Reading 7: Allen Ginsberg

Howl

I know I probably shouldn't this say but it needs to be said. I struggled through this poem. Not because I thought it particular difficult, but rather because I found it terribly repetitive. The need for this repetition was not lost on me, but 11 pages of it was. Interest was quickly lost and I had to keep rereading portions due to a growing lack of focus.

As for the poem itself, I will now attempt to decipher what I think it was about. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by/ madness, starving hysterical naked..." This is how the poem starts off. Instantly putting us into a negative mood progressively worsened throughout the poem., He goes on to describe his generation of great minds in what he sees they have become: "who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York" (p 11), "who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts" (p 12), and "who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music" (p 15). Ginsberg seems to be talking of what he saw traveling through the United States, watching all the people in the streets wasting away their greatness on drugs and sex. People who didn't fit in. Despair might be a proper word to describe this Part I.

In Part II, Ginsberg uses Moloch, a Philistine God to describe the cause of the misery and disconnectedness. Moloch was the Sun god of the Ammonites and was all together malevolent. They sacrificed first-borns in order to keep on his good side. "Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!" (p 21). He uses the very negative worship of Moloch to describe the very negative worship of all things wrong in the US. Talk of sobbing army boys and weeping old men caused by a worship of the wrongs.

In Part III, Ginsberg addresses Carl Solomon, a friend who is also a writer. "Where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter" (p 24). This part takes a slight turn. Despair is also combined not with hope, but with a sort of plea. "We hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep" (p 26). I think he is trying to say that we will keep trying to fix a sick nation, willing it to get better, and trying to relax it in its time of illness.

A Supermarket in California

This poem I found slightly more interesting. Maybe for its use of metaphor, or simply because it was shorter and less forgettable. This poem was apparently written while Ginsberg was high on peyote (as he was in Part II of HOWL). "What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon" (p 29). This poem is both of his adoration for Walt Whitman and an excellent metaphor of the US as a supermarket. It could have been a real hallucination brought on by the peyote, what he saw within these lines. "I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?" (p 29). He sees Walt Whitman as a companion, almost a friend. "Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?" (p 30). He is following Whitman, allowing Whitman to lead him to wherever it is Whitman thinks he should go. Sort of like a father might do for his son.

The last paragraph/sentence changing from this adoration of Whitman and description of US to a more grim desperation once more. "What America did you have..." (p 30), Ginsberg asks Whitman. Was Whitman's America any better than Ginsberg? Was it the America Ginsberg wishes his could now be?

-Mark

Reading 6: Tennessee Williams

The Glass Menagerie: Scene 7

The story ends in a way unexpected. Rather than the typical, guy and girl happily ever after, it ends in a way neither extremely depressing nor terribly happy. The last scene starts right after the lights went out (because Tom chose not to pay the bill). "Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield... Maybe the poem will win a ten-dollar prize", Jim says (page 68) shortly after candles are lit. Quipster, he is, with a sharp tongue hidden with knives. Showing negativity towards his friend from the warehouse.

This scene is really about discovering who Jim really is and further defining Laura through their conversation. Likely popular in high school due to his ability to sing and his self-confidence (and well defined sense of self, whether real or false) that tend to draw in youth. It really comes out in the way he speaks to Laura within this scene. Alone in the living room, the two beginning to talk about each other's lives. "You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! Know what that is?...Now I've never made a regular study of it, but I have a friend who says I can analyze people better than doctors that make a profession of it." (page 80-1). He spends the majority of the chapter telling Laura what he believes and that she should believe similarly. While not necessarily bad, it does show Jim's character as high on who he is and how right his opinions are.

Page 88 is the climax of the story, all the build-up for this moment, when Jim kisses Laura, showing the possibility of Laura not being an old maid, but wait! "Stumblejohn...Stumblejohn! I shouldn't have done that -- that was way off the beam. You don't smoke, do you?" John yells afterwards. He reveals his engagement to another women. Something he didn't mention at work because he was worried about what they would call him... about getting married. "The cat's not out of the bag at the warehouse yet. You know how they are. They call you Romeo and stuff like that."(page 93) ROMEO!! Rather than tell anyone that he is marrying the love of his life, he would rather keep his appearance and reputation at the warehouse.

As for the ending, after Jim leaves, Tom walks out, continuing his life without a home or family. He wanders the world but with a hole created by the absence of Laura. Amanda speaks to Laura of what we know not, but knowing that it somehow managed to make Laura smile.

-Mark Todd

PS. The word I was looking for previously to describe Jim was self-righteous.

Reading 5: Tennessee Williams

The Glass Menagerie: Scenes 1-6

Bear in mind that I did start reading some of scene 7 as I got caught up, lost track of pages and kept reading into the next scene without even reading it. I am actually really enjoying this play for what it is, a play. Reading books means getting descriptions of scenes and characters as they happen. Reading plays is quite a bit different. You 'see' everything in a play, so the playwright must be very descriptive in his setting, and he must do so and the earliest possible moment. This means that at the beginning of the scene, the setting is thoroughly described and images take perfect shape in your mind (well, that's the hope anyway). The playwright must be as descriptive as a chemist may be with his experiment, and for the very same reason, so that it is repeatable. Unlike in many of Shakespeare's play, setting is much more of a presence because it can be. The play is in an enclosed space (typically) with props galore.

What surprises me more about this story is that there are only a mere four characters in the entirety of the story and one doesn't even come in until act six. The story is a memory (more described as a dream, but I'll consider a memory), with unrealistic scenery, blurry areas and dims places because of their insignificance. The story takes place completely inside the confines of an apartment (I believe?) and its outside portieres. The story is of a family of three -- mother, Amanda, daughter, Laura, and son, Tom. There are two different conflicts within the story. One for each sibling. Tom works at a warehouse but spends his nights at the Movies, presumably with a bottle of alcohol at his side. He wants to escape to live a life roaming the earth. His sister, Laura, is a cripple (has a leg in a brace) and is very shy, getting sick a lot. She is single and spends her time collecting glass and walking. Her mother, Amanda, fear she will be an Old Maid.

The first five scene set up these two conflicts. They also mention the missing Father, who fled to adventure the world. He was a drunkard and listless. The last note they got from him was a postcard saying "Hello, Goodbye". Scene Six presents the fourth character (actor?), Jim Delaney O'Connor. He was a friend of Tom's in high school and works at the warehouse with him. He is invited to the house for a seemingly innocent dinner. Laura, in scene two, mentions her only love was a boy names Jim, who in high school, called her Blue Roses. When she fell ill, she said she had pleurosis (apparently actually called pleurisy or pleuritis) but Jim though she said Blue Roses. The name stuck.

Jim meets Laura but seems not to recognize her throughout Scene six. She acts very odd towards him, very shy and nervous. The scene concludes after the lights go out. Tom neglected the light bill this month, choosing instead to pay due for the Merchant Marines.

-Mark Todd

Reading 4: Delmore Schwartz

In Dreams Begin Responsibility

The title help explain this almost cryptic story. This story is of an unnamed man at age 21 dreaming on eve of his birthday. In his dream, he is sitting in a theatre watching a old silent film. Throughout the entire story, we know not that it is a dream at all. For the majority of the story, it is also unknown that the narrator is even a male. I believe Schwartz did this intentionally to take focus away from the narrator and rather his actions and that of his parents. For me, I was unsure why he was referring to the two main characters, a young couple, as mother and father. I thought initially that he was drawn into the film like the "drug" he had related it to.

The third paragraph begins "My father walks from street to street..." The second sentence starts "the motorman, who has a handlebar mustache..." The significance of the change is to support that the narrator is being very observant, noticing every part of the surroundings, in contrasts to his father. In the first sentence, he uses a very intense imagery, "street-car skates and gnaws, progressing slowly" futher adding to this very clear view of the scenery. However, in opposition, the father "takes the long walk because he likes to walk and think". While he is doing so, he completely ignores the people in their Sunday clothes, the trees and houses.

The majority of this story takes place in Coney Island. The couple is on a date walking around the island. Near the beginning of Chapter 3, the narrator watches her mother and father stare out at the ocean as it "is becoming rough." The narrator seems to see the very negative side of everything that is occuring, probably because he is looking from a point in the future where he knows how he parents turned out. This becomes more obvious when he screams out to the audience "Don't do it. It's not too late to change your mind... Nothing good will come of this, only remourse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous" near the end of page 5. However, this belief may stem from his own insecurity and ill feelings with who he is.

The dreams ends as the usher who is pulling him out of the movie saying "you will be sorry if you don't do what you should do...everything you do matters too much." He then wakes up from his dream on his 21st birthday, somewhat of a coming of age. This dream may have been his own subconscious screaming at him to wake up and do what he knows he must because he can't dwell on the past and who he was but rather who he could and should become.

Reading 3: Alice Walker and Jamaice Kincaid

Authors Note: I accidentally posted without actually type anything. Here is the fix.

"The Flowers" By Alice Walker:

This is the short story about a girl named Myop. She likely lives at a farm due to her ability to have "worked out the beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen". Her family is a sharecropper family, which means a tenant (the family) is allowed to farm land so long as the share a portion of the crops with the owner of the land. She walks throw the wilderness beyond the property to pick flowers. As she makes her way back to the house she finds the dead body of a tall, hanged man on the ground with his head separated. Near the body a wild pink rose grows in a raised ring mound (the noose) and the rest of the rope hanging from the tree.

Repetition is found throughout this story, whether its in the structure, like "the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash" or in the way Walker starts her sentences, as in the second paragraph. In paragraph 2, She or the antecedent Myop start every sentence followed directly by a verb. Alliteration was very popular in the piece as well (repetition of the starting consonants) such as "sweet suds", "brown ... buds", "big bones", "raised .. ring...rose's root...rotted remains" and "blending benignly". She finished off the last paragraph with four participles (verbs ending in -ed used as noun modifiers).

The amount of repition in the last paragraph show the significance Walker places on it. The last paragraph is really the climax and conclusion of the story. The seven previous paragraph set up the setting, character development, and action so that the climax and conclusion could happen so quickly. She finds a dead body of a man while picking flowers with a beautiful flower beside. However, she places the rose back down upon discovery of its location (within a noose). Possibly a sign of reverence toward the dead man or a fear of him. The negative participles used to describe the rope still attached to the tree adds to the haunting emotions.

In paragraph five she uses an odd word choice: "strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts." Haunt simply means a place commonly visited but is usually associated with ghosts. The odd choice is where strangeness is associated oppositely with haunts, as if possibly ghosts were a familiarity.

Reading 1: Ezra Pound and Raymond Carver

Photograph of My Father In His Twenty Second Year, by Carver, is a poem of three "Quintrains" (sets of five lines rather than four, quatrain). It is much harder to describe this than Pound's because it is longer and seemingly more obvious. The poem is in the first-person, in October in a kitchen that he describes as unfamiliar probably to contrast his familiarity with the way his father is in the picture that makes up the rest of the poem. He goes on to describe the look on his fathers face, what is in the hands and what he is wearing. The setting of the scene is of little importance, mentioning only the Ford that Carver's father is posing with. The setting isn't important, it is only the feeling invoked by seeing his father that matter. He mentions alcohol twice in the poem, the first time in his dad's hands, the second, comparing to his own trouble with the liquid. He loves his father but realizes that he was only human back then, making mistakes and struggling.

You can find the poem at http://www.agonia.net/index.php/poetry/67809/

In a Station of the Metro, written by Pound in 1913, is a mere 2 lines of 14 letters (not counting the title, which adds as much to the explanation as the two lines). With no rhyme scheme or rhythm of note, is known as a "imagist" poem (thanks Wikipedia).

The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The first line, to me, is about the focus his eyes put on the faces flying by him inside the overcrowded station. The second line goes on to metaphorically describe these faces, describing how he feels about each individual, a mere leaf on the black branch of a tree. I'm not sure how wet metaphors but the black, a typically negative color, is used to describe the uncomfort or the darkness caused by the flood of people.

Letter of Introduction

Past:

High School
In high school, I read quite a few books for school. Well, actually, for most of them it was I should say I "read" them (meaning Spark Notes was my friend). I struggled through A Picture of Dorian Gray because it was too slow for too long, so by the time it got into the exciting bits, I had already resorted to Sparky to finish it.

However, one book I was required to read for class I thoroughly enjoyed and have moved on to another book because of it. The book wasn't for English, it was for math and is over 100 years old, Flatland. The book was completed in 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott, a school teacher. It focused on two points:

1. Satirically attacked the practices of the Victorian England.
2. Put out thoughts about higher spatial dimensions.

I am now reading Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.

My most fond books however have nothing at all to do with math or science. The series that most affected me throughout my secondary education was pretty much the exact opposite of science. It followed story of a group of teenagers who were seemingly growing as I was, of similar age throughout the entire series. They experienced similar troubles in school as I did, except with a few unique to them. The story of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley is not just a simple children's tale. It is much more than that, it was (and is) the start of a whole culture that I am happy to be apart of.

Beyond these tales I read the short stories of James Thurber, my favorite American author, with his unique and humorous takes on ancient proverbs. I also followed the adventure of a certain Arthur Dent throughout the galaxy in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its "Trilogy of Five" along with Douglas Adams other detective type novel with humor throughout. I also read most of the Ancient Myths of Greece during my high school years. I spent sometime studying the bible and the differences in translations. I've also read books about Hinduism and Buddhism and plan to read more in the coming years, because they are intensely interesting religions (Buddhism is much for philosophical then religious).


College
As a Freshman, I've only been through one semester so far. So little has been done so far. However, my first English teacher, a Mr. Anthony Collamati, was probably one of the best teachers I'd ever had. His unique teaching style really entrenched in me ideas about writing and reading and expression of ideas in general. Our final project included a remix video. Within that video, I had to chop up several different audio tracks all about completely different subjects into one singular theme, the one I wanted to put across.

Since my senior year of high school, I have been writing music and expanding the way I think about transmitting my thoughts to others. Struggling through metaphors, leitwortstil, and twists to go beyond the obvious truth.

Present:

Reasons for Taking this Course

• It satisfies the Literary English Requirement for graduation
• Never been a fan of structure-writing courses
• Prefer 20th and 21st Century lit over previous centuries because it is much easier to identify with the author.

Mark Todd