William Carlos Williams – Selected Poetry

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

                -“Spring and All”, lines 1-6

The opening stanza to Williams’ poem, “Spring and All,” exemplifies how the poem’s structure mimics the descriptions that the poem dictates.  The image of “blue / mottled clouds” winds downwards and stands above “the / waste of broad, muddy fields,” both structurally and in actual resemblance to the nature—that the clouds in the sky reside above the “dried weeds, standing and fallen” in the brown field.  This continues pretty consistently throughout the rest of the poem, especially seeing as the poem ends by stating, “Still, the profound change / has come upon them: rooted they / grip down and begin to awaken (lines 25-26).  Otherwise stated, Williams’ intertwines his poetic framework around the meanings and images that he details, all of which put strong images in the readers mind and are linguistically playful, an artistic decision that was rather unconventional when juxtaposed with the normative poetic ideals that seeped from the 19^th century into the early 20^th century.  And although he does hold a romantic tone throughout his work that bears some resemblance to Romantic Era poets such as Keats and Whitman—both of who were deeply inspiring and influential to his poetic style— William Carlos Williams throws in a modernist edge, using enjambment to create ambiguity and double meanings.  For example, the first two lines seem to be connected, but because of the enjambment the reader can see those same lines as separate lines that are not directly connected.

This playful use of language reminds me of e.e. Cummings, the first modernist poet we read in this class, though Cummings uses different literary devices and avant-garde techniques to break the mold of the Romantic poets, who confined themselves to universal formats such as the sonnet structure.  These modernist poets, Williams’ being one of the forefront poets of this era, demonstrates the rebellion against the status quo of poetry, and consequently revealing their complex American individualism and their approach to society—to change and alter it, whether out of distaste for America’s monotony or of the desolation that wreaked havoc on the American people—both soldiers and citizens—during WWI, the so-called “Great War.” Why it was so great, other than the great size of bleak turmoil that ensued—I have no clue.  Perhaps it was the propaganda issued on the American people, propaganda that justified and covered up the violent truth about American life, both as a citizen and as a soldier of war.

Similarly, Williams’ touches on this American imperceptivity and blindness to the realities of their nation’s imperfections, particularly in “To Elsie”.  The poem opens up by inferring that “pure products of America”—or plain white American folk with little to no cultural/ethnic roots—“go crazy,” then goes on to give various examples of this American lunacy.  Sometimes Williams’ represents his idea of American craziness in the natural world, such as Jersey’s “isolated lakes and / valleys, its deaf-mutes,” with the isolated lakes directly opposing “its deaf-mutes,” a compounded word that Williams’ uses to describe the “valleys,” with their literal and figurative emptiness (lines 6-7).  The valleys themselves are symbolic of the “pure products of America”—the cultureless Americans who he mentions in the first line—in that both the valleys and “pure” Americans are metaphorically empty, deaf and mute.  Mute and deaf in that we lack self-expression, a theme that is recurrent throughout “To Elsie”; for instance, American’s hold “imaginations which have no / peasant traditions to give them / character / but flutter and flaunt / sheer rags—succumbing without / emotion / save numbed terror…which they cannot express” (lines 19-27).  Plain old Americans, the pure products of the nation, all of those citizens who have lost their various ancestral cultures through the passage of time and the nations intrinsic freedom to escape any established cultures from which their ancestors moved away from.  Yet how can one escape lunacy if he or she is not anchored to anything from the past, and is thus suspended in a mist of cultural obscurity.  While some may argue that this escape from the cultures of past societies is a very American ideal, one that goes right along with rugged American individualism—being willfully separated from normal conventions of the past or present—the truth of the matter is that culture is an essential facet to seeing reality in its wholeness.  This is why the “mountain folk from Kentucky,” who have surely separate themselves from past customs, embody this obliviously disoriented American who is blind sighted by a lack of connection with the truth of the land, truths which the poem says can only be seen by “some Elsie— / voluptuous water / expressing with broken / brain the truth about us” (40-43).  Unlike rootless Americans, Elsie (via her broken brain) is able to express what they cannot—whether it be an expression of Nature, “some hedge of choke-cherry / or viburnum,” or an expression of one’s inner emotions and feelings (in this case, a terror that is numbly buried within the “pure products’” souls.  People like Elsie are able to see the truth in Americans, as Williams ironically implies, because their minds are wired differently than usual (Elsie was mentally handicapped), thus separating her from the standard American.  Elsie and other people who would not be labeled as pure American products, either due to immigration or any perceived imperfections, like mental disorders or differences in race.  So in this sense, the outsiders are the only ones who are truly aware of the materialistic and degrading aspects of American society—a society that lacks any objective culture outside of the practical knowledge of agricultural and living.  The insiders, then, are paradoxically less aware of America’s true state than those outsiders, such as Elsie.

Robert Frost – Selected Poetry

“Desert Places” by Robert Frost:

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it – it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less –
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Frost uses vivid descriptions of nature to externalize such ineffable human emotions as loneliness and despair, the two feelings most prominent in this particular poem.  The title “Desert Places” refers to any aspect of Nature that is bleak and isolated, natural settings that carry heavy implications of death and desperate loneliness.  So the title is metaphoric, alluding to the emotions fleshed out in the poem rather than to an actual desert.  Instead, Frost expresses these complex emotions using the image of “a field…covered in snow, / But a few weeds and stubble showing last.”  Frost’s meditations on nature tend to carry an air of superficial lightness, yet beneath that layer of lightheartedness his poems are weighed down by the ulterior commentary which he makes about nature’s destructive side.  This presents the poem’s core dichotomy: Nature’s capacity to destroy /Nature’s capacity to create.  There is nothing unnatural about “snow falling and night falling fast,” seeing as these are normal elements of nature.  Indeed, without snowfall human beings would surely keel over and succumb to dehydration “fast, oh, fast”—faster than the falling snow that destroys the “weeds and stubble” growing in the field.  And without night, the field’s sprouting vegetation—symbolic of life’s creative force—would shrivel up under the relentlessly scrutinizing sun.  Yet snow and night are used in this poem to symbolize those parts of Nature which destroy; not only is it snowing like crazy, but the night prevents any sunlight or warmth to melt that suffocating snow away from the withering growth of weeds and stubble. Nature manifested in the “smothering” animals and falling snow represents death and that confining facet of Nature which slowly snuffs out the creative facet of Nature.  Nature manifested as “the ground almost covered smooth in snow, / But a few weeds and stubble showing last,” on the other hand, is emblematic of life’s strenuous attempts against death, and man’s struggle to fight against the nature of loneliness and the isolation of death.  This presents a duality between the weeds and the snow, since both are a part of Nature yet, at the very same time, are contradictory in the natural world (i.e., snow kills weeds and stubble, yet these are all one and the same).  Nature’s cyclical ways are built around the constant ebb and flow between creation and death: life springs from the land and, eventually, fades back into it, ad infinitum.

There is a definite connection made between deserted places and a deserted minds—that one’s internal state is reflected outwards, into the external, natural world.   What Frost is getting at is that one can see his or her true self in Nature.  If you are in an ecstatic mood for whatever reason, Nature will smile at you with tulips and nebulous clouds; if you are in a depressed mood, Nature will present itself in its most somber of ways.  The speaker in this poem is quite obviously a lonely individual, one afraid of death, so he hones in on aspects of nature which translate into that same ineffable feeling of solitude and desolation; for instance, the “empty spaces / Between stars – on stars where no human race is” functions as a symbol of extreme isolation and lifelessness (death).  “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces / Between stars,” the speaker says to an ambiguos “they,” which though not overtly stated, probably alludes to the scientists and researchers at the time who were coming out with all this new information about how minuscule our planet is in the grand scheme of the universe.  He remains undeterred, however, since his internal feelings of isolation are far more frightening to him than the prospect of being a spec of dust in the physical universe, even though they mirror each other.

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

NOTES/IN PROGRESS

-Duality (creation/destruction; oneness/division)

-Maya (that which separates the Inseparable)

-Creating through destruction

-Nature/Society or maybe Nature/Man

-Nature incessantly bringing mankind together, despite our attempts to separate from each other.

-Clichés and sayings as vehicles for ideologies of the past

-Why does the speaker continue this neighborly ritual?

-How does a wall bring people together?  Is it an act of reinforcing one’s individuality externally, creating a wall as a symbol of both the speaker’s and his neighbor’s individuality—they bond by fortifying the wall that literally separates their individual property, while symbolically strengthening their sense of autonomy and rugged individualism.

-Father as a symbol of the past and time-worn ideologies or customs.

“Design” by Robert Frost:

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth —
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth —
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.

NOTES/IN PROGRESS:

-A “heal-all” is an herb used for multiple healing purposes – symbolic

-Spiders (destructive) as being a part of Nature a whole, and thus working as a constructive force.  Like they say, spiders are good to have around the garden and house to keep pests away.  And yet, their nature is to kill and destroy life.  Nature’s paradoxically destructive nature.

-Nature’s creative design/Nature’s design of darkness

-Nature’s ubiquitous design that “govern[s] in a thing so small”

-Spider (destructive)/Heal-all (beneficial or creative)

John Dos Passos’ “The Body of an American”

Whereasthe Congressoftheunitedstates byaconcurrentresolutionadoptedon the4th-dayofmarch lastauthorizedthe Secretaryofwar to cause to be brought to theunitedstatesthe body of an Americanwhowasamemberoftheamericanexpeditionaryforceineurope wholosthislifeduringtheworldwarandwhoseidentiyhas notbeenestablished for burial inthememorialampitheatreofthenationalcemetaryatarlingtonvirginia.  (1996)

John Dos Passos’ unconventional prose in “The Body of an American” begins with a mash of journalistic clichés and idioms that could be used to speak about any fallen soldier, just another “Americanwhowasamemberoftheamericanexpeditionaryforceineurope.”  By smashing words together like this, Dos Passos is criticizing generalities; he wanted to bringing the American eye back to individual death, as opposed to thinking and speaking of dead soldiers—fresh-faced kids who were dying by the dozen—as mere casualties, a term that belittles and reduces the impact of the very real horrors and sorrows which dribbled from World War I like blood from a bullet-ridden corpse.  Dead soldiers were not just a random loss for a greater good, they were people—individuals!  Sadly, it’s even worse today.  Our government has learned to keep certain images away from the public eye, namely images of war: piles dead bodies, pools of blood, grotesque displays of human violence.  Such images had an immediate and profound impact upon many of the more conscious minds in America at the time, including John Dos Passos, who speaks about this Machiavellian tactic used by politicians to detach the American public from the horrendous acts and afflictions of war.  Instead of showing a dead soldier, a “John Doe” or a “Richard Roe,” the newspapers and media talk about the dregs of war by pointing to statistics and death tolls to inform the masses.  And when an individual soldier is given attention upon dying, the articles all come out sounding like the above quote: an empty, meaningless jumble of words that people have lost sight of in the fog of such generalities.  Even the title, “The Body of an American,” is a bland, oversimplified way to speak of such a serious matter.  Already, the reader imagines a G.I. Joe sort of character who died in the heat of glory and calamity.

Speaking of statistics and death tolls, a bit later on Dos Passos writes about John Doe as being just another number, explaining that the military “gave you…an identification tag stamped with your serial number to hand around your neck” (1998).  They turn you into a number not only so the home front can look at a death toll rather than the gory pictures of reality, but also so they can justify the consequences of their war waging.  Compared to today, ironically, censorship wasn’t as prominent; at least, one could pick up the morning paper and see some brutal stuff.  But as Dos Passos is pointing out in his beautifully experimental piece, the brutal and extraordinarily devastating effects of war are being swept under the rug, whether it be by President Harding’s “impersonal tribute” to “a typical soldier” or President George W. Bush’s sweeping censorship of almost all brutal war information.  When’s the last time you saw a picture of a pile of dead American soldiers, all being neatly lined up in body bags by grim soldiers who could very well have known a number of those corpses?  It’s rare, but they do exist; never in the mainstream media though.  Instead, the media floods society with generalities while distracting them with yellow journalism.  Oh how the times haven’t changed.

The moral detachment and desensitization that politicians such as President Harding coldly endure is perfectly conveyed in Harding’s reaction to the funeral of a fallen soldier.  As Dos Passos details, “and Mr. Harding prayed to God and the diplomats and the generals and the admirals and the brasshats and the politicians and the handsomely dressed ladies out of the society column of the Washington Post stood up solemn / and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God’s Country it was to have the bugler play taps and the tree volleys mad their ears ring” (2000).  It goes without saying that this radical description sheds a light on the contrast between the John Doe’s of the world and the upper-class, American aristocrats who are responsible for the macrolevel decisions they make and the impact those decisions have upon innocent people caught up in war.  And unfortunately (and inevitably), a major portion of the mainstream masses blindly do what they are told to do by their government, given the option to kill or be killed, to be a brave hearted hero or a coward.  There were no two ways about it.  Harding’s speech, in the eyes of John Dos Passos, is emblematic of the American government.  It is an investigational, poetic statement against the United States’ continual participation in war, especially in such massive and globally spread wars (ie, the World Wars).  The more war we have, and the bigger that war is, the more nameless and insignificant a soldier’s death will be.

“Hamlet” Performed @ CalShakes

Hamlet @ CalShakes on the night of September 19^th, 2012

Hamlet @ CalShakes 2012

I really enjoyed going to this production of Hamlet, both the show and the venue.  I do have one burning question: why was the stage set up as an empty, grimy swimming pool, scattered with junkyard/yard-sale type objects that seemed to hold no significance to the play, at least in terms of the characters interactions with them?  I actually found it appropriately absurd.  That being said, I read up on why the director would choose to have a set like this for Hamlet and stumbled upon an article in the Contra Costa Times that talks about the director’s decision to use a drained swimming pool as part of the set:

“Director Liesl Tommy promises a fresh look at the treachery, madness and murder at Denmark’s royal court.

‘For me, this is a memory play, a haunting within a haunting,’ Tommy says. ‘The world of the play becomes its own character where rooms and objects hold the secrets and memories of what took place there.’ “

A haunting within a haunting, a world devoid of meaning at the start of the play, yet full of unsaid meanings by the end.  So the random objects sprawled across the floor, the drab grey building behind the pool’s basin, and the pool itself becomes full of meaning as the play progresses.  These meanings are determined subjectively by the audience’s view of how those objects or settings are interacted with (or not interacted with).  For instance, I was clueless as to why there was a child’s rocking horse at the forefront of the stage, but as Hamlet dove headfirst into madness and hysteria, he rocks back and forth on the absurd toy, lending an eerie feel to the scene.  For some reason, that rocking horse became a symbol of madness to me, of Hamlet’s instable mental state.  As the director was quoted saying in the article, this object “became its own character where rooms and objects hold the secretes and memories of what took place there.”  Indeed, vapid objects were given weighty implications as the drama unfolded upon them.

I also liked that it was different from what I expected from a traditional Shakespeare play.  There were no elaborate, Elizabethan costumes, save the group of players who put on that humorously overdramatic piece of drama (I can still see one of them jumping up and down, contracting his body with grief and expanding it with flamboyantly joy).  Instead, 20^th and 21^st century attire and music was incorporated into the play, including Ophelia’s rendition a song I know by a poppy band called The Flaming Lips.  I didn’t enjoy this part that much; it felt contrived, even though the lyrics went perfectly with the theme of her departure from the realm of sanity.  The business attired watchmen bearing AK-47 rifles, along with that drab communist-looking building in the backstage, gave it an Orwellian feel.  It was relatively cinematic too, with jolting music closing the gripping scenes and a creepy synthesizer playing surreal, Lynchian notes over slow moving and detached people on the stage (particularly in the beginning, when the ghost appears most).  I’m always scared I won’t be able to keep up with the dialogue, but once I was 30 minuets into the play I was so absorbed in it I couldn’t pull myself out.  I really want to read Hamlet again, especially since I didn’t cover it in my Shakespeare class here at Saint Mary’s.  Still though, after having not read the play for almost five years it was refreshing and inspiring to see the classic come to life.

My only solid critique would be that the production was a bit clunky at times, but I guess that’s expected since it’s the first performance.  Cheers to Hilda Ma and Lisa Manter for setting this up.

e.e. Cummings – Selected Poems

i sing of Olaf glad and big

whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel (trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but—though an host of overjoyed
noncoms (first knocking on the head
him) do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments—
Olaf (being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds, without getting annoyed
“I will not kiss your f.ing flag”

straightaway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but-though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation’s blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skillfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat—
Olaf (upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
“there is some s. I will not eat”

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ (of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you

-e.e. Cummings

Olaf, “glad and big,” the Christ-like protagonist in this e.e. Cumming’s poem, is a humble yet steadfast martyr, one who endures the brutal tortures of his comrades and higher-ups, all without showing any signs of resistance or angry defiance.  Though not explicitly stated if any religious or political ideologies serve as the impetus for Olaf’s staunch decision to remain “recoiled at war: / a conscientious object-or,” we are told that “his warmest heart” is what makes him balk at the idea of war (2-3).  So all dogmas aside—whether they be religious, political, or otherwise—Olaf’s peaceful heart keeps him strong during his torment and humiliation.  “First knocking on the head him,” Cummings describes Olaf’s beating, going on to “stroke [Olaf] with brushes recently employed anent this muddy toiletbowl” (8-12).  While this goes on, Cummings has his protagonist respond by “not getting annoyed” (18).  Perhaps Olaf stands against war out of heartfelt compassion, making him a sort of spiritual martyr for human peace—a Christ figure, as is directly referenced in the unrhymed couplet towards the end.  Interestingly, blond hair and “blueeyed pride” represent nationalists and patriotisms by alluding to the Aryan race.  I say this is interesting because this poem was written in 1931—just as Hitler was coming into power, I believe.  Either the news of Hitler’s racial purification hit the newsstands early on or, as I suspect, this absurd notion of the “supreme” Aryan race of blonde haired, light-skinned, “blueeyed” people was already a social issue.

After reading and rereading his poems a few times, I noticed that Cummings’ has a very idiosyncratic, offbeat approach to poetry, especially in terms of his technical formatting and wordplay.  He recurrently has the speaker refer to himself as an “i” rather than “I,” a technique which diminishes the speaker’s importance and adds a layer of humility to his tone; other times, it serves to bring more attention to the speaker, notably since this inversion is unconventional and bound to catch the readers eye.  The way in which this multifaceted use of the uncapitalized “i” works in opposing ways is a display of Cummings’ cunning use of irony.

The rhyme scheme is sporadic, often appearing in the ABAB or ABBA rhyme schemes; for example, for the opening four lines are in the ABBA format.  Surprisingly, though, this might be the most conventionally formatted poem of the four that we’ve been assigned to read.

Focusing back upon line 3, we are told that Olaf is “a conscientious object-or”; this can have multiple meanings depending upon how it’s looked at.  Taking “object-or” as meaning “an object,” the reading suggests that Olaf is a tool of the military, one who is thrown into the midst of modern chaos and war, flung into “boots” and raped with “bayoneted roasting hot with heat” (30).  It’s horrific and grotesque imagery, but as Cummings sadly conveys, this is a modern way of evoking “allegiance”—“per blunt instruments” (14).  Yet to ironic effect, when “object-or” is seen as one who objects to something, Olaf is reinforced as a peaceful opponent of war.  Again, we see Cummings’ use of jarring juxtaposition between multi-layered meanings of words.

        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Buffalo Bill's  
defunct
          who used to
          ride a watersmooth-silver
                                                  stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat                                                                                                          Jesus    
he was a handsome man                        
                     and what i want to know is  
how do you like your blueeyed boy  
Mister Death
            -e.e. Cummings

The first thing that struck me about this poem was the format: it is completely unconventional, using what seems like arbitrary spacing, smashing words together to create the cadence of the actions the words convey (creating his own onomatopoeia, in a sense), and the general approach he uses to play around with words,  both their meanings and their sounds.  Yet for all it’s awkward alignment, it reads as smooth and lyrically as his “watersmooth-silver / stallion.”

The poem centers around the legend of Buffalo Bill, which according to the speaker is now “defunct,” signifying the legends fading prestige and appearing to criticize the icon.  This directly opposes the next few lines, and potentially the rest of the poem, which glorifies him as a “handsome man” who can shoot like Annie Oakley.  To demonstrate his lighting fast, spot-on gunmanship, Cummings mashes “onetwothreefourfive” together in order to create the cadence of a gun popping off: bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!  Following this rapid-fire, “pigeonsjustlikethat” is a four-word conjunction that conveys a sense of immediacy. At once, the speaker denounces Buffalo Bill as an irrelevant has-been; the next second, he is tooting the man’s horn.  By the end, it is ambiguous as to whether the speaker is speaking sarcastically to “Mister Death”—as if to say that “Mister Death” unwisely took the burden off the speaker (and perhaps the world’s) shoulders—or if he is genuinely asking, almost irritated that Buffalo Bill is gone and dead alongside his admirable characteristics.  That contradictory ambiguity functions to cast an aura of irony over the poem, an irony that is seen in the poem both within the descriptors and as a whole.

Once again, Cummings uses the conjoined adjective, “blueeyed,” to portray the a sense of patriotism and American nationalism, since America started to see itself as a white, Aryan nation.  I don’t think Cummings is being racist here by implying that blue eyes signify courage, but is rather describing Buffalo Bill, whose Aryan traits have come to define the flag-waving American spirit.

A couple of things I noticed but couldn’t decipher, at least yet.  First of all, “Mister Death” sounds like “missed her death,” though the poem is dominated by male figures (except the ambiguous “i”).  Even the “stallion”—a male horse—cannot be the “her” in this wordplay.  I wonder if I’m reading too far into it, or if e.e. Cummings had some underlying intent for doing this.  Second off, I find it symbolic that the speaker “Mister Death,” presumably death personified into an adult male, takes the “blueeyed boy” that is Buffalo Bill.  Yes, Bill wasn’t a boy, but death isn’t truly an old man, so that is beside the point.  It almost seems like “Mister Death” is a pedophile, preying upon the youthful spirit of Buffalo Bill, here seen as a “blueeyed boy.”  Nothing is explicitly sexual in language, but one can make the inference that Cummings purposefully has the ageless figure of “Mister Death” is taking away something beautiful and sacred when he takes little Billy.

Edith Wharton’s “Souls Belated”

“You do understand, don’t you? You see how the very thought of the thing humiliates me! We are together today because we choose to be-don’t let us look any farther than that!” [Lydia] caught [Gannett’s] hands. “Promise me you’ll never speak of [marriage] again; promise me you’ll never think of it even,” she implored, with a tearful prodigality of italics.

-Edith Wharton’s “Souls Belated,” Chapter 1

 

Lydia’s marriage to Tillotson defined what she knows to be “marriage,” a very self-defined concept, actually; and because that marriage was so utterly colorless and restrictive to her independence, Lydia views marriage as a dull hindrance to one’s inner self and the desire to express that self in a free and unencumbered fashion.  That is her definition, formed out of her own experiences with Tillotson; yet a marriage to Tillotson is not actually marriage, at least at it is meant to be.  Her notion of marriage revolves around her past, and more specifically around Tillotson’s failure to allow space in their relationship—space, meaning the ability to continue growing as individuals while in wedlock, to carry on supporting each other’s individuality and promoting growth in one another.  True marriage is a mutual bond in which both parties aid each other’s personal growth, and by doing so they come into contact with each other’s real, inner beings, thus bringing them closer together.  That mutual encouragement and support was all but absent in Lydia’s marriage to Tillotson, which accounts for why she has such strongly oppositional thoughts about marriage.  She views it as a destructive force, a societal designation that is liable to raze any true feelings of love between a couple, no matter how in love they may be; for instance, Gannett has true love and affection for Lydia, and though she knows it, she’s terrified that changing that love into marriage will bring an abrupt ending to their adventurous love affair.  She’s stuck in that mindset that yelps: marriage is prison, it is restrictive, it is controlling, it severely limits one’s potential, and to boot, it diminishes and stunts the independent self.

I’m no expert on the inner workings of matrimony, but I do know that two people can, without a doubt, live together under the label of marriage without being forced to give up everything they formerly loved about life.  In this way, individuality is not “sacrificed to the family” when a man and woman join hands in marriage, at least by a healthy definition of marriage.  True, within the context of Wharton’s time period—the early 20^th century—normative marriage was still heavily steeped in patriarchy (as it still is today, but to a much lesser degree).  This meant that females would agree to an unwritten rule, a rule that the dominant male society contrived over time: a married woman takes care of household chores and menial tasks, always at the beck and call of their husband, who is free to roam the world as he pleases.  Ultimately, however, the preconceived notion of marriage that Lydia believes to be limiting rather than expansive is both the result of the repressive combination of patriarchal social norms and her own bitter and impounding experiences with Tillotson, who falls into his role as ‘man of the household,’ leaving Lydia at home to live a stale life.

This causes her to feel this odious distaste for marriage, even though she’s found a new and better lover in Gannett.  Does she not have faith in her own ability to let go of her past experiences, to loosen her fixed attachment to the delusive misconceptions deriving from her failed marriage with Tillotson, and to redefine marriage around the intimate relationship she has with Gannett?  She knows her love for Gannett is true, but fears that putting the label of marriage on that relationship would tarnish it and reconstruct the power structure between her and Gannett.  Denouncing marriage as a humiliating choice, Lydia exclaims, “You see how the very thought of the thing humiliates me! We are together today because we choose to be – don’t let us look any farther than that!”  If she believes that marriage is not the exact same thing as ‘choosing’ to be together, as she words it, then her conception of marriage is askew.  So while her fear is well justified by her previous marriage and the social norms that ruined it, it goes without saying that she could marry Gannett by redefining her understanding of what marriage is all about.

W.E.B. Dubois’ “The Soul of Black Folks”

TO BE INSTERTED

Booker T. Washington, from “Up from Slavery”

“Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe. This is so to such an extent that Negroes in this country, who themselves or whose forefathers went through the school of slavery, are constantly returning to Africa as missionaries to enlighten those who remained in the fatherland. This I say, not to justify slavery – on the other hand, I condemn it as an institution, as we all know that in America it was established for selfish and financial reasons, and not from a missionary motive – but to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose. When persons ask me in these days how, in the midst of what sometimes seem hopelessly discouraging conditions, I can have such faith in the future of my race in this country, I remind them of the wilderness through which and out of which, a good Providence has already led us.”

-Booker T. Washington, from Up from Slavery, Chapter 1

Here, Booker T. lays down his conservative approach to ridding society of racial prejudices provoked by slavery’s vicious institute.  This approach is extremely contentious, among the many other quotes that vindicate the majority of slave masters, stating that they, too, were victims of slavery.  For instance, he says of his father—a white slave master—“Whoever he was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in any way for my rearing. But I do not find especial fault with him. He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the Nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at that time” (1132).  Washington is so forgiving in his perception of white slave owners, asserting in an almost sage-like manner that he and other slaves hold no grudges for the callous actions enforced on them.  At the same time, however, this passive method of talking about such a significant matter would be what’s called the “Uncle Tom” approach.  This is, people might view it as catering to the white man too much, sugarcoating the harsh realities of slave life.  Yet I believe Washington is being extremely tactful by stating a unifying fact: everyone was a victim of slavery, in one form or another.  Whether morally, as the white man, or physically and emotionally, as the slave, nobody comes out on top; nobody wins.  White people who indulged in brutal slave tactics had generally become morally bankrupt, deeply unhappy people; those slaver owners who showed mercy and love for their slaves, as Washington describes, suffered a much lesser blow to the human conscience.  To call Booker T. an “Uncle Tom” would be a misnomer, not to mention a complete misunderstanding of his aim as a writer.  He doesn’t seek to please the white masses, but rather offers society a way to overcome slavery together, as a united group of people working towards that shared goal.

Nevertheless, to say that American slaves are “in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe” is bound to bring on a slew of criticism, especially from his fellow black colleagues.  In my African American Literature course a couple semesters ago I read Du Bois’ counterargument to Washington’s claims, in which Du Bois condemned his belief submissive ideology—that both black and whites were victims of slavery.

And I’ll admit, the beginning of the above passage struck me as a bit irrational, as if he were trying to justify slavery in a way that would turn it into a good thing.  But as he says, he is not trying to justify slavery; to the contrary, he “condemns it,” stating that his reasoning is meant  “to call attention to a fact, and to show how Providence so often uses men and institutions to accomplish a purpose.”  What exactly does he mean, though, when he says this?  At first it may sound like he’s giving white bigots a religious copout, but one must take into account the fact that Washington is intentionally avoiding any further divide between blacks and whites.  The last thing he wants to do is to set up more barriers between the two races.  In his eyes, to guilt trip the dominant white society would be a severe disadvantage in the long run to the ultimate goal of the unification of blacks and whites in America.  Taking this into account, Washington takes the optimistic approach, viewing slavery an obstacles that God setup as a constructive complication for black slaves in America.  Without the horrific period of slavery that blacks went through, Washington implies, they would not be as strong and advanced as they were becoming then and have already become in most parts of our nation.  It is actually very altruistic of Booker T., seeing as he lets go of all sense of ego—all the scathing emotions and hatred that he could have put into words, which would have done nothing but further the racial cleave.  Rather than heaving the red bricks of irrational hatred back towards one’s enemy, Washington contends that former slaves should pickup those bricks and build a constructive shelter from the constant attacks upon their racial identity.  An idealist, Washington chooses to look at his former enslavement as a trial through which he found his identity—an interesting outlook, since the institute of slavery attempted to divide and destroy individuality.

“I was asked not long ago to tell something about the sports and pastimes that I engaged in during my youth. Until that question was asked it had never occurred to me that there was no period of my life that was devoted to play. From the time that I can remember anything, almost every day of my life has been occupied in some kind of labour; though I think I would now be a more useful man if I had had time for sports. During the period that I spent in slavery I was not large enough to be of much service, still I was occupied most of the time in cleaning the yards, carrying water to the men in the fields, or going to the mill, to which I used to take the corn, once a week, to be ground. The mill was about three miles from the plantation. This work I always dreaded. The heavy bag of corn would be thrown across the back of the horse, and the corn divided about evenly on each side; but in some way, almost without exception, on these trips, the corn would so shift as to become unbalanced and would fall off the horse, and often I would fall with it. As I was not strong enough to reload the corn upon the horse, I would have to wait, sometimes for many hours, till a chance passer-by came along who would help me out of my trouble. The hours while waiting for some one were usually spent in crying. The time consumed in this way made me late in reaching the mill, and by the time I got my corn ground and reached home it would be far into the night. The road was a lonely one, and often led through dense forests. I was always frightened. The woods were said to be full of soldiers who had deserted from the army, and I had been told that the first thing a deserter did to a Negro boy when he found him alone was to cut off his ears. Besides, when I was late in getting home I knew I would always get a severe scolding or a flogging.”

-Booker T. Washington, from Up from Slavery, Chapter 1

This excerpt truly captures a part of what forms the foundation of slavery’s brutal institute, it’s process of dehumanization in which white slave owners attempted to further detach their slaves from human consciousness as a means of reinforcing their roles as tools and commodity.  Here, despite his often passive approach, Washington bluntly displays the experience what that he and other slaves were forced to live through, particularly the negative emotional effects that these harsh experiences had on slaves.  As seen in this quote, slaves were tortured both mentally and physically from the day they were born until they day they died—they were given shabby wooden shoes and rough flax shirts and forced to toil doing ceaseless chores; left to sleep on dirty rags, if not the dirt floor.  If a one were to disobey the rules, they would wind up at the end of their master’s whip, screaming as the white bigot’s whip would gash into their scar tissue.  It’s a process of inhumane and heartless manipulation, one aimed at stripping slaves of their sense of self and crippling their sense of identity.  Through a series of dehumanizing conditions, the slave learns to be helpless and to internalize this sense of hopelessness, thus perpetuating the screeching wheels of slavery.

As Washington states in the introduction, “I am not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time” (1132).  Not to say that knowing one’ date of birth is a central pillar to one’s identity but it just goes to show how slaves like Washington were born into this institute—a machine that attempts to churn out scarcely conscious workers.  Washington knows he is a human being, born from a mother just like everyone else.  Knowing this, that ‘I am’, is more than enough to warrant his humanity; the exact date is trivial.  In this way, his statement is empowering: you can never truly destroy one’s individuality, as hard as they may try.  Besides, how else would Booker T. have written this personal account if slavery had smashed his core being?

“As they went on describing the school, it seemed to me that it must be the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more attractions for me at that time than did the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, about which these men were talking. I resolved at once to go to that school, although I had no idea where it was, or how many miles away, or how I was going to reach it; I remembered only that I was on fire constantly with one ambition, and that was to go to Hampton. This thought was with me day and night.”

-Booker T. Washington, from Up from Slavery, Chapter 3

Reading Booker T. Washington’s account often reminded me of Fredrick Douglass’ 18^th century slave narrative, and while their reflections on American slave culture coincide in factual accuracy—that is, what slaves lived through—the two authors often diverge on certain topics.  Perhaps more than anything, the two former slaves hold their masters in very different moral standards.  I’ve talked about this already in reference to one of the above quotes in Up from Slavery, so I won’t go into detail.

So despite the difference in pathos, Fredrick Douglass felt many of the same feelings of oppression and hope that Washington accounts for here, in his own narrative.  Their take on knowledge and education are their most analogous and significant similarity.  Both are immediate struck when introduced to the notion of education and its power to give an individual the power of knowledge—the gift of consciousness.  Through the omnipotence of knowledge, as Fredrick Douglass overhears his masters talk about and Washington overhears in a conversation between two white miners, a slave gains the ability to escape the confines of slavery.  Knowledge, more specifically a heightened consciousness of one’s surrounding environment, is seen by both writers to be the key to undoing the shackles of slavery.  ‘Because knowledge is power!’

Willa Cather’s “My Antonia”

I knew it was homesickness that had killed Mr. Shimerdas, and I wondered whether his released spirit would not find its way back to his own country…[He] was resting now in this quiet house.

            I was not frightened, but I made no noise. I did not wish to disturb him. I went softly down to the kitchen which, tucked away so snugly underground, always seemed to me the heart and centre of the house. There, on the bench behind the stove, I thought and thought about Mr. Shimerda. Outside I could hear the wind singing over hundreds of miles of snow. It was as if I had let the old man in out of the tormenting winter, and were sitting there with him. I went over all that Antonia had ever told me about his life before he came to this country; how he used to play the fiddle at weddings and dances. I thought about the friends he had mourned to leave, the trombone-player, the great forest full of game–belonging, as Antonia said, to the `nobles’– from which she and her mother used to steal wood on moonlight nights. There was a white hart that lived in that forest, and if anyone killed it, he would be hanged, she said. Such vivid pictures came to me that they might have been Mr. Shimerda’s memories, not yet faded out from the air in which they had haunted him.

-My Antonia, Book I, Chapter XIV, p. 103-4

Mr. Shimerda’s death has a profound impact upon the 11-year old boy, not merely because of the obvious tragedy of a suicide death, but because he feels a pressing connection to the homesick foreigner’s wistful soul.  Both he and Jim live their lives half empty, hollowed by the desire to be in one’s own environment, by a deep-seated nostalgia for the past and a dull dread of the future, one that Jim perceives to be the dark nothingness of Nebraska.  Mr. Shimerda’s soul, as Jim details, will take flight back to him homeland, thus fulfilling that shared desire for what once was—for “home.”  For the moment, however, it is resting in the “heart and center” of the Burden homestead alongside Jim, who feels the visceral presence of Mr. Shimerda’s spirit through a series of his memories, which Jim relives in his head.  These memories are of Mr. Shimerda’s past life in Bohemia—the glory days of his youth—play out vividly in the boy’s head upon “hear[ing] the wind singing over hundreds of miles of snow.”  This is a literary device that Cather recurrently incorporates into her narrative, seamlessly merging nature and human memory in order to accentuate the power that nature has, with its innumerable scents and sounds, to induce distinct and vibrant memories.  As if that icy wind was swelling with those very memories, sweeping the old Bohemian man’s memories through Jim’s mind, Mr. Shimerda’s past life comes flooding into Jim’s conscious mind, which he “thought and thought about,” sitting pensively in that memorable kitchen.  Both souls—Jim and Mr. Shimerda—are awaiting the voyage home, and even though Jim is clearly not leaving Nebraska with Mr. Shimerda’s spirit, he rests and communes with it, feeling a sense of going home vicariously through Mr. Shimerda’s placid soul.  Among the places Jim imagines the soul visits before finally gliding back to the old country is Baltimore, Jim’s home and the equivalent of Bohemia for Mr. Shimerda.  It’s as if Jim, in his meditation, is ushered back home by the relinquished spirit of another roving soul. In this way, these two characters are linked by their desire for the past and where they came from, by what they will always call “home.”

Look at my papa here; he’s been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him.’

 

-My Antonia, Book IV, Chapter IV, p. 255

 ***WORK IN PROGRESS, WILL ADD MORE ANALYSIS SOON

As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world.

In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes out of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there.

                                               

-My Antonia, Book IV, Chapter IV, p. 255-6

***WORK IN PROGRESS, WILL ADD MORE ANALYSIS SOON