & an introduction to two other guys named William

You must read this!
1. William Carlos Williams & an informal explication of "The Great Figure"
I didn't intend my question about "The Great Figure" to be a trick. But when we think about an author's purpose we think we are looking for something hidden *under* the words or *behind* the text. As if the text is there to cover up the true meaning. However, even in allegorical texts like Grendel, Lord of the Flies, and Invisible Man the symbolic meanings are embeded *in* the text, in the word choices, in the descriptions, in the language.

So when in Lord of the Flies William Golding writes about the first fire as a "squirrel" that develops into a "jaguar," we know that he is working on two levels: he describes the fire and he compares the fire to animals. Because he is working on the metaphorical (comparison) level as well as the literal level he invites a metaphorical/allegorical interpretation of the passage: "The fire is an animal that begins harmless (a squirrel) and becomes a predator (a jaguar); the boys themselves begin and end the same way.

Likewise when a writer wishes to draw our attention away from interpretation (away from looking behind or through an image for meaning, for example), we should find a text that foreground experience itself. So "The Great Figure" fixates on sensory experience and resists metaphorical/symbolic/allegorical readings. The poem encourages the reader to experience and not to move away from the experience into metaphorical comparisons or symbolic meanings (though the reader, being a thinker and interpreter of all she sees may, of course, choose to associate the experience with larger themes of, say, the hectic nature of modern urban life). He sets the scene quite literally: "among the rain/and lights." We see rain. We see lights. Then we see (as the speaker does) the figure five. It's "gold/on a red/firetruck". Both the "gold" and the "red" come at the end of lines and are therefore emphasized. For a moment (as they eye ends one line and picks up another) the red--the pure color--dangles independently without its object. So we experience red before we even know what is red. The experience of seeing is foreground and the meaning of what is seen is in the background.

Then the static 5 (static at least in the poem so far) is given motion. (Remember the reader's experience is ordered by the arrangement of words on the page not by what "really" "happened". So as we experience the "5" in the poem it is motionless until the word "moving". Then we realize (in the world) it has been moving all along though not in our mind's eye.)

The poem then becomes all movement & sound. The firetruck has "urgency", is "tense", and is "unheeded". ("Urgency" comes at the end of its line; the last two words stand alone for emphasis.) The firetruck moves "to" loud noises as a dancer moves to the music. (This reminds me of "Overture...") The movement & sound are synchronized in evoking an uneasy chaos in the reader.

The loud noises are "clangs" and "howls" and "rumbling". (Notice that like the colors and descriptions of the motion these sound words appear at the end of lines.) Clangs, howls, and rumbling are urgent and tense, like the firetruck's motion. If one is attentive to the words one will see the frenzied motion, hear the loud, insistent sounds, & feel the tension and heedless urgency inside oneself.

The last line then provides stasis all of this noise and motion occurs against the static nothing of darkness. (This is a recontexualization--a new backdrop--for the image, movement, and sound. The speaker's first lines give us a different context: "rain"--vertical movement later contrasted by the horizontal movement--& "light"--later contrasted by the "dark city".)

The sensory experience created by the poem--the arrangement of particular words in a particular order with particular line breaks--recreates the experience seen & felt by the speaker. The poem must evoke that experience in order to be effective. That seems to be its purpose: to transform an experience of sight, sound, and feeling into words that will evoke those same sights, sounds, and feelings for a reader. The poem to succeed must create an experience *in* the reader.

Williams never tells us that what he sees is like anything else. No similes. No metaphors. No personification. No allegorical language.

He also tells no story. The are no characters. The fire is implied by absent. Completely absent. There is no rising action. No single climax (Instead the poem climaxes at the end of each line from line seven through thirteen: moving, urgency, tense, unheeded, clangs, howls, rumbling--before (perhaps) unifying all the action with the word "city".)* No resolution. Just sensory experience--a number, then color, then motion, then sound, then nothing--and the feelings evoked by sensory experience.

Why do this? Why is it significant to make literature in a way that is aggressively non-allegorical? Allegories can feel like meanings grafted onto things & experiences--separate and separable from things, from experiences. And so allegories can feel like lies. (Think of Grendel's reaction to the Shaper. Think of your own feelings about certain undefended, unexplained interpretations of literature.)

Are there other reasons to foreground sensory experience and resist allegorical interpretation? One might believe--as Williams seems to have--that in grasping for ideas and interpretations and implications and meanings we miss what is in front of us. Or to make the implication clearer we miss the life that is in front of us. I think WCW makes the importance of attending to sensory particulars pretty clear in this poem:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I read that first line as having at least two possible meanings. In the world beyond the poem that red wheel barrow might be crucial to the operation of the farm. Small but significant. In the world of the poem the entire poem depends upon the "red wheel / barrow" & its context. (Compare this to "The Great Figure". I think WCW's method is quite similar in the two poems.) Williams emphasizes particulars, things and experience. It is only *in* things that we can have ideas. (No ideas but in things.**) He seems to want to return us to a physical, sensory experience of our daily reality. Not a bad lesson in our increasingly "virtual" and "mediated" world.

A poem might be valuable because it helps us experience the world and word more vividly.

OK That's enough WCW for now. (We'll come back to his "Icarus" poem later.)

Notes:
*(If you doubt this reading notice line eight. Why doesn't Williams break the line at "weight" as we might expect based on the line lengths immediately before and after? Why? Because "weight" is a static word & the poem demands movement and sound from line seven through the penultimate line.)

**Notice that this edict can be applied to allegorical writing too. In truly effective allegory writers evoke the meanings that they feel are latent *in* things instead of grafting meanings onto things. (Think of William Golding's use of fire in Lord of the Flies. He finds meaning in the properties of fire. He doesn't impose external meaning upon it.) When an artist paints a blue circle and then say that it symbolizes war that is probably a meaning imposed upon a thing rather than discovered within it or evoked by it.

2.Over vacation we will be reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.
This novel will be the bridge between the poetry of self unit and the self & family unit.
Due 1/7.

3. Next in the poetry unit we will be reading two dozen of William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets. The details are below:
Read the following sonnets at http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/:

1, 3, 12, 14, 17, 18, 29, 30, 42 can be found here.

55, 73, 98, can be found here.

116, 126, 127, 129, 130, 133, 138, 143, 144, 147, 148, 152 can be found here.

There is helpful commentary on the site for each poem.

Read all 24.

Post six "SOAPSTone + Theme" responses to the blog. (Everyone must write about sonnet 130. In addition pick five other sonnets to respond to.) Due 1/4.

You will also need to memorize a sonnet for the midyear exam. More on that later.

WCW: All the Work

1. Read and understand the "notes" posted on the blog. (See: "WCW Poetry" & "More on Poetry" below.) Be able to discuss the notes on Friday (12/14).

2. Read three critical commentaries on WCW poems. Be prepared to discuss your responses to the commentaries on Friday (12/14). (Respond using the four questions from the Portrait Criticism Response. These questions are also below under "WCW Lit Crit").

3. Write a strong, imaginative, supported SOAPSTone + Theme on one poem from "Early Poems, William Carlos Williams". Post it below in the comment box for "WCW SOAPSTone + Theme". (Willie has posted already follow his lead.) In the event of difficulties with the blog email me your SOAPSTone + Theme.) Post by Friday (12/14).

4. Hand in summer work Friday 12/14.

More on Poetry

before class 12/13/07

WCW's poems are not secret codes with meanings accessible only to those with secret decoder rings available only at Big Time University English departments for $100,000.

So if poems are not secret codes--if a poet's purpose is not to encrypt the meaning to keep unwanted readers out--then why are poems often so difficult?

Here are a few ideas. A poem's difficulty often comes from compression of language, a lot of meaning & sound in a small space. Difficulties also come from tension between sound & sense--or, to put it another way, between the poem as an experience of language & the poem as an act of communication.

The 20th century American poet Louis Zukofsky wrote of poetry as "an integral" with speech as the lower limit and music as the upper limit. In other words, poetry exists in between speech and music. If the poem becomes exclusively musical--all sound, no meaning--it ceases to be poetry. If the poem becomes exclusively speech with no music then it again ceases to be poetry.

WCW & Poetry

From class 12/12/07
1. Poetry, for me, has always permitted a sort of freedom from the pressures I have felt to think, feel, and act in certain ways. Sometimes to thoughts, feelings, actions I've thought I should (or that I've felt pressured to) have, feel, do are not the one's I think are true. Or, sometimes I'm interested in exploring other ways. Reading a poem we might think, feel, react in ways that are not permissible or respectable outside the poem. Of course within that freedom, as with any freedom, one is responsible for what one does, what one chooses to do, with that freedom. I invite you to use the poem to freely explore other ways of thinking, but be responsible; try to remain true to the poem. This exchange between poet and reader brings up another hallmark of reading poetry: intimacy. The intimacy of the relationship between the poem (and most great literature) and the reader is another delight of the reading experience.
2. Reading and responding to poetry takes imagination, invention, creation on the part of the reader. The poem must happen within you. This reminds me of a poem by Bill Knott; it goes something like this:
A Juggler to His Audience
One in the air.
One in my hand.
And one in you.
3. WCW wrote "A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words." WCW believes that by choosing words carefully & artfully, arranging them in a particular way into sentences, breaking the lines in certain places, and creating music with the words the truth of a certain situation, one creates poem-machine--each of which has a purpose unique to that poem. (As Jake said, a toaster is not the same as a car & the two have different purposes.) WCW also believes that some understanding--a certain something--will be revealed in the experience of reading the poem if the machine works. (That's where the reader comes in. As Rebecca said, the machine needs a power source! Our minds, in a sense, animate the machine & each mind, each power, source does this somewhat differently. So the machine works differently depending on its power source, though it remains the same machine. Some power works better than others. Some power is just different than others. Some power sources animate only part of the machine for example. Be a good (i.e. imaginative, thoughtful) power source!)
4. In the next post you'll see three links. Those links will take you to one or more criticism of a poem from WCW's Early Poems. Choose three of those criticisms to respond to. I've changed how many but I'll give you time to work on them in class on Thursday and instead of collecting responses we'll discuss them in class on Friday. The three crits can be of the same poem or different poems. Respond to the same questions you used when responding to Portrait. The purpose of this assignment is to give you some experience reading how others have written about poetry.
5. Remember to post your WCW SOAPSTone + Theme down below if you can. Willie has posted his. Take a look. It's a good model.

WCW Lit Crit

Literary Criticism on WCW's can be found in a few places on line. Commentary on "Overture to a Dance of Locomotives" can be found here ; commentary on "Love Song" (by BU prof & former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky) can be found here ; commentary on "Portrait of a Lady," "Queen-Anne's-Lace," "The Widow's Lament in Springtime," and "The Great Figure," can be found here.

Read & respond to three of the commentaries. The purpose of this activity is for you to get a sense of how people write about poetry. There's a great range from formal to informal, from focus on sense to focus on sound, from abstract discussion of theme and purpose to concrete focus on word choices and line breaks. The best commentaries on WCW attempt to take on the poem as a whole comprise of parts; after all as WCW says a poem is a "machine made of words."

Be prepared to talk about the following on Friday (12/14):
1. How did the critical commentary help you understand particular aspects of the poem and/or the overall meaning? (Show that you have understood what the reader-critic is saying and then apply that understanding to your own take on the poem.)

2. What interpretations and analysis in the critical commentary are you skeptical about or do you disagree with? Explain. (Show an understanding of the critic's point; offer a counter argument.)

3. Discuss the language used in the commentary. Think about the word choices (diction) and sentence structure (syntax). Evaluate the writing: clear? sophisticated? stylish? Cite examples.

4. What references, allusions, terms, etc. would you like to know more about in order to better understand the commentary, the poem, the cultural and historical context of the poem, etc.?

(WCW's poem "The Great Figure" became the basis for a well-known modernist painting by WCW's friend Charles Demuth. You can see the painting off on the right of the blog. I've also put the Jean-Honore Fragonard painting that WCW seems to refer to in "Portrait of a Lady" over on the right side of the blog.)

WCW SOAPStone + Theme

Complete a SOAPStone + Theme for a Williams poem of your choice. (I have posted two below.)
In the interest of saving paper I would like you to post your SOAPStone + Theme in the comment box. Identify the poem. Include your name. Write down your ideas about the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, tone, and theme. Make sure your ideas are adequately explained and supported.

Tract & Queen Anne's Lace

Tract

I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral
for you have it over a troop
of artists—
unless one should scour the world—
you have the ground sense necessary.

See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black—
nor white either — and not polished!
Let it be whethered—like a farm wagon—
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.

Knock the glass out!
My God—glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
the flowers or the lack of them—
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass—
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom—
my townspeople, what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.

No wreathes please—
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes—a few books perhaps—
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople—
something will be found—anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.

For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him—
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down—bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all—damn him!—
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!

Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind—as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly—
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What—from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us—it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.
***
Queen Anne's Lace

Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth - nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand's span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over--
or nothing.

Love Song (WCW)

I lie here thinking of you:—

the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branched the lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world—

you far off there under
the wine-red selvage of the west!

Song of Myself (all the work)

On Monday December 10 you should hand in...
* The three summer responses to Song of Myself: response to the theme of the self's relationship to the world, response to language in the poem, and personal/poem response.

* SOAPStone + Theme

* Explication of two sections of Song of Myself (Directions below.)

Song of Myself Explications

Explication of Two Sections in Song of Myself

• Write explications of the two sections in Song of Myself to which you have been assigned. (Two separate explications will likely work best.)
• An explication is a commentary that reveals the meaning of a passage or complete work of art. It is not a paraphrase. It is not a summary. It is a close reading of all the elements of a text in order to explicate (literally: to unfold, to unravel) its meaning.

• The explications should begin with commentary on the section's overall composition (a SOAPStone + theme approach--speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, tone--will help with this), the section’s context (the surrounding sections: what is "subjects" are discussed before and after the section?), and the section's overall significance and meaning (the "P" in SOAPStone--purpose-- and theme are relevant here), especially (but not exclusively) with regard to the theme of identity.
• The explication should also include (specific not vague or general) commentary on the significance of the speaker, the speaker's attitude (tone), the subject(s), what the speaker does (if anything), what the speaker sees (images), etc.
• The explication should unfold or unravel the significance of motifs and symbols in the section.
• Finally, deal explicitly and insightfully with the language in the sections. Recall our discussions of rhythmic listing and repetition. (The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a series of lines (as in "Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much? Have you ...") is called anaphora. Whitman also uses parallel structure, alliteration, assonance, and an exceptionally long lines.) Recall our prior discussions of the sentence structures and word choices. Here you should deal with how language and form contribute to the meaning and effect (on the reader) of the sections.
• Conclude by returning to each section's overall significance and meaning (purpose and theme, especially (but not exclusively) with regard to the theme of identity. Also, in conclusion deal with each section's significance with regard to the poem as a whole. (How does it fit in with the novel’s overall design, themes, and purpose?)

SOAPStone + Theme

Respond to "Song of Myself" by responding to the prompts below.

Make sure you give reasons (evidence) for your responses.

You will need these responses in order to participate in assessed discussions.

(SOAPStone + Theme)

Speaker: Who is the speaker of the poem? What do you know about him or her?

Occasion: What is the occasion of the poem? What is the event that prompts the speaker to speak?

Audience: To whom is the speaker speaking? What do you know about him or her?

Purpose: What is the purpose of the poem? Why do you think the poet wrote the poem?

Subject: What is the subject of the poem? (This is a different from "what is the topic of the poem?")

tone: What is the tone of the poem? What is the speaker’s attitude toward the subject of the poem?

Theme: What is the theme of the poem? What is the poet pointing out about people, society, or life? State the theme succinctly.

(Special thanks to Mr. Gallagher at Malden High School.)