Allen Ginsberg “Howl”

Was really glad we got some good explanation about this work in class today. At first reading, the poem appears to be a non-rhythmical, poorly written rant about some terrible life who did nothing good, and all things miserable. In part two I feel like it’s an un enlightening parody, or satire on Maloch, who symbolizes the United States taking away the people’s humanity, to which I as when has any vast number of people ever had this humanity? that’s beside the point. It is good to know that this poem was done in the Dadaist fashion. Most helpful was the analogy between this poem and a collage that our professor gave us today. Just as impressionist paintings described the poetry as well. We find all sorts of macabre or grotesque things in this poem. Things that are not well thought of. Ginsberg does a great job of adding humor to lighten the almost whiney tone of this poem. These whines significant and wanting to be heard as what the author probably thought was a howl. There’s no telling how loud the howl was, and how much of an impact it actually made. I do appreciate how the lack of style in Dadaist poetry allows writers to freely express emotion in a kind of in your face approach. I would like to employ this type of writing, similar to Ginsberg as kind of a lazy impressionism.

Allen Ginsberg. “Last night in Calcutta”

In this poem I could go on to summarize what would be seemingly sleeping in a dankish hot room in India, but that would be boring. Instead I will focus on the lines of the poem that seem the most out of place to me, or the hardest to understand. The last 3 lines of the poem begin with a hyphen and it  says “—Leave immortality for another to suffer like a fool, / not get stuck in the corner of the universe / sticking morphine in the arm and eating meat.” (lines 38-40). The previous lines seem to elude to the narrator having pain in the kidney.  “Skin is sufficient to be skin, that’s all / it ever could be, tho screams of pain in the kidney / dying to finish its all too famous misery”(lines 34-37). It would seem that the narrator is in pain and doesn’t want to die in Calcutta. I would say the significance of the morphine would at least be symbolic of an unwillingness to let go. I would also make so bold of an assumption as to say that “eating meat.” is a reaction against the Indian culture in which many are vegetarian. It seems the narrator wants to go back to New York or Bangkok (line 33) but I couldn’t say why. Let me say that there is at least some more structure to this poem compared to many of ginsberg’s others which makes it easy to read, but it is still filled with vagueness, the likes of which I have experienced far too much since beginning this course.

William Carlos Williams

“The Great Figure”

William’s apparent experience with the Imagists becomes quite apparent in his poetry from the early 1900’s following his partnership with Ezra pound. Imagistic poetry can sound overly simplistic, and lacking of depth, but I suppose that is what is attempted to be portrayed. It is a sort of visual snapshot through words. This poem captures the entire essence of a fire truck rushing in the rain (ironically) to some destination at night while its siren goes. In 33 words (later 29 after line 7 was omitted) Williams paints a movie clip in the minds of readers. In reality this scene would have lasted about 15 seconds, but that is all that he wished to portray evidently. What other meanings this poem could mean, and why he wrote it is beyond me. I may as well just write a poem about this cup of water sitting on my desk and call it an imagist poem, just as well as a painter might paint a still life. It is poetry, and it is art.

Mina Loy “Songs to Joannes”

I get the feeling that Loy is poet equivalent in nature to the impressionist painters of the beginning of the 20^th century. I feel that she uses more emotional words, adjectives and adverbs than there should be in relation to nouns and verbs making the whole poem a fragmented montage of expression rather than meaning. I frequently hear that art is a medium of self expression, and this piece illustrates that quite nicely. This poem has a narrator and is speaking to only one person. It is full of a mixture of innuendos and descriptive imagery. There seems to be an air of secrecy about the poem “…Something only for you / Something that I must not see” (part XIII, lines 9-10). I can’t put a finger on it exactly, but this poem also seems to be glorifying the darker themes associated with love.

Let us be very jealous

Very suspicious

Very Conservative

Very Cruel

                (lines 14-18)

The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot.

When one thinks of poetry, it is usually a few stanzas, but in the case of the wasteland, Eliot puts a new outlook on poetry. With countless allusions, and varying changes in rhyme scheme throughout the stanzas and a great many characters, it is no wonder it became one of his most notable works. In a preface, I read that Eliot, never intended to derive a certain meaning to his poem, and that he was really just writing what he thought was best. This is comforting, because the poem itself is very difficult to understand, and a greater than renaissance or literature education would be required to grasp it all without the footnotes. I like how Eliot frequently adds a rhyming couplet near, but not on, the end of the stanzas. He frequently makes use of enjambed lines, often times marking the first word of a sentence at the end of a line. there are many literary techniques involved, and this poem is clearly far from anything prosy sounding.

T.S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

                After reading this lengthy poem, I would like to make a conclusion or moral of the story; that woman should be sought out before a man’s head begins to bald, and that it doesn’t hurt to work out, if only for aesthetic purposes. However, this I feel is not the meaning of the poem itself. What is Important to take note of is that this “Love Song” is an Ironic, a satire even, version of what love poetry has always been before. I think when one first begins their journey of poetry, they stereotype it with love poems; roses are red… etc. In terms of literary elements, the concept of poetry that I think is most important in this poem is the use of metaphor. When J. alludes to his being as a yellow fog is one time (line 15) is one example, or “I should have been a pair of ragged claws” (line 74). In the end he uses the metaphor of a peach to be a woman, or love, and sets up a whole scene in which he describes the women as mermaids. Let’s not forget line 111 when J. says, “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;” Hamlet is alone in his play by Shakespeare, and although this is more of an allusion, than a metaphor, the comparison qualities are still strong.