Motivating Introduction
Instill in the students an appreciation for a different kind of a reaction paper.
Instead of an essay, Wen-Ito wrote this poem as a reaction to the stagnant water around.
1. Ask the students to think of all the garbage- and plastic bag-filled ditches,
“esteros” around, and even areas in Manila Bay. Think of the fly- and rodent-infested piles of uncollected garbage especially in various parts of Metro Manila.
2. Ask the learners what the implications of these polluted bodies of water have on the residents, on the bathers and swimmers. Remind them too of the flash floods during the rainy season and what constitute the aftermath of the rain-drenched and flooded areas where the infested garbage piles had remained.
Lesson Proper
Reading the Poem and Reacting to it
Make the student’s realize that after a first reading of the poem, it is imperative to know the poet behind the creative and environmental perceptive.
1. Appreciate the Poet’s Role. Share a brief background about the colorful life of Wen-i-to/Wen Yi-duo:2
“On June 6, 1946, at 5pm, after stepping out of the office of the Democratic Weekly, Wen Yiduo died in a hail of bullets.
Mao blamed the Nationalists and transformed Wen into a paragon of the revolution.
Wen had received a classical education. But he came of age as old imperial China and its institutions were being swept away, and the Chinese people were looking ahead to a new China. It was fertile ground for a young poet.
In 1922, Wen studied art and literature at the Art Institute of Chicago. There he published his first collection of poetry, Hongzu or Red Candle. Returning to China in 1925, he became a university professor, active in the political and aesthetic debates of
2 This is borrowed from Robert Hammond Dorsett (Translator), “Stagnant Water & Other Poems by Wen Yiduo”, in https://chinafile.com/library.books/Stagnant-Water-Other-Poems-Wen-Yiduo,
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the time. His published his second collection of poems, Sishui, or Dead Water, in 1928.
As political trends shifted from an intellectual, elitist base toward a populist one, Wen was one of the leaders of a movement to reform Chinese poetry, from a classical style and diction far removed from everyday usage, to adapting common speech and direct observation, while maintaining a strict, albeit new, formalism.
However, Wen never resolved the conflicts that existed within him: The elitist and the proletarian, the scholar and the activist, the traditionalist and the innovator, the personal man and the public man, fought for ascendancy. Yet it was these contradictions that proved so fruitful and give his poetry its singular power.”
2. Unlocking Verbal difficulties. Make the students realize that before they can understand the poem and interpret its meaning well, they have to know the meanings of these expressions used:
a. Raise a single ripple understanding the literal meaning of the poem:
a. Stanza 1- When is water “hopelessly dead?”
b. Stanza 1- Why cannot a breeze “raise a single ripple on it?”
c. Stanza 2- Can the green on rubbish copper become emeralds? Can peach blossoms sprout from thrown away tin cans? Can grease cover the surface with “silky gauze?” Can germs produce colorful foam on this water? In what ways can these “emeralds, “peach blossoms,”
“silky gauze,” and “colorful spume” come out of the stagnant water?
d. Stanza 3 – Again, can dead water be fermented into wine? When can white scum be viewed as floating pearls? When do pearls chuckle and become big pearls, then turn into gnats? In what ways would these gnats steal the rum?
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e. Stanza 4- In what way can one see that the “hopelessly dead water”
may have a bright touch? Why would the frogs croak in delight “when they cannot bear the silence?”
f. Stanza 5 – In a seeming contradiction of early assertions that pearls, peach blossoms, colorful spume, etc. all beautiful images, can spring from the dead water, why does the last stanza say that nothing beautiful can live in the dead water? What frame of mind is revealed when one leaves it to the devil to cultivate the dead water? What may come out of the dead water if the devil “cultivates” it?
4. Interpreting the text. To make the students move beyond the literal reading of the text, ask them these guide questions:
a. What does a hopelessly dead water stand for?
b. If the breeze cannot even move the water to produce a ripple, why would one add to the pollution by throwing in rusty scraps and left over food and soup? What does such an action signify?
c. From your science, you learn that the green on copper is more of blue-green layer of corrosion that develops on the surface of copper when exposed to sulfur and oxide compounds; that the oily film floating on water may be caused by decomposition of grease; that the colorful foam or water may be caused by cyanobacteria with harmful cyanotoxins. Why does the poet “romanticize” versions of these effects of corrosion, decomposition, and toxicity as “emeralds, silky gauze, or colorful spume?”
d. What tone does the poet use, especially in Stanza 3, when he gives in to fermenting the water into jade wine, etc.? Can water be fermented?
Why would that fermented water be “jade wine?”
e. What do the small pearls stand for? What does their chuckling mean?
And how can their chuckling turn them into big pearls? Moreover, how do they burst as gnats that steal the drink?
f. As though the persona relents a little about the hopelessly dead water, he/she allows it a “touch of something bright.” To what would this bright touch refer? In what way would the frogs no longer able “to
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bear the silence?’” Why would the dead water (not the frogs) sing/croak its “song of delight?”
g. In the last stanza, what do the last two lines signify, considering that the water is hopelessly dead and unable to contain any form of beauty? On what note does the poem end then?
5. Critical Reading of the Text
Remind the students of the brief background on the writer. That he was killed for his writings means that his socio-political background calls for a reading beyond an environmentalist’s concern. Ask them to examine the two interpretations below and explain which they would agree with, or which parts they would disagree with, and why:
a. In “Dead Water” Wen Yiduo made claims to the past. With the passage of time the consolidation of the Qing rule and censorship determined how the fall of the Ming dynasty was remembered, imagined and represented, Yiduo represented the poets of this era as they tried to base their poetry on past models and make them meaningful for the present generation. The dead water was symbolic of the state of China. The people were desperate and hopeless.
Realizing the lack of new ideas, the narrator stated “Here is a ditch of hopelessly dead water / No breeze can raise a single ripple on it / Might as well throw in rusty metal scraps / or even pour left-over food Reminders:
The persona in a poem is the role or character adopted by the author to speak or act in the text.
Tone in poetry or prose refers to the writer's attitude toward the subject or audience. It may be admiring, afraid, aggravated, aggressive, agitated, angry, apathetic, apologetic, sarcastic, and sardonic.
It is the emotional coloring of the poem.
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and soup in it” (ll. 1-4).This stanza makes a powerful statement on the times of China. A ray of hope had sparked the era, the narrator explains to the reader “this ditch of hopelessly dead water / may still claim a touch of something bright / [and] the dead water will croak its song of delight” (ll. 13-14, 15).
Poetically, the poem displayed a duality of what was potentially dead could have life and could potentially live again. The poem appeals to the use of nature and natural elements to symbolically stimulate the reader. Despite the narrator’s losing hope in the last stanza, the reader is stimulated to believe that a new era is approaching and a new social state is on the verge of beginning.
b. “Stagnant water”. The "dead water" symbols, irony , and other artistic techniques refer to The Northern Warlords, the dark rule, the performance of the author, and the government's determination opposed to darkness.
The poem of five sections can be divided into three parts. the first part (Section 1) the "dead" water, refers to the old China and the emotions of the reality of corruption. A “Hopeless dead" has a profound meaning: it symbolizes that in the semi feudal warlords’ corruption in the dark, semi colonial old China, is "a ditch of despair and the poet’s disappointment. In the second sentence of the poem, "the wind blowing up a ripple," "cool" and "dead" can refer to all the fresh ideas and strength that cannot create the slightest reaction in the stagnant water." In the poem’s third, fourth sentences "If you are to throw some junk-heap, you might as well throw leftover," express that the
"stagnant water", following the disappointment, caused the mood of extreme hate. If the reality is so dark, desperate, rather than let it rot completely, the hopelessly bad will grow more thoroughly bad, and the new things may grow stronger. This poem expresses here how the poet is full of anger, yet has ardent hope for good things.
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c. In the second part (second, third or fourth), the poet makes a detailed depiction of the "dead water,” specifically vividly reveals the social status of the old China -- decadent, and this expression of the old Chinese hatred, anger, sarcasm.
In the third part (the last section), the poet expresses the curse of reality, the eager desire to change reality. In the first two sentences, the poet, in a very flat tone, asserts that the dark China Society is completely negating, denying that “this is a stagnant ditch of desperation, definitely not beautiful. The ugly reclaiming the world – actually, the ugly to the extreme, attempts a ray of hope. Therefore, the last two sentences include not only the despair of the poet for the old China, but also the new China’s expectation and longing, with a strong desire to change the reality.
The poem then comprises a strong attack and curse of the reign of the dark old Chinese, and expresses the poet’s deep patriotism.
(From “Stagnant Water” in http://www.et97.com/view/37664.htm)
Concluding Activities
Ask the students to perform these contextualized activities to make the poem more relevant to their concerns.
1. Academic: Write a two-paragraph description of the most polluted Philippine river, the Marilao River. Focus on the details of its pollution and the hazards these bring. Make the third paragraph a crucial step to revive it and make it
“alive” and fresh again.
2. Art and Design: Prepare a visual graphic of the highly polluted Marilao River.
Focus on the images that contribute to its hopelessly dead state. Accompany the visual with a two-paragraph description of the stagnant water and its implications on public health.
3. Sports: Explain how swimming in a polluted river or lake can be very dangerous for athletes.
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4. Tech Voc: Pretend that you are the secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Write an urgent program of action to clean up the Marilao River and transform it into a clean, toxic-free river that can “support and protect the livelihoods of the people and wildlife that depend on these waterways and the life-sustaining resources that they provide.”
Summary
This creative reaction to a hopelessly dead ditch water emphasizes how useless and polluted it has become.
1. It satirizes the fermentation, corrosion, and toxification that happen through seemingly beautiful images of emeralds (patina of corrosion), silky gauze (grease decomposition), and colorful spume (toxic cyanobacteria).
2. Greater irony is created through images of graver spoilage presented as pretty objects, like jade wine (green liquid of corrosion), pearls (of scum), etc.
3. In ultimate frustration, the persona leaves the cultivation of this dead water to a devil even, and sees what kind of world can ensue.
4. While these images, as well as the sarcastic and ironic tone deplore the hopelessness of the polluted water, this decayed water may be seen as a criticism of China and its political, even moral decay. And if the dead water cannot be rehabilitated, even by the symbolic devil, China cannot be revitalized by the Kuomintang and political rivalries (at the time).