The Writer's Persona

I don't know if we can still post but I'll give it a shot. In another English class we did a close analysis of "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" from a different perspective as in this class. We looked at how the writer's motives and personality comes out in his/her work. It was from a psychoanalytic standpoint, but I kind of threw that out the window and adopted my own interpretation because I'm not a big fan of it.
Anyway, the class began with a short documentary on Eliot... and having read the poem before, I paid close attention to the man behind the words. It was like watching a film adaptation of Prufrock in many aspects. Eliot was contemplative, analytic, but most importantly vicarious. When you read a good poem or book, or even find an appreciation for a specific character in literature, I think there is almost always a piece of the writer that you're reading about. Shakespeare's work has a comical, intellectual and thoughtful air about it; Hemingway is blunt, to the point, and masculine... and I can't help but associate these traits with the writers' own characteristics. Thelonius Monk said "A man's a genius just to play himself." I believe that to be true, that letting yourself into your own work is the basis for a successful piece. Just my thoughts, though :)

Passing

Because of my final paper is focused on Nella Larsen's book Quicksand, I've been thinking a lot more about the depth in the book Passing. What is truly striking about it is that I had never observed so many levels to the title. How does the word passing connect to the book? Well, there is the most obvious answer: the book is about black women who pass as white. But writers are generally not that straight-forward when they title a novel. So what else could passing mean? It is an adjective describing satisfactory performance (often found in this form when describing a test). The book, leaving Irene's actions so vague that she is passing in this way (passing meaning free). Or perhaps she has destroyed the unification of the white and black race, Clare, and thus, in her mind, she is doing satisfactory work. Passing is also a verb, meaning to go by. How often did the white people simply go by the white people and vice versa, the blacks go by the whites without intermixing. Perhaps this is what is meant by passing and that is the way things (in the mind of society) should remain. Therefore, Clare was ultimately doomed as a character because she never just passed one race or another. She didn't conform in either category being a mulatto. Passing can also mean to spread something, such as passing a cold. Therefore, the interaction between the races could be compared to a disease- leading to Clare's destruction. And though I'm sure its not the only other perscription to the word "passing", there is the fact that Clare dies and Clare is therefore on the verge of passing from life to death. There are so many levels to the word passing.

The Big Forces

A lot of the focus in this class has been on what was the change that occurred and who were the people who provoked change. But I think there is a dimension that we often overlook when looking at modernism, or at least I do: the opposition of change. These were not JUST judgemental people. These were eugenicists, masses of people believing in "cleansing" the world of genetic inferiorities, such as the Nazis and the KKK, which was at full-force in the 1920's. Families were torn as tradition was provoked. The nuclear family began to bend and break as gender roles were questioned. Revivalists began to preach of the impurity of the world as others claimed God died. Fear struck the world with wartime hysteria creating such things as internment camps. It seems like a lot was going on, and that's because there was, not just for A minority, but many groups catalyzing each other to change.

Ignorance

It is strange to think that 120,000 Japanese-Americans were placed into internment camps, but the camps could still be kept secret and Americans through fear became hateful (perhaps like citizens after 9/11). There were articles that I read from old newspapers that had the "sensored" versions of relocating Japanese-Americans. There were a multitude of stories suggesting that the temporary confinement of the Japanese-Americans were few. They suggested alternative stories such as new housing displaced Japanese-Americans. Politicians gave their opinions of the federal government interfering with systems outside of their limitations. Its so strange to think what really is being sensored? How much do we know of what is going on in our own country?

Japanese Internment Camps

I researched more about the concentration camps for Japanese-Americans during WWII, and I found some alternative writing that came out of it. There is a poem called "That Damned Fence" and it is arranged in quatrains with the first two lines and last two lines rhyming with one another. It is a poem that describes the feeling of being trapped inside, with repetition of "That Damned Fence" throughout the poem.

After reading this poem, I found that in comparison to the haiku, which we read in class, the haiku is much more effective. The ideas in the haiku are not convoluted because the word choice is limited in this style of poetry. The alternative poem that I found on the internet is written by one author, where the haiku is by several authors; and while this would usually make the poem harder to follow because of different writing styles, I think it is good because it offers different perspectives in a chronologically manner. As far as expression of emotion, I think that the haiku does a better job. The emotion is not expressed as clearly to the reader in "That Damned Fence" and I think it is because of the freedom the author had to choose in words and stanzas that a haiku does not offer.

Though both poems were written in the Japanese concentration camps, I think that the haiku produced a better result, and those who did not experience the time can get a better idea of what went on inside.

Artichoke

In "The Pangolin," Marianne Moore's substitution of words for other words or her use of metonymy, is evident throughout the entire poem. Despite her intelligent phrases, I found some of her other lines fairly humorous though they may not have been meant to be.

For example, the word artichoke seemed at first to be out of place in her poem,

"...This near artichoke with head and legs and grit-equipped gizzard,"

It seems funny that it is put there, though I like the sound of it. The humor acts in two different ways at the same time, and the artichoke is in comparison to the pangolin. Moore's way of doing this is shocking because an artichoke is a stationary plant. However, the pattern on the leaves of artichokes and on the pangolin resemble one another. The pangolin is an animal that I had never seen or heard of before this poem, so it is a surprise that it can be similar to a plant that is fairly well-known. The humor in Moore's writing is the image that the reader gets after visualizing an artichoke paired with a pangolin, because the reader may think of a walking artichoke... which is in a sense, what Marianne Moore is referring to.

Moore's fascination with the pangolin allows her to describe the armored plates in a way that would otherwise be overlooked. Her humor adds richness to the poem by putting it into context with a scaly covering of an artichoke. Overall, if I understand the meaning of metonymy, I think Moore is successful in making artichoke and pangolin mean the same thing.

Freedom and the Japanese Internment Camps

Writers are often praised when they can take a phrase and incorporate into it a double meaning that gives insight into the heart of society. I noticed that the Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku surpassed this practice, though, and was able to create double meaning not only with the language of the poem, but more importantly with the form of the poem as well.

For instance, haiku generally has a rigid pattern that must be followed to the tee. However, while the Concentration Camp Haiku takes the appearance of a haiku, it does not follow the exact measures set by the previous generation of haiku poets. There is freedom of expression within the style. The triplets can range from a 4-12-7 syllable sequence to a 6-5-7 sequence in the proceeding series, for example.

This breaking away of set rules for poetic forms becomes ironic when one realizes that these poetic liberties were being taken in a poem that depicts imprisonment. When freedom was at a premium for the haiku poets, they tried to gain a sense of freedom through their own art.