Poetry 3: Nature and Art (2)

Rhyme and Rhythm (2)

Outline

“Musée des beaux arts”

Stevens, Wallace  “Anecdote of the Jar” (1923)

“Vincent”

Review: Poetic Techniques?

Tone – lyrical, ironic, assertive, tentative, etc. Sound – sound pattern, rhyme, alliteration,

assonance, consonance, meter & stress (feet –iamb, trochee, spondee, dactyl and anapest)

Form – stanza, line length, free verse and villanelle Figurative speech – metaphor, simile, symbol,

personification, apostrophe Others – irony, tense

Musee des beaux arts

Three paintings:

1. The Census  at Bethlehem, based on Luke 2:1-5

2. The Massacre of the Innocents --取材于《馬太福音》；希律王派兵逐戶搜害幼孩

3. Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus.

"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The Massacre of the

Innocents Image source http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/

mm/massacre.html

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),

"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The Massacre of the

Innocents Images source: http://bruegel.pieter.free.fr/innocents_soldats.htm

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),

"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The Massacre of the

Innocents Images source: http://bruegel.pieter.free.fr/innocents_soldats.htm

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),

The Census  at Bethlehem

"Musée des Beaux Art"

Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus

"Musée des Beaux Arts"

What are the examples of human suffering in the poem?  How are they set in contrast to the daily activities of human beings or even animals? Of all the examples of human/animal indifference, which is the least appreciated?   

For the speaker, these two kinds of events concur and the "Old Masters" know it.  What is the speaker's attitude toward this concurrence, and toward the Old Masters?

"Musée des Beaux Arts"

1 About suffering they were never wrong.

2 The Old Masters: how well they understood

3 Its human position; how it takes place

4 While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

5 How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

6 For the miraculous birth, there always must be

7 Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

8 On a pond at the edge of the wood;

9 They never forgot

"Musée des Beaux Arts"10 That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course 11 Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot 12 Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's

horse 13 Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

14 In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away 15 Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may 16 Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry. 17 But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone 18 As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green 19 Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen 20 Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, 21 Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Musee des beaux arts

Three paintings: 1. The Census  at Bethlehem, based on Luke 2:1-5

2. The Massacre of the Innocents --取材于《馬太福音》；希律王派兵逐戶搜害幼孩

3. Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus.

"Musée des Beaux Arts" Theme: human suffering vs. daily activities

1. daily activities: banal, trivial, and commonplace

2. Innocent: children’s play, animalistic survival, routine work of peasants, the sun shining,

3. Indifferent: expensive delicate ship

4. Sufferings: birth, martyrdom, failed youthful aspiration. Structure: from the general to one specific painting. The 2nd stanza: Icarus -- simply a splash, a cry, a pair of

"white legs“ –mixed with the daily occurrences. Language: deliberately unpoetic + hidden rhymes Old Masters = the speaker.

"Musée des Beaux Arts" In Historical Contexts: Ovid’s Metamorphosis – “Some fisher …stood stock

still in astonishment” – in Bruegel’s painting, they are oblivious of Icarus.

Written in 1938 –before then, Auden went to China and witness Sino-Japanese war (esp. Japanese air-raid of Hankow):

Journey to the War qtd Nemerov 784

Journey to the War qtd Nemerov 786

For your reference: “Landscape With The Fall of Icarus” by

William Carlos Williams According to Brueghel when Icarus fell

it was spring

a farmer was ploughing his field

the whole pageantry

of the year was awake tingling

near

the edge of the sea concerned with itself

sweating in the sun that melted

the wings' wax

unsignificantly off the coast

there was

a splash quite unnoticed this was

Icarus drowning -- The matter-of-fact language-- no punctuation --Icarus is the actual focus.

For your reference:

Some other poems: http://www.eaglesweb.com/IMAGES/icarus.htm

-- “WAITING FOR ICARUS” – the wife’s perspective

-- “TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO TRIUMPH” –passion and idealism vs. pragmatism

“Icarus” by Carolyn Leaf (an animation at Intro2Lit)

Some other poems: http://www.eaglesweb.com/IMAGES/icarus.htm

-- “WAITING FOR ICARUS” – the wife’s perspective

-- “TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO TRIUMPH” –passion and idealism vs. pragmatism

“Icarus” by Carolyn Leaf (an animation at Intro2Lit)

Icarus Atop Empire State Building, 1931

Photo by Lewis Hine Courtesy George Eastman House

Anecdote of the Jar (1923 p. 1043) I placed a jar in Tennessee,

And round it was, upon a hill. It made the slovenly wilderness Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it, And sprawled around, no longer wild. The jar was round upon the ground And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion every where. The jar was gray and bare. It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing else in Tennessee.

Stevens, Wallace 

Discussion Questions

What is the “jar” symbolic of? Why is the poem about its “anecdote”?

How is the jar opposed to nature? How do the two respond to each other? (e.g. 1st stanza: “round” vs. “slovenly”;

2nd stanza: “tall and of a port in air” vs. “sprawled around”;

3rd stanza: “gray and bare” vs. “give of bird or bush.”)

Anecdote of the Jar

The jar -- symbolic of art, which provides an organization or interpretation of nature (or human world).

the jar vs. nature Art: organizing, sense-making, but “dead” Nature: living, active and on-going.

Sound Pattern: mostly iambic tetrameter occasional rhymes (where the jar is described)

Sound and Rhythm

repetition: "round“; opening and closing lines end with “Tennessee.”

The use of the other open vowels around the word "round“ vs. “grey and bare” “bird and bush” in the last quatrain.

“Vincent” by Don McLean

An sympathetic view with belief in his sanity and passion;

Vision of colors – “Flaming flowers that brightly blaze

Swirling clouds in violet haze”; Lonely but sympathetic with ordinary people and

their tortures: “Portraits hung in empty halls

Frameless heads on nameless walls With eyes that watch the world and can't forget Like the strangers that you've met The ragged men in ragged clothes The silver thorn, a bloody rose Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QiZQYPtI7c&translated=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QiZQYPtI7c&translated=1

Mr Tambourine Man … I have no one to meet

And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for meI’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going toHey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for meIn the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRzOBzVgBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRzOBzVgBE

Mr Tambourine Man Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship

My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to gripMy toes too numb to stepWait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fadeInto my own parade, cast your dancing spell my wayI promise to go under it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRzOBzVgBETrans. http://blog.roodo.com/honeypie/archives/6523255.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRzOBzVgBETrans. http://blog.roodo.com/honeypie/archives/6523255.html

Conclusion

Nature – Human Communication with it in different ways (“Earth” “Narrow Fellow” and “Astronomer”)

Human Suffering/Aspiration and Art: Abstraction & Understanding of Human Position (“Musees des beaux arts”), Mixture of Fear, Grandeur

and Triviality (“Icarus”), Human Sympathy (“Vincent”)

Art and Nature: “Anecdote of the Jar”

Journal Writing: Main idea presented in your thesis statement; Deal with at least two poems—with quotes and close analysis of the quotes; better offer some comparison of the poems before you reach your conclusion.

Journal Writing: Possible Topics "We Real Cool“

"I'm Nobody!  Who are you?“ "A Noiseless Patient  Spider“ “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers“"Those Winter Sundays" “My Mother and the Bed” “Days” “Days” (for Philip Larkin) “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” “Sestina”“Metaphor" “Because I could not stop for Death ““Earth”  ”A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"  "Musee des Beaux Arts" “Anecdote of the Jar”

Identity – young identities, self protection, isolation and exploration

Family – understanding and memory of parents and their care

Life and Death—rhythm and repetition (ironic, routine, open to interpretation, sequence of loss, a train with no return, striving till the end)

Nature – forms of contact Art – views of our positions

in life

How do we analyze a poem?* All the elements should be examined in relation to its

theme(s). “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers“"Those Winter Sundays" “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

“My Mother and the Bed” "We Real Cool“ "I'm Nobody!  Who are you?“ "A Noiseless Patient  Spider““Because I could not stop for Death ““Sestina”“Metaphor" "Musee des Beaux Arts" "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"   ”A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”“Anecdote of the Jar”“Earth” “Days” “Days” (for Philip Larkin)

“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers“"Those Winter Sundays" “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

“My Mother and the Bed” "We Real Cool“ "I'm Nobody!  Who are you?“ "A Noiseless Patient  Spider““Because I could not stop for Death ““Sestina”“Metaphor" "Musee des Beaux Arts" "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"   ”A Narrow Fellow in the Grass”“Anecdote of the Jar”“Earth” “Days” “Days” (for Philip Larkin)

sound—meter/rhythm & rhyme syntax, use of dashes tone, form –free verse, vilanelle, sestinafigurative language: metaphor, symbol rhetoric (O)Pattern of contrast & repetition;

ALL

See you next time!!!

Reference

Alexander Nemerov. “The Flight of Form: Auden, Bruegel, and theTurn to Abstraction in the 1940s.” Critical Inquiry / Summer 2005: 780-810.