1 day ago
Friday, January 23, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
apres-holiday three-way, pt. 3
Where Hoagland concerns himself with the operation of three poetic tools—image, diction, rhetoric—at work in the poem, Stephen Dobyns advocates analyzing three different contexts—emotional, intellectual, and physical—in a poem in his essay, "Metaphor and the Authenticating Act of Memory."
I thought of applying Dobyns’s approach to this poem after reading Hoagland’s analysis. They are two different approaches, but complementary. And this poem lends itself well to both.
Dobyns begins his essay with a definition of art. “A work of art, such as a poem, seeks to communicate with a reader,” he says. He contends that an understanding of artistic communication can be reached by thinking about the relationship between the three types of context and the events in a poem.
Just as Hoagland contends that extraordinary poems employ all three altitudes—image, diction, rhetoric—Dobyns contends they employ a balance of emotional, intellectual and physical contexts. He argues that when one of these contexts is exaggerated, the poem breaks down. “For instance, when the intellectual context is exaggerated, the poem tends to become emotionally barren; and when the emotional is exaggerated, the poem becomes sentimental.”
Goodman’s “Birthday Cake” employs all three contexts in a balanced way, just as the poem employs the tools of image, diction and rhetoric in what Hoagland calls a “fluctuating alloy” in its “savagery and sophistication.”
The poem shifts from a predominantly emotional context in the first stanza to one that is predominantly intellectual in the second, and then predominantly physical in the third. I say predominantly because, in each stanza, there is also another (sub)context at work.
Now isn't it time
when the candles on the icing
are one two too many
too many to blow out
too many to count too many
isn't it time to give up this ritual?
The first stanza of the poem has a strong emotional context. Hoagland identifies strong emotion being conveyed in the rhetorical questioning here, as well. However, I read the poem differently than Hoagland; I don’t see the emotional tone as being childish and resentful as he does. Rather, I read the tone as being one of frustration, not resentment—the tone of a stammering old man, who could just as easily be complaining about the number of stairs up to his apartment as the number of candles on his cake, for example.
There is also a physical context to this stanza which, as Hoagland points out, is conveyed through the poet’s diction. He argues the poet’s repetition, and his decision to break the lines unevenly, support his reading of a childish, resentful speaker in the poem. However, I think the stanza’s diction better supports a reading of the tone as an older, frustrated one. Its language re-enacts the heaving of one’s lungs, huffing and puffing, in an effort to blow the candles out, and being unable to. Because they are too many, too many, too many… What is implied here is that a task that the speaker used to master—the task of blowing out candles at a birthday—is now one that has mastered him. This physical re-enactment of breaths being taken in the poet’s speech supports a reading of the emotion being expressed here as frustration.
With this frustrated, breathy first stanza, the poet turns us neatly into a second, entirely different context in the second stanza, turning on the word “although” where the speaker seems to catch his breath.
although the fiery crown
fluttering on the chocolate
and through the darkened room advancing
is still the most loveliest sight
among our savage folk
that have few festivals.
As Hoagland notes, the words flow lucidly and articulately here where they were broken and underscored through repetition in the first stanza. This gives the stanza an intellectual context; the speaker is speaking authoritatively in making judgments about “our folk.” It states we are “savage,” have “few festivals,” and judges emphatically that, of these few, the birthday cake celebration is the “most loveliest” of them.
There’s also an emotional (sub)context here. I disagree with Hoagland’s reading of the speaker’s emotion shifting here from being childish and frustrated to being sympathetic and culturally-minded. Here I believe Hoagland is stretching in his perceived resonances and associations in making this claim.
I don’t see a shift in tone here, except for a brief moment with the judgment of the cake; the double-superlative “most loveliest” does stick out here. Here the speaker sees the cake with a childish wonder, as if it were his first memory of a birthday cake. However, it is a fleeting memory; it stands in contrast to the rest of the poem's tone. The final few lines suggest this. As readers, we can’t get too enthused about the “most loveliest” sight of the birthday cake because it’s only the best of the "few festivals" our "savage" people have to offer. It’s as good as it gets, but it ain’t that good.
Where Hoagland reads the beginning of this stanza as being evocative of a communal, tribal scene, I read it as being wickedly ominous. The “fiery crown …through the darkened room advancing” is downright spooky, especially if you read it as not the fiery crown advancing, but rather the darkened room advancing, shadow encompassing, the symbolic advancing of the ultimate darkness that terminates old age—death.
After pausing to give us the only bright spot in the poem, the speaker returns to the frustrated tone of the poem in the first stanza.
But the thicket is too hot and thick
and isn't it time, isn't it time
when the fires are too many
to eat the fire and not the cake
and drip the fires from my teeth
as once I had my hot hot youth.
The image of the “fiery crown” that the speaker pauses to praise in the second stanza is now a “thicket” that is “too hot and thick.” The repetition of thick in this line, and isn’t it time in the next, re-establishes the emotional context of the first stanza.
However, the speaker’s frustration finds a resolution here where it was previously unresolved. The first stanza ends with a question mark, as if the suggestion to give up this ritual was a matter of debate. This stanza ends in a period, implying there is no debate. It is time “to eat the fire and not the cake.”
The emotion is acted upon here, and the act of consuming the fire gives this stanza a predominantly physical context. The line “and drips the fires from my teeth” suggests an animal hunger motivates this act, the fire dripping (like blood) not burning (like fire) from his teeth. It’s primal, and as such, a fitting act for “our folk” who the speaker earlier characterized as savage.
By consuming the candles on his birthday cake, the speaker succeeds in resolving the conflict underlying the frustration expressed in the first stanza. He can’t blow them out; they are too many; he’s too old to perform the task required of this ceremony. But, by eating the fire instead of cake, he symbolically devours his old age. Paradoxically, the speaker consumes what is consuming him.
And if we read the poet himself as the person who is speaking in the poem, then we can read this poem itself as an absurd, virile act that defies old age. Here, at its conclusion, I find myself in agreement with Hoagland when he says “the aging king of his ego eats his own crown, affirms his virility and concedes his absurdity all at once.”
However, in the savage act of eating the fire, it is not “his absurdity” that he concedes, but rather the absurdity of “our folk.” Our absurdity. Humanity’s. It is the finite aspect of our human existence, and our unwillingness to accept youth's loss, to be mastered by mortality, that is being defied by this poem.
Through a balance of emotional, intellectual and physical contexts, “Birthday Cake” effectively does what Dobyns says a poem should do—effectively communicate with a reader. It communicates a metaphysical truth about humanity, and the reader recognizes it in the poem, even if he or she cannot articulate why. Not until I sat down (and labored) to analyze this poem could I begin to articulate why I liked it. I could only say, “this poem fucking rocks.”
This is what great poems do.
I thought of applying Dobyns’s approach to this poem after reading Hoagland’s analysis. They are two different approaches, but complementary. And this poem lends itself well to both.
Dobyns begins his essay with a definition of art. “A work of art, such as a poem, seeks to communicate with a reader,” he says. He contends that an understanding of artistic communication can be reached by thinking about the relationship between the three types of context and the events in a poem.
Just as Hoagland contends that extraordinary poems employ all three altitudes—image, diction, rhetoric—Dobyns contends they employ a balance of emotional, intellectual and physical contexts. He argues that when one of these contexts is exaggerated, the poem breaks down. “For instance, when the intellectual context is exaggerated, the poem tends to become emotionally barren; and when the emotional is exaggerated, the poem becomes sentimental.”
Goodman’s “Birthday Cake” employs all three contexts in a balanced way, just as the poem employs the tools of image, diction and rhetoric in what Hoagland calls a “fluctuating alloy” in its “savagery and sophistication.”
The poem shifts from a predominantly emotional context in the first stanza to one that is predominantly intellectual in the second, and then predominantly physical in the third. I say predominantly because, in each stanza, there is also another (sub)context at work.
Now isn't it time
when the candles on the icing
are one two too many
too many to blow out
too many to count too many
isn't it time to give up this ritual?
The first stanza of the poem has a strong emotional context. Hoagland identifies strong emotion being conveyed in the rhetorical questioning here, as well. However, I read the poem differently than Hoagland; I don’t see the emotional tone as being childish and resentful as he does. Rather, I read the tone as being one of frustration, not resentment—the tone of a stammering old man, who could just as easily be complaining about the number of stairs up to his apartment as the number of candles on his cake, for example.
There is also a physical context to this stanza which, as Hoagland points out, is conveyed through the poet’s diction. He argues the poet’s repetition, and his decision to break the lines unevenly, support his reading of a childish, resentful speaker in the poem. However, I think the stanza’s diction better supports a reading of the tone as an older, frustrated one. Its language re-enacts the heaving of one’s lungs, huffing and puffing, in an effort to blow the candles out, and being unable to. Because they are too many, too many, too many… What is implied here is that a task that the speaker used to master—the task of blowing out candles at a birthday—is now one that has mastered him. This physical re-enactment of breaths being taken in the poet’s speech supports a reading of the emotion being expressed here as frustration.
With this frustrated, breathy first stanza, the poet turns us neatly into a second, entirely different context in the second stanza, turning on the word “although” where the speaker seems to catch his breath.
although the fiery crown
fluttering on the chocolate
and through the darkened room advancing
is still the most loveliest sight
among our savage folk
that have few festivals.
As Hoagland notes, the words flow lucidly and articulately here where they were broken and underscored through repetition in the first stanza. This gives the stanza an intellectual context; the speaker is speaking authoritatively in making judgments about “our folk.” It states we are “savage,” have “few festivals,” and judges emphatically that, of these few, the birthday cake celebration is the “most loveliest” of them.
There’s also an emotional (sub)context here. I disagree with Hoagland’s reading of the speaker’s emotion shifting here from being childish and frustrated to being sympathetic and culturally-minded. Here I believe Hoagland is stretching in his perceived resonances and associations in making this claim.
I don’t see a shift in tone here, except for a brief moment with the judgment of the cake; the double-superlative “most loveliest” does stick out here. Here the speaker sees the cake with a childish wonder, as if it were his first memory of a birthday cake. However, it is a fleeting memory; it stands in contrast to the rest of the poem's tone. The final few lines suggest this. As readers, we can’t get too enthused about the “most loveliest” sight of the birthday cake because it’s only the best of the "few festivals" our "savage" people have to offer. It’s as good as it gets, but it ain’t that good.
Where Hoagland reads the beginning of this stanza as being evocative of a communal, tribal scene, I read it as being wickedly ominous. The “fiery crown …through the darkened room advancing” is downright spooky, especially if you read it as not the fiery crown advancing, but rather the darkened room advancing, shadow encompassing, the symbolic advancing of the ultimate darkness that terminates old age—death.
After pausing to give us the only bright spot in the poem, the speaker returns to the frustrated tone of the poem in the first stanza.
But the thicket is too hot and thick
and isn't it time, isn't it time
when the fires are too many
to eat the fire and not the cake
and drip the fires from my teeth
as once I had my hot hot youth.
The image of the “fiery crown” that the speaker pauses to praise in the second stanza is now a “thicket” that is “too hot and thick.” The repetition of thick in this line, and isn’t it time in the next, re-establishes the emotional context of the first stanza.
However, the speaker’s frustration finds a resolution here where it was previously unresolved. The first stanza ends with a question mark, as if the suggestion to give up this ritual was a matter of debate. This stanza ends in a period, implying there is no debate. It is time “to eat the fire and not the cake.”
The emotion is acted upon here, and the act of consuming the fire gives this stanza a predominantly physical context. The line “and drips the fires from my teeth” suggests an animal hunger motivates this act, the fire dripping (like blood) not burning (like fire) from his teeth. It’s primal, and as such, a fitting act for “our folk” who the speaker earlier characterized as savage.
By consuming the candles on his birthday cake, the speaker succeeds in resolving the conflict underlying the frustration expressed in the first stanza. He can’t blow them out; they are too many; he’s too old to perform the task required of this ceremony. But, by eating the fire instead of cake, he symbolically devours his old age. Paradoxically, the speaker consumes what is consuming him.
And if we read the poet himself as the person who is speaking in the poem, then we can read this poem itself as an absurd, virile act that defies old age. Here, at its conclusion, I find myself in agreement with Hoagland when he says “the aging king of his ego eats his own crown, affirms his virility and concedes his absurdity all at once.”
However, in the savage act of eating the fire, it is not “his absurdity” that he concedes, but rather the absurdity of “our folk.” Our absurdity. Humanity’s. It is the finite aspect of our human existence, and our unwillingness to accept youth's loss, to be mastered by mortality, that is being defied by this poem.
Through a balance of emotional, intellectual and physical contexts, “Birthday Cake” effectively does what Dobyns says a poem should do—effectively communicate with a reader. It communicates a metaphysical truth about humanity, and the reader recognizes it in the poem, even if he or she cannot articulate why. Not until I sat down (and labored) to analyze this poem could I begin to articulate why I liked it. I could only say, “this poem fucking rocks.”
This is what great poems do.
Friday, January 9, 2009
apres-holiday three-way, pt. 2
In his essay, “Altitudes, a Homemade Taxonomy,” Hoagland discusses three poetic tools which he calls “altitudes.” These are 1) image, 2) diction and 3) rhetoric. In calling these tools “altitudes” he is speaking figuratively about them, suggesting in this metaphor that one tool is “higher” than the other – image being the lowest altitude, rhetoric being the highest, and diction somewhere between the two.
Now, Hoagland is quick to stamp out the contention that he is talking about a hierarchy in poetic craft here. By no means is he suggesting that a poem fashioned primarily by image-making is inferior to one which relies more upon employing the tools of diction or rhetoric. Rather, by speaking of these tools as “altitudes,” he is suggesting the hierarchy of accessibility intrinsic to these tools.
As I stated in pt.1, Hoagland upholds “Birthday Cake” by Paul Goodman as a poem that employs all three of these tools successfully. In doing so, the poem has, in Hoagland’s words, not only a “great visceral force and urgency” but also “intellectual precision” and “rhetorical persuasiveness.”
The poem’s force and urgency is generated primarily by the poem’s use of imagery. Image is a poetic tool that that confers, as Hoagland says, “unmediated communication.” Take this central image in the poem, “Birthday Cake”:
…the fiery crown
fluttering on the chocolate
and through the darkened room advancing
Of this image Hoagland notes how it is “perceptually intense.” In other words, it’s readily visualized and accessible. Imagery is immediately gratifying because, as human beings, we are visually-oriented. In very few words, Goodman is able to create an image that is instantly perceived and understood.
However perceptually intense Goodman’s images are in the poem, they do not work alone upon the reader. His imagery works in conjunction with diction in the poem to work upon the reader at a different (“higher”) level, as well.
Hoagland defines diction as “speech that is consciously making reference to the history of its usage.” In the second stanza of “Birthday Cake,” we can see how the poet’s conscious choice in words works with the image he presents the reader.
although the fiery crown
fluttering on the chocolate
and through the darkened room advancing
is still the most loveliest sight
among our savage folk
that have few festivals.
The image of the cake, alone by itself, is a powerful one; however, the poet chooses the metaphor “fiery crown” to describe its candles. He chooses to describe our folk as “savage” and calls, by inference, a birthday party a “festival.”
Hoagland argues that the speech the poet is using here is not at all arbitrary. It is, rather, consciously being employed to work associatively upon the intellect of the reader. He says that words such as fiery, crown, savage and festival work together to evoke “feudal resonances of crowns and fire are communal and sacred.” The darkened room suggests “a cavernous, pre-electric setting” where savage folk gather for warmth and comfort.
One may or may not agree with Hoagland’s interpretation of the poet’s diction, or whether the poet was consciously making his decisions in his speech throughout the poem, but one cannot refute that the poet’s diction puts the reader’s intellect to work. His diction in this stanza works with his image of the birthday cake, causing associations and resonances to percolate in the mind of the reader.
The poet is also expressing an opinion about birthdays, as well. In this way, Hoagland argues, the poem possesses a rhetorical persuasiveness. At first glance, after the first stanza, it seems predominantly to be advocating a course of action.
Now isn't it time
when the candles on the icing
are one two too many
too many to blow out
too many to count too many
isn't it time to give up this ritual?
What the poet seems to be saying here is relatively straightforward—why do we even bother with birthdays? As Hoagland says, this rhetorical question implies its answer—“Yes, it’s time to give up this ritual.” He also notes the poet’s diction here—through its “repetitive simplicity” and it’s “run-on syntax”—underscores this contention. Twice he’s asking “isn’t it time” to give it up. The candles on the cake are “too many … too many … too many.” It suggests “feverish emotion,” a frustration with getting old.
However, with the second stanza, the rhetoric shifts. The image of the birthday cake prompts this shift, and the poet calls it “the most loveliest sight / among our savage folk / that have few festivals.” The second stanza argues for the ritual where the first stanza argues to do away with it. Hoagland understands this shift in rhetoric from “an aging, childishly resentful speaker” to one who “sympathetically recognizes” its use and “considers the welfare of the culture as a whole.”
The third stanza steps back from this more considerate, sympathetic stance once again to childish, emotional one:
But the thicket is too hot and thick
and isn't it time, isn't it time
when the fires are too many
to eat the fire and not the cake
and drip the fires from my teeth
as once I had my hot hot youth.
Once again Hoagland points out we have the same broken, run-on syntax in the first stanza and repetition “isn’t it time, isn’t it time” here. However, while the diction is similar, the rhetoric—what the poet is arguing—is markedly different. Instead of the ruminative “self-pity” found in the rhetorical tone in the first stanza, here the tone is angry and forceful, and the poet advocates action, creating an undeniably strong and forceful image – eating the fire of the candles instead of the cake. “Here,” Hoagland argues, “the aging king of his ego eats his own crown, affirms his virility and concedes his absurdity all at once.”
Having shown Hoagland's approach to poetry in general, and this poem in particular, I will next summarize Dobyns's approach to poetry in pt. 3. Then I will give my reading of "Birthday Cake," using Dobyns's approach as a means of entry into the poem.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
apres-holiday three-way, pt. 1
As I return to a nog-less mindset and clarity after the holidays, I've immersed myself in reading about poetic craft in order to overcome the holiday-induced lull in my writing. Nothing jumpstarts the creative process for me more than reading poetry analysis. I will also be attending the Associated Writers & Writers' Programs (AWP) conference in Chicago soon, and my mind needs a bit of tuning to the topic of poetic craft beforehand.
I've been picking through Best Words Best Order by Stephen Dobyns and Real Sofistikashun by Tony Hoagland-- two collections of essays, I now realize, I should have purchased the minute they came into print.
These two collections offer two different, but similar, ways of approaching a poem. I'd like to bring these two approaches to the same poem, a poem that Hoagland discusses in his essay, "Altitudes, a Homemade Taxonomy." It is a poem I'd never read before, written by a poet, Paul Goodman, with whom I was previously unfamiliar. I am thankful for Mr. Hoagland's introduction to both. Here is "Birthday Cake" in its entirety:
Birthday Cake
Now isn't it time
when the candles on the icing
are one two too many
too many to blow out
too many to count too many
isn't it time to give up this ritual?
although the fiery crown
fluttering on the chocolate
and through the darkened room advancing
is still the most loveliest sight
among our savage folk
that have few festivals.
But the thicket is too hot and thick
and isn't it time, isn't it time
when the fires are too many
to eat the fire and not the cake
and drip the fires from my teeth
as once I had my hot hot youth.
In pt. 2 of this posting, I will summarize what Hoagland has to say about the poem in discussing his three "altitudes". In pt. 3, I will summarize Dobyns's approach, who understands a poem to be an emotional-intellectual-physical construct. I will apply his approach to "Birthday Cake" and, in doing so, provide an alternative way of reading "Birthday Cake."
In these three blog entries, I hope to relay how complementary, in general, the two approaches to reading poetry are while, at the same time, showing how each offer a different perspective in perceiving the same poetic gem.
More importantly, though, I want to approach the poem from different perspectives for the same reason you have sex using different sexual positions-- solely for pleasure's sake. I want to get under the poem's skin and, in doing so, become one with it as much as humanly possible.
Like Hoagland, I think it's a pretty extraordinary 18 lines. My birthday's coming up, too, so there's some personal proximity to its theme. But really, I think the poem just fucking rocks, and I'm eager to understand why exactly this is and share this understanding with anyone who cares to listen.
I've been picking through Best Words Best Order by Stephen Dobyns and Real Sofistikashun by Tony Hoagland-- two collections of essays, I now realize, I should have purchased the minute they came into print.
These two collections offer two different, but similar, ways of approaching a poem. I'd like to bring these two approaches to the same poem, a poem that Hoagland discusses in his essay, "Altitudes, a Homemade Taxonomy." It is a poem I'd never read before, written by a poet, Paul Goodman, with whom I was previously unfamiliar. I am thankful for Mr. Hoagland's introduction to both. Here is "Birthday Cake" in its entirety:
Birthday Cake
Now isn't it time
when the candles on the icing
are one two too many
too many to blow out
too many to count too many
isn't it time to give up this ritual?
although the fiery crown
fluttering on the chocolate
and through the darkened room advancing
is still the most loveliest sight
among our savage folk
that have few festivals.
But the thicket is too hot and thick
and isn't it time, isn't it time
when the fires are too many
to eat the fire and not the cake
and drip the fires from my teeth
as once I had my hot hot youth.
In pt. 2 of this posting, I will summarize what Hoagland has to say about the poem in discussing his three "altitudes". In pt. 3, I will summarize Dobyns's approach, who understands a poem to be an emotional-intellectual-physical construct. I will apply his approach to "Birthday Cake" and, in doing so, provide an alternative way of reading "Birthday Cake."
In these three blog entries, I hope to relay how complementary, in general, the two approaches to reading poetry are while, at the same time, showing how each offer a different perspective in perceiving the same poetic gem.
More importantly, though, I want to approach the poem from different perspectives for the same reason you have sex using different sexual positions-- solely for pleasure's sake. I want to get under the poem's skin and, in doing so, become one with it as much as humanly possible.
Like Hoagland, I think it's a pretty extraordinary 18 lines. My birthday's coming up, too, so there's some personal proximity to its theme. But really, I think the poem just fucking rocks, and I'm eager to understand why exactly this is and share this understanding with anyone who cares to listen.
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