Week 11

from Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924.

XVI

THE SKIES can’t keep their secret!
They tell it to the hills—
The hills just tell the orchards—
And they the daffodils!
A bird, by chance, that goes that way	5
Soft overheard the whole.
If I should bribe the little bird,
Who knows but she would tell?
I think I won’t, however,
It’s finer not to know;	10
If summer were an axiom,
What sorcery had snow?
So keep your secret, Father!
I would not, if I could,
Know what the sapphire fellows do,	15
In your new-fashioned world!

Good day to you all.  Hope you are well and have found time to practice your recitation, which is to be performed today, as you know.  Afterwards you will have time to write the final essay of about 500 words, open notes and sources, including author and title references to the 3-6 sources you are required to integrate, and direct quotation to illustrate the aptness of your descriptions and interpretative claims.

Any outstanding work must of course be submitted this week, no later than Thursday midnight.

Enjoy the Summer, Come Rain Come Shine

Week 9

Gannets Mate for Life

Good afternoon!  Today and next week we will cover a few final story pieces and poetry and review the works covered over the quarter and how they might be used for the in-class short essay final and the final project, if you choose.

I'll let you decide what we read from among the various selections already provided and those I bring today, including  "Puppy," a short story by George Saunders, considered one of today's very best in the genre. In fact at the following link you can read the convocation speech he delivered in 2013 and which bears the thematic marks of many his stories, namely, the difficulty and utmost desirability of human kindness and love:  http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/george-saunderss-advice-to-graduates/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Week 8

What is to give light must endure burning. – Victor Frankl

Today we look at Howl.  One of its source inspirations,  (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174745) "Song of Myself", by Walt Whitman, invites stylisic and thematic comparison.

 Having you watch the film Howl (starring James Franco in the role of the poet Allen Ginsberg, author of the poem “Howl”) I am interested in your response to the content of the poem and the film, the poet’s explanations of his work and why he wrote it, and the critical responses expressed during the trial scenes.  If you owe a short response, or want to focus on Howl as a final project:  In your own words, relate what the poem is about, what you thought of Ginsberg’s discussion of the work, and the opinions aired in court on the matter of its obscenity or no, its artistic merit, the advisability of censoring its publication, etcetera (350 words, short response).

Several links posted here may be useful:

http://www.shmoop.com/howl/section-1-lines-6-10-summary.html

http://www.dhs.fjanosco.net/Documents/HowlOnTrial.pdf

Howl is a film based on a now very famous poem–"Howl"–by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997).    At the time of its writing, Ginsberg was a young man coming to terms with his own identity as a homosexual and felt himself at odds with much of American culture, in particular its militarism and capitalistic excesses and its opposition to homosexuality.  The poem is personal, autobiographical, raw, and graphic in its depictions of a generation ("the best minds of my generation") living on edge, and finding meaning (or whatever "sensations") in those edges.  The poem became famous, at least in part, when government authorities claimed it obscene, and a trial ensued to have its publication banned.  Ginsberg wrote the poem in free verse in a style imitative of Walt Whitman's work ("Song of Myself)", in long lines uttered with force, in sometimes broken syntax and with odd juxtapositions of words that reflect the urgency, intensity and spontaneity of Ginsberg's poetic vision.  In the trial, prosecutors objected to the poem's profane language and sexual content, and contended it had no literary merit. The defense claimed the language and content were necessary to portray truthfully the culture and attitudes of Ginsberg's subjects.

----------

In the Symposium of Plato, an inquiry into the nature of love is made by Socrates and his guests.  One story comes from Aristophanes:  “Mankind, he said, judging by their neglect of him, have never, as I think, at all understood the power of Love. For if they had understood him they would surely have built noble temples and altars, and offered solemn sacrifices in his honour; but this is not done, and most certainly ought to be done: since of all the gods he is the best friend of men, the helper and the healer of the ills which are the great impediment to the happiness of the race. I will try to describe his power to you, and you shall teach the rest of the world what I am teaching you.”

      He goes on to speak of an ancient myth recounted by Homer that humans were originally of three kinds or sexes, each with two heads, four hands, four arms and legs, and so on.  There was man, woman, and a combination of the two, the androgyne.  These were mighty creatures and they made an attack upon the gods, who repelled them and then sought to curtail their power.  Zeus decided to split them in two.  Thus, in this myth,  we have since spent our lives yearning for our other half, whether male or female:  

And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together, and yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.   ­  –from Aristophanes's Speech from Plato's Symposium

Review:

Figurative language is the primary mode of poetry, language compressed and concentrated and made expressive and evocative through association.  Figuration or tropes take different forms, as metaphor, personification, simile, symbol, synecdoche, metonymy, irony, hyperbole, pun.  We find literal and figurative language is used to make imagery, the patterns of represented objects, feelings, and ideas we find in poems.  We speak of literal and figurative language; the former expresses the ordinary sense or actual denotation of the word or words, and the latter expresses an unusual sense or use for expressive purposes, beauty, vividness, ect.  So to call a woman a rose is a figurative use of the word rose (and to give her roses . . .), the two become identified by close association.

In the photograph above, which I found on the Internet, and I don't remember where, it appears someone has literally carved the "dream" of love and home into this woman's back.  What does the image suggest figuratively?  A tentative response:  anguish, we bleed for these, for love, true connection, a happy and safe home.  Inwardly and outwardly our thoughts and efforts, whoever we are, resonate with people the world over, however they identify–black, white, brown, yellow, gay, transgender, aged and ill, heterosexual, young, vibrantly healthy–what have you.

 The image reminds me of Allan Ginsberg and all the outcasts and rejects of society, including those who  struggle for self-acceptance and inclusion and love and respect–or benign tolerance, at the least.  Identity politics.  The face and body we present, the voice we use, our sexuality, work, lifestyle– we make of ourselves what we can in the pure endeavor to fulfill what calls to us.  Often our "differences" put us in conflict with others, and we suffer.  Sometimes, too, a collective fight ensues and the culture must change to accommodate the "differences" inherent in people the world over, natural variations of race, color, creed, gender, sexuality, and age.

-------------

Sex Without Love                        by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love

without love? Beautiful as dancers,

gliding over each other like ice-skaters

over the ice, fingers hooked

inside each other's bodies, faces

red as steak, wine, wet as the

children at birth whose mothers are going to

give them away. How do they come to the

come to the come to the God come to the

still waters, and not love

the one who came there with them, light

rising slowly as steam off their joined

skin? These are the true religious,

the purists, the pros, the ones who will not

accept a false Messiah, love the

priest instead of the God. They do not

mistake the lover for their own pleasure,

they are like great runners: they know they are alone

with the road surface, the cold, the wind,

the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-

vascular health—just factors, like the partner

in the bed, and not the truth, which is the

single body alone in the universe

against its own best time.

Desire       by Stephen Dobyns

A woman in my class wrote that she is sick

of men wanting her body and when she reads

her poem out loud the other women all nod

and even some of the men lower their eyes

and look abashed as if ready to unscrew

their cocks and pound down their own dumb heads

with these innocent sausages of flesh, and none

would think of confessing his hunger

or admit how desire can ring like a constant

low note in the brain or grant how the sight

of a beautiful woman can make him groan

on those first spring days when the parkas

have been packed away and the bodies are staring

at the bodies and the eyes stare at the ground;

and there was a man I knew who even at ninety

swore that his desire had never diminished.

Is this simply the wish to procreate, the world

telling the cock to eat faster, while the cock

yearns for that moment when it forgets its loneliness

and the world flares up in an explosion of light?

Why have men been taught to feel ashamed

of their desire, as if each were a criminal

out on parole, a desperado with a long record

of muggings, rapes, such conduct as excludes

each one from all but the worst company,

and never to be trusted, no never to be trusted?

Why must men pretend to be indifferent as if each

were a happy eunuch engaged in spiritual thoughts?

But it's the glances that I like, the quick ones,

the unguarded ones, like a hand snatching a pie

from a window ledge and the feet pounding away;

eyes fastening on a leg, a breast, the curve

of a buttock, as the pulse takes an extra thunk

and the cock, that toothless worm, stirs in its sleep,

and fat possibility swaggers into the world

like a big spender entering a bar. And sometimes

the woman glances back. Oh, to disappear

in a tangle of fabric and flesh as the cock

sniffs out its little cave, and the body hungers

for closure, for the completion of the circle,

as if each of us were born only half a body

and we spend our lives searching for the rest.

What good does it do to deny desire, to chain

the cock to the leg and scrawl a black X

across its bald head, to hold out a hand

for each passing woman to slap? Better

to be bad and unrepentant, better to celebrate

each difference, not to be cruel or gluttonous

or overbearing, but full of hope and self-forgiving.

The flesh yearns to converse with other flesh.

Each pore loves to linger over its particular story.

Let these seconds not be full of self-recrimination

and apology. What is desire but the wish for some

relief from the self, the prisoner let out

into a small square of sunlight with a single

red flower and a bird crossing the sky, to lean back

against the bricks with the legs outstretched,

to feel the sun warming the brow, before returning

to one's mortal cage, steel doors slamming

in the cell block, steel bolts sliding shut?

--------------Two Sonnets

To the Evening Star    by William Blake (1757-1827)

Thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening,

Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light

Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown

Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!

Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the

Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew

On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes

In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on

The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,

And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,

Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,

And the lion glares thro' the dun forest:

The fleeces of our flocks are cover'd with

Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence.

And the Stars        by Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

Perhaps you did not know how bright last night,

Especially above your seaside door,

Was all the marvelous starlit sky, and wore

White harmonies of very shining light.

Perhaps you did not want to seek the sight

Of that remembered rapture any more.–

But then at least you must have heard the shore

Roar with reverberant voices thro' the night.

Those stars were lit with longing of my own,

And the ocean's moan was full of my own pain.

Yet doubtless it was well for both of us

You did not come, but left me there alone.

I hardly ought to see you much again;

And stars, we know, are often dangerous.

  

     Literature is filled with stories and poems about our quest for love in one or another of its forms.  We will spend some time looking at them in the coming weeks.

----------------- Week 11 your recitations and final projects are due.  There will also be a short in-class essay final to write that day.  Rest and eat well.
At Harper's you may read an excellent little piece by an accomplished American poet named Tony Hoagland on why poetry matters and the 20 he offers as instructive.  You may find one to write on if you have yet to settle on subject matter for one or another writing:  http://harpers.org/blog/2013/04/twenty-little-poems-that-could-save-america/3/


The following poem and song has folk roots going back to slave times in America, and the work of abolitionists like John Brown, whose siege of the federal arsonal in support of a slave insurrection at Harper's Ferry, for which he was tried and executed, gave impetus to the American Civil War.  It is an excellent piece for recitation!  You can hear it sung on youtube.

Battle Hymn of the Republic              by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord: 


He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath

are stored;


He hath loosed his fateful lightning of His terrible swift

sword:


His truth is marching on. 



I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling

camps;


They have builded Him an altar in the e evening dews and

Damp;,

I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring

Lamps.


His day is marching on. 






I have read a fiery Gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:

"As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall

Deal;"


Let the Hero born of woman ,crush the serpent with His

heel,


Since God is marching on.





He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call

retreat;


He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment

 seat,


Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him!
Be jubilant, my feet,


Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

Week7

                                                     

 Howl

Today we will review responses to Into the Wild, discuss its contents–scenes, images, plot elements, characters and themes.  One question, for example, to lead the discussion:  what has Christopher McCandless's journey into the "wild" to teach us about right living?  He, after all, was in pursuit of  Truth.  Does he discover what he was seeking?

 We will catch up on pieces still to be covered as well.

----------------Notes on the Persona, one of Carl Jung's Five Basic Archetypes--------

In dictionaries the word persona is defined as (1) person, and (2) the characters of a drama, novel, etc.  It is related to the familiar words personality, personal, personify, personate, and impersonate, each suggestive of the individual identity, and the ways in which that identity is manifest or portrayed–distinctive appearance, behavior, attitudes, voice, etc.  In Carl Jung's writings, the Persona–the social face or mask– is an aspect of the totality of Self.  It, along with the Shadow, Anima and Animus, coexist in the greater whole.  The Shadow/Unconscious Dark elements of Self stand in contrast to the Ego/Conscious Light elements and bear a compensatory relationship to each other.  Shadow elements are associated with animal nature, the instincts, that which is wild and uncivilized within us, but which is a source of primal energy, creativity and spontaneity.  Anima and animus are aspects of the Soul Image, an archetypal image of the opposite sex which may appear in dreams and fantasies and which is often projected onto others, particularly in the experience of falling in love.  The study of archetypes and symbols encourages understanding of  how opposites may be transcended or bridged, with the resultant experience being one of wholeness, consciousness and the unconscious melded.  The psychic reality is an essential aspect of Jung's thought, and includes even what is strictly "illusory."  Inner and outer worlds are perceived in images and the contents of psychic processes and experiences at times personified, as in the figures of gods and goddesses.

The ancient goddess figure called Aphrodite/Venus personified feminine beauty, the bloom of spring, love, and uninhibited, unself-conscious sexuality.  Only the virgin goddesses Athena, Artemis, and Hestia were said to be immune from her power (Huffington The God of Greece).  She has a heavenly and earthly aspect, a light and a dark side, to which our instinctual desire for love may have acquainted us.  She is not to be toyed with.  The arrows of her son Cupid (Eros) will magically transform some, and fatally poison others.

                                                   Venus at Her Mirror

In the Morning                      by Steve Kowit (1938-  )

In the morning

holding her mirror,

the young woman

touches

her tender

lip with

her finger &

then with 

the tip of 

her tongue

licks it &

smiles

& admires her

eyes.

Cosmetics Do No Good           by Steve Kowit (1938-  )

Cosmetics do no good:

no shadow, rouge, mascara, lipstick–

nothing helps.

However artfully I comb my hair,

embellishing my throat & wrists with jewels,

it is no use–there is no

semblance of the beautiful young girl

I was

& long for still.

My loveliness is past,

and no one could be more aware than I am

that coquettishness at this age

only renders me ridiculous.

I know it.  Nonetheless,

I primp myself before the glass

like an infatuated schoolgirl

fussing over every detail,

practicing whatever subtlety

may please him.

I cannot help myself.

The God of Passion has his will of me

& I am tossed about 

between humiliation & desire,

rectitude & lust,

disintegration & renewal, ruin & salvation.

Week 6

                                                    Redwoods, Jedediah Smith State Park


The groves were God's first temples. ~William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn" 


Hello, class.

Today we have plenty to catch up on. With any luck,  we we'll  get to "The White Heron" and other assigned stories  and poems, such as "Tintern Abbey, "   and begin the film Into the Wild.  The latter is based on the true story of a young man, just graduated from college, with honors, who runs away from home and family and other obligations to explore the "wild" in search of a more authentic life/self, against all he considers false in humanity and society.

Response 4  (350 words minimum, due week 7 or 8):  Discuss what you find most compelling in story, poem or film (thus far).  Refer to specific scenes and images and the ideas and feelings they elicited.  You may convey freely your personal associations and /or memories of like experiences in the development. Handout with questions included for film option.

At the following URL is an excellent essay by one well known American best writer on the human-animal relationship in historical and cultural perspective.  Animals, Lewis Lapham writes, elude our attempts to define them, even as we push so many to the brink in our "conquest" of the natural world:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lewis-lapham/the-conquest-of-nature_b_2859691.html


And in the short video found at the following URL, you can see the power of imagination exemplified in William Blake's lines beginning "To see a world in a grain of sand" magnified by application of modern technology :  https://www.ted.com/talks/louie_schwartzberg_hidden_miracles_of_the_natural_world

from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance       

       There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

        Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being.

Week 5

The following free verse poem is by Walt Whitman, who served as a nurse during the American Civil War.  In it he sees beyond the immediate violent conflict between North and South in recognition of the "divine" humanity of all involved, and the healing inevitably to come.  Notice his long, free verse lines, stretching out from among the shorter and providing an expansive, heightened sense of feeling:

Reconciliation

WORD over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world:
... For my enemy is dead—a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin—I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

A White Heron

Welcome back to class.  I hope you are all doing well.  

     Today we pick up where we left off last week, reviewing the narrative work of Guy de Maupassant.  Then we'll read part or all of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" and take a quiz!  Then we can get to Charles Bukowski and Sarah Orne Jewett ("The White Heron"), writers from very different eras who yet tell stories about the travails of growing up that in certain respects are similar.  We will discuss the similarities and differences in class, but here I will indicate some of the similarities in theme that I have noted:

• A narrator/protagonist who feels himself in opposition to family and/or others and thus feels isolated or alone and vulnerable to some degree
• A narrator/protagonist who struggles to find and assert himself and in so many ways feel strong
• A narrator/protagonist who discovers where his powers lie and then exercises them
• A narrator/protagonist who considers the consequences of actions, and regards with sympathy and/or antipathy the weak, meek, and humble
• A narrator/protagonist who seeks understanding, even wisdom, through reflection, reading and writing
• A narrator/protagonist who shows awareness of the social mask and who hides certain aspects of his character
• A narrator/protagonist who invites readers to see the challenges of growing up by relating key memories and experiences from that journey

We do not see in Bukowski's work the kind of conversation with God that St. Augustine enacts in his autobiographical Confessions.  We do not see elements of prayer and religious devotion.  Bukowski's work is not a religious confession nor a conversion narrative; in fact, we would all have to read more of his work to understand his spiritual or religious ideas and attitudes clearly.  He is, it seems to me, clearly seeking the Truth of his experience and trying to convey it in his narrative work, however unflattering the light he shines upon himself and others.  This, too, the articulation of Truth, is St. Augustine's aim.

--------------
I ask that you bring next week something to recite (not by memory) for class, which should be fun, and good practice!  There is an excellent recording of "My Last Duchess" at the link below that I hope to play, providing the computer cooperates.  Here is a link to student performance videos  class:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/20/theater/hamlet-student-instagram-videos.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

If we have time next week or the next we will look at  autobiographical excerpts by Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala Sa), a Native American writer who recorded her memories of Sioux life in South Dakota, including the influence of her mother, the natural world around them, the legends and rituals of her tribe, and her meeting with white missionaries.  In addition, "The Navaho Night Chant," a piece still performed today by the Navaho, offers a look into the way that poetry and chanting come together in a ritual of healing and transformation intended to return its participants to a renewed sense of vitality and wholeness.

                                                      Tintern Abbey (12th Century)

I have also a selection of poems I'd like to address, time permitting.  They will serve to underscore the narrative themes in the prose pieces we are reading, provide review of earlier themes and concepts,  and will move us along to the next works.  One is "Tintern Abbey," a romantic poem in blank verse by William Wordsworth:  http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/tabbey.html   At the following link you may read background and see in photos the beauty of the abbey:  http://www.castlewales.com/tintern.html  Another is Alfred Lord Tennyson's rhymed narrative (ballad) of "The Lady of Shallot," based on the medieval tales of King Arthur. And yet others include Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" and John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale."  

Posted below is the description of essay 3, which is due week 6 or 7:  

 Essay #3, due week 6: Compose a 600-700 word (minimum length) essay that introduces the text(s) by title and author and proceeds to support a thesis point or claim about the text(s). You may address poetry and/or prose selections. If you have two or more selections, they must be addressed under a comprehensive thesis, the essay unified by the thesis, with each serving to illustrate, develop and support your thesis. Include some description of the formal structure of the poem and/or prose elements, for example, stanza form, line length and rhyme pattern, use of repetition or anaphora, use of narrative structure, setting, plot, character,  conspicuous sound devices, imagery, figurative elements (such as metaphor, simile, symbol, personification).  Remember, narrative always involves the perspective or point of view of the narrator (first person or third person typically, as well as plot, setting, character development, tone or mood, and central thematic concerns. Lyric poems may have little in the way of narrative or story, though they always have a speaker and the speaker provides perspective, along with whatever other voices may be presented in the poem.  Provide support and evidence for your claims in the form of textual summary and direct quotation, formatted in the MLA style, with line citations. Avoid using quotation unnecessarily or dropping quotations in without commentary. Integrate short quotations into the text with quotation marks and slashes to indicate line breaks. Quotations of 4 and more lines should be block formatted. Title your essay (do not use the poetry or prose story title in the essay title unless a subtitle is also present). Double‐space the lines. 

Week 4

Jabberwocky                         by Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

   And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son

   The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

   The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

   Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

   And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

   The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

   And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

   The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

   He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

   Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

   He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

   Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

   And the mome raths outgrabe.

                                   –from Through the Looking-Glass

For another charming, though cruel, nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, see "The Walrus and the Carpenter."

Today we will start "The Hunting of the Snark," by Lewis Carroll and "Kubla Khan"  and then on to the short prose stories by Guy de Maupassant and Charles Bukowski, with the focus on childhood, adolescence . . . growing up.    "The White Heron," by Sarah Orne Jewett is another that, like the first two, takes as its subject childhood and growing up, its pains, particular burdens and joys, family, social isolation, and the role of authority, often male-identified, in the protagonist's life. All are stories of initiation into experience and knowledge of one sort or another. The Confessions, by St. Augustine,  is the oldest complete autobiographical work we have and describes somewhat the author's religious conversion and confessions of sin and guilt. He is at pains to show to God and man how he has learned to see God's just and guiding hand in his life, even in those times his life was given over to what he calls wickedness. We may read excerpts; the full text is available at http://www.online-literature.com/saint-augustine/confessions-of-saint-augustine/.

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In Charles Bukowski's  “Son of Satan,” a semi-autobiographical account, the author tells how a group of boys alleviate the boredom of day in the suburbs by torturing an erstwhile playmate, Simpson, a kid rather quiet, different, the narrator says, perhaps simply weaker than they in some way, “a loner. Probably lonely.” Not so different in fact, we can imagine. But the narrator takes his offhand boast of having lain with a girl under the narrator’s house as a challenge, territorial perhaps, though they know in all likelihood it was just a boast, “a lie” Simpson had come up with in hearing them talk of such things. After a brief “trial” they hang him from his porch.

      Before Simpson comes to serious bodily harm, the narrator cuts him down, and then the narrator goes for a long walk, feeling lost, “vacant” and somewhat remorseful. His shoes are thin and “hurt [his] feet.”  When he says that the “nails started coming through the soles,” we might imagine the story of Christ, whose feet were nailed to a cross. When he gets home his father is waiting for him, and he wants answers. But the boy, perhaps unable to explain, and afraid, chooses instead to fight his angry father, who for all he knows, might kill him. In the end, the boy is hiding under the bed, hoping to elude the big man’s grasp, waiting.

      The power and influence of parents and other authority figures is something we contend with throughout our lives as we come into our own. The story, to me, illustrates something of the cruelty, suffering, and longing for relief that mark a human life. The narrator is coming to terms with these experiences in, perhaps,  the only way he knows. The fight between him and his father, their coming to blows, appears a crucial departure in his young life.

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                                                      Vulcan, Greek God of the Forge

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” 

― Charles Bukowski

Homework:  Poetry Essay #2, due week 5:  Compose a short essay of 250-350 (three paragraphs ought to do it) words on a poem from the handout.  Introduce the subject piece by title and author, describe briefly what the poem is about, its form (free verse or rhymed, stanza type and number), and proceed to your thesis idea, which is an arguable claim, an interpretative claim/opinion you have arrived at after consideration of the text’s structure and sense.  Support or prove your thesis idea in the body paragraph(s) by reference to specific lines and words in the poem text and explanation of their meaning.  Provide a brief conclusion that underscores your central focus and point.

Integrate short quotations (less than four lines) into the text with quotation marks and slashes to indicate line breaks. Quotations of 4 and more lines should be block formatted.  Remember, all use of original wording should be enclosed in quotation marks or otherwise indicated as original source material.  Title your essay (do not use the poetry title in the essay title unless a subtitle is also present).  Double‐space the lines.  Bring the printed copy to class week 4, or email it to ndoyle@aii.edu if you cannot be in class to submit it.

Topic suggestions:  
the poem as symbol or allegory of imagination and its powers, the search for truth, love, happiness or whatever theme you discover 

the poem as meditation on nature's shows 
the theme of life's progression– childhood, adolescence, maturity 

the uses of allusion –mythological, biblical, historical– in poetry                       

A Guide to the Study of Literature:  Explore the pages and links at the site below, where you will find helpful introductory material and insightful essays and responses to the themes and topics readers have discovered in literature.

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/read_lyr.html

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/rom.html

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