ELIT 48C Class #11

Stationary vs. Stationery

• Stationary means "fixed in place, unable to move;” Stationery is letterhead or other special writing paper. (Hint: Stationery with an e comes with an envelope.) Examples: Evan worked out on his stationary bike. The duke's initials and crest appeared atop his personal stationery.

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sue-sommer/common-grammar mistakes_b_935609.html#s338543&title=stationarystationery

AGENDA

The Chair Poet Imagist Poetry

o “In a Station of the Metro.”o “The Red Wheelbarrow” o “To Elsie”

Author Introduction:o Wallace Stevenso Mina Loy

Chair Poet of the Day?

On the website, you will find a link to short American poems. You can get a poem from there, but any American poem is fine. Simply commit the poem to memory; each day from now until the end of the quarter I will ask if we have a chair poet. All you have to do is raise your hand. I will take one or two a day. (If there are multiple volunteers, we will schedule them for the next sessions.

A chair poet earns five extra participation points for each member of his or her group.

• The first time I taught this class, a student spontaneously recited “The Red Wheelbarrow” while standing on a chair. From that came the idea of a chair poet a day.

LECTURE

Imagism

Crooked, crawling tide with long wet fingersClutching at the gritty beach in the roar and spurt of spray,Tide of gales, drunken tide, lava-burst of breakers,Black ships plunge upon you from sea to sea away.

From “Tide of Storms” by John Gould Fletcher

Imagism flourished in Britain and in the United States for a brief period between 1909 and 1917. In an effort to move away from the sentimentality and moralizing tone of nineteenth-century Victorian poetry, imagist poets looked to many sources stimulate new ideas:

• They studied the French symbolists, who were experimenting with free verse, a form of poetry that shunned the accustomed rhythm of metrical feet, or lines. Rules of rhyming were also considered nonessential.

• The ancient form of Japanese haiku poetry influenced the imagists to focus on one simple image.

• Greek and Roman classical poetry inspired some of the imagists to strive for a high quality of writing that would endure.

T. E. Hulme (an English Poet who lived from 1883–1917) was instrumental in formulating and cultivating the ideas and concepts that characterized imagism. Hulme proposed a poetry based on absolutely accurate presentation of its subject with no excess verbiage. Imagist poetry aimed to replace muddy abstractions with exactness of observed detail, apt metaphors, and economy of language.

The first tenet of the Imagist manifesto was "To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word." While Hulme wrote only a modest amount of poetry, his ideas inspired Ezra Pound.

Pound's definition of the image was "that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time." Pound defined the tenets of Imagist poetry as follows:

I. Direct treatment of the "thing," whether subjective or objective.

II. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.

III. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5658#sthash.D8754249.dpuf

Amy Lowell on ImagismWhen Ezra Pound left the imagists, Amy Lowell led the movement. In her book Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (New York: Macmillan Company, 1917), she outlines what she sees as the major points of imagism. She set them down “in order.”

1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact, nor the merely decorative word.

2. To create new rhythms -as the expression of new moods -- and not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods. We do not insist upon "free-verse" as the only method of writing poetry. We fight for it as for a principle of liberty. We believe that the individuality of a poet may often be better expressed in free-verse than in conventional forms. In poetry a new cadence means a new idea.

3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject. It is not good art to write badly of aeroplanes and automobiles, nor is it necessarily bad art to write well about the past. We believe passionately in the artistic value of modem life, but we wish to point out that there is nothing so uninspiring nor so old-fashioned as an aeroplane of the year 19 11.

4. To present an image (hence the name: "Imagist"). We are not a school of painters, but we believe that poetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities, however magnificent and sonorous. It is for this reason that we oppose the cosmic poet, who seems to us to shirk the real difficulties of his art.

5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.

6. Finally, most of us believe that concentration is of the very essence of poetry.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/amylowell/imagism.htm

American ImagistsEzra PoundH.DAmy LowellJohn Gould FletcherWilliam Carlos Williams

English ImagistsRichard AldingtonJames JoyceF. S. FlintD. H. Lawrence

It is almost impossible to discuss the imagist movement in terms of only Americans. Pound, who spearheaded much of it, had connections in both America and Britain, and the ideas influenced all of those poets in the same decade.

Though the Imagism movement was over by 1917, the doctrine profoundly influenced the free verse style of the twentieth century.

GROUP DISCUSSION:PARAPHRASENEW CRITICISMQHQS

“In a Station of the Metro”“The Red Wheelbarrow”“To Elsie”

In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Who can paraphrase “In a Station of the

Metro”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES-CqAkxPKo

New critical readings of “In a Station of the Metro”In the title of this poem the word “Station” could have several meanings. In one sense the word could mean an actual station; like the Metro Train Station. In this context it could portray a sense of coming and going, a place in which you could go several directions. It could be a starting place or an endpoint of another. In another sense it could mean a place of stability. If you are stationed somewhere, you know where you are supposed to be and what you must do. The last word “Metro” also has dual meanings.

The lack of action words in the poem contrasts with the fast moving metro car, and is representative of the lifelessness of the passengers. The phrase “apparition of these faces” is ambiguous because the word “apparition” can either mean “a ghost or ghostlike image of a person” or “the appearance of something remarkable or unexpected.” Based on the multiple definitions, the speaker is stating that he views the passengers on the metro, and the atmosphere of the environment, as remarkable, but due to the fast paced nature of the subway the passengers appear ghost like as they ride on the metro. It is ironic that the speaker incorporate nature, not to use it as a symbol of life, but as a symbol of lifelessness.

New critical readings of “In a Station of the Metro”

The second line, “Petals on a wet, black bough” works as a metaphor for the faces inside of the train quickly passing by. This can be interpreted as the bough being the train, and the petals being the people riding the train, so in this case the reader would be the viewer.

With the second and final line, “petals on a wet, black bough”, gives it another context. The line does not make it feel sad and alone, but that everyone is dealing with their own things in life. The “wet, black bough” means that is it comparing the people together on a dark, wet branch, which has a feeling of connection because a branch connects to a whole tree, so everyone in the station is together as one. The fact that the people are called “petals” means that they are a beautiful thing as people, but they are connected to the wet branch. The wetness, or the rain, is usually meaning “new”, so the fact that they are flowers on a wet branch could be that something new is beginning for everyone, and that everything can change.

“In a Station of the Metro” and Pound’s Manifesto

Ezra Pound was known for his support of simplicity, as we see in his Manifesto From a Retrospect. No word should be used unless it reveals something relevant to the work. He also discusses his definition of an “Image”, “that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” (342) Using the above information, this explains the style and shortness of the poem. Every word is significant and used to create an image that will stimulate emotion and intellect within the reader.

Q: How does this poem reflect the concepts discussed in Ezra Pound’s manifesto?

Q: Does the fact that Pound only writes two lines in his “In a Station of the Metro” contradictory to his promotion of “great” writing as avoiding abstractness of meaning?

QHQ on “In a Station of the Metro”

Q: Why is it two lines?? What is the deep meaning? Why is it difficult to analyze a poem with two lines!?

Q: How does line one compare to line two?

Q: What is pound trying to say about the faces in the crowd by comparing it to the petals of flowers on a wet dark tree branch?

Q: Is there any value to Pound’s minimalistic approach to “In a Station of the Metro”?

Q: What is Ezra Pound is trying to accomplish stylistically with “In a Station of the Metro”?

Q: Could this poem, In the Station of the Metro, be Ezra Pound’s allusion to the destruction of nature caused by industrialism?

William Carlos Williams “No ideas but in things”

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much dependsupon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens

The Paraphrase

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqIl3oX_44s

The Paraphrase!1. The small, red cart that is placed near the white chickens and wet

with rain is greatly relied on.2. The glistening red wheelbarrow that was drenched with rain and

carried the essential goods necessary for survival, was placed alongside the clean and lively birds.

3. Many aspects of life are contingent on a garden technology of a certain color that is wet from the precipitation while it lies near the farm animal

4. It is extremely important, the role of this pushcart; its fire truck color inspiring in its neglect as it shines with the liquid of the skies adjacent to the porcelain poultry.

5. There is an excess of reliance weighing down a manufactured industrial product. Aspects of nature have marked their presence on the object. Lastly, this object is situated by animals that roam nearby.

QHQ “The Red Wheelbarrow”1. Q: Why does so much depend “upon a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.”

2. Q: Are we interpreting Williams’ poem correctly if we analyze it as him literally referring to a red wheelbarrow?

3. Why did Williams include the description of the wheelbarrow being wet and next to a pair of white chickens? Color seems to be of significance in this poem since white usually symbolizes innocence and purity.

QHQ1. Q: What was the connection between “The Red

Wheelbarrow” and Spring and All, the collection it first belonged to?

2. Q: How does “The Red Wheelbarrow” influence our understanding of an imagist text? How does this round-out, or help us understand the complicated subject that is inherently ambiguous?

3. Q: If “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “In a Station of the Metro” are poems, what constitutes a poem, and where do we draw the line and no longer consider something a poem?

To

ElsieThe PARAPHRASE

“To Elsie”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqpNWylzRDs

“To Elsie” Lines 1-12

The pure products of Americago crazy—mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of Jerseywith its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thievesold namesand promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have takento railroadingout of sheer lust of adventure—

First consumer goods made in America went viral, that even folks as far East as Kentucky, or the far north of Jersey along the empty lakes and valleys, provoke by the hunger for prosperity and lust of a new adventure dare to migrate to the West.

Lines 13-21

and young slatterns, bathedin filthfrom Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that nightwith gaudsfrom imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give themcharacterbut flutter and flaunt

Young unclean women are dirtied from working Monday to Saturday. They dress up at night with flashy, decorative clothing and accessories made by people whose designs do not draw from any traditional roots. These articles of clothing and accessories are consequently devoid of any purpose or personality other than being being showy.

“To Elsie” Lines 46-54addressed to cheapjewelryand rich young men with fine eyesas if the earth under our feetwerean excrement of some skyand we degraded prisonersdestinedto hunger until we eat filth

Directed to unvalued jewelry and wealthy boys who have beautiful souls, it is as though the land beneath our feet had been waste from the heavens; We devalued criminals who were fated to starve for the moment we devour dirt.

Paraphrase “To Elsie” Lines 60-69

the stifling heat of SeptemberSomehowit seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks thatsomethingis given off

No oneto witnessand adjust, no one to drive the car

The torrid warmth of the ninth month of the year, annihilates us in a way that is unseen. In the lonely rubble left in our wake, only a single grain of life can be found. In the forlorn emptiness, there is no one to move forward, nobody to operate the vehicle.

QHQ: “To Elsie”

Q: What is Williams saying about the life and people in his poem?

Q: Is there a reason Williams chooses to use pessimistic and negative imagery in “To Elsie”?

Q: How is “Elsie” subject to the sexualization of the poem and the narrator?

Q: What does Williams mean at the end when he talks about the deer going by fields of goldenrod” and how there’s no one to “adjust” or “drive the car?”

AUTHOR INTRODUCTIONWallace Stevens

• Wallace Stevens was born on October 2, 1879• He lived a relatively privileged life• He went to Harvard, trying to satisfy his father’s wish for him to

become a lawyer while at the same time satisfying his own need to write.

• In 1900, he defied his parents and moved to NY to become a Journalist for The New York Tribune, though eventually he did return to law school and become a lawyer.

• He worked to make himself financially stable, but still he wrote. • In 1923, he published his first collection of poetry.

Although Steven’s work is powerful in its use of images, he is not classified as an imagist. Instead he writes in a number of styles—often three line stanzas. His early poems sometimes rhymed, some are in blank verse, and some a melodic free verse. The poems we are reading are lyric poems

AUTHOR INTRODUCTION: MINA LOY 1882–1966VISUAL ARTIST AND POET

Although Mina Loy was born in England, she did much of her work in Paris, Florence, and New York City, where her beauty and outlandish behavior shone at the center of multiple avant-garde circles. The unconventional vocabulary and syntax of Loy’s poems and their scornful treatment of love and other subjects can puzzle and offend, but no reader can question the work’s originality nor the poet’s fierce intelligence.

Neglect of Loy's poetry has lent qualified support to revisionist claims that leading male modernists like T. S. Eliot, Pound, and Joyce defined modernism so as to marginalize writers whose poetics and politics threatened their own largely conservative stance.

However, Eliot and Pound praised Loy's work. High modernist champions of technical innovation and intellectual rigor could not accuse Loy of formal conservatism or sentimentality.

Literary historians may have marginalized Loy by making her a modernist icon, woman-as-Dada, while relegating her writing to avant-garde obscurity; but equally relevant is Loy's lessened attention to her poetry in later life.

Renewed interest in her poetry belongs to the recovery of the neglected, multiple aspects of early modernism. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) Stein, whom Loy praised as "Curie / of the laboratory / of vocabulary," offers a definitive tribute to Loy's artistic vision. Recalling Loy's first husband's plea that she punctuate the long sentences without commas in The Making of Americans (1925), Stein notes that "Mina Loy . . . was able to understand without the commas. She has always been able to understand."

HOMEWORKRead: Mina Loy 295-96 and “Parturition” 296-99 Post #12: Respond to one of the following prompts:1. QHQ on the “Parturition”2. Discuss “Parturition” in conjunction with Loy’s Manifesto.3. Discuss “Parturition” in conjunction with one critical theoryRead: Wallace Stevens“The Snow Man” 283 “The Emperor of Ice Cream” 284 Post #13: 4. Paraphrase either poem. Be original! 5. Discuss the modernist aspects of one or both of these poems.6. Or a brief “new critical” reading of one poem7. Or do a QHQ for either “The Snow Man” or “The Emperor of

Ice Cream”