Week 3

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.  Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing.  He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates.  For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
                                                       –from Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in 1954

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.

Welcome back. Hope you've had a good week.  Today we will continue discussing Week 1 poetry selections, including short stories by American writers Kate Chopin (1860-1904) and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1960), and by Frenchman Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893).  "My Uncle Jules,"  and the some 300 other De Maupassant  stories, were models of the short story form and known by both Americans.  The one or more selected here for class focus on the trials of youth, how we grow up, the influence of family and the force of authority.

I'll return  your first written responses, submitted last week.   I've also a couple of extra pieces, just below.

when serpents bargain for the right to squirm            by e.e. cummings when serpents bargain for the right to squirm and the sun strikes to gain a living wage-- when thorns regard their roses with alarm and rainbows are insured against old age when every thrush may sing no new moon in if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice --and any wave signs on the dotted line or else an ocean is compelled to close when the oak begs permission of the birch to make an acorn-valleys accuse their mountains of having altitude-and march denounces april as a saboteur then we'll believe in that incredible unanimal mankind(and not until) 1944

Discussion Question:  What is the point the poet here makes about nature and about humans?  What is his method or means of address, or how is the poem formed?


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:  http://harpers.org/blog/2013/04/twenty-little-poems-that-could-save-america/3/

----------------------------- In the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" we see a peculiar, dark humor of author Lewis Carroll.  So-called nonsense literature, like the prose novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is typically set in fantastical places and features strange creatures we wouldn't expect to meet in real life.  Often the plot events and speech are equally mystifying or silly but the premium seems to be on defying logic and authority by showing the irrational side of our being and imagination and all the flexibility and ambiguities of language; and, of course, on having fun! We have to let go for a time our reliance on strict logic and what is sensible and right to play along.  Nonsense works appeal to children and to the child in us all. And perhaps in them we may find something beyond age.

The poem below, in the form of a ballad, has always been a favorite of mine, and one easily memorized, by a poet much admired by the late Beatle John Lennon, who wrote some nonsense verse himself.

The Owl and the Pussycat               by Edmund Lear (1812-1888)

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea 

   In a beautiful pea green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,   

  Wrapped up in a five pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,   

  And sang to a small guitar,’

O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,     

  What a beautiful Pussy you are, 

      You are,       

      You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!   

   How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:   

   But what shall we do for a ring?’

They sailed away, for a year and a day,   

  To the land where the Bong-tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood   

   With a ring at the end of his nose,         

       His nose,         

       His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

    Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’

So they took it away, and were married next day   

    By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,   

    Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,   

    They danced by the light of the moon,         

        The moon,         

        The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

Here, too, a short commentary on nonsense lyrics by George Orwell:  http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/essays/orwell_1.html
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Writing Assignment #2

In “I Dwell in Possibility,” on page 2 of the week one poetry handout, poet Emily Dickinson writes about her imaginative life and work.  Provide a 250-350 word reading of the poem (an essay description and interpretation) that identifies some of the points she makes and what is interesting about the language she uses in making them.