Ezra Pound - "A Girl"

Ezra Pound was one of the most representative figures of the early modernist movement of poetry. His major contribution is the development of Imagism, a writing style derived from Japanese and Chinese poetry which has to do with the use of clear and precise language to keep the essence of one single image when reading the poem. Pound's style of writing grabbed my attention therefore I took a look at some other poems of the same author and I found this particular piece of writing.

Apollo and Daphne's Myth

A Girl

The tree has entered my hands,

The sap has ascended my arms,

The tree has grown in my breast -

Downward,

The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,

Moss you are,

You are violets with wind above them.

A child - so high - you are,

And all this is folly to the world.

"A girl" is based on the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne, but it is simplified. The myth is explained with the fewest words and lines possible in order to keep the idea of precision. 

The myth itself is not intrincate thus it can be explained as following:

Apollo, one of the most powerful gods, bothers the god of love Eros because he uses warlike weapons such as the bow and arrow, but he was not the god of war, so the idea of him using this weapons was preposterous. The offended Eros took two arrows, a gold and a lead one. Daphne, the nymph, was shot with the lead arrow, which incitated hatred, whereas Apollo was shot through his heart with the golden one, which incitated love. Then, Apollo fell in love with Daphne, however she hated him and other potential lovers. Finally, Eros helps Apollo to catch Daphne, but she asks her father, Peneus, to change her form into a tree. As long as Apollo could not take her as his wife, he promised to take care of the tree.

Pound, however, restate the myth saying that "she" (Daphne) has become a tree and Apollo will have to accept Daphne's new identity as a tree. Then, he expresses the new beauty of her comparing her with the beauty of the violets when the wind gently plays with them. Finally, Apollo analyses the decision of Daphne.

To sum up, even though the myth is not very complex, Pound restate it in simple words through the use of the Imagism movement.

For you to think...What is your view on the Imagism movement? Do you think this poem could have any other meaning?

A Deep-sworn vow~

As a university second language learner is still difficult for me to read and get the real meaning of the poems in English, read them only once is not enough. A deep-sworn vow is an example, it really caught my attention after three times and an analysis to understand how deep could be the message this poem contains. Yeats and his frustrated love story with Maud Gonne can be identified through his poetry and, in this particular case due to the fact that we can imagine him talking about the situations in which he still remembers her.

If we analyze it, the poem shows the extremes that could be reached by a human when he/she is influenced by a overwhelm situation, emotion, person, etc. and cannot escape from it. In that way, love is an unconscious feeling and overwhelming: we are powerless in front of it, and we cannot choose who we love or how to react towards the love we feel. But here in the poem love is transformed into a heartbreak nightmare which takes form of a very special person to play with Yeats emotions, canceling out his sense, driving him mad to the point that heartbreak has the power to suddenly appear in the most unexpected situation. Thus, love or heartbreak is strong enough to take advantage of Yeats’ unconsciousness to act.

So, taking his unfortunate love story into account, we can realize that Maud Gonne left a huge mark in Yeats that forced him try new options in order to erase the vow that could not be kept. Those options could be to act so dangerously until face death, to sleep so much to escape from reality or to drink a lot of alcohol to forget for a while. Also, we can interpret that Others (meaning people or even the options already mentioned) were lodged between him and the vow to fulfill the emotional emptiness.

Furthermore, I would like to highlight that an emotion is momentary (like anger) and a feeling lasts in time (like grudge) and that the difference between them makes more important the mark Maud left; she is what Yeats still finds in the very deep of his mind. She is no longer a person (something physical) because she is gone, instead she becomes something psychological as a feeling that lasts and it is always there.

There is also the possibility that the deep-sworn vow was done by Yeats himself (instead of her) to forget Maud and bury the memories with her; but unfortunately she does not keep the vow and appears in the most unexpected situations, even unconsciously. So, every time he wants to escape in danger, dreams or drinks she is there.

To sum up, Yeats is a modernist poet and I believe that to understand his poem we have to bear in mind that maybe what he is asking is: "Is perhaps love so strong that it can appear in moments of deep unconsciousness? Or is only me who brings her back?”

Atomic Coming

"Atomic Coming"

The famous poem “ The Second Coming” really amazed me and has made me think a lot about it since I first read it . This is a poem that clearly shows how this modern era full of violence, crisis and death has influenced writers to make predictions about the future or to merely describe the hostile times they have lived in.

Not only has this sorted century influenced writers but also a varied and versatile group of artist.

There is a black metal band formed in 1986 called “Dark Throne” from Norway. This band, in 2006, released a song entitled “Atomic Coming”. I had never paid much attention to what this song meant until we read Yeats’ poem.

In this song, they don’t suggest another version of the second coming of Jesus; instead, they propose a more apocalyptic and even more realistic prediction of the future: An atomic coming. This coming seems to be under some few people’s control (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) or sometimes it seems that it couldn't be controlled (Chernobyl and Fukushima). It is indeed one of the most scary and possible ends of the world.

I know that this kind of music may not be of your taste and neither it sounds like a poem, but it is a clear sample of how the context in which artists live in is directly represented on whatever they create or communicate.

Finally, you can find a link below in which you can listen to the song. Also, I would like to mention that one of the two members of the band ( the one to the right in the video) is a current school teacher in Norway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNrdv_xV9Bo

A charm invests a face

Many poets were the driving force behind modernism, most of them man. However there was a strong female participation in that movement, mainly thanks to women such as Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, H.D (Hilda Doolittle), Emily Dickinson, among others.

Emily Dickinson was an american poet. Though most of her work was published before her death, she is considered one of the strongest and most important figures on modern american poetry. One of her poems is “A charm invests a face”, which goes like this:

A charm invests a face

Imperfectly beheld.

The lady dare not lift her veil

For fear it be dispelled.

But peers beyond her mesh,

And wishes, and denies,

'Lest interview annul a want

That image satisfies.

In the poem Dickinson presents us the idea that sometimes we are afraid to show our true self because we think others may not like it. She said “ The lady dare not to lift her veil” meaning that we only show what we think are our best qualities and looks. The veil can also mean that beauty is in the mystery of the unknown where lies the charm or we can also interpret that for the woman anything was better than facing the reality, because most of the times our reality is not what we want it to be.  

It becomes explicit from the start of the poem that Dickinson’s view on beauty and especially women’s role on society differ  from what was established at that time. This is not only a characteristic of Emily Dickinson but of all the Modernist writers and poets of where writers through their works show their discontent on human race, social rules among other things.  

Complex, very complex.

When we talk about Modernism, we also talk about Modernity and Modernism, although we might find differences in each conception, sometimes people tend to confuse them. Starting with all these different terms to make reference to an only one, it is possible to state that Modernity is too related with complexity


As is well known, poetry in general is hard to understand easily because every poem is a  situated action and  its complexity is going to vary depending on the context of the author. But from my point of view  in this particular stage of the literature,  I find extremely difficult to link every stanza or verse to a certain "stage" of the poet or  make an interpretation in relation with politics or even economy. 

It is interesting to see the complexity of the poems connected with the modernism, since in many cases the main features of the modernity  are not explicit and very clear at all and at the same time the use of structures and techniques makes us go deeper and deeper and even when we might have an idea about the connection of some parts of the poems with , for instance, the poet's life but sometimes the answer is totally different. When it comes to the modernist traits, it is possible to recognize that several poets as Elliot or D.H. Lawrence  characterize their works by features as the indecision and emotional distance that readers can understand after a thorough process of interpretation. 

We could be analyzing poems for a long period of time, but we have to recognize that these interpretations would not be totally accurate and is needed extra- information and some guidance in our understanding process.

However, this complexity is fascinating and at the same time is frustrating, not only in terms of the content of the poems which are related to a constant feeling of "chaos" but also in the process of the interpretation of them. Complexity is a complex word.

Papyrus...too short...too complex

While I was studying to Mr Ezra Pound, It captured my attention the complexity of his poem "Papyrus"; the first time I read it, I did not get the poem: it has only four words, nevertheless it has many "features" which makes it unique and when you read it once, you probably do not understand them.

The complexity of a poem is not a matter of extension; in only a few words you can create an outstanding poem.

First of all, I believe that Mr Pound gives relevance to how you structure a poem; let’s start with the title: the poem is called "Papyrus" which makes reference to an ancient manuscript  used centuries ago, for that reason, most of the papyri founded are incomplete just like this poem seems to be. The structure of the poem  is considerably similar to a real papyrus destroyed by the pass of time, so what we got are only pieces of it.

Secondly, it can be considered a Haiku, not for its syllabic formation but for its intention: 1) It talks about nature (spring), 2) An specific event (it is "too long") and 3) it contrasts 2 concepts (spring and Gongula).

And what about Gongula? I assumed it as the name of a woman, which it is mentioned in 2 Sappho's poem. Sappho is a Greek poetess of the 600 B.C, so Mr Pound is winking an eye at the past, which is classic of modernism, where artists take something of the past and turn it into something new.

To sum up, I think that it is considerably complex to find out only one meaning to this poem, however in my opinion that is the intention of Ezra Pound, to make us think and to create our own significance at the moment of reading this poem, based on the historical/cultural content of it and its form.

Also, I believe it is remarkable how he combines 2 cultures: West and East / Greece and Japan.

So, do you give a particular meaning to this poem? Do you think that there is only one interpretation to comprehend this poem?

Mario Espinoza

The Second Coming

What interested me most about this poem was Yeats' different view of the second coming.

As we have discussed in class, in Christianity, the second coming is the return of Jesus to earth.

If you were type in the second coming in Google and look through the images that appear, you’d find that most of them have the same characteristics; such as the image of Jesus, light, angels, and so on. Basically, the typical meaning given to the second coming is that of salvation.

However, this poem compares the common interpretation of the second coming to Yeats' own perspective of it. Instead of salvation, there is hopelessness and destruction; Instead of a savior, there is a monster.

He has even gone as far as using the concept of water, normally an element which represents cleansing and carries a positive connotation; and transformed it into something negative. “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed” and “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”  convey despair and a pessimistic view.

Yeats leads us to think that what we believe the future will bring may not actually be what we expect. There is only a false hope of what we wish reality to be.

There are may characteristics of modernism, as talked in class, that can be found in the poem. First, there is the questioning of reality, or rather, a reality to be. Will the world end with our savior descending to earth to retrieve the good and punish the bad; or will it end with the arrival of a monster that brings whit it the destruction of all that we know. Which is the reality? Are either of them the true future reality?

Second, there is the obsession with language. Each word is specially picked, carrying with it a specific meaning. It is no coincidence that so many of the words or phrases can relate to Christianity and the bible.

Finally, so as to bring this to an end (there is still much that can be discussed about the poem), what I find most intriguing about this and all the poems read is the shock factor. Never does the class immediately understand what the poet is trying to convey. There is either an initial state of confusion, misunderstanding, rejection, surprise, or as I just said, shock. I think this is because of not only the modernists stance on questioning all, but also their judgmental attitude towards the norm. What surprises me most though, are how these poems are still able to evoke some of the same reactions from the time in which they were written to our day in age.

T.S. Eliot - Morning at the window

In my quest for finding a topic to write about, I've come up with poem called "Morning at the window" and I've decided to write about it owing to the fact that it really caught my attention, it's written by one of the authors reviewed in our lessons, T.S. Eliot and also because I think that clearly comprises a lot of elements which characterize modernism.

Here is the poem:

Morning at the Window - T.S. Eliot 

They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,

And along the trampled edges of the street

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids

Sprouting despondently at area gates.

 

The brown waves of fog toss up to me

Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,

And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts

An aimless smile that hovers in the air

And vanishes along the level of the roofs.

This is an imagist poem which represents a clear image of poverty and decay immerse on a modern city with a life style very mundane and miserable. The speaker is located at the window seeing the life of other people out in the street and he describes that picture showing how the mundane life of those people is, the speaker's perception of the person and that person's life, meaning that through the image, the speaker is conveying his own perception.

In addition to this, the deterioration and decadence of society and city life is made explicit through words such as "trampled edges" of the street where they live, "damp souls", "twisted faces" of unhappy people, "aimless smile" which vanishes among the polluted ("brown waves of fog") city roofs, among others, which can be related to the "pessimist" (in a certain way) view of modern writers.

Moreover, other modern characteristic that can be identify is the isolation, in this case, the isolation of the speaker, since he is apart from everything that is happening outside his window, he's "aware of the damp souls" and he hears the "breakfast plates" but he is not in contact or in communication with them neither a part of the reality that he describes.

Finally, the issue that caught my attention was that, in spite of the fact that this poem was written in 1917, nowadays that image has not changed that much, since we can still see people out in the street isolated from each other walking down the street, going to work with a unexpressive face, and so on, making very explicit that the topics covered by modern writers are still present and prevalent in our society. 

Modernist Literature in Latin America.

Latin American literature not only is an expression of our reality, or the invention of another reality. It is also a question about the reality of those realities. A question and at times a judgment. The constant presence of critical thought in the poetry and fiction of our America is not accidental; it is the feature of all modern literature in the West… In this sense our literature are moderns. And they are so in a way that is more radical than our social and political systems, which ignore criticism and nearly always persecute it.

                                                                                                                   -Octavio Paz

The term Modernism refers to an artistic movement.

 As we know, Modernism is a manifestation of an universal crisis that is expressed trough arts, science, politics and religion.

This movement took place in Latin America during 1890-1910. Poetry was extremely rebellious, outrageous and narcissistic. What’s more, Modernist poets revolutionized the  aesthetics of language and the metrics.

One of the main characteristics in modernism is the denial and aversion of ‘’cotidianidad’’, dailylife, so the writer or poet will try to evade time and space recalling and evoking past times.

Another aspect is the use of musicality, the repetition of words, the rhythms inside the poem and the use of metaphors.

In addition, the  myths are used  as a way to recall the past, where we were more ‘’human, more primitives, a time where we were more connected with ourselves’’.

The yearning and aspiration of perfection towards the poem.

Some modernist writers in Latin America are Rubén Darío, José Martí Julián del Casal, Manuel de Jesús Galván ,Ernesto Noboa, Caamaño Arturo Borja Humberto Fierro, Medardo Ángel Silva among others.

 All in all, we can see that despite the fact that the modernist movement in Latin America differs in dates from the European, both share essentials aspects. For example, the musicality, rhythm, repetition inside the poem, the recurrent aspect of myths as a way of coming back to the past and poetry as a way to express the sense of loss, despair and crisis in humankind.

by.- M. Susana Cabrera

Leda and the Swan by Yeats

This poem was written by William Butler Yeats in 1928 and it's based in the Greek mythology. 

I decided to talk about this poem because it totally caught my attention when the teacher started to explaining it. All of the poems that we've been covered so far, are weird, freak, or non-attractive for most of us, since in my case, I'm use to know or read poems of love and that are really understandable and do not need a second reading. So, digging into this poem and realizing what actually represented it, gave me a sort of slap in my face: love poems are boring.

Moreover, realizing that the poem was talking about a raped girl called Leda and that Swan was similar to God (Zeus), didn't give me a more understandable way of what was the final objective of this poem, and less noticing that Swan was the one who raped Leda. At the end, Leda gave birth to four eggs, in which each of them were key figures of the war of Troy.

One of the things that Yeats is trying to accomplish throught this poem is to, us, think and question about the origin of things. This is related to modernism since one of the characteristics of it is to question everything. So this could be one of the many others new inventions of shaping or reshaping history that come up everyday in that time and through this, sort of make sense of a new vision of reality.

Thus, if we think about the conception of everything, what would happen if this poem is a comparison of what Jesus and Maria had? Leaving apart that the angel Gabriel was suppose to be the one who left pregnated Maria, we can see it like this: the violence that we live and see  nowadays are a consequence of what Swan/Jesus did to Leda/Maria: force her, with violence to have relations. 

I'm my personal opinion, this comparison is something huge in which we can make assumptions. You can believe it or not, but this is for me, more logical than any other story that I ever heard before. If modernism brought an individualist man, it's not so hard to believe that this could happen. We have the example of thousands of men that do the same to  girls like Leda, leaving apart that in this poem beauty seems to generate violence. 

To continue, another point of view that I would like to add is the idea that we, our entire life, have been hearing about Jesus and Maria like a sort of goodness, even if we don't believe in that. We are constantly watching it in television or social networks; for Easter week, Christmas, and so on and so forth. We are not use to hear or watch other stories, other origins of times, or even believe in something different from what most of the people think. I sincerely believe that the more options we have, like an spectrum, about the origins of times, the more we can discuss and debate or meditate, and is that wrong? I don't think so.

All things considered, the challenge for Yeats was to come up with a new and original perspective on the story, and he actually did it. As I already mentioned above, the story has not been told as frequently in words as in images. Finally, and what I thought it's very important to mention as an open question: why it's seen as something bad to question things and give it another turn to issues like the origin of times? the end of the world? or even if we really exist, here and now?

The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock

There is a particular verse that caught my attention, and
everytime I read it I just can't stop thinking about it.

"There will be time, there will be time   
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;"

For me, in this verse there is a sort of dialogue between
-as I like to call them- Prufrock 1 and Prufrock 2
where one (let's call him Prufrock 1) is the man who walks
in the streets, the one that talks to people, the one who works,
the one who meet people. And Prufrock 2 who is the "inside" man,
the one who prefers stay at home, the one who does not
like to talk, the one who does not like interaction, but the one
who is obliged by Prufrock 1 to meet the people he meet.

In other words, actually, in other times, is what WE are doing now,
we all are Prufrock, we all have these two "persons" inside us,
maybe more, and the more tangible way to see it is Facebook,
or any other social network that alows us to create a profile,
a face, to meet other faces, we try to make ourselves
look more interesting, we "like" things that we actually do not like
we have pictures of ourselves that does not represent us completely
we are our "other us" our own Prufrock 1... Or perhaps Prufrock 2

While the person who we really are, the person that is behind that screen
the person that has to face the "real world" is obliged to prepare
a face, that face that is shown on that profile, that face that your
"facebook Prufrock" shown, but that is not our real face.

Pound : In a station of the metro

 

We already know that Pound writes “In station of the Metro” based on his experience in the Paris metro where he sees a beautiful face, then another and then another. 

The first line of the poem “the apparition of these faces in the crowd” is totally connected with his experience. He is just describing how these faces emerged from the background. Here I ask to myself; are there only some faces standing out of the multitude of people because of their exceptional beauty, or are all the faces of equal beauty?

In the second line “petals on a wet, black bough”, black bough is just a synonym for the darkness of an underground metro station, whereas petals on a wet symbolizes the beautiful faces that Pound saw growing out of the darkness, just like petals that emerge from branches.

 It seems that each petal of a flower might be slightly individual, nevertheless, overall, they are all the same. This makes me think that there is equivalence to each beautiful face. 
Therefore, all humans are equally beautiful and equally important to creating one complete flower or crowd.

 The image of the faces  materializing out of the crowded darkness gives the poem a mysterious effect, however, the image of colored petals on a black branch is a hopeful one. 
All things considered, we have two conflicting ideas together that create a rounded effect in which the poem can cover two contrasting sentiments in only two lines, which is amazing.