Week 3, Sept 19: Reading Poetically: On Imagination.
Diction and Ambiguity.
*These are short poems but
re-read
them.
Pause on the
words and the ends of lines and read them out loud. Have a
dictionary nearby and look up the words.
Readings:
1. William Carlos Williams: Read all but study these:
“Queen-Anne’s-Lace”; “The Great Figure”; “Spring and All”; “To
Elsie”; “The Red Wheelbarrow”; “This is Just to Say”;
“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” Oxford Anthology of
Modern American Poetry, ed. Cary Nelson.
2. Wallace Stevens: Read all but study these: “Thirteen Ways
of Looking at a Blackbird”; “Anecdote of the Jar”;
“Disillusionment at Ten O’Clock”; “The Snow Man”; “The
Emperor of Ice-Cream”; “Of Modern Poetry”; “The Plain
Sense of Things”; “Of Mere Being” Oxford Anthology of
Modern American Poetry
Quick re-cap from last week:
Omelas and Road can mean several things. NOT an infinite number of things. But if we read them closely and zoom in on their actual words on the page then we can actually see more, not less and not just the one true objective scientific meaning.
We also touched on a few keywords: diction (word choice).
Our main idea from the Bartholomae/Petrosky volume so far: “Read it as if it makes sense, and eventually it will.”
WHAT IS POETRY AND HOW TO READ IT?
What is poetry or “the poetic”? How to see, think, live like a poet? Living like a poet is more important than merely writing poetry. It also doesn’t mean wearing dark or frilly clothes, with or without turtlenecks, drinking too much coffee or taking drugs, being emotional all the time, and so on. (Stereotypical images).
‘Living like a poet’ or ‘seeing like a poet’ is exactly what both of these authors want us to do. To do that we have to develop and use our imaginations and our power of perception. Stevens says: we can “have it our way”. But how? And can we really? It is not easy – takes a lot of concentration – but I do think it is possible.
1. There are no real rules or formulas for reading poetry. You can often ruin the experience of reading poetry by worrying about rules/terms and the like, and also by worrying that you do not understand or get it. Sometimes there is nothing to “get.” But only to see or imagine or feel. Other times there is a message there but it’s rarely argued in a prose-like way. Poetry is never about reading for information.
Definition of poetry?
1. Poetry is just something that looks like “poetry.” It often rhymes (but does not have to). It has spaces and weird punctuation, and is often ungrammatical compared to prose. And it is
compressed. Less wordy than prose. “missing” transitions and punctuation and grammar and prepositions and so on. AND again the word choice is crucial. More dense and compact. More meaning per inch. Poetry is like Hong Kong real estate.
METAPHOR too – poetry is full of metaphor, though so is fiction. [A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity.] Poetry is like Hong Kong real estate (this use of like is a “simile,” which is a type of metaphor).
Poetry is
what seems
pretty-poetic text
like
a circle or
what Others say
it IS.
>>> this looks like a poem (I think), so it is one. Not a good one, but anything can be poetic. It is just a convention or style of using words in a certain way.
TERMS/ISSUES for THIS WEEK—two general things: modernity and imagination. (we have already covered diction and ambiguity, and these are key too for the poets)
1. The MODERN period (applies globally, incl. to HK / China): cognate words: modernity, modernist, modernization, modernism.
When? Mid-19th Century through the present. WCW and WS are modern poets.
What? Sense of crisis if also opportunity for some. Sense of everything being NEW or having changed from the past eras.
^^^^ This is the crucial info here that you should know. The rest below is just supplemental.
MODERNITY (the time period) is characterized by:
war and mass death, the results of “progress” and history” moving forward; death of God/religion (See “The Supreme Fiction” poem by WS);
science as dominant force and deadly force (even before WW II and nuclear weapons); too much rationality, or instrumental rationality: the desire for mastery and control of the
environment, for example. Formal logic or instrumental reason over other forms of reason and thought and feeling
crisis of meaning: a crisis of “merely being alive” or “life” having no purpose or meaning;
mass culture and mass society: there are so many people now and they are so alike (conformity).
“Make it new”: New and Modern are, or were synonymous. The world has changed irrevocably since the old days. For the arts this meant NEW FORMS and
EXPERIMENTATION and REJECTION OF THE OLD.
2. IMAGINATION (and PERCEPTION as more or less a synonym for this)
The Imagination has a key, new role to play here in the modern world: compensation for the above losses (loss of faith in religion, progress, etc.). A key tool for the new
What is the imagination? A uniquely human ability or capacity. It is not what animals do or have. But what is it? Begin with basic definitions here:
[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imagination ]
: the ability to imagine things that are not real
: the ability to form a picture in your mind of something that you have not seen or experi-enced
: the ability to think of new things…. New to you at any rate!
: something that only exists or happens in your mind
BUT NOTE: “imagined” is NOT – for Williams and Stevens -- to be understood as FALSE or Fake. It is not merely fantasy or ‘fancy.’
So, in short, imagined things can also be real (the dictionary is wrong). Imagined things can have real effects. People – whole societies even – can believe in them and act AS IF they are perfectly real and actually exist. “God” for example.
So the line between imagined and real is, or can be in some case a very thin if not completely blurred one.
Things are also very important to see and pay attention to. You can use your imagination to perceive and feel or experience them anew.
For WS and WCW the imagination is crucial b/c it allows EVERYONE to live like a poet, if only they will try. They are both OPTIMISTIC writers. They also think poetry is an example of the imaginative capacity of humans. Poems also mirror how the mind and imagination works. It, the mind finds and makes meaning. Meaning or values do not exist otherwise. WE create them.
This is for them a very optimistic and affirmative view of life and of our minds.
“The poem of the mind in the act of finding what will suffice….” > “Of Modern Poetry.” Stevens
More Supplemental info here:
A related term: Perception: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perception
: the way you think about or understand someone or something
: the ability to understand or notice something easily
WILLIAMS CARLOS WILLIAMS
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqpNWylzRDs
http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Williams-WC/13_Harvard_12-04-51/Williams-WC_06_Spring-and-All_Harvard_12-04-51.mp3
1. Williams once said this: “No ideas but in things…” This is his motto or credo to live by. He believes “things” are important. We should pay more attention to them. They might even teach us what to think or feel. Any “thing” can be the subject of poetry, i.e. of feeling and reflection and value. Why not have poems about 牛腩麵 [beef noodle soup]? These are just as important as, say, temples and mountains.
http://allpoetry.com/from-Book-I,-Paterson [this is also in
https://allpoetry.com/A-Sort-Of-A-Song
THINGS are more important than ideas or received wisdom aka common sense. For Williams it is almost as if THINGS can themselves produce an effect or feeling on us, as if they have a certain power and are not simply inert or dead.
What kind of things? Plums, Red Wheelbarrows, Wildcarrot leaf (it’s a weed or
‘nuisance plant’)1, ordinary or working class people and what they look like, fire trucks,
and so on. Real stuff. White chickens.
2. The emphasis in Williams is on perception and how that can allow one’s imagination to achieve great power and insight. If we can become aware of how we perceive things—or just that we do do this – then we open up a whole world of imagination and meaning and beauty or significance. In other words, we should look at the world with fresh eyes. Rather than assuming what we know is or is not beautiful and “deep” we should start over and look at the actual world around us. Women, for example, do not look like rare and precious flowers. Men are usually chubby and funny looking too (Cf his poem about his reflection in the mirror). Why do we have all this art about classical beauty? Why don’t we have poems about modern life and the modern world?
Often we don’t do this and just go about our lives barely noticing the world around us. We also tend to think that only “special” things, events and people are worth really noticing. Not the “average” or “everyday” or the ordinary things and people of life. But what if we do stop and perceive them anew? Can the everyday world be beautiful or meaningful or just significant in some way? It is up to us to decide what these qualities might be. We can even take this one further: the ugliness of the world – things and people we think of as ugly or plain or worse – can in fact be worth looking at again and re-seeing.
Williams in other words wants us to take perception seriously-- to be aware of ourselves as seers and perceivers. He has a great photographer’s sense of mission and purpose.
One final point here: Williams is also trying to re-invent the subjects and purposes of poetry or art here. It is as if he is saying: We live in a modern, urban, mass society and culture. We need to find beauty and truth there – here in our world -- and not in the traditional poetic and artistic things and subjects.
Other topics we will not get to very much in lecture but that you might want to explore in discussion or in papers later on:
1. Nature. It still exists. Not as wilderness but as traces of the wild and natural world that surrounds us—the “wild carrot leaf” . “Spring and All” gets at this powerfully. We are still part of nature ourselves, even if it seems like we have ruined and killed it.
2. Pleasure. Beauty. (The plums in the icebox.... ) Very very old subjects for poetry. Now: connect it to ice-cream…. Why not?
3. “the masses” or ordinary or downtrodden people.
WALLACE STEVENS:
WS tells us that: “You can have it your way.”Concentrate on using the imagination [there is a slight paradox here— you might think concentration conflicts with imagination…. But his point is that it does not.] If you can make sense of that you can get Stevens. It does not come
naturally or automatically (the imagination). You have to work at it. You might fail. But we do have the capacity or power to do so. Or even: we are always using our imagination whether we know it or not. But we may not do it well or happily.
Read the poem “Gubbinal” from the handout (and at googlesites)
‘The poem of the mind:: if you can sort of understand this you know the gist of Stevens.
Stevens was way ahead of others in pointing to this, though not alone. By the 1950s you could find books like this, and it even continues today in “guides” or manuals about how to be creative. But there is no formula a/c to Stevens. It is an individual quest of the mind/person. http://realneville.com/txt/How_To_Use_Your_Imagination.html
Stevens is really emphasizing is the act of the imagination. He thinks that we can “have it our way.” Reality can be just what we say it is. It is the power of the imagination to make that so. Perception = reality; Imagination = reality.
Stevens is also concerned with how we know things. He is trying to represent the thought process, the imaginative process. This is not easy to get and more ‘advanced’ than Williams, or too ‘brainy’ perhaps? Hi poems can certainly seem like word puzzles or philosophy-math. But they do pay off the effort.
“Disillusionment at 10 O’clock” ….. failure yet capacity of imagination within drunken sailor.
“High Toned Old Christain Woman” “Poetry is the supreme fiction”—i.e. it is the new/replacement/reality of Christianity….
EMPEROR poem:
[Concupiscent: Vigorously passionate] n. A strong desire, especially sexual desire; lust.
[Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin concupscentia, from Latin concupscns, concupscent-, present participle of concupscere, inchoative of concupere, to desire strongly : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + cupere, to desire.]
What is the point here do you think? What is the poem about literally? The plot so to speak? (a funeral/wake).
How do you feel about ice cream and death? Big topics! Williams is staking out an anti-Christian/religion view. And a hedonistic one—pleasures are what count, not transcendence. “let be be finale of seem”: this famous/infamous line literally makes no sense grammatically. So how to deal with that as a reader? Like I said: you don’t worry about it and just read it as if it makes sense. He seems to be saying ice cream is the supreme good. Sensual pleasures. Those are enough to live by. There is no God or afterlife we need to worry about or can rely on. No other order/sense to the universe. BUT we can imagine that this is all enough—the life of the living, the real world.
Also: quit fooling around and deceiving yourselves. Be realistic. Dress the corpse in what the woman used to wear. Not anything new or fancy.
IMAGINATION: it actually take a lot of effort and work to be able to use this human power. It is like life is a struggle between being able to use it and live by it versus being stuck in an empty and drab and sad and meaningless life. It takes a lot of effort. You might not always succeed. But at first you MUST try. You have to become aware of your own thinking and thought processes. Become aware of HOW you see the world around you.
DISILLUSIONMENT poem: nice and simple images leading up to the old sailor. “Anecdote of the Jar”: do you need to know what Tennessee is? Not really. It is a poem about how our minds can give order to reality and nature. There may not be some god or divine order of things, or a scientific basis to life. BUT we can order it all anyway-- make ‘Plain Sense of Things’: the rat tells us everything. It is a sharp, imaginative image, that rat. The landscape looks like a wasteland. But there is still imagination there. You have to imagine it being that bad. It is not that bad “in reality.” Because there is no “reality” outside of our imaginations.
Here are some apt ways of summarizing W Stevens: “The hero of Wallace Stevens’ poetry is the human imagination…..” “the poet of mental life” and the “life of the mind”...
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/ < for info/scholarship on WS and WCW among others…
SUMMING UP: both poets are centrally concerned with the power of the mind to create reality-- through perception and the imagination. They want us to be keenly aware of both of these things: how we perceive things and how we use – or don’t use – our uniquely human imaginations. But this is never easy and always a struggle, and also depends on the built, material object-world at hand.
What are their differences?
WCW—more plain less rhetorically inventive and playful. Also more realistic and rooted in everyday life. And working class/ordinary people.
Stevens: it’s all about the mind
