Story of the Stone (part two)

In this volume of The Story of the Stone, the cousins are a little more grown up (14 or 15), and they are mad for poetry.  The Crab Flower Club is the name of their club, and many of "their" poems are included in this volume.  Our anthology includes only a few scenes from this section of The Story of the Stone, but I think that it is still well worth reading not only to see what happens to Bao-yu and his family but also to understand a little more about Chinese literature and literary studies as well as their attitudes towards gender.

The picture below is China-Guide's illustration of Dai-yu composing one of her poems.



However, this volume is not as wonky as it seems.    In fact, here, the clouds begin to gather over Bao-yu and his family.  Early on, Jia Zheng, Bao-yu's father, attacks his son, giving him an extremely severe beating because of what he perceives as his dissoluteness.  Keep in mind that Bao-yu hates to study and that he shows especially contempt for what is considered masculine knowledge.  His father, on the other hand, is a Confucian scholar and civil servant.  Almost at the beginning of the book, Golden, a servant to Bao-yu's mother, is dismissed for flirting with the young man.  Later she kills herself.  When Jia Zheng inquires into this young woman's suicide, Jia Huan (his other son by a concubine) informs him that Golden killed herself after Bao-yu had raped her.  (Right now I'm reading Vol. 3, and this lie has not yet been exposed although it is clear to the family that Jia Huan and his mother are troublemakers.)  Jia Zheng leaves the family compound shortly thereafter when the Emperor promotes him to high office.  However, Bao-yu's days in the garden may be limited.  His maid and now "chamber wife," Aroma, advises Bao-yu's mother to be stricter with him, move him into lodgings outside of the garden, and encourage him to be more like his father.  In other words, it is time for Bao-yu to learn to be a man.  (Below is a picture of Confucian scholars from www.cultural-china.com.) 



Dai-yu, Bao-yu's beloved cousin, also faces certain gender strictures.  At one of the meetings of the Crab Flower Club, she quotes lines from Dream of the Western Chamber, a risque novel that Bao-yu has encouraged her to read.  How explicit it is you may see here:
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7134.html
Afterwards, Bao-chai takes her aside to warn her about her reading and even her absorption in literature.  She reminds her that for both girls and boys literature is just a pastime. 

Unfortunately, I can't find a picture of Baochai at work, so here is An Ho's portrait of Wang Xifeng, the relative who runs the household...or shall I say family complex.  Wang Xifeng is perhaps Dai-yu's polar opposite.  She is energetic, practical, manipulative, and illiterate.  She puts a great deal of energy into humoring Grandmother Jia and managing the servants as well as making money for herself.  Let's imagine that Wang Xifeng is sitting listening to reports from the various servants.



However, all is not well for Wang Xifeng either.  Her husband Jia Lian is a philanderer, and in the Crab Flower Club, we will see her attack him and her servant Patience after she overhears his complaining about her to a mistress.

As you might imagine, at this point, the poetry club, though, is a useful diversion, uniting the younger members of the family, a group that becomes even more numerous near the end of this volume.  Even Wang Xifeng is involved as the enforcer of penalties.


Perhaps I will end this entry with another picture of the Grandview Garden in Beijing:

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2009) -- Poetry

The picture above is William Blake's original published version of "Holy Thursday" in The Songs of Experience.  Blake is also known as an artist and printmaker.

We began our poetry unit by reading both versions of William Blake's "Holy Thursday."  One was from The Songs of Experience (1794).  The other was from The Songs of Innocence (1789).  Consider the difference between the way that William Blake portrays these children and that earlier writers like Voltaire and Behn portrayed the poor, servants, and slaves.   Romantic writers were more sympathetic to the poor and children.  (Rousseau--we are born good but are corrupted by society.)


We also looked at William Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" and "Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman."  Interestingly, neither were in our anthology.  Both poems are from Lyrical Ballads, the 1798 collection of poems by Wordsworth & S.T. Coleridge.  Our editors seem to prefer Wordsworth's self-scrutiny to his poems of observation.  Note how "Simon Lee" resists narrative yet sounds like a ballad.  (Its rhyme scheme is ababcdce.)
Unfortunately, we did not get to Wordsworth's sonnets, but here is a link to John Green's reading of "Westminster Bridge."  Note that the sonnet was another form that he helped to revive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz4v9x3PIZc

Below is an 1897 painting of Westminster Bridge by Frederick Marlett Bell-Smith:



Here are some remarks by William Wordsworth on poetry.  They are from his preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800, 1802):

"All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."

Poetry "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

"Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply."

A poet "is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind."

"a large portion of the language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good Prose."



Above is a picture of William Wordsworth's home, Dove Cottage, in the Lake District of England.  If you scroll to the links below, you may listen to actor Jeremy Irons reading Wordsworth's "Daffodils."

Emphasizing the supernatural rather than ordinary individuals who lived in the country, Wordsworth's friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge took a different approach to poetry in his fragment, "Kubla Khan" and his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."  (Coleridge, by the way, lived for a time in Germany.)  If you scroll to the links at the bottom, you may listen to Sean Barrett reading from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

Blake (1757-1827), Wordsworth (1770-1850), and Coleridge (1772-1834) belong to the first generation of Romantics.  These men lived through the French Revolution as adults.  With John Keats (1795-1821) and his narrative poem, "The Eve of St. Agnes," we move on to the second generation of the Romantics.  Note how Keats handles the supernatural in his narrative.  Note how Porphyro takes advantage of Madeleine's belief that she will dream of her husband-to-be on the Eve of St. Agnes. 

Below is an image of Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt's painting "The Eve of St. Agnes."  By the time Hunt created this painting (1847-1857), Keats' reputation had risen.  During his lifetime, critics attacked his work, in part because of his social standing and perhaps their assumptions about his politics.  (Keats was an apprentice to a surgeon at a time when doctors' social standing was not as high as it is today.  Early nineteenth-century England was conservative politically and culturally, perhaps in response to the upheaval of the French Revolution.)

We then moved on from the British Romantics to some other 19th century poets from Vol. E.  We began with Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), a controversial poet and the author of Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil).   The poem of his that we read (in French and its English translation) was "The Albatross."

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/200

Below is a photo of an albatross.

We also read the Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario (1867-1916) 's "Walt Whitman" and "In Autumn,"
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)'s "I heard a Fly buzz," and
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)'s "I Hear America Singing" and "O Captain! My Captain."  With these poets (including Baudelaire), modern poetry begins.  Latin American critics, in fact, call Dario the father of Modernismo.  Emily Dickinson, by the way, published very few poems during her lifetime, and Walt Whitman self published his book, Leaves of Grass.  This was not too hard as he was a printer by trade.

Below is a picture of Emily Dickinson's room at home.  Can you imagine the fly buzzing?  The house where she lived and wrote her poetry is now part of a museum run by Amherst College.


We moved into the 20th century with Ezra Pound (1885-1972) ("A Pact," "In a Station of the Metro," and "The River Merchant's Wife," his translation of a translation of Li Bo's poem).  Although Pound knew many other languages and was an instructor of modern languages at Indiana's Wabash College, he did not know Chinese.  Although he did not know Chinese, he brought much attention to that culture's poetry and used it to change English-language poetry, making it more stripped-down and focused, exchanging the metronome for the phrase, making it new, to cite his famous command. 

With T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), we were able to listen to his recording of the first part of "The Waste Land," an immensely influential and erudite poem in five parts and many languages from Italian and German to the closing Sanskrit.  This poem, however, takes place in London, the city where Eliot, an American, had chosen to live.  (By the way, Ezra Pound helped edit "The Waste Land.")  We also read Eliot's earlier poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which he wrote when he was 22.  Does Prufrock ever leave his room?

Here is a link to the recording of Eliot's reading that we listened to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tqK5zQlCDQ

How does Eliot's London compare to Blake's or Wordsworth's?

Below is a picture dating from World War One.  It is from the British Postal Museum and Archive's website.


We also looked at two poems by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats (1865-1939):  "The Second Coming" (the poem where Chinua Achebe derived the title, Things Fall Apart) and "Easter 1916" (a poem about the aftermath of the Irish declaration of a republic -- Ireland was then a British colony).  Both poems were published by 1921, after World War One had ended but before Ireland became independent.  Here you may listen to Yeats' reading his poems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FT4_UUa4I

Below is a picture of the General Post Office that served as the Irish rebels' fort in 1916:

Here you may listen to an Irish-American rock band Black 47 play its song "James Connolly."  Connolly was one of the leaders of the rebellion.  Yeats did not mention him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwEv2YCrSoY

We finished our unit on poetry with the work of Australian aborigine political activist and poet Oodgeroo of the tribe Noonuccal (1920-1993) 's "We Are Going," Laguna/Sioux poet and scholar Paula Gunn Allen (1939-2008)'s "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins," Laguna Pueblo poet and novelist Leslie Marmon Silko (1948-)'s "Toe'osh" and "Franz Boas' Visit."  Paula Gunn Allen's visitor, by the way, was Abenaki poet Joseph Bruchac.  Ironically, the Franz Boas that Leslie Marmon Silko refers to was a pioneering, progressive anthropologist who not only developed scientific method in anthropology but also encouraged his students to be more tolerant to the groups they studied.

Below is a picture of Laguna Pueblo (NM) from 1902:



These are links to the videos that we watched on review day (Monday):

Sean Barrett reads from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E9crjEp0_A

The words to "Bonnie St. Johnstone" are here:
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=586

Here is a link to Richard Thompson's performance of this song:
http://www.last.fm/music/Richard+Thompson/_/Bonnie+St.+Johnstone

Jeremy Irons reads "Daffodills" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL7ysgRNAT0

William Blake's "London" is transformed into a song and music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkGi_XAhtPc

Here "London" is read: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIDUf6V8OLM

To see the poem itself, go to this link: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15818

T.S. Eliot reads "The Waste Land" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tqK5zQlCDQ

Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" is read here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KblU3g32l5g

For more information about the ballad, see these links:

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/ballad.html

http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/BalladSearch.html

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ballads/early_child/#what

http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/ballads.html

Bettina Judd's Reading 9/17 at MC

 I thought I'd blow off some of this blog's dust today and write about Bettina Judd's reading at MC.  It's been good to read poems from other times and places ("The Ballad of Mulan" and so on), but I've always liked going to readings to hear what other people are writing NOW.

Bettina Judd's poetry fits in nicely with last week's readings...Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage," Muriel Ruykeser's "Absolom," and even Seamus Heaney's "The Tollund Man" and "The Bog Queen."  Research is a significant part of Ms. Judd's writing process since many of her poems are about historical figures or individuals who are in the news.  The first few poems that she read were from a project that she is doing on gynecological experimentation and its impact on Black women's bodies.  Several were from the point of view of Joyce Heth, a slave whom P.T. Barnum had bought and exhibited as George Washington's nurse in 1835 and 1836.  Barnum claimed that she was 160; Ms. Heth was actually in her 70s.  (Below is a picture from a play, "The Exploitation of Joyce Heth," that was performed in New York.)

Another picture is one of Barnum's advertisements:

For more about Ms. Heth's story, see this link from George Mason University:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/5pts/museum/heth.html

Bettina Judd also read poems about more contemporary women.  One was the girl, Latasha Harlins, who was shot in the back of the head by a Korean-American store owner in 1991.  The relatively light sentence that the store owner received was one of the causes of the L.A. riots in 1992.  Having grown up in L.A. and its suburbs, Ms. Judd recalled the impact of Harlins' murder.  She added that at the time she had seen tapes of the shooting on TV.  Another startling poem was about a woman who was tortured and killed by her ex-lover.  A third was about a woman who lay dying and ignored in a NYC emergency ward.

As you can see, Ms. Judd's work is about the violence of history, especially as it affects Black women.  These poems are not for everyone.  Curiously, she read her poems in a soft, quiet voice, swallowing her words.  However, these were not poems for shouting and declaiming.  I would be interested in hearing her read in a different venue...but I was glad to see how packed the room was.

Oh yes...and Ms. Judd talked about *her* approach to writing poetry.  She discussed the projects that she works on.  The poems about gynecological experimentation actually came out of a series of watercolors that she had been working on.  She tries to write a poem a day, not worrying about whether that poem is good or bad.  It is "just" a draft, and she will continue to work on it.  This appears to be an approach that she has taken from the Cave Canem Poets.  Here is a link to their site!  (Caution:  This link has been broken some of the time, so...beware!)

http://cavecanempoets.org/

Here are some links to poems by Bettina Judd.  The first is "A Conversation After Teeth." 

http://penzitspronouncedpants.blogspot.com/2008/08/guest-pnz-conversation-after-teeth.html

Another is her poem, "Sankofa: Gender Bend."

http://www.torchpoetry.org/Fall%2007/bettinajudd.htm

Here is her MySpace page where you may listen to her read some poems, including "Sankofa."

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=199530233

And here is a link to her blog:

http://www.ablackgirl.com/wordpress/


Next up...the Poetry at Noon for World Peace Day on 9/22!

Seamus Heaney

  Watch this space for an entry on Seamus Heaney & his poetry.

A Few Poems to Start With

Since our books may or may not be in by the time our semester starts, I thought that I'd post a few readings up here to begin with.  These poems will respond to the prompts I've posted on the discussion board.  In these poems, poets will introduce themselves, recall their first memories of language, and pay homage to earlier poets.  This homage may not be as elaborate as John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, but there are many ways to honor the past.

I will post links to seven poems.  Feel free to comment on any or all of them.  Some will be older than the poems in our anthology.  Others may be newer.

Let's start with Emily Dickinson's "I'm nobody.  Who are you?"

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2619.html

The picture below is from a site where you may listen to two of her poems set to music by Nancy Robinson.

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ngal/z-dickinson.htm

In Langston Hughes' "Theme for English B," the speaker might be introducing himself to a professor in his writing class at Columbia University.

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/English_B.html

Below is a picture of Hughes a year or so after he left Columbia.  (He would eventually graduate from Lincoln University.)

Here is a link to "I am the woman," a poem by one of my former teachers, Joan Dobbie.  (I was in her workshop in Eugene, OR.)  The link contains the text version of the poem and a YouTube video of her reading her poem.  (By the way, you might notice that this poem really fits one of the prompts for our writing practice. Joan's poem was the one that gave me the idea for it!  Thanks, Joan!)

http://iamthewoman.blogspot.com/

Now I'd like to change the mood a little and move onto a poem about an unusual name.  How many of you remember reading Shel Silverstein's poetry?  One of the poems he wrote was "A Boy Named Sue."

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/shel_silverstein/poems/14827

You may also know it as a song that Johnny Cash sang.  This YouTube video is of his performance at San Quentin Prison in California:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M89c3hWx3RQ

FYAmuse, here is a small picture of the cover of Shel Silverstein's album A Boy Named Sue.


Cheryl Savageau's "Looking for Indians" is kind of about language and kind of about one's name.  I thought that you might like to read it.

http://www.curbstone.org/bookexcerpt.cfm?BookID=69

Here is a little more information about the Abenaki.

http://www.native-languages.org/abenaki.htm

http://www.abenakination.org/

The Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario wrote this tribute to Walt Whitman in 1887, when Whitman was still alive.  I'm afraid that I don't know the name of the translator.

http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~stalley/2335Resources/DarioWhitman.htm

Here is the original poem in Spanish:

http://www.poemas-del-alma.com/walt-whitman.htm

Interestingly, in English at least, the translation of Dario's blast against Theodore Roosevelt is more available than his homage to Whitman.

The poem below, Philip Levine's "M. Degas Teaches Art and Science at Durfee Intermediate School -- Detroit 1942," is not an homage to an earlier poet, but I thought that you would like it.  Moreover, this site includes an audio file of the poet reading his work.

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/levine/m._degas_teaches_art_and_science_at_durfee_intermediate_school--detroit1942.php

In case you are not familiar with Edgar Degas' work, here is an example below:


Feel free to post your own responses to these poems at our discussion board or here.  Here are some questions, though, to start with.

-- Which of these poems are you reading for the first time?  What is your first impression of each poem and poet?

-- Which of these poems are you re-reading?  When did you first read this poem?  What jumped out at you then?  What jumps out at you now?

-- If you read Spanish, what jumped out at you as you read Ruben Dario's "Walt Whitman" in its original language?

-- What does Ruben Dario admire about Walt Whitman?  If you've read Whitman's work or know of him, how is Dario's Whitman different from yours?  How are they the same?

-- What kind of a teacher does M. Degas seem to be?  Which poet, painter, or musician would you imagine teaching at MC?  Why?

I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say!

Poetry and Puritanism

  Link

John Berryman, one of the poets we may read this semester, wrote Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, so I thought I'd post a link to my entry on her & her fellow Puritan poets.  The picture above is Ben Shahn's illustration that was on the cover of one edition of this poem.  Unfortunately, I can't find the right size image of that cover, so here is the illustration anyway.

And here's the link to Homage to Mistress Bradstreet:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=177880

Which surprising bygone poet would you write an homage to?

Ovid, Myths, and Epics

Link

Ovid is a poet and, specifically, the painter's poet, so I thought that I'd post a link to my EN 201 entry on the myths in his Metamorphoses.  The painting above is by Eugene Delacroix, and it depicts Ovid in exile.  (The Emperor Augustus exiled the poet from Rome.  Why?  There are a number of stories.)

I am also posting a picture from Mary Zimmerman's theatrical adaptation of the Metamorphoses.  Here Silenius the satyr is expressing his gratitude to King Midas for rescuing him.  I wish that MC would stage this play!!!

Mulan

  Link

Did you know that Disney's Mulan is based on a Chinese poem, "The Ballad of Mulan"? 

Here are some translations of this anonymous poem:

http://www.chinapage.com/mulan-e.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hua_Mulan

http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/mulan.php

This page has more information about the poem itself, and you may also see the poem in Chinese.

http://home.pacific.net.hk/~shung/favorites/mulan.html

Here you may see a calligraphic (is that a word?) version of the poem:

http://www.chinapage.com/mulan.html

Upcoming Poetry at MC

  No, he's not reading at MC this semester...as far as I know...but I am surprised at how difficult it is to find a good lead picture for a blog entry announcing poetry readings.  I realize that we are an online class and that not everyone is available during the day, but I thought I'd announce a series of readings at the campus.  This series is run by our developmental writing program, but I am intending to attend at least one or two...and report on them here!

On Wednesday, Sept. 17 Bettina Judd will read and discuss her poetry.  Here's a link to her blog:  http://www.ablackgirl.com/index.html  One of her poems is "Gender Bend: Sankofa," Sankofa being an Adinkra symbol that means learning from the past.  Adinkra symbols come from Ghana, but you may have seen some of them in clothing or artwork or even tattoos.

http://www.torchpoetry.org/Fall%2007/bettinajudd.htm
 
More of her poetry is available at her MySpace site:  http://www.myspace.com/bettinajudd If you are interested in political poetry, poetry about the body, women's poetry, and African-American poetry, I encourage you to attend this reading...and/or explore her work.

On Wednesday, October 22 poet and memoirist E. Ethelbert Miller will be reading his work.  Some of you may have read his work or been to his readings, but here is a link to his website:

http://www.eethelbertmiller.com/

Here is his page at the Academy of American Poets' site:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/485

You may also listen to him read poems about fatherhood at this site:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91531158

Or you may hear a minute of his poetry at this site:

http://aalbc.com/authors/jazz.htm

I found some pictures of E. Ethelbert Miller reading his poetry (where were these pictures an hour or two ago?!), but most were on Flicker.  Here is a picture that wasn't.  Below that is the cover of his memoir, Fathering Words, a book that I'd like to read soon.  I enjoy reading memoirs, especially when they are set in NYC.


On Wednesday, November 5, the Korean journalist, poet, and editor Yearn Hong Choi will be reading his poetry and essays at MC.  I'm glad to see that Korean culture will be getting more attention.  Here is a link to this poet's work:

http://www.poetswest.com/selected.htm

Also, this review of Surfacing Sadness, an anthology edited by Yearn Hong Choi, appeared in the KoreAm Journal:

http://www.koreamjournal.com/Magazine/index.php/kj/layout/set/print/content/view/print/659

Dr. Choi has more recently edited Fragrance of Poetry, an anthology of Korean-American poetry.  The VOA News interviewed him and two other poets whose work appears in this collection:

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-09/2005-09-09-voa69.cfm





Then, on Wednesday November 19, Sylvia Lee, a visiting professor at MC, will read from her poems.  Here is a link to a set of her poems. http://www.damaya.net/poems/Jordan-Rome/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=112

Here are some pictures from the Cornelia Street Cafe, the venue for a reading series that Prof. Lee co-curates.



Each of these readings take place from 9:30 to 10:20 and 11 to 11:50 at a site to be announced later.  Dr. Choi and Prof. Lee will also read from 1 to 1:50.

More on Mirabai

Link

As promised, here is the link to the entry on Mirabai and her work!  Her poems are also song lyrics, and she was a devotee of the Hindu god Krishna.

Ono no Komachi

Link

I thought I'd add a link to an entry on the ninth-century Japanese poet, Ono no Komachi.  She is a wonderful, concise, and passionate poet who continues to intrigue the Japanese.

In the 19th century, the woodblock printer Ando Hiroshige and others depicted her in their work.

More recently playwrights have also depicted her.  Below is a scene from Aoi/Komachi, a performance of two of Yukio Mishima's plays.

Gary Snyder's Reading at the Smithsonian

Link 

Here's a link to my blog entry about Beat poet and translator Gary Snyder's recent reading in DC.  He is one of my favorite poets these days.  As you might imagine from the picture above, he writes about nature and is based out west in Northern California.  Enjoy!

Study Guide for Final (Spring 2008) -- part 4b (poetry in English & song)

And then there are the poems written in English...I'm not sure where the poems from the Nuyorican anthology would fit, and I forget whether Michael Ondatjee wrote his poems in English or another language.

We began our unit on poetry, discussing some Romantic poets and their poems (excerpts from Lord Byron's mock-epic Don Juan, Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Keats' beautiful "Eve of St. Agnes"--the image above is Holman Hunt's painting of a scene from that poem).  In the section of "Don Juan" that we read, Juan has landed on an island where he and Haidee, the daughter of a pirate king, will fall in love.  Juan is no innocent as he is escaping from his (discovered) affair with an older woman.  Byron plays with the conventions of the epic, especially as he goes off track, discoursing on "wine and women, mirth and laughter."  We also discussed Coleridge and Keats' narrative poems.  Although I did not mention it that day, the concept of medievalism is important here.

We moved onto Walt Whitman's poetry from Leaves of Grass, a collection that he revised throughout his adult life (Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892).  Two poems that we looked at were "I Hear America Singing," for its inclusiveness (that Ruben Dario later plays on) and  "O Captain!  My Captain," a more conventional eulogy to Abraham Lincoln.  We discussed whether or not these poems could be sung with accompaniment.  (We had just watched the tape of Coleman Barks' performance.)  "O Captain!  My Captain!" also seems like it would be easy to memorize!

For a contrast, later, we looked at poems by Native American writers Paula Gunn Allen and Leslie Marmon Silko.  These seemed to be harder to read, and it became harder for us to say what was poetic about them.  These poems were Gunn Allen's "Pocahontas, to her English Husband, John Rolfe" and the ironic "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins" (about the poet's taking a guest to see her mother and her grandmother at their high rise apartment) as well as Marmon Silko's excerpt from The Storyteller in which she retells a Coyote tale told by her white great-grand father.  This time Coyote is not a male trickster but a female victim of another figure's trickery, and her pups die of thirst because of this trickery.  As I reflect on these poems, I remember Ngugi wa Thiong'o's essay on the importance of writing African literature in African (i.e., native) languages.   Should Leslie Marmon Silko or Paula Gunn Allen write their poems in Keresan (the language of the Laguna Pueblo)? 

Mary also brought in some of Billy Collins' poems as well as reading one of her own.  (Her poem, by the way, is in the Advocate.  Congratulations!!)

We also looked at the relationship of poetry and music/popular song, figuring in the concept of orality and the effect of print culture.  Songs that we listened to included three from Richard Thompson's 1000 Years of Popular Music (the medieval "Sumer is Icumen In" [also parodied by Ezra Pound at one point], the 18th century ballad "Bonnie St. Johnstone," and a cover of Britney Spears' "Oops...").  Here are links to the lyrics of the first two songs:

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=428

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=586

We also listened to English-language and Spanish-language songs by Los Lobos.  Here is a link to the lyrics of the English-language song, "One Time, One Night" from 1987:

http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/los_lobos_lyrics_5296/by_the_light_of_the_moon_lyrics_16979/one_time_one_night_lyrics_196225.html

These are the Spanish lyrics of their version of "Volver, Volver":

http://www.lyricsdir.com/los-lobos-volver-volver-lyrics.html

We also listened to songs by The Mighty Sparrow, a famous calypso singer from Trinidad.  Is he a trickster or an acute social observer?

Here is Billboard.com's catalog entry for Early Flight, the album that I brought in.  (We listened to "Sailor Man," "Dear Sparrow," and "Russian Satellite.")

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/discography/index.jsp?JSESSIONID=DK1KH51JV1XMm1zXTgqTHdYFLnWy1bXQPTmY9b4pm0hdvLTzxy1d!87636624&pid=3875&aid=742126

I will let you look for his videos on YouTube!  Good night!

Poetry, Poets, & Poetesses

After Lauren's wonderful presentation on women poets in world literature, I thought that I would post a few links.

Here are some sites that show how literary scholars are reviving the term poetess. A number of these sites are fairly specialized, but this is a "hot" topic, and I think that you'll benefit from seeing how literary studies is changing as I type! (See these sites for more conventional definitions of the term poetess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetess

http://www.bartleby.com/68/59/4659.html

http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=7&cont=show.php&item=569).

The first article, "The Poetess in America," is long but begins with a good definition of the term poetess as it is being revived. The author, Annie Finch, is a poet, translator, and literary scholar.

http://www.ablemuse.com/critique/a-finch_poetess.htm

Here is her website at the University of Southern Maine. She also keeps a blog at this site:

http://www.usm.maine.edu/~afinch/

Here is another academic site, The Poetess Archive, that is edited by literary scholar Laura Mandell. It focuses on English-language poets and the scholars who write about them, but it is not limited to 19th century poets. One poet included here is Sylvia Plath, a confessional poet from the 1950s and 1960s.
http://unixgen.muohio.edu/~poetess/index.html

Prof. Mandell defines the poetess tradition in a detailed essay here. As part of her definition, she considers the extent to which this tradition does or does not include political poetry. She also talks about the distinction between "major" and "minor" poetry.

http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2003/v/n29/007712ar.html


But has the term poetess ever really gone away? See these sites.
http://www.etsu.edu/writing/studentsamlit/plath.htm
http://www.utep.edu/rgr/poetry6.html

And here are some sites on one of the poetesses that Lauren mentioned (Ono no Komachi):
http://www.museum.cornell.edu/HFJ/handbook/hb74.html

http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Komachi.html

http://www.classical-japanese.net/Poetry/komachi.html

Here the poetess appears on stage:
http://www.callmekomachi.com/
http://www.sonic.net/~tabine/SAApoem_nikki_noh_fall_2005/saa2005aki_noh_sekiderakomachi.html

For more information about the Indian poetess Mirabai and her work:

http://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/mirabai.html

http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/poems/

http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/2/
http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/poems3/


http://www.vistarfoundation.org/repertoire.html#mirabai