Group members - Lauren Baggett, Isabelle Chang, Linda Doan, Kristina Mahler and Melany Zerbino
Our group chose to discuss Jorie Graham’s “Prayer”. Initially we discussed the meaning of the title and the way it invokes the issue of faith in the poem however the group agreed that the role of faith in this poem is devoid of religious connotation. The figure in the poem is watching minnows in motion and they are acting on some unseen motivation that exists within them; it is sort of a mystery to the spectator. The minnows are exhibiting a force which cannot be put into words; there is something intangible at work in the world which is felt by the figure. The poem deals with freedom and the freedom one experiences when realizing you are part of something larger and this realization requires faith in oneself and the world. However, the notion of freedom and the image of the fish acting as one being contradict one another. The second part of the poem is paradoxical to the first; the last line of the poem “It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here:never.” suggests a lack of agency and that the speaker is free and yet restricted in their choice. The figure in the poem is restricted in their speech and does not speak aloud in the poem; however the reader is seemingly privy to their internal realizations. We related this to a statement in Graham’s poetic statement which reads “it is not because language has failed the author, it seems to me, but but because the human speaker has reached the point where the action of mind takes place in silence” (147). As a language poet Graham has a more lyric style and her poem is somewhat abstract but much more literal than most of the other poems by language poets. Graham does not shy away from the use of “I” in this poem, she finds the medium to produce “I” in the language. Parataxis is shown through the equality relations created by paradoxes and the force of the individual and the collective appear equal at the end of the poem. There is no hierarchy of experience in this poem, both the experience of the figure and the minnows are equal. Graham states that for her the power of poetry “resides most vividly in its capacity to make a reader receive utterable and unutterable realities at once” (148), “Prayer” is a powerful example of her ability to convey this sense of realization as well as “the inexpressible, the emissary of the nonverbal territories of intuition, deep paradox, conflicting bodily impulses...,profoundly present yet non-languaged spiritual insights [and] certain emotional crisis states” (148). As a language poet Graham does not think language is exhausted by any means. She sees language as the tool; it’s how you use the instrument and not the instrument itself.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, from The Retired Architect.
group: Mohamad Jalloul, Nicola Young, Sarah-Helene Laferriere, Tara Saunders, Jennifer Sacco and Natasha Gold
As a group we analyzed the poem "The Retired Architect", written by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. We felt as though this poem was about growth and the process of self-acceptance as one ages. As she ages, she loses the need for such decorations as "gold leaf", which is really only beautiful on the outside, luring one in, only to be lacking in substance in the end. As she says, "Actually, I designed two bungalows: the gold leaf, and one later, because I had missed something." She realizes as she ages that it is not necessary to decorate herself with such fine things and instead, the more natural is better. She uses similies at the beginning of the poem, comparing herself to aspects of nature. It is the natural idea of human life versus nature and finally allowing nature to win. When one does that, there is a finer grace about him/her. Also, when speaking of "the plastic wood paneling, the plastic ducks..." there is another shedding of the skin, as if she finally realizes there is no need for such ornaments, plastic that is not real and is cheap.
There is use of metonymy through the idea of architecture, with "calculations" and "support". With the concept of architecture, the reader imagines sharp and clean angles, everything neatly constructed. It is an attempt to build one's self properly but concrete and perfectly consctructed angles are unnatural and can only erode with time. This is an idea that, by the end of the poem, is not only accepted but embraced as well. With the final line of the poem, "Now, when my work expresses loss or failure, I no longer say, get rid of that." It is a really beautiful way to end the poembecause there is an obvious feeling of closure, as if the author has truly accepted the person that she is and recognizes that failure and mistakes are a part of the process that makes us all wonderfully human. It is also important to note that the first poem in the book, by this author, was "from Four Year Old Girl" and ended with this poem, as though she herself was showing the journey she has taken.
There was an example of anaphora at the beginning of the poem, with the repetition of "I". We also felt that the image of the lake was comparable to her perspective, which ripples and changes over time. This poem is a beautiful reflection on life and the choices one can make to embrace the finer things in life, if they can let go of the superficial.
As a group we analyzed the poem "The Retired Architect", written by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. We felt as though this poem was about growth and the process of self-acceptance as one ages. As she ages, she loses the need for such decorations as "gold leaf", which is really only beautiful on the outside, luring one in, only to be lacking in substance in the end. As she says, "Actually, I designed two bungalows: the gold leaf, and one later, because I had missed something." She realizes as she ages that it is not necessary to decorate herself with such fine things and instead, the more natural is better. She uses similies at the beginning of the poem, comparing herself to aspects of nature. It is the natural idea of human life versus nature and finally allowing nature to win. When one does that, there is a finer grace about him/her. Also, when speaking of "the plastic wood paneling, the plastic ducks..." there is another shedding of the skin, as if she finally realizes there is no need for such ornaments, plastic that is not real and is cheap.
There is use of metonymy through the idea of architecture, with "calculations" and "support". With the concept of architecture, the reader imagines sharp and clean angles, everything neatly constructed. It is an attempt to build one's self properly but concrete and perfectly consctructed angles are unnatural and can only erode with time. This is an idea that, by the end of the poem, is not only accepted but embraced as well. With the final line of the poem, "Now, when my work expresses loss or failure, I no longer say, get rid of that." It is a really beautiful way to end the poembecause there is an obvious feeling of closure, as if the author has truly accepted the person that she is and recognizes that failure and mistakes are a part of the process that makes us all wonderfully human. It is also important to note that the first poem in the book, by this author, was "from Four Year Old Girl" and ended with this poem, as though she herself was showing the journey she has taken.
There was an example of anaphora at the beginning of the poem, with the repetition of "I". We also felt that the image of the lake was comparable to her perspective, which ripples and changes over time. This poem is a beautiful reflection on life and the choices one can make to embrace the finer things in life, if they can let go of the superficial.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Group Work, Lucie Brock-Broido
Our group decided to attempt to deconstruct "Periodic Table of Etherial Elements" by Brock-Broido. At first it seemed obtuse, but the more we talked about it we seemed to approach a meaning. We concluded that the poem is exactly what the title implies; it is a scientific, practically medical consideration of something which is utterly out of body and only fleetingly tangible. The alliteration accentuates a seemingly oxymoronical juxtaposition. It deals in the themes of the fragmented self, and almost resigned loss of something or someone. Brock-Broido (and we can assign the author as the speaker due to her own instruction) identifies her fractured self in the loss of girlhood, and/or the relation with something formless. While she once lived in a 'glassed castle' (indicative of something transparent, something easily breakable, something from a fairy tale) she now lives in just a 'house'. While she was once a girl, that time has passed and because she likens that girlhood to a useless penicillin we can assume it's departure has left something diseased, something fractured. The presence of multiple occasions of anaphora based in the conditional ('I was not ready for' occurs twice, and 'If you' three times) reinforce that the formless something could have come to different conclusion, had things been different. Closure does occur but it is subject to question because though that thing she is lamenting is gone, it has left an impression and will forever effect her (just like that childhood toy Trish referred to in class to explain Freudian theory).
Of Charles Bernstien's 'poem profiler' literary devices, in the poem exists:
gender markers ('If you were a man') which could perhaps lead us to consider the speaker as accusing her editor Harry Ford to whom the poem is dedicated.
sampling from Bukowski ('A little jump of flame')
and more but thats all we got to.
group members, please tell me if I missed anything.
Megan Camerson, Sydney Neuman, Jess Pietryszyn, Hayley Brehl, Kristal Kordich, Candice Fridman, and Hannah Jocelyn
Lyn Hejinian - a clue to solving her puzzle
Hi everyone,
I, like many of us, was grappling with Hejinian's poem, "From Writing is an Aid to Memory" and I picked up on a pattern that may be useful for deciphering meaning. Although I'm not sure what it means. The structure of the poem seems erratic at first and that is what I thought. However, the poem is structered according to the first letter in each verse. The verses have been placed where they fall. Example:
GRID:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
apple is shot nod
ness seen know I around saying
but perhaps utter errors direct the point to a meadow
Each verse is placed in alignment with the grid according to the first letter of that verse. Although this may not be the key to uncovering the inner-workings of what's going on, it is something I noticed and thought could perhaps spark further ideas. What are your thoughts?
Calogero A. Miceli
I, like many of us, was grappling with Hejinian's poem, "From Writing is an Aid to Memory" and I picked up on a pattern that may be useful for deciphering meaning. Although I'm not sure what it means. The structure of the poem seems erratic at first and that is what I thought. However, the poem is structered according to the first letter in each verse. The verses have been placed where they fall. Example:
GRID:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
apple is shot nod
ness seen know I around saying
but perhaps utter errors direct the point to a meadow
Each verse is placed in alignment with the grid according to the first letter of that verse. Although this may not be the key to uncovering the inner-workings of what's going on, it is something I noticed and thought could perhaps spark further ideas. What are your thoughts?
Calogero A. Miceli
Friday, March 20, 2009
Identity Crisis
An ongoing theme throughout Rhys' novel seems to be the crisis of racial identity and the barriers it creates surrounding the notion of existence. After finishing the novel, I wondered if the novel itself is undergoing somewhat of an identity crisis. Seeing as Wide Sargasso Sea is a postmodern and postcolonial response to Jane Eyre, I wonder if the novel can exist on it's own. Can Wide Sargasso Sea truly be appreciated as a work on its own?
-K Coughlin
Monday, March 16, 2009
Illicit Verb, this Wednesday
Hi folks,
I want to invite you all to come out to the Green Room this Wednesday, March 18th, for ILLICIT VERB.
Poets Sina Queyras (Expressway, Lemon Hound), Lisa Robertson (Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip, Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture) and Matthew Tierney (The Hayflick Limit, Full Speed through the Morning Dark) will launch their brand-new books with short readings, and host Erín Moure will lead a short, interactive Q&A with the audience.
Sina Queyras -- the Concordia professor, Lambda Literary Award winner and noted literary blogger (lemonhound.blogspot.com), will launch Expressway, a new collection that uses the modes of the Romantic poets to explore the world of modern transportation and mobility. Check out the trailer for Expressway at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ui9Qw_RtWRk
Lisa Robertson -- the Governor General's Award nominee and frequent cross-genre collaborator visits from San Francisco to launch Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip, a new book of previously uncollected poems, essays, drafts, reports, treatises and laments. Toronto's Eye Weekly calls it an 'exuberant, saucy approach to the materiality of language and vice versa.'
Matthew Tierney -- Toronto poet and This Magazine Great Canadian Literary Hunt winner will launch The Hayflick Limit, a new collection that concerns itself with the boundaries of the cosmic and subatomic, and covers subjects as varied as black holes and Warner Bros. cartoons, murky market economies, murkier quantum laws, Vincent Price, Molotov cocktails, seedless grapes, Area 51 and competing Theories of Everything.
Illicit Verb
launching books by Sina Queyras, Lisa Robertson and Matthew Tierney
hosted by Erín Moure
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Green Room, 5386 St. Laurent
8:00 p.m.
Free
Books will be on sale from Concordia Community Solidarity Co-op Bookstore.
some of my interpretations of Robertson and Armantrout
I was taught that poems should be self-sufficient. A good poem, like a song, should have its own meaning for the reader... though we are all reading the same words, there is no "right" or "wrong". A poet knows that once a poem is written or published, it is vulnerable to be anatomized and criticized... but in the end, it is to be appreciated and shared and understood by someone else... thus is the healing power of writing.
Robertson's Residence at C_____ (on page 194-5) reminds me of Girl, Interrupted and Plath. Who is Robertson writing to? I believe she's writing to herself. The poem flows like a set of commands that someone should obey. I feel Robertson is trapped outside her own emotions, and she is trying to breathe herself back to life through this poem. "Say self because [you] can". The first part of the poem attempts to builds the reader (herself) to feel "Marvelous. Spectacular. Brilliant." From then on, the poem becomes less abstract, she mentions Kate Moss, pink, death. "Misplace the death," is Robertson numb because someone died? "Say trying to possess or not," is she speaking of letting someone go (as opposed to denying their death and keeping them alive as long as you can in her heart). "If you thought love was ironical," if you equaled love to happiness and it only brought you pain. "If pleasure emancipates, why aren't you somewhere"... if you're as happy as you believe, then why are you dead inside? The final word "sincerity" acts as a sign of sincerity, that after all the commands, should the reader (herself) be offended, or defensive, it was all in good intention.
Tuesday's repetition reminds me of Chapter 26 of Nobokov's Lolita: "Don't think I can go on, Heart, head-everything. Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat 'til the page is full, printer." This (very short) chapter demonstrates the narrator's obsession with Lolita, up to the point where she's all he thinks of and he doesn't write anymore to cut brief the redundancy. For me, Tuesday is a poem about obsession. Clouds are a sort of Rorschack test (inkblot test), where what one sees can be associated with one's mind. And these clouds remind her of these different women, who come together and share a same-ness as each of them "crumbles" in different ways and have different clouds associated with them - but in the end, they're all clouds.
Armantrout's The Plan makes sense when viewed from the second part, with the first part in mind. Two people planned to meet, anxiously. "Who told you you were visible?" comes across as the omniscient "God" scolds the writer for believing things would be different this time. That the other was actually going to understand the writer's point of view but "like this palm's impression of a tree - flashing scales," the writer slowly realizes she is being deceived. The palm tree looks like a tree, but, like Plato's theory of forms, it doesn't follow the initial image of a tree. Instead of being a copy of a copy, it is a copy of a copy of a copy of a tree. Flashing scales are broken scales, if one were to weight themselves, the result might or might not be accurate. The question remains: to discard, or to fix the scales? "But sweet! You don't understand! Like a lariat made of scalloped bricks," all expectations fall apart. You are not a brick wall, but almost. "circling a patch of grass," maybe there's still hope, but "Who told [me I was] visible?" Nobody, I was just hoping.
As I was reading Armantrout, I was wondering if her form was necessary and if they added any dimension to the poetry that William Carlos Williams, e.e.cummings, or George Herbert haven't already perfected. What differenciates a good writer from a bad one is their ability to compact meaning in a few words, but is there a point where concise is too concise? There's a haiku and Armantrout's The View.
I might be entirely wrong in my readings of the poems by doing reader-response criticism rather than a post-structuralist or formalist one, but I believe it is the only possible reading.
Robertson's Residence at C_____ (on page 194-5) reminds me of Girl, Interrupted and Plath. Who is Robertson writing to? I believe she's writing to herself. The poem flows like a set of commands that someone should obey. I feel Robertson is trapped outside her own emotions, and she is trying to breathe herself back to life through this poem. "Say self because [you] can". The first part of the poem attempts to builds the reader (herself) to feel "Marvelous. Spectacular. Brilliant." From then on, the poem becomes less abstract, she mentions Kate Moss, pink, death. "Misplace the death," is Robertson numb because someone died? "Say trying to possess or not," is she speaking of letting someone go (as opposed to denying their death and keeping them alive as long as you can in her heart). "If you thought love was ironical," if you equaled love to happiness and it only brought you pain. "If pleasure emancipates, why aren't you somewhere"... if you're as happy as you believe, then why are you dead inside? The final word "sincerity" acts as a sign of sincerity, that after all the commands, should the reader (herself) be offended, or defensive, it was all in good intention.
Tuesday's repetition reminds me of Chapter 26 of Nobokov's Lolita: "Don't think I can go on, Heart, head-everything. Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat 'til the page is full, printer." This (very short) chapter demonstrates the narrator's obsession with Lolita, up to the point where she's all he thinks of and he doesn't write anymore to cut brief the redundancy. For me, Tuesday is a poem about obsession. Clouds are a sort of Rorschack test (inkblot test), where what one sees can be associated with one's mind. And these clouds remind her of these different women, who come together and share a same-ness as each of them "crumbles" in different ways and have different clouds associated with them - but in the end, they're all clouds.
Armantrout's The Plan makes sense when viewed from the second part, with the first part in mind. Two people planned to meet, anxiously. "Who told you you were visible?" comes across as the omniscient "God" scolds the writer for believing things would be different this time. That the other was actually going to understand the writer's point of view but "like this palm's impression of a tree - flashing scales," the writer slowly realizes she is being deceived. The palm tree looks like a tree, but, like Plato's theory of forms, it doesn't follow the initial image of a tree. Instead of being a copy of a copy, it is a copy of a copy of a copy of a tree. Flashing scales are broken scales, if one were to weight themselves, the result might or might not be accurate. The question remains: to discard, or to fix the scales? "But sweet! You don't understand! Like a lariat made of scalloped bricks," all expectations fall apart. You are not a brick wall, but almost. "circling a patch of grass," maybe there's still hope, but "Who told [me I was] visible?" Nobody, I was just hoping.
As I was reading Armantrout, I was wondering if her form was necessary and if they added any dimension to the poetry that William Carlos Williams, e.e.cummings, or George Herbert haven't already perfected. What differenciates a good writer from a bad one is their ability to compact meaning in a few words, but is there a point where concise is too concise? There's a haiku and Armantrout's The View.
I might be entirely wrong in my readings of the poems by doing reader-response criticism rather than a post-structuralist or formalist one, but I believe it is the only possible reading.
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