Week 7

Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.–Khalil Gibran




Good afternoon, class.  Hope you are well.  


Last week we read from Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Minister's Black Veil," a dark, symbolic piece on the terrors of guilt and sin set in colonial America, Puritan New England.  You were to read, summarize, and respond to Stephen King's short story "Suffer the Little Children," another dark drama about a school teacher whose mind is prey to images and ideas that may or may not have any basis in outward reality, but who acts upon them in a most extreme and horrific manner.  The workings of the unconscious mind and a haunting sense of evil are themes central to each of these stories.


In today's scheduled film, we follow the true story of a young man alienated from family and society who seeks to find himself, to heal himself, too, in the truths that wild nature and "freedom" provide him.  He opts for a simple life on the road, and so leaves his comfortable life behind and sets out for the West, a place of vast landscapes and seemingly endless opportunities for adventure.  The title of the film is Into the Wild (2007), directed by Sean Penn.  


As a companion piece, you will take home and read Henry David Thoreau's "Where I Lived and What I Lived For," a chapter from Walden, a book inspired by an experiment he made in living simply and wisely,  which involved retiring to a small cabin he himself built by Walden pond in Massachesetts, "where he would front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Week 6

Lost in the woods, in darkness, the mythic labyrinth of passageways with no exit, characters reveal the terrors that haunt them, the shrinking fear of being discovered, shamed, condemned, or of being alone, abandoned by society, unloved and unloving, at the mercy of some death-dealing power.   Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Minister's Black Veil," depicts the guilt ridden aspect of a preacher in Puritan times.  What is his particular crime?  Is the veil a symbol?  Of what?  What gives it its strange power?

 And the schoolteacher in Stephen King's short story "Suffer the Little Children," what possesses her to behave in the way she does?  Why do the young children seem to wear secret, menacing smiles?  Why does she suspect them of being monsters?

 Each of these stories asks us to consider the origins of sin, guilt, paranoia, and the strange, alien force(s)  hidden within and around us.  Can the "supernatural" be explained, our sense of forces so far from the ordinary world of business and routine.  Stephen King, writer of horror stories, says "I think that we are all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better–and maybe not all that much better, after all" ("Why We Crave Horror Movies").  Stories of horror, of terror and darkness impenetrable, he says, appeal to "all that is worst in us" and allow us, for a little while, enjoyment of our "most base instincts."

Week 5

Happy Valentine

Welcome to class.  Hope you are well, and keeping up with reading and writing assignments.

I here review some of what we read and discussed last week.  I'll start with a short poetry selection, by Emily Dickinson:

Presentiment–is that long Shadow–on the lawn


Presentiment–is that long Shadow–on the lawn–
Indicative that Suns go down–

The notice to the startled Grass–
That Darkness is about to pass–

What does Dickinson do here that is unusual, remarkable?  She defines an abstract word–presentiment–by means of sound (liquid n's and long hissing s's) and metaphor.  The setting sun, casting long shadows on the lawn, brings home the feeling of imminent danger.  "Darkness"(line 4)  is near, seemingly predatory, and the "startled Grass"(line 3) betrays its fear.  We are the grass, perhaps, the suns our all in all, and Darkness the fate we flee, death.

The two general classes of letters, vowels and consonants, have particular attributes:  a vowel can be perfectly uttered alone, but a consonant cannot until joined with a vowel.  Semivowels are consonants that can be imperfectly sounded alone, and which sound protracted at the end of a syllable, as with l, n, z,   in al, an, az.  Semivowels c, f, g, h, j, s, or x  require strong breath or air– aspirates they are called.  L, m, n, and r are called liquids, as they seem to flow.  K, p, t,  in ak, ap, at are called mutes, for they cannot be sounded without a vowel and stop the breath.  The feeling accompanying these sounds, here only briefly discussed, is used to certain effect.
 Hush!  Be quiet!  Shut up!    The abruptness of the t and p makes for a connotative difference in the sound of each of these imperatives.  Like the difference between rock and stone, word sounds_even letter design– may correlate to the meaning or connotation of a word.  The play of sound effects noticeable in alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia (buzz, bee, rumble, roar) is one of the resources to which poets' ears are tuned.

The Word Plum       by Helen Chasin (b.1938)

The word plum is delicious

pout and push, luxury of
self-love, and savoring murmur
full in the mouth and falling
like fruit

taut skin
pierced, bitten provoked into
juice, and tart flesh

question
and reply, lip and tongue
of pleasure.

Identify the sounds in the poem above that bring to mind the sounds and sensations of eating.

Week 4

Everything speaks.–James Joyce, Ulysses

Good day!  Hope you are well.

Last week we ended class discussing the free verse poem "The Red Wheelbarrow," by William Carlos Williams, a poet who strove for simplicity and directness of language, which is one means of making poetry more accessible and of showing how everyday, ordinary experience speaks to us, or can, in poetry.  The still life scene of a barnyard, "red wheel / barrow/ glazed with rain / water" (lines 3-6) at its center, arrests our eye in an act of pure contemplation.  The "white / chickens" of the final lines enliven the scene.  In what sense can the poet maintain "so much depends / upon" (lines 1-2) these humble elements?  One answer is that art depends upon our immediate sensations and perceptions of the animate and inanimate alike, and our ability to make some sense of it all, or to order it in seemingly meaningful ways.  The Imagists drew inspiration from the poetry of the East, including haiku and tanka, in which precise, concrete images, strictly limited by syllable number and line length, tell the whole story, however indirectly.  

We are fascinated by objects ("materialism" to the side) and our emotional ties to objects remains strong.  Size, shape, color, number–each is a marker, meaningful, bespeaking our collective history and language itself.