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.

It's All About the Imagery

“All poetic language is the language of exploration. Since the beginning of bad writing, writers have used images as ornaments. The point of Imagisme is that it does not use images as ornaments. The image is itself the speech. The image is the word beyond formulated language.”

-Ezra Pound, Gaudier-Brzeska, 1916

When reading poetry, I have the tendency to look at a poem and immediately think, “What does this poem mean?” While this is a common reaction among most people, I have learned that trying to discover the meaning of a poem confines and forces the poem to have one particular meaning that maybe the author did not even intend. When I began to read Pound this week, I instantly had to put this thought out of my mind, because quite frankly the more I tried to find the “meaning” behind his poems, the more frustrated I became. Even though they are two different people with two particular writing styles, Pound reminded me a great deal of Gertrude Stein. When I read Gertrude Stein, I could not help to grow in frustration as I pried to discover the meaning of her poetry; I felt those same emotions as I read excerpts of Ezra Pound’s The Cantos. Pound writes with a great deal of historical references, and the more I read of The Cantos, the less I understood. In Pound’s bio excerpt in the Anthology of Modern American Poetry, it is said that only Pound is able to fully understand his own poetry. As a reader, I concur with this statement because Pound’s writing felt too heavy for me. As an amateur poetry reader, I did not feel scholarly enough to even touch one of Pound’s Cantos. I enjoyed that Pound writes with his own particular style, and that he wrote his Cantos in prose style.

Pound is known for uncovering the Imagist movement. It was almost as if through this movement, Pound was trying to say that sometimes one could not find the words to describe images seen, but must find some other way to express the image. Pound writes in his, Gaudier-Brzeska, 1916, “All poetic language is the language of exploration. Since the beginning of bad writing, writers have used images as ornaments. The point of Imagisme is that it does not use images as ornaments. The image is itself the speech. The word is beyond formulated language.” When I first read Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” I knew there was something unique and different about this poem compared to all of his other poetry. After I did more research on the poem, I realized that Pound was using the imagist element in his haiku. This poem was the most interesting poem to me, and I enjoyed how Pound describes an image he saw in the most clear and precise form. Pound writes:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

The background of the poem is that Pound was at a Metro Station in Paris, and he saw a sea of beautiful people, but no way to describe them. After reading three different interpretations of the poem, it seems to be the general consensus that the single word apparition is the primary hinge of the poem. Apparition means: anything that appears, especially something remarkable or startling. With the help of James F. Knapp, I was able to better understand Pound’s poem. Knapp suggests that Pound is using a metaphor for spring through his use of the word apparition. Knapp writes, “And because “apparition” means what it does, he is able to convey the feeling of surprised discovery which such a vision in such a place must evoke.” Out of the three interpretations and understandings of Pound’s poem, I agreed with Knapp the most. Even though all three discussed similar aspects of Pound’s poem, I felt Knapp’s understanding was the most helpful and concise interpretation. Pound’s descriptions (although very concise) in, “In a Station of the Metro,” is unique and I think Pound’s point about imagisme reigns true through this poem, that “the image is itself the speech.”

            After reading Pound’s poem, I went searching for a more contemporary poem with the same type of imagery Pound used, but instead of finding a poem similar to Pound’s, I came across visual poetry. I thought to myself, “does visual poetry still provide imagery without using descriptive language?” I know this is a far, far stretch from Pound’s “In a Station at the Metro,” but whenever I read that Pound struggled putting his thoughts and his sights into words and how he saw only colors before he re-wrote his poem, I felt like visual poetry portrayed that line of thought. Instead of using words to describe what they want to say, the visual poets just use images instead. Now, I think visual poetry can lack the luster of a written poem with words as the primary communicator, but I think it is true that visual poetry can provide imagery just like a written poem. There are lots of types of visual poetry, but the one that caught my eye was haiku #62 by Scott Helmes. Helmes’ poem looks something like this:

I am not quite sure what Helmes is trying to communicate through this poem, but if you go back to the hyperlink on Scott Helmes, you will see that Helmes created this poem in the form of a haiku, and to Helmes these colors and pieces communicate something, although I am not sure what that something is. If you look closely, you will notice that the top line has two pieces put together, the middle line three, and the bottom line three. There are different colors represented in Helmes’ poem and even different types of letters within the blocks of color. These are just simple observations one can make about Helmes’ poem, but overall, this type of visual poetry contains imagery, and can evoke emotions in the “reader” or visualizer. 

It should be made clear, that I am by no means saying that this is how Ezra Pound would write poetry, or that this type of poetry resembles anything of Ezra Pound’s. In fact, it is quite different than any of Pound’s work, it I recognize that it is a stretch to compare this to Pound’s idea of the imagist movement. But when I looked for more information on visual poetry, I realized that this is just another way to communicate a certain image to people, by literally using images instead of words to write a poem. Most people would say that visual poetry is not “true” poetry, and who knows, Ezra Pound may very well say the same thing because he believes that “the image is itself the speech,” but it is true that imagery in poetry can be displayed in a number of different ways and even if visual poetry is “unreadable,” it is still considered poetry, and it also reveals imagery just like a written poem would.