Poetry Has Many Facets

H.D. was an amazing experience for me. I had never read poetry like hers before, and I loved delving in and exploring her writing more. Even though I had had many “ah-ha!” moments with many other poets I have read, H.D. was the first poet that I read her poetry and literally had to take a minute to absorb what I just read because it was so beautifully mind-blowing. I love the simple-complex paradox in her poetry, and how her simple writing causes so much uproar because we as impatient poetry readers want to beat meanings out of poems like they owe us something. Reading H.D. was a beautiful experience for me, and I cannot wait to explore more of her writing.

With all of that said, in a conversation with a good friend of mine about poetry and why it is important for us to read poetry as believers, she told me something I will never forget: poetry teaches us about people. I know that does not seem very profound, but let me flesh this out a little more. When we read different poets, we read through and feel many different emotions that are common to all people. All of these emotions are displayed through different types of poets with different writing styles, and through poetry we learn different facets of the human being. Let’s take for example writers such as Claude McKay and Jean Toomer. Through their poetry we see themes of injustice, anger, desperation for life, nostalgia and a longing for the way things used to be, feelings of inadequacy, grief, desire for peace, and the list could go on and on; but these are all feelings and emotions all people of the human race can relate to in someway. McKay wrote during the Harlem Renaissance, which was a crucial time in America. Considering the time period in which he wrote, and through the language of his poems, we see McKay speaking about the feelings of being black in a place and time where being black was looked down upon and seen as the lesser of races. For example, McKay’s poem “To the White Fiends,” seems almost like a speech out of anger, and defiance. McKay writes:

Think you I am not fiend and savage too? Think you I could not arm me with a gun And shoot down ten of you for every one Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you? Be not deceived, for every deed you do         5 I could match—out-match: am I not Africa’s son, Black of that black land where black deeds are done? But the Almighty from the darkness drew My soul and said: Even thou shaft be a light Awhile to burn on the benighted earth,         10 Thy dusky face I set among the white For thee to prove thyself of highest worth; Before the world is swallowed up in night, To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth!
When I read this poem, all I could think of was McKay or whoever the speaker of this poem saying: “I have worth and I am not a nobody!!” in an outburst of anger—or maybe even a calm, frightening kind of anger. This poem seems to me like an outcry for justice, a demand to not be over looked, and a sly warning for the “white fiends.” This poem by McKay and his “The Negro’s Tragedy” took me back to Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask.” In “The Negro’s Tragedy,” McKay writes: It is the Negro’s tragedy I feel Which binds me like a heavy iron chain, It is the Negro’s wounds I want to heal Because I know the keenness of his pain. Only a thorn-crowned Negro and no white Can penetrate into the Negro’s ken, Or feel the thickness of the shroud of night Which hides and buries him from other men. So what I write is urged out of my blood. There is no white man who could write my book, Though many think their story should be told Of what the Negro people ought to brook. Our statesmen roam the world to set things right. This Negro laughs and prays to God for light. This poem connected me back to the second stanza of “We Wear the Mask,” where Dunbar says: Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. The whites, the world, all people besides the blacks in this particular setting “could not write the black’s book” or actually be able to sympathize with “all their tears and sighs,” because they did not go through or experience the same things they did throughout history (this is not to speak rudely towards white people, this is just what I gathered from the context of the poems). This is what I meant when I said that poetry helps us to understand people. Poetry helps us to understand history and tradition, and feelings and emotions we ourselves have not felt, but others have deeply felt them, and when we read their poetry, even though we cannot fully identify we learn about the people around us and the people of our history. This helps us to connect with people, and travel outside of ourselves for a little while. Also See: “Outcast” “Tiger” “The Lynching”  “The White City”

          In my search for similar poetry, I came across “Parsley,” by Rita Dove. I have read this poem before in relation to How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alveraz. The background of this poem is General Rafael Trujillo ordered that 20,000 black people be killed because they could not pronounce the letter “r.” The themes of this poem are oppression, fear, death, desperation for peace, and discrimination. Even though this poem displays a tragedy, this poem reveals an experience and emotions we are unable to sympathize with. This poem reveals to us the hearts of these people who are being oppressed and killed for not being able to pronounce a single letter in a word. The word perejil, Spanish for parsley, rolls around in the minds of the workers. Over and over they practice the rolling of the “r,” because their fate rests in the work of their tongues.

            The poem seems to tell a story and gives two different scenes. First, the cane fields where the workers cut down sugar cane. Perejil haunts them while they cut the cane, they quietly call for the mountain, Katalina, almost like they are searching for a savior. While all of this is going on, there is a “parrot imitating spring in the palace.” This parrot seems like a symbol, yet also like a true entity in the poem. When you reach part two of the poem, The Palace, the scenes change to the palace where the general resides. There he thinks of his deceased mother, and her death. It is almost as if her untimely death caused in him a hunger to kill others. Here there is a real parrot from Australia, and the parrot is brought pastries, like a ceremony for his mother. The general has a flashback to his time at battle, and reminisces on his mother’s ability to roll her “r’s.” And at the end of the poem he decides that: "He will order many this time to be killed for a single beautiful word." This story is full of death, anguish, oppression, and fear. And unfortunately this story is true. I honestly do not have enough time to delve into this poem as much as I want to, but I love reading poetry because it teaches us not just that things can be written in a different format, or through an artistic avenue, but it teaches us about people. It teaches us about the world which we live in, and it connects us to each other. 

Featuring H.D.

H.D. was closely knit with Pound, and both shared similar interests and writing styles. I am glad that I read Pound before H.D. because Pound established the imagist movement, and then others began writing with the same writing style as well. I greatly enjoyed reading H.D.’s poetry. H.D. writes smoothly and provides beautiful imagery throughout her poetry.  My favorite aspect about H.D. is her simplistic form and language. She does exactly what Pound was talking about when using imagery in a poem, does not explain what she is describing, but gives words that supply that image.

My favorite poem by H.D. is “Mid-Day.” H.D. writes:

The light beats upon me.

I am startled—

A split leaf crackles on the paved floor—

I am anguished and defeated.

A slight wind shakes the seed-pods—

My thoughts are spent

As the black seeds.

My thoughts tear me,

I dread their fever.

I am scattered in its whirl.

I am scattered like

The hot shriveled seeds.

The shriveled seeds

Are split on the path—

The grass bends with dust,

The grape slips

Under its crackled leaf:

Yet far beyond the spent seed pods,

And the blackened stalks of mint,

The poplar is bright on the hill,

The poplar spreads out,

Deep rooted among trees.

O poplar, you are great

Among the hill-stones,

While I perish on the path

Among the crevices of the rocks.

For me it seems that the speaker of the poem is bearing the weight of being vulnerable or exposed. The first two lines make me think of a person being pushed into the spotlight against their will: “The light beats upon me. I am startled—“ Then the speaker moves on to mention he/she is “anguished and defeated.” Throughout the poem, H.D. uses the symbols of “split leafs crackling” and “hot shriveled black seeds.” These symbols made me think of something or someone barely hanging on and lifeless. In the second stanza, the speaker says, “my thoughts are spent/as the black seeds./ My thoughts tear me,/I dread their fever.” By the language of “my thoughts are spent,” it seems as if the speaker has been exhausted or has revealed too much. The speaker compares him/herself to the scattered “hot shriveled seeds.” Usually seeds are scattered and produce something full of life and healthy, but these seeds being “black” and “hot” and “shriveled” make me think they have lost their ability to produce life. The third and fourth stanzas are mildly different than the first two. The shriveled seeds and crackled leaves still show up,

yet far beyond the spent seed pods,

and the blackened stalks of mint,

the poplar is bright on the hill,

the poplar spreads out,

deep-rooted among trees.

O poplar you are great,

Among the hill-stones,

While I perish on the path

Among the crevices of the rocks.

By using the conjunction “yet,” the speaker speaks of a contrasting image of the poplar tree. Unlike the “blackened stalks of mint,” “hot shriveled seeds,” and “crackled leaves,” the poplar tree is “bright,” “deeply rooted,” and “great among the hill-stones.” The symbol of the poplar tree seems like a glimmer of hope and life, but the poem does not end hopeful or with life. Surprisingly, the poem ends with the speaker “perishing on the path/among the crevices of the rocks.” This poem, even though one of my favorites, did not end how I expected it to. The poem builds up to the end with the grandness of the poplar tree, and then the suddenness of death quickly ends the poems. Why did the speaker perish? The poplar tree was full of life and growth, unlike the scattered seeds the speaker spoke about before, yet the speaker was still in anguish and defeat. Whomever the speaker is, it was almost as if they drowned among those rocks on the hill. This poem greatly reminded me of Pound and Frost in a way. The end of the poem did not provide clarity for me, but left me more in the dark and confused. H.D. writes with a beautiful flow of language, much like the “musical flow” Pound says all good poetry has. I greatly enjoyed reading her poetry, and the artistic feel of her poems as well.

            H.D.’s poetry reminded me of Mary Oliver. She writes with similar nature themes about the ocean and the earth. Her poem “Breakage” is full of imagery, slight alliterations, and is written in free verse. The speaker of the poem goes to the sea and sees different pieces or attributes of the ocean. The speaker sees:

The cusp of whelk,

The broken cupboard of the clam,

The opened blue mussels,

Moon snails, pale pink, and barnacle scarred—

And nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered and split,

Dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.

The reader can see the different elements of the see Oliver describes in her poem. In my opinion this poem goes in waves. H.D.’s poem began with something dark and desperate, gave a glimmer of hope, and ended with death. Oliver’s poem begins with “morning light,” peaceful descriptors of the elements of the ocean, and then turns into this picture of everything being torn and nothing whole. Oliver’s poem ends peacefully with a comparison to a schoolhouse where it is made of

little words,

thousands of words.

First you figure out what each one means by itself,

the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop

full of moonlight.

Then you being, slowly, to read the whole story.

Oliver’s poem gives the reader a holistic picture at the end, rather than something tattered and left undone. I enjoyed Oliver’s comparison of the sea to a schoolhouse. Both Oliver and H.D. have similar themes, but there is something very distinct about each one. H.D.’s poem seems more refined in the way she uses imagery, but Oliver’s imagery is beautiful as well, just shown in a different style than H.D. 

Outcries

Out of all of the poems I read by Eliot this week, “The Hollow Men” caught my eye. In my opinion, the emptiness and darkness of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” is what makes it attractive. I think it is safe to say that Eliot’s poems have common themes of death, darkness, emptiness, etc. and with a title like “The Hollow Men” one cannot help but have those themes luring over them while they read Eliot’s work. Eliot’s poem is split up into five sections, and in a way tells a story. My favorite aspect about Eliot’s poem is the contrasts he makes in each section. Even from the beginning of section one Eliot reveals the men are “hollow,” yet “stuffed,” and continues with other contrasts particularly in section V.

            I enjoyed how Eliot uses particular language and wording to project his themes throughout the poem. The language of “straw” “dried voices” “whisper” “death” “broken” “distant” “solemn” “dead land” “cactus land” “fading” “hollow” “prickly pear” (versus the mulberry bush) “Falls the Shadow,” all of these words further project the themes of darkness and emptiness the hollow men are experiencing and feeling.

            Another aspect of Eliot’s poem that stood out to me, were the symbols of the eyes and the two kingdoms Eliot mentions. The eyes appear in the first section:

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

These particular eyes have gone over to “death’s other Kingdom” and the hollow men want to be remembered by these eyes. When describing the eyes, Eliot compares them to “sunlight on a broken column.” But it seems as if the hollow men are being watched over and smothered by the presence of these “eyes.” Maybe these eyes are not literal eyes, but some type of oppression or fear they feel. This is just my speculation, but I thought it was interesting how Eliot uses eyes as a symbol in his poem.

Also, in the first, third, fourth, and fifth section, the hollow men are speaking as a collective unit using words like “we” “our” “us,” but in the second section it seems as if only one hollow man is speaking. I do not know if this change of voice has any significance in the poem, but I thought it was interesting how the language switched from “we” to “I.”

The theme of hopelessness is very apparent in Eliot’s work. He writes in the second section of his poem:

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Walking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

The dead man send’s prayers to the stone idols, but those idols do not respond to the dead man, and if the man is dead, how do his prayers even reach the “gods?” This section portrays hopelessness and death. At the end of section four, Eliot continues with the theme of hopelessness and writes:

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lose kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

These men Eliot is describing are holding onto a liquid hope. A hope that is not lasting and stable, but they are weak, frail, and hollow. It makes me wonder, what is exactly is the hope of the empty men? Why are they hollow? Why did Eliot write this poem in the first place? Are these real men he is describing, or is he painting a certain image with his writing? All of these questions flooded my mind when I was reading Eliot’s poem and although I can only answer these questions with speculations, I enjoyed the image and feeling Eliot created with “The Hollow Men.”

            The last four lines were my favorite lines of “The Hollow Men.” Eliot writes:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

The end of the poem was startling to me. I guess I was not expecting Eliot to end the poem with the world ending, although I should have expected that considering the reoccurring his themes of death and emptiness. Eliot repeats, “this is the way the world ends” three times, and the last line ties the entire poem together, and almost paints the picture of the hollow men truly dying off. The world ended with a “whimper” instead of a “bang.” The whimper, in my opinion, sort of signifies something long, painful, and resistant, whereas a “bang” is quick with little thought behind it. When something ends with a whimper, it is almost as if the thing is hesitant to go or trying to fight against going or dying away. I felt section five of “The Hollow Men” was the most intense section of the whole poem, and up to the last four lines Eliot leads the readers with multiple contrasts, and then BANG!! There’s the end of the poem, ending with a slow, whimper. Although, it may be slightly morbid to enjoy a poem about death and emptiness, I love what Eliot creates with “The Hollow Men,” and it is one of my favorite poems by him.

Comparing poetry is a funny thing. Some poems that are written about totally different topics and have completely different styles of writing (or written in different centuries for that matter) can have attributes in common that you would not normally put together. This is not to say that every poem can be related, because not all poems are meant to have connections, but I find it interesting that even in the poems with the most distinct contrast, there is most likely something to compare the two with. Also, I love Sherman Alexie. I’ve only read one of his books, and have only had a small taste of his poetry, but I thoroughly enjoy reading his work. I came across a poem of his titled, “The Powwow at the End of the World.” Now, I will be honest and say that when I came across the title of Alexie’s poem, it reminded me of the last four lines of Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” Alexie and Eliot are both referring to different circumstances in their poems, but I felt that Alexie’s poem could share some common themes with Eliot’s. Alexie’s “The Powwow at the End of the World” carries themes of lostness, a hint of emptiness, and carries the weight of something that is incomplete or unfinished. Of course, Eliot and Alexie differ in the way they display these themes in their writing, but I thought it was interesting how the two projected these themes in their poems.

Alexie’s poem repeats, “I am told by many of you that I must forgive and so I shall after…” It would be easy, and maybe correct to read this poem as a Native American cry for justice considering Alexie himself is Native American and writes Native American literature, but one cannot always assume that’s what the poet is implying. But Alexie writes that “after” all of these things are complete, he will forgive. Alexie is waiting for things such as,“that salmon swims upstream, through the mouth of the Colombia and then past the flooded cities, broken dams and abandoned reactors of Hanford.” This is just one example from Alexie’s text, but reading “The Powwow at the End of the World” made me ask the questions: are these things Alexie, or the speaker of the poem, are waiting on impossible to fulfill? Is he saying that after these unreachable desires are met, he will finally forgive? Is there any hope for these desires to be met at all, or is this poem just to prove that these desires can never be met now and that all hope is lost until the end of the world at the ultimate powwow? It is almost as if this powwow will be the consummation or completion/fulfillment of these unmet desires or requests Alexie writes about. Again, this is very different in contrast to “The Hollow Men” by Eliot, but we see similar themes of emptiness and hopelessness in both poems (a bold connection, but I am willing to make it!). I could spend all day trying to weasel connections into both of these poems and read too much into them to find ways to make them similar, but in all honesty I just greatly enjoyed both of these poems, and both poems created the same type of emotion inside of me, which is why I connected the two. Like I have said before, I like that poems make you feel things from just reading words on a page, and I loved the themes both of these poems project. Alexie’s poem produces a heart wrenching kind of emptiness. I felt sympathy and sorrow for the people of the poem, who felt lost, left in despair and forgotten about. Eliot’s poem produces a lonely emptiness. I did not necessarily feel sympathy for the hollow men, but I could feel the emptiness and loss of hope. Also, through Eliot’s theme of death, the end of the world Eliot talks about at the end of his poem is almost longed for. Both of these poems seem like outcries of the speakers of the poem, and a longing for hope is certainly evident.