Rhetorical Arguments

Last class, we discussed the three different areas/sectors of poetry: rhetoric, image, and diction. I came across this poem, which was interesting because unlike many of Szymborska's other poems, image does not play as prominent role--and rhetoric is much more important.

Certainty

"Thou art certain, then, our ship hath touch'd upon
the deserts of Bohemia?" "Aye, my lord." The quote's
from Shakespeare, who, I'm certain, wasn't someone else.
Some facts and dates, a portrait nearly done before
his death...Who needs more? Why expect to see
the proof, snatched up once by the Greater Sea,
then cast upon the world's Bohemian shore?

First of all, the syntax and diction of this poem are much less abrupt than some of the author's other poems. If read out loud, I don't know that the reader would necessarily know that it is poetry, not prose. And, the poem is only seven lines: it is like a snippet of a conversation that one might overhear. Next, the second half of the poem is strongly rhetorical--the speaker asks several questions that have strong argumentative undertones. While some of the diction is more descriptive--"snatched up" and "cast upon"--for example, the intention of the poem is to argue that Shakespeare was actually Shakespeare, not some other author. The intention is laid out very clearly, and the lack of inference needed on the part of the reader makes the poem atypical. Could this poem be made stronger with the addition of image and more "poetic" diction? Does it make an effective rhetorical argument? I think that the poem needs to be longer, since the reader is not given many details or analysis by the speaker of the poem.

Varied Points of View

One of the strengths of Szymborska's poetry is her ability to write effectively from a variety of points of view. Some volumes of poetry contain a number of poems with very similar themes, diction, structure, etc. To some degree, this is the "style" of the poet, and the reader does not expect a great degree of variance. It is refreshing, however, when a poet makes the effort to write poems from different perspectives. Here's a question: How much should we, the reader, expect a poet to deviate from their standard poetic style? Obviously, every poet develops subjects that they enjoy writing about as well as certain stylistic trademarks. Is the poet better off attempting to develop this trademark style, or should he or she experiment with other techniques? For those of you who have read Kay Ryan, for example: would the aggregate effect of Ryan's poems be lost if all of them were not so terse and laconic?

While Szymborksa writes from a variety of perspectives, the abrupt, direct tone is apparent in all of her work. We talked about translation earlier in the semester, and in light of our observations, I wonder how effective the translators were at transposing the tone of the Polish poems to their English counterparts. Assumablely, the poems were written with simple syntax and clear diction in Polish, but it seems as though it would not always be possible to translate it into English. The tone changes that result from point-of-view changes are often quite subtle, and such subtleties are often apparent in features that distinguish one language from the next.

Here are a couple of examples of her poems with different perspectives.


Advertisement

I'm a tranquilizer.
I'm effective at home.
I work in the office.
I can take exams
or the witness stand.
I mend broken cups with care.
All you have to do is take me,
let me melt beneath your tongue,
just gulp me
with a glass of water.

I know how to handle misfortune,
how to take bad news.
I can minimize injustice,
lighten up God's absence,
or pick the window's veil that suits your face.
What are you waiting for---
have faith in my chemical compassion.

You're still a young man/woman.
It's not too late to learn how to unwind.
Who said
you have to take it on the chin?

Let me have your abyss.
I'll cushion it with sleep.
You'll thank me for giving you
four paws to fall on.

Sell me your soul.
There are no other takers.

There is no devil anymore.

This is an interesting persona poem; Szymborska does an excellent job creating emotion with something inanimate. The diction and syntax are characteristically simple and clear; this is appropriate, since the tranquilizer is speaking to someone who views taking a tranquilizer as an "easy out." The speaker is not directing thoughts toward someone having difficulty deciding whether or not to use a tranquilizer. The tranquilizer is given god-like abilities and presence; in fact, all of its powers make God's role unnecessary...the tranquilizer can help handle misfortune, take bad news, etc. This comparison is then underscored with the last lines in the second stanza: "What are you waiting for-- / have faith in my chemical compassion." At the end of the poem, the tranquilizer moves from a God-like role to a negative, devil-inspired role: "Sell me your soul. / There are no other takers. / There is no other devil anymore." Szymborska's demonstration of the relationship between religion and items with comparable effect makes the persona believable and interesting--and a more effective poem than one that just describes tranquilizers from the human perspective.

Here's another poem that is not exactly a persona poem, but that has an object speaking.

Falling from the Sky

Magic is dying out, although the heights
still pulse with its vast force. On August nights
you can't be sure what's falling from the sky:
a star? or something else that still belongs on high?
Is making wishes an old-fashioned blunder
if heaven only knows what we are under?
Above our modern heads the dark's still dark,
but can't some twinkle in it explain: "I'm a spark,
I swear, a flash that a comet shook lose
from its tail, just a bit of cosmic rubble;
it's not me falling in tomorrow's news,
that's some other spark nearby, having engine trouble."

This poem is unique syntactically; the first half of the poem is a series of questions. Usually, questions are not a very strong rhetorical device since they tend to lack image and concreteness. These, however, are have rich diction. In the second half of the poem, the star speaks. The fact that the star is speaking is secondary; the imagery ("cosmic rubble") is at the forefront. The idea of the star speaking is reminiscent of twinkle-twinkle-little-star, but the tone is kept lighthearted instead of silly. The poem has an AABBCCDD rhyme scheme, but there is not rhyme in the final four lines; this keeps the rhyme scheme from overwhelming the imagery, as well as distract from the sonic repetition ("comet shook lose"). I still am not sure, however, that this poem would not have been more effective with just a description of the star--is it "speaking" a worthwhile addition?

Wislawa Szymborska--No End of Fun, 1967

Wislawa Szymborska

Poems New and Collected—No End of Fun, 1967

This volume is a collection of the work of Szymborska, a Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1996. All of her poems are straightforward, with clear and conversational diction and syntax. Many of the poems describe familiar subjects or topics of the twentieth century—wars and changes in society. Additionally, Szymborska’s poems often have an abrupt tone that results from the stark style. She uses similes frequently, but does not use other figurative language or trope in abundance.

Consider this poem, “Report from the Hospital”:


Report from the Hospital

We used matches to draw lots: who would visit him.
And I lost. I got up from our table.
Visiting hours were just about to start.

When I said hello he didn’t say a word.
I tried to take his hand—he pulled it back
like a hungry dog that won’t give up his bone.

He seemed embarrassed about dying.
What do you say to someone like that?
Our eyes never met, like in a faked photograph.

He didn’t care if I stayed or left.
He didn’t ask about anyone from our table.
Not you, Barry. Or you, Larry. Or you, Harry.

My head started aching. Who’s dying on whom?
I went on about modern medicine ad the three violets in a jar.
I talked about the sun and faded out.

It’s a good thing they have stairs to run down.
It’s a good thing they have gates to let you out.
It’s a good thing you’re all waiting at our table.

The hospital smell makes me sick.

First of all, the stark tone of the poem matches the title, which suggests that the poem will be a no-frills outline of events. Usually, we don’t think of poetry as a “report,” but Szymborska has captured the essence of the situation without copious description.

The stark diction, with as few words as possible, helps create the disconnected tone as well. For example, the speaker does not even indicate who she is visiting—the person in the hospital is referenced only by “him,” “he,” and “someone.” None of the characters in the poem are described clearly; the reader is given no background or context. This makes the disconnection described in the poem more applicable to any situation, rather than just sickness in a hospital.

Szymborska does not mince words; she writes a narrative poem with the events laid out clearly. In some stanzas, the poem reads like prose: “I got up from our table. / Visiting hours were just about to start.” Szymborska uses mostly simple sentences instead of complex sentences with clauses; this helps create the robotic, distant tone. Additionally, the repetition of phrases suggests that the speaker is just going through a set of motions without emotion behind them. In the fourth stanza, the final line (“Not you, Barry. Or you, Larry. Or you, Harry.”) has sonic repetition, since Barry/Larry/Harry are all obvious rhymes. This heavy rhyme creates a sing-song quality that indicates lack of connection with reality, something that is understandable in a situation with sickness. The reader can imagine the stress inevitable with long, drawn out illness. In the next to last stanza, every line begins “it’s a good thing they…” Each of the lines then goes on to describe a method of escape from the hospital: stairs, an open gate, or other people. The last line of the poem—“The hospital smell makes me sick”—creates a clear contrast between what’s “good” (anything outside the hospital) and what’s “bad” (anything related to the hospital). It’s clear that the speaker considers events in black and white; not only are emotions few and far between, but the emotions that do exist in the poem are not shown in a large spectrum.

Untraditional Religious Themes

Progressive Health

We here at Progressive Health would like to thank you
For being one of the generous few who’ve promised
To bequeath your vital organs to whoever needs them.

Now we’d like to give you the opportunity
To step out far in front of the other donors
By acting a little sooner than you expected,

Tomorrow, to be precise, the day you’ve scheduled
To come in for your yearly physical. Six patients
Are waiting this very minute in intensive care

Who will likely die before another liver
And spleen and pairs of lungs and kidneys
Match theirs as closely as yours do. Twenty years,

Maybe more, are left you, granted, but the gain
Of these patients might total more than a century.
To you, of course, one year of your life means more

Than six of theirs, but to no one else,
No one as concerned with the general welfare
As you’ve claimed to be. As for your poems—

The few you may have it in you to finish—
Even if we don’t judge them by those you’ve written,
Even if we assume you finally stage a breakthrough,

It’s doubtful they’ll raise one Lazarus from a grave
Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed
To work six wonders. As for the gaps you’ll leave

As an aging bachelor in the life of friends,
They’ll close far sooner from the open wounds
Soon to be left in the hearts of husbands and wives,

Parents and children, by the death of six
Who are now failing. Just imagine how grateful
They’ll all be when they hear of your grand gesture.

Summer and winter they’ll visit your grave, in shifts,
For as along as they live, and stoop to tend it,
And leave it adorned with flowers or holly wreaths,

While your friends, who are just as forgetful
As you are, just as liable to be distracted,
Will do more than a makeshift job of upkeep.

If the people you’ll see tomorrow pacing the halls
Of our crowded facility don’t move you enough,
They’ll make you at least uneasy. No happy future

Is likely in store for a man like you whose conscience
Will ask him to certify every hour from now on
Six times as full as it was before, your work

Six times as strenuous, your walks in the woods
Six times as restorative as anyone else’s.
Why be a drudge, staggering to the end of your life

Under this crushing burden when, with a single word,
You could be a god, one of the few gods
Who, when called on, really listens?

Here is another example of Dennis’s variance in style. He uses direct address again, which is appropriate because it provides the sense of urgency that would be necessary to convince someone to die in exchange for the lives of six others. Additionally, almost every stanza is open; this indicates that the entire poem creates a single cohesive thought. The poem ends with a question mark; this is fitting since the poem questions the value of a single life in comparison to multiples lives.

The conversational tone allows the reader to flow through each of the stanzas and understand the general idea on the first read. The tone of the poem changes throughout; at the beginning, the poem is similar to an emotionally wrenching plea for money by a charity. The plea, however, is tongue-in-cheek: the idea of choosing to die so that six other people could have your organs is laughable…but as the poem continues, the reader realizes that there is some logic (and seriousness) in this proposal—isn’t, as the speaker suggests, the lives of six people more valuable than the life of one? This, I think, is the intention of the poem: a rebuff of selfishness, the poem makes us consider what effect complete selflessness would have. The lines that suggest that while the subject has only twenty years left, the combined total of those whose lives would be saved equals one hundred years is clever; it presents an argument that is surprising, yet intuitive. Why don’t people who will only live another few decades give up their lives in order to provide far more total years for half-a-dozen people? Selfishness: sacrifice is not in your best interest.

In the final stanza, Dennis relates the conceit of the poem back to the non-traditional religious themes of the volume. With a single word, the speaker emphasizes, that the subject of the poem could be a “god” who really listens. This implies that the traditional, Judeo-Christian god doesn’t listen, and it also suggests that one of the features of a “god” is to act as a savior. The poem is a secularization of traditional religious beliefs, yet it still relies on familiar religious ideas. The validity of the one Biblical allusion is quickly discounted: “It’s doubtful they’ll raise one Lazarus from a grave / Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed / To work six wonders.” Once again, Dennis succeeds in weaving poems that combine traditionally religious aspects as well as secular portions. Interestingly, these lines emphasize self-reliance by citing a Biblical example.

The title of this poem (“Progressive Healthcare”) as well as the title of the volume (“Practical Gods”) demonstrates the themes of the volume: spirituality is individualistic, the history of religion is important in developing religious beliefs today, and the best view of religion is the practical one.

A poem describing poetry

Eternal Poetry

How to grow old with grace and firmness
Is the kind of eternal problem that poetry
Is best reserved for, unaging poetry
That isn't afraid of saying what time will do
To our taste and talents, our angles of observation.
As for a local problem mentioned in passing
In this morning's news, like the cut in food stamps,
It's handled more effectively in an essay
With graphs and numbers. A poem's no proper place
To dwell on the prison reforms my friend proposes
Based on his twenty-year stint inside the walls.
In an essay there's room to go into details
So the State of New York can solve the problem
Once and for all and turn to issues more lasting.
Facing old age, the theme I'm developing here,
Will still be an issue when the failure of prisons
Interests only historians of our backward era.
A poem's the thing for grappling with the question
Whether it's best to disdain old age as a pest
Or respect it as a might army or welcome it
As a guest with a ton of baggage. Three options
That health-care professionals might deem too harsh
To appear in their journals. I wish they would help
My friend publish his essay on prison reform,
His practical plan to inspire the inmates
By cutting their minimum sentences if they master a trade
So they won't return, as is likely now, in a year or two.
The odds are long against getting the ear of the governor
But not impossible if he's only a year from retirement
And old age prompts him to earn a paragraph
In the history of reform. The bill might squeak through
If the Assembly decides it hasn't the wherewithal
To keep the old prisons in decent repair
Let alone build new ones. No money now
To pay the prison inspector what he deserves
As he makes his rounds in his battered pickup.
An old man shaking his head in disgust
As the roof leaks, peeling plaster, and rusty plumbing
That might have been avoided with a little foresight
And therefore don't deserve a place in a poem.
And to think he's been at it for thirty years
Despite his vow, after a month on the job,
To be out of it at the latest by Christmas.
Nobody's eager to wear his shoes
Unless we count the people inside the walls
Whose envy of those growing old outside
Is a constant always to be relied on,
And so can enter a poem at any time.


This is an odd poem--mostly because it seeks to describe what poetry should and should not be used for...by writing a poem about it. Dennis writes that poetry should be used for different kinds of "eternal problems." Is he implying that poetry should not be used for issues that are temporary? Certainly, poetry is most often used for describing and discussing abstract issues: love, death, life, passion, pain, etc. But, I think that poetry can be used to describe more temporary issues. Perhaps, however, even a temporary issue--like describing a sickness--could be viewed in terms of its "eternal" themes. I think that the line about "angles of observation" is a more accurate portrayal of poetry. The purpose of poetry is to take either mundane things and describe them as extraordinary, or, conversely, take difficult, abstract concepts and describe them in terms of everyday objects. That, I think, is what distinguishes poetry from prose.

Dennis' observation that "this morning's news" is handled more effectively in an essay with "graphs and numbers" is true. An article will convey the most news if the information can be related in prose. That said, many poems have a political angle, so it's not accurate to say that a poet must divorce current events and poetry completely.

Midway through the poem, the speaker states that "a poem's the thing for grappling with the question / Whether it's best to disdain old age as a pest / Or respect it as a mighty army." Right after these lines, the speaker enters into a long segment of discussing prison reform. This seemed completely contrary to his earlier assertion that "a poem's no proper place / To dwell on the prison reform." Why did Dennis make this statement...and then decide to discuss prison reform at length? Is he demonstrating that a poem about prison reform doesn't really make a very good poem?

The syntax and diction of the body of the poem contrast with the title. "Eternal Poetry" creates an image of a poem with abstract ideas and an erudite vocabulary. The text of the poem, however, uses simple, clear syntax and diction that are prose-like. Especially in the later half of the poem, it would be impossible to distinguish it from prose if read aloud. I do agree with Dennis here: if you are going to write a poem about an issue that would be found most often in prose form, then the poet should take pains to make sure that the poetry can be clearly marked as poetry. Lines like "I wish they would help / My friend publish his essay on prison reform" have few poetic qualities, and I think should belong in prose. Even the structure of this poem, which is not broken into stanzas, is similar to prose.

Now a few questions for you all to consider: Do you think that a poem is the best place to discuss what makes a good or bad poem? Are there certain topics that are unsuited for poetry? Does poetry need to rely on the abstract?

Religious Themes in "Practical Gods"

In a poetry volume titled "Practical Gods," religious-themed poems are certainly expected. Dennis does write poems with religious allusions and subject matter, but he does not necessarily take a specific stand or have a didactic tone, which I found surprising at first, considering the number of Biblical allusions.

For example:

The God Who Loves You

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many features.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week--
Three fine houses sold to deserving families--
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in sight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will fill compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imaging him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.

There are several techniques that Dennis uses that are unique.

First of all, the poem is in the second person--a direct address. Not very many poems are written in second person, and there's a good reason for this: it is difficult to pull off without sounding too preachy. What effect does the direct address have in this poem? While the speaker is not God, the second-person mimics God's commands, especially from the Old Testament. The prevalent use of "you" reminds the reader of the 10 Commandments, or any other part of the Bible where God lays down guidelines that when not followed, result in a worsened quality of life. "The God Who Loves You" has more of a reflective, melancholy tone than a didactic tone; this reflects Dennis' tendency to portray religion in more flexible terms. By having the speaker of the poem act as an intermediary between the subject (referred to as "you") and God, Dennis paints a religious picture different than the the traditional, archetypal view of God speaking forcefully and personally to humans.

Second, the repetition of the phrase "the god who loves you" throughout the poem underscores the non-traditional manner than Dennis views religion. "God loves you" is a familiar phrase, but Dennis uses it in an unfamiliar manner. In general, religion is portrayed as humans making sacrifices to God and then having to change their behavior to fit with the mandates of God. Humans are far more concerned about God's opinion of them than vice-versa. Yet, in this poem, Dennis portrays the opposite: God is pondering the happiness of the subject and is demonstrating insecurity and uncertainty, while the human is too busy to pay attention to the concerns of God. It's interesting that all of the references to "he"--referring to God--are not capitalized. (Traditionally, all of the pronouns would be.) The lack of capitalization brings God and the subject of the poem to the same level, like in the last stanza: "...by imagining him / No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend / No closer than the actual friend you made at college." In a way, the God that Dennis describes is contradictory: he is omniscient, which is in accordance with traditional Biblical beliefs ("knowing as he does exactly what would have happened") , yet he is also placated by the speaker describing life's events. This succeeds in breaking traditional "God" roles.

I thought that this was an interesting choice for the final poem of the volume. For a volume of poetry with mainly religious subjects, this poem advocates independence from God. This, I think, is the crux of many of Dennis' poems: spirituality is important and something worth analyzing, but the traditional religious viewpoint is not always correct or desirable. We see through Dennis' poems that he believes spirituality to be an everyday thing that is largely individualized. Consider these last lines of the poem: "With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed, / Which for all you know is the life you've chosen." To end this volume with the word "chosen" is, I think perfect--throughout, Dennis has advocated a non-rigid conception of spirituality that centers around human choice.

Abstract Subjects

In my last post, I cited some examples of specific imagery and connected tropes. As I continued to read "Practical Gods" I found that for every poem that has clear, simple images, there is a poem that dwells heavily in the abstract--yet still includes abundant figurative language and imagery. I felt that these poems lacked the poignancy of the poems with more concrete, connected imagery; this is because it is difficult to write a poem about an abstract idea and have it not be trite. For example, "A Chance for the Soul":

Am I leading the life that my soul,
Mortal or not, wants me to lead is a question
That seems at least as meaningful as the question
Am I leading the life I want to live,
Given the vagueness of the pronoun "I,"
The number of things it wants at any moment.

Fictive or not, the soul asks for a few things only,
If not just one. So life would be clearer
If it weren't so silent, inaudible
Even here in the yard an hour past sundown
When the pair of cardinals and crowd of starlings
Have settled down for the night in the poplars.

Have I planted the seed of my talent in fertile soil?
Have I watered and trimmed the sapling?
Do birds nest in my canopy? Do I throw a shade
Other might find inviting? These are some handy metaphors
The soul is free to use if it finds itself
Unwilling to speak directly for reasons beyond me,
Assuming it's eager to be of service.

Now the moon, rising above the branches,
Offers itself to my soul as a double,
Its scarred face an image of the disappointment
I'm ready to say I've caused if the soul
Name the particulars and suggests amendments.

So fire are the threads that the moon
Uses to tug at the ocean that Galileo himself
Couldn't imagine them. He tried to explain the tides
By the earth's momentum as yesterday
I tried to explain my early waking
Three hours before dawn by street noise.

Now I'm ready to posit a tug
Or nudge from the soul. Some insight
Too important to be put off till morning
Might have been mine if I'd opened myself
To the occasion as now I do.

Here's a chance for the soul to fit its truth
To a world of yards, moons, poplars, and starlings,
To resist the fear that to talk my language
Means to be shoehorned into my perspective
Till it thinks as I do, narrowly.

"Be brave, Soul," I want to say to encourage it.
"Your student, however slow, is willing,
The only student you'll ever have."

My first reaction to this poem occurred after reading the first line: why would a poet attempt to write a poem addressing his "soul?" Not only is "soul" one of the least concrete, quantifiable things that I can think of, but it is also heavily used in popular culture in a shallow manner. Writing a meaningful poem about one's own soul seems like a task that is doomed from the beginning--the poet would be much better off not using "soul" as the subject of the poem. As I continued to read and consider the poem, "soul" as the subject seemed more justifiable, but certainly still a difficult subject to write a meaningful poem about.

Throughout the poem, Dennis personifies--I'm not sure that personification is the correct term--things associated with human beings, but not considered clearly living or inanimate: in the first stanza, the pronoun "I" is characterized as wanting things, and throughout the rest of the poem soul takes on the qualities of a human. (This makes sense, after all, the soul supposedly embodies all of the thoughts, desires, and emotions of a human.) By making "soul" take on human qualities ("Now I'm ready to posit a tug / or nudge from the soul"), Dennis removes it from the strictly abstract realm....this allows the reader to create a stronger, more specific view of the soul, but at the same time, it removes the deeper, pensive tone that repeatedly using a word like "soul" has.

In the third stanza, Dennis creates a metaphor: the speaker is a tree that grows and changes over time. The speaker asks a series of four questions pertaining to himself: "Have I planted the seed of my talent..? / Have I watered and trimmed the sapling? / Do birds nest in my canopy? / Do I throw a shade others might find inviting?" Certainly, this metaphor is logical: trees grow from seeds to large trees. Humans grow from babies to adults. Dennis adds a few more details...but then the speaker goes on say that "these are some handy metaphors." What is the purpose that Dennis would remind the reader that these are metaphors? This fact is not obscured in the least. It seems as though Dennis is making "soul" as a general concept more trivial and accessible. Like I've discussed, Dennis seeks to simplify religious themes in many of his poems. While not directly religious, the soul is certainly a religious concept. By describing it in specific terms, Dennis is reminding the reader that it does not have to be a nebulous, fuzzy concept.

Two final things: first, my favorite piece of imagery in the poem--"to resist the fear that to talk my language / means to be shoehorned into my perspective." I think that this is one of Dennis' best few lines of poetry. He keeps the language simple, but does not result to overly simple ideas. It's easy to imagine the foot being forced into the shoe via shoehorn...the reader can then translate this specific image to the idea of making language fit perspective. The result: the reader then realizes that there is often a discrepancy between spoken words and thoughts.

Finally, there is an interesting use of apostrophe in the final stanza: "Be brave, Soul." (Remember, an apostrophe is addressing an non-living thing or an abstract idea.) The fact that the speaker is addressing his soul as a separate entity is of interest; it makes "soul" take on concrete qualities that allow the reader to quantify the soul as more than an intangible concept. Additionally, it implies that the soul has the ability to have strengths and weaknesses; this is interesting because it makes it difficult to separate the human from the soul. At the same time, the distinct address of the soul by the speaker indicates that the two are indeed separate. I think that this is a fundamental idea in the poem: the soul and human share many qualities, yet are still distinct.

"Practical Gods" by Carl Dennis

The tone of all of the poems in "Practical Gods" is very conversational. While many of the poems have religious themes (that have the potential to become didactic and pompous), all of the poems retain an accessibility that is far more effective than a didactic tone. The title for the volume that Dennis chose suggests this; in many ways, "practical" and "gods" conjure very different images. A synonym for "practical" is down-to-earth, and this is the opposite of the gods, which are in the heavens and are traditionally inaccessible. From the beginning, the reader realizes that while Dennis might address philosophical and religious material, it will be in a context that is accessible to the lay reader.

This poem, which does not have religious overtones like many of Dennis' other poems, indicates the conversational syntax and diction.

School Days

On the heart's map of the country, a thousand miles
May be represented by a quarter inch, the distance
Between St. Louis and a boarding school in Massachusetts
Where the son will be taught by the same teachers
Who taught his father and will reappear Christmas
At Union Station singing his father's songs.

Likewise the distance walked by an immigrant mother
From the tenement on Locust to the school on Seventh
Equals the distance on the heart's map of the world
Between the Volga and the Mississippi.

Now she's left the children at the school door
And has watched them enter a country she'll never visit
From which they'll return this evening with stories
She won't be able to understand. And on weekends,
When she and her husband fill their one big room
With the clatter of piecework, the children wait for a seat
In the reading room of the Cass Avenue library
Where a book is a ship, its prow pointed toward Ithaca.

A thousand kisses to you, Miss Winslow, senior librarian,
With a slice of poppy-seed cake that mother made
For your help in boarding and raising the sails.
Now for the lotus-eaters and witches, princesses, gods,
Not one of which leaves Odysseus at a loss for words.
And all the words in English, a language stiff as a stone
On the tongue of the oldsters but flexible for the children.

What skill could be more useful than making a stranger
A friend with a single speech or tricking a giant
Eager to eat you? The boring parts can be skimmed
Like the trip to shadow land, where the hero has to sit still
And listen to the sad stories of shadows.

Three times he tries to embrace his mother,
Who pined away with longing for her lone son
Wandering far from home, buffeted by the sea god.
Three times he embraces only air.

The strength of Dennis' poems is his ability to take mundane objects and ideas and then weave them together to create ethereal imagery. Dennis moves the reader from a very concrete world to the abstract without any awkwardness. For example, in the first stanza, there is a concrete, recognizable observation: a thousand miles can be a quarter inch on a map. Dennis, however, equates this physical distance with the "heart's map of the country." Either image by itself would fail to evoke the same understanding from the reader. Dennis continues the map imagery in the second stanza. Then, in the third stanza, Dennis only alludes to the map idea when he writes that the mother has "watched them [her children] enter a country she'll never visit / from which they'll return this evening with stories." Now, school represents a foreign country, and the children are described as returning with exotic stories from a foreign land. At the end of this stanza, Dennis adjust his imagery once again, but still keeps it in the "travel" category. In the last line of the stanza, he uses a simple metaphor: "a book is a ship." At first glance, this metaphor is child-like...but this is the idea--it so utterly noncomplex that it conveys the single-mindedness of the children learning. In the fourth stanza, Dennis continues his ship metaphor. Here, the poppy seed cake is a mechanism to raise "the sails" of learning, knowledge, and exploration.

Throughout the entire poem, Dennis uses a sequence of concrete objects to convey specific images. The words of the poem are often prosaic, but the cumulative effect is much more impacting than a string of high-sounding big words. This, I think, we could emulate: sometimes, we spend too much time crafting images and philosophical sounding ideas with too many "million dollar" words, when simpler, more specific words would do a better job. Consider the last line of the poem: "Three times he embraces only air." None of the individual words are particularly complex or descriptive, but the sum of the sentence perfectly portrays the lack of connection between the young man and the mother.

Form, Diction, & Syntax

In an exemplary poem, all of the different elements--form, diction, syntax, imagery, tone etc.--coalesce to produce a haunting sequence of words. I think that one thing that beginning poets struggle with is getting all of these elements to work with each other, not in opposition. At some point this semester, we talked about how if the tone of a poem does not match with the diction or syntax then the poem is not nearly as effective. One aspect that Applewhite is successful in is his ability to match the diction, syntax, and imagery with the tone of the poem. As I've written about earlier, many of his poems describe the past, where he uses more formal, perhaps borderline archaic, diction and syntax. He uses long lines that fill most of the physical page to mirror the density of his descriptions. Additionally, he often writes single-stanza poems; he uses this most often when writing narrative poems--this way, stanza breaks do not break with the flow of the story.

There is one poem in "Daytime and Starlight" that I think breaks with Applewhite's usual use of form: "Wings"

We'll ascend the keen plane
------in a dawn-gazelle
--antlered with radar
-----------------having seen

gleaming truths, arising.
--------Aluminum gains
--meaning as cities
----------------fall from us.

Thristing west and east
-------these beasts of velocity
--inhale horizons
-----------------opening exits--

intense centers we
------enter, levitating with
--a prayer. Not lighter
---------------than air though

ferried farther than by a
-------dream, we harry clouds
--in stratospheres above
-----------------remembrance.

Unaware of continents
----------beyond imaginable
---force, we crease
----------------existence, close

to a barrier polished by a
----------quickness past breathing.
--From present to future
-----------------we attenuate

balancing the old and a newer
------------life, navigating
---origin and desire
-----------------as the polestar

guides our thrust toward
-----aphelion. We nod there,
--lax among magazines
--------------waking through

unknown time zones
--------to Rome and a tongue.
--Above, tomorrow
--------------we'll be platinum

foils, contrails, cigarette
-----smoke taut-drawn
between
-------------departure and destination.


(The line indicate the indentations--Blogger deletes the tabs.)

Applewhite matches the title, "Wings," with the placement on the page---the indentations remind the reader of flight. When he describes abstract ideas, Applewhite continues the flight connections: "gleaming truths, arising." In the second stanza, I think that it is particularly effective that the first line ends in "arising" and the last line begins with "fall." These written indicates of physical space complement the arrangement of the words on the page. Applewhite's diction in this poem also gives it a feel of motion:

levitating
inhale
opening
harry
quickness
balancing
navigating

The combination of vivid, flight-like diction and airy syntax (Applewhite does not include a subject at the beginning of any of the stanzas except the first; I think that this makes the reader feel an ascension away from the beginning excertation of "we'll ascend") complement the poem's physical structure on the page, and this makes the poem more successful than if any of the three elements were not present.

Applewhite's Tone

First of all, let's revist the definition of "tone"--the emotional stance of the speaker of the poem toward a particular speaker or object. The tone of many of Applewhite's poems is introspective, reflective, and considerate of the past. Much of the imagery relates to the passage of time, with the seasons representing different stages in life and a discussion of how past inhabitants of a place affect the current residents. Applewhite longs for the past, and the underlying focus on events that have already occurred creates a meloncholy tone.

For example:

"Jamestown"

All looks little and low--like the creek
bank at home, when we'd have come from
the canoe. But here and more alone than I can
dream, they awaited the return

of the Godspeed, though the water most would corss
was Pitch and Tar Swamp, bearing rushes
to thatch houses, for a town that in two years' time
look like an ancient ruin.

...

So England orphaned us in a new ruin representing
the old one, that we thought with envy of until
those kinsmen fed into the soil made the tilling of it
identity, and this bereft place home.

Gentlemen of the Company, could you not plant other
knowledge to guide us in our new isolation--
palisaded on a shore, watching for the returning ships, more
lost than Raleigh's first colony?

The events described in the poem are grounded in the past, but Applewhite ties the poem into the present with the first stanza. Applewhite turns the subject of the poem from the speaker (I) to the settlers of early America (they): "But here and more alone than I can dream, they awaited the return." By using both of the pronouns in the same sentence (and so close together), he creates a syntaxical link between the past and present. In the next to the last stanza, Applewhite brings the reader back in time with his pronoun usage another time: "So England orphaned us...that we thought." The stanza describes a search for identity within the colonies, but the use of the pronouns allows the reader to easily extend this search to become his or her own. By italicizing home, Applewhite adds to the reflective, identity-searching tone that the reader has come to expect in other Applewhite poems. The author looks for solutions to current identity issues in the past, but lets the reader draw many of the connections between descriptions of history and goals for the future. I think that many other poems that are deeply rooted in the history have a much more didactic tone; Applewhite chooses instead to describe the events in a mellow, contemplative tone.

Imagery and the Inclusion of Technical Terms

Earlier this semester I read Kay Ryan, and her poems were full of imagery; in fact, many of her poems were almost completely imagery rather than a narration of events. In contrast, Applewhite weaves together natural/scenic imagery and narration. I think that this enhances both the narration and the imagery.

Here's a good example:

A Late Sun

Buona sera, with an afternoon reverberant of engines,
as kamikaze scooters nip at the heels of tourists in
the Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere. We pause
to drink expensive water and Coke

and watch the Roman azure attenuate through odor
of diesel smoke. Inside, mosaics had glistened, as late
sunlight lapped the convexisty of the apse. Sheep bore
on their backs a time of Christ

and saints. The gazes of those boys on high met our eyes
so directly and piercingly they seemed almost not
strange anymore. To adore the precious color and
entablature was nearly to believe.

The later, frescoed angels a layer below whirled robes
with limbs made lithe by a real world. Outside,
Italian kids kicked a soccer ball beside the central fountain
and had me smiling, glad

that Christ was human on one side of the family, at least--
that praisers of his cast belief in fresco, intelligible as
flowers in the orto botanico, where I snapped your picture, so
you will not fade anymore, my saint.


Applewhite begins and ends the poem with Italian phrases. "Buona sera" means "good evening" and "orto botanico" means "botanical garden." This adds to the narrative aspects of the poem--first, it reminds the reader that the poem, while in English, takes place in Italy, and second, it is indicative of the common tourist tendency to add in phrases in the local language to appear knowledgeable about the foreign culture. Given the fact that the speaker is certainly still an outsider, the reader can question the authenticity or accuracy of the speaker's analysis of Italian history, art, and culture. Applewhite's use of Italian terms fits with the overall scheme of the poem, since there are other terms that pertain to Italian architecture throughout.

An image in the first stanza provides a vivid picture of Italian tourism: "kamikaze scooters nip at the heels of tourists." This image is especially interesting because it challenges our general connotation of "kamikaze." When I read "kamikaze," my first thought is the Japanese suicide planes in World War II--and this is much more severe than scooters nipping heels, which while not benign, is a much more playful image. The combination of the violent, planes-going-up-smoke image and the more happy, playful image of heel-nipping makes the reader consider the image with more care. I think that this is an effective strategy when composing poetry: taking an object, idea, or place that the reader is already familiar with--and then ignoring any preconceived notions about that thing when creating the image--creates more original, thought-provoking imagery. Too often, we are trapped by constraints that will have more written effect when broken.

Another technique that Applewhite uses: when writing about Italy in a historical context, Applewhite has a tendency to use words that while not exactly archaic, aren't used everyday. For example: "Inside, mosaics had glistened, as late sunlight lapped the convexity of the apse." Here, "apse" jumps out right away as being a word that the reader probably doesn't know. It is "projecting part of a building (as a church) that is usually semicircular in plan and vaulted." We can then see that it goes right along with "convex." The combination of the personification in the beginning of the line ("sunlight lapped") and the more formal, technical terms at the end of the line creates a complex image in terms of diction. At the end of the third stanza, Applewhite uses another technical term; this time with less effectiveness, I think--"To adore the precious color and entablature was nearly to believe." Unless his readers are architecture buffs, there is little chance that they know what "entablature" means. It is the horizontal part in classical architecture that rests on the columns. Here, I'm not entirely sure what the connection is between entablature and believing is...it seems like Applewhite could have created the image in such a way that the reader would be more likely to understand it.

Technical terms included in a poem can be a mixed blessing. On one hand, they provide the author a mechanism to precisely describe something. However, the more precise the term, the less likely it is that the reader will immediately recognize it and appreciate its inclusion.

Ending Abstractly

One thing that I have noticed while reading Applewhite's poems is his tendency to end abstractly. Applewhite includes concrete images and narration of events in the middle of his poems, but he often ends with a few abstract words.

For example: In "A Tapestry in the Palazzo Pamphili"--

Final stanza:

as you have stitched our lives in needlepoint.
Otherwise, the seasons leave us these thread-
bare glances, eyes large with freedom, knowing.

Here, he brings in a easily visualized image in the first line of the last stanza, but ends with two terms that encompass all of the other imagery that he has presented throughout the poem: "freedom" and "knowing."

In "The Mortal Father":

The last four lines--

as in another world. The majesty of mind
that once explored eternity is at end.
Against the perspective of time, now we miss
his speech: its persistence and consciousness.

Applewhite once again ends in very abstract terms, but perhaps "the majesty of mind that once explored eternity is at end" is more vague and abstract that the final reference to persistence and consciousness, since they are at least in reference to a speech.

A third example, from "Postwar Days":

looks of veterans left their victory pressure
that hastened our labor, as we heaved and bent.
The heat hovered over in a transparent specter
revealing the future: accelerated and violent.

By ending the poem with several more abstract words instead of concrete language, Applewhite is providing a succinct end that suggests to the reader what themes of his poems are. It is as if he is giving the reader a hint--"read it again, this time considering acceleration and violence." The abstract ending connects the reader to the poem as well, since many of the ideas that Applewhite concludes his poems with are applicable to the human condition in general--violence, consciousness, freedom, knowledge. While this is valuable, I think that it is also indicative of one weakness of Applewhite's poems--he attempts to convey too much, to tackle too large of a subject, in a single poem.

Thoughts on Autumnal Equinox

Autumnal Equinox

The earth has rotated again on an axis inclined from perpendicular
to the plane of the ecliptic by twenty-three and a half degrees.
Maple leaves in the canopy lamp back, to a source of recession,
an acknowledging yellow. Oaks higher yet give themselves airs
in the wind, their lobbed leaves handlike, sowers of generations.
They plop their acorns on my drive, turning heroically bronze--
inadvertent feeders of squirrels, as the dogwoods are of birds,
with their scarlet berries. These signals relate to one another,
a simultaneous response to progression through the altered rays.
Likewise my mind shines back a recognition, seeing these
colored leaves as banners on the billion-masted ship of Earth
as it sails in its orbit, with the sun in its galaxy,
with the galaxy receding from others. And this mind grows,
like the leaves, slightly dizzy, but wakes to a higher intensity,
that cannot explain such magnificent, pointless purpose, though
glowing within this medium of fruitation and perishing.
Mind feels itself turn the colors of wonder: scarlet-maroon
with beholding, yellow with transiency, green in remembrance--
and looking into changes to come, a bronze of enduring.
Already, flags of lost summer spin aimlessly as the wind
grows chilly. Mind wishes to inscribe its thoughts
in a medium like the gold-amber sunlight. The light relates
these thoughts, those of the squirrels, seeing plenty, those of
the leaves, which parachute and spin, and those of this mind,
with its memories, which also wobble. The bronze oak
stands with nobility, in a firmament too blue for regrets.
I see a maple seed propeller down and land on the roof
within changes so tragic we can hardly believe this other:
maple leaves the mantle of a lattern, thought burning inside it,
sun-angle and colors and falling like the quasser-rays from
space-time, focused in Earth of this conscious universe.

Structure

In "Daytime and Starlight," Applewhite writes poems with structural variety in terms of the actual quantity of words. Some poems have short, uniform lines in regular stanzas, others have long lines in just one stanza. A few poems are just a splattering of words on the page. "Autumnal Equinox" is a dense poem; it is dense in terms of looking almost like prose, and it is dense in terms of diction. Additionally, "Autumnal Equinox" has a heavy tone because the lack of stanza breaks do not provide the divisions that allow our minds to categorize the information and imagery that Applewhite has provided thus far. The diction of the poem is so scientific, and the structure so unorganic, that as the reader, I expected structural divisions along the same lines. I feel that in a poem with complicated diction that contains words with a lot of syllables, stanza breaks are very helpful to the reader--they provide mental breaks for the reader to pause and review the text presented so far.

Diction

At times, "Autumnal Equinox" read more like a science textbook than a poem ("falling like quasar-rays from space-time"), but there were also lilting passages with clear imagery. Of course this mixture of styles is intentional, but what is its effect? Including heavier, scientific language makes the reader cognizant of the grandeur of the Earth...so many times, poems describe nature in specific, small, dainty ways: a beautiful flower, winter branches, etc., and I think that Applewhite did not want to limit himself--he impresses on the reader the importance of viewing the world in whole (toward the end: "the story is continuing"). The density of the poem is overwhelming in places, however, and by tackling so many separate ideas and images, I felt that Applewhite missed opportunities to clearly articulate a few in exchange for a more muddled portrayal of a variety.

The diction of the first few lines are not what we'd consider commonly poetic: axis, inclined, perpendicular, plane, ecliptic, degrees--all of these words are scientific, evoking a precise image. In the next few lines, the tone changes with the change in diction: now, there are words like maple leaves, canopy, yellow, oaks, airs, wind, handlike, generations. I think that Applewhite is attempting to bring together the scientific and the aesthetic to form a more complete picture of the Earth. Still, I feel that the lines with concrete imagery are the most effective: "flags of lost summer spin aimlessly" and "colored leaves as banners on the billion-masted ship of Earth." In other words, when Applewhite meshes the scientific rhetoric with more abstract, natural descriptions and creates something concrete, the reader best understands the visual picture that Applewhite is attempting to convey.