A few weeks ago in class, as Ann was introducing us to Ezra Pound and his fellow Modernists, she noted that Pound considered the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson to be too concerned with sound. Apparently, Tennyson wanted his poetry to be pretty more than he worked to make the words important. I took personal note of this because in my little exposure to Tennyson, I’ve found his poems to be absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, from personal experience, I consent that Pound had a point.
I first encountered Alfred Lord Tennyson last fall when my kind of embarrassing family band, 3 Skuzins and a Funkle, learned a rendition of his poem "Crossing the Bar."
My cousin Emma and I found the song to be beautiful, and we sang it whenever we had gigs (which we are proud to acknowledge were almost always at church coffee houses or the occasional retirement home). Anyway, we sang the song at our grandfather’s 80th birthday celebration last year and it was just a little embarrassing when, being the scholarly type who would totally do this, he put us on the spot in front of about forty people and asked us to explain what the poem was about. Well… we really hadn’t thought about it! Most of our songs happen to be about death, so we assumed as much, but we enjoyed singing the words so much that we’d failed to think much about what they meant. Of course, Poppop then walked us through an explication that I’m not going to dwell on now.
The point of this is that last year, I most likely did rate poetry on how pretty it sounded. It is more natural to do this than to slow down and contemplate the ideas and questions that a poem raises. I still thoroughly enjoy Tennyson’s work, and I don’t think it should be cast aside, but in the future I will need to use the tools I’m acquiring in this class to give the text the attention it deserves!
P.S. I thought it would be fun to let you listen to our version of “Crossing the Bar” because I believe poetry can absolutely be enjoyed as music. I had my dad upload it from our CD onto his ReverbNation account. Feel free to give it a listen and go ahead and check out my dad’s music because I think he’s kind of awesome! (Also, the song features Emma as the singer and Justin Yoder as cello-playing extraordinaire.)
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Poem for a Hurting World
Try To Praise The Mutilated World
Published on the back page of The New Yorker shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11,2001, "Try To Praise the Mutilated World" should be put in a time capsule. Not only was its message needed in the days and weeks following the attacks, it will resonate with readers as long as they are living in a damaged world. We all struggle with darkness, but Zagajewski pushes us not to forget all that is beautiful. The poem is not over-indulgent It contains only a few simple yet powerful images that are enough to carry the reader another day.
Published on the back page of The New Yorker shortly after the terrorist attacks on September 11,2001, "Try To Praise the Mutilated World" should be put in a time capsule. Not only was its message needed in the days and weeks following the attacks, it will resonate with readers as long as they are living in a damaged world. We all struggle with darkness, but Zagajewski pushes us not to forget all that is beautiful. The poem is not over-indulgent It contains only a few simple yet powerful images that are enough to carry the reader another day.
Hughes Wants America Back!
I recently read “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes out of the Against Forgetting anthology. (Read it here!)
The poem is not brief; it is made up of 17 stanzas ranging in length from one to fifteen lines long. Hughes identifies the individuals and groups that have not enjoyed the freedom and promise that America flaunts. He speaks not only on behalf of black people, but also the Native Americans who were driven from their land, and the white man “sold to the machine.” He suggests that even those individuals who can make a living without facing discrimination are not living the dream because they are sell-outs; they’ve become greedy and mean.
Throughout much of the poem, Hughes calls America out on its false promises, which is sad because it was built by immigrants in search of something better than they had experienced. However, by reminding us of this, he points out that there is hope because we ARE people with dreams and we can take back the land so it can be beautiful again. It is not America that has failed us; we have screwed up.
I like how free the free verse really is. I like the variety of the stanzas, the occasional question, and the parentheses that suggest Hughes is talking on a few different levels. He writes from a variety of perspectives: himself, other groups, and the voice of the American dream.
The poem is not brief; it is made up of 17 stanzas ranging in length from one to fifteen lines long. Hughes identifies the individuals and groups that have not enjoyed the freedom and promise that America flaunts. He speaks not only on behalf of black people, but also the Native Americans who were driven from their land, and the white man “sold to the machine.” He suggests that even those individuals who can make a living without facing discrimination are not living the dream because they are sell-outs; they’ve become greedy and mean.
Throughout much of the poem, Hughes calls America out on its false promises, which is sad because it was built by immigrants in search of something better than they had experienced. However, by reminding us of this, he points out that there is hope because we ARE people with dreams and we can take back the land so it can be beautiful again. It is not America that has failed us; we have screwed up.
I like how free the free verse really is. I like the variety of the stanzas, the occasional question, and the parentheses that suggest Hughes is talking on a few different levels. He writes from a variety of perspectives: himself, other groups, and the voice of the American dream.
Making Sense of Modern and Contemporary Poetry- With Me!
Welcome, readers, to my first blog since Xanga rocked my world in 7th grade! If you are meeting me for the first time, I am Maddie Ruth, a first-year Psychology and Music Performance double major at Goshen College. I enjoy playing tennis, making music, bike riding, and drawing, among other things. Never before has “reading poetry” made the list, but through a Modern and Contemporary Poetry class I’m taking this semester, I am attempting to work my way through a variety of published verse by everyone from Ezra Pound to Langston Hughes to Adam Zagajewski. In doing so I’ve come to not only comprehend, but also enjoy a lot of what I’ve read! This blog will hopefully track some thoughts regarding my favorite poems, and can also be a way for you to get a taste of the delights and displeasures of reading an array of poets and styles. You are warmly invited to join me in reading and sharing YOUR thoughts. The idea of this blog is that poetry is much more fun when it is shared with others!
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