Sitting down with Marvin Bell and Emily Dickinson

Charles A. Watson
ENG206
Poem Explication
March 15, 2015

The Mystery of Emily Dickinson by Marvin Bell (1990)

Sometimes the weather goes on for days
but you were different. You were divine.
While the others wrote more and longer,
you wrote much more and much shorter.
I held your white dress once: 12 buttons.
In the cupola, the wasps struck glass
as hard to escape as you hit your sound
again and again asking Welcome. No one.

Except for you, it were a trifle:
This morning, not much after dawn,
in level country, not New England’s,
through leftovers of summer rain I
went out rag-tag to the curb, only
a sleepy householder at his routine
bending to trash, when a young girl
in a white dress your size passed,

so softly!, carrying her shoes. It must be
she surprised me—her barefoot quick-step
and the earliness of the hour, your dress—
or surely I’d have spoken of it sooner.
I should have called to her, but a neighbour
wore that look you see against happiness.
I won’t say anything would have happened
unless there was time, and eternity’s plenty.[1] 

When the weather goes on for days, generally this means a state of melancholy as the wind or precipitation dictates the mood. Bell did not write this to talk of the weather, though. Having begun his life experience in New York City, Marvin Bell spent his professional years as a poet and teacher not in New England, the home of American Romantic poetry that preceded Dickinson and Frost, but in the Midwest, pivotal to the history of modern poetry. Bell earned his M.A. from the University of Chicago and his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa where he taught at the Writer’s Workshop for 40 years. On “This morning” not in New England, an appreciation occurs out on the Plains of the mundane in a rag-tag moment as Marvin Bell took out his trash while a young girl passed by in a white dress, carrying her shoes just after the morning rain. These little feet came down the walk, fittingly, and remind Bell of Emily Dickinson and enabled a reflection to connect to his study of Dickinson. If one were to consider Dickinson as the mother of modern poetry, then this girl’s innocent presence in the white dress qualifies as a reminder that evokes the tireless muse. Ms. Dickinson’s diminutive stature and writing personae was often the woman-girl who frequently held her last breath of innocence before every deathly sting of her dash. Still, after the dark sting settles, the white dress remains as her assigned trademark because Emily Dickinson is perfectly deserving of this distinction. Dickinson’s poetic form in the late Nineteenth Century had become hackneyed by 1990 when Bell wrote this 24-line answer to an eternal question.

Like many great artists and poets, Emily Dickinson’s fame arrived posthumously when her sister discovered her cache of poems, those for which she couldn’t find a publisher. In evoking Dickinson, Bell chooses eternity to say that her work will endure—true—and that as a poet, Bell can wait forever to meet her and her poems, for she is the girl in the white dress. As literary currency, his answer to her mystery befits the white dress standard: Prim, neat, proper, yet attainably common while carrying a darker significance, and all part of her method of exacting attention to her word choices and devices. For example, in an answer to her stinging words about a “Narrow Fellow In The Grass”—when she stoops to secure it—Bending in the Hash.[2] Bell calls Dickinson “divine” and does so properly and mysteriously with a capitol Y, but only by default in the business of a grammar sequence (line 2). The function of the colon as opposed to a dash is to introduce a list. Bell uses it to introduce the ironic paradox that is, possibly, grammatically and dramatically incorrect (line 5). “12 buttons” as a singular synecdoche would have been set off by a dash. Emily Dickinson’s use of a dash was often grammatically incorrect. In this case, “12 buttons” represent the collective of something mysterious: poems, buttons, or our poetic inheritance.

By her diminutive human stature, this little reminder captures Dickinson’s pure essence and not the New England puritan vernacular. This is the poetry; this is muse. Bell writes for Emily Dickinson and for the girl who, like a spirited bird, came down the walk (“A Bird came down the Walk”) reminding him that a well-constructed poem captures a memory like a photo that will last an eternity. Neatly contained in stanza two, it’s quite possible that the 12 buttons of Bell’s allusion signify incremental phrases that follow the poem’s second colon: “Except for you, it were a trifle: 1. This morning, / 2. not much after dawn, / 3. in level country, / 4. not New England’s, / 5. through leftovers of summer rain / 6. I went out / 7. rag-tag / 8. to the curb, / 9. only a sleepy householder / 10. at his routine / 11. bending to trash, / 12. when a young girl in a white dress your size passed…” (9–16) Bell writes this in free verse in 24 lines with three stanzas of eight lines and no rhyme. Dickinson often structured her poetry in 24 lines, using six four-line stanzas as her method of verse. Why this poem works with its 12 buttons is that Bell’s free verse equivocates mathematically to hers, but without rhyme—his three stanzas to her six.

In its avoidance of rhyme, a trademark of all the poetry preceding this modern era, the greatest irony to this poem is the repetition of “happ-” in contrast to Dickinson’s famous facial pose. “That look you see against happiness” (line 23) describes Dickinson’s dour expression in most paintings or graphic representation of her visual essence. Her personal history cannot be described as joyful. In person, she was rarely seen smiling and, in her works, she frequently sets up a whimsical scene only to sting it with stern conventional wisdom. Bell unravels this synecdoche (12 buttons) and metonymy (the dress) to explain the mystery, poke at her happiness, and understand the embodiment of the seemingly innocent garment. If wasps, commonly found among garbage, represent the tension in her work work—dashes, punctuation, stingers—then figuratively, like the cupola, the eternal dress with the twelve mother-of-pearl buttons has the role of smothering them. That number holds minor significance to her work, only that it might describe the famous dress or half of the value of a typical Dickinson poem. Did the dress button down the back? What does Bell mean when he “held her dress?” (line 5) To Dickinson, white signified many hopeful ideas from the color of the soul to a wedding dress—she was even buried in white and enclosed in a white casket! The white housedress was practical, easy to care for, bleachable, and commonly rag-tag. What would it mean for a poet to hold something so vintage, famous, real, and mythical? It’s quite possible that Bell literally held the dress as it is on display in the Emily Dickinson Museum at Amherst College.[3]

Bell’s poem, though devoid of rhythm and rhyme, has poignant echoes of Dickinson’s style and, with subtle allusion as shown in Western Wind and, has the weight to uncover the essence of Dickinson. The descriptive word rag-tag originated around 1865 in the last years of Dickinson’s life. (adj. 1. ragged or shabby; disheveled. 2. made up of mixed, often diverse, elements: a ragtag crowd.)[4] The form and function of the “cupola” (line 6), or a dome, might suggest a little trap to the reader like the cornice and the fly buzzing before death (“I heard a fly Buzz—When I Died” Western Wind, 422). (Cupola; noun; a light structure on a dome or roof, serving as a belfry, lantern, or belvedere; a dome, especially one covering a circular or polygonal area; any of various domelike structures; Metallurgy. a vertical furnace for melting iron to be cast; Italian, Latin; 1540-50; < Italian < Latin cūpula, equivalent to cūp (a) tub + -ula -ule. Cf. cup).[5]

Also noteworthy is Bell’s loaded use of trifle (“except for you, it were a trifle:”, line 9) before a set of phrases that provide the setting for this Mystery. A trifle describes many pieces including an article or thing of very little value; a matter, affair, or circumstance of trivial importance or significance; a small, inconsiderable, or trifling sum of money; a small quantity or amount of anything; a literary, musical, or artistic work of a light or trivial character having no great or lasting merit; bagatelle; a kind of pewter of medium hardness. (trifles, articles made of this. M.E. (to mock) < Old French (to make sport of) 1175-1225   ex: bauble, toy, fritter.) Even more significantly ironic, the trifle is an English cold dessert made with sponge cake spread with jam or fruit, soaked in wine or sherry, covered with a custard sauce and cream, and decorated,[6] the exact kind of treat one might store under a glass cupola to keep from the wasps and the flies.[7] The elements of the entire stanza are the bits leading up to lines 15–16 when a “young girl / in a white dress your size passed.” Rich in wordplay, in the same breath it represents some memorable details of Dickinson’s work. Of her wills and her keepsakes she asks, “what portion of me be?” (“Heard a Fly Buzz”) as if they were trifles and simple division of all her worth. The implication is not much; but there is a housework white dress brought to life here in “Mystery.” Like Bell’s poem, the bits that make up Dickinson’s work are the mechanics of her poetry that sometimes reflect the seemingly mundane.

With this poem, Bell enters steadfastly into the figurative realm of Dickinson wordplay. He chooses to be near her but knows the wasp sting will keep him in check. Recalling Emily Dickinson’s invitation to explore her persona through her words and imagery—but not for too long—he is merely the tide to her.

“Until We meet the Solid Town—
No One He Seemed to know
And bowing—with a Mighty look—
At me—The Sea withdrew—
(“I Started Early—Took My Dog”, lines 21–24, Western Wind, 423).[8]

He can admire her for eternity as sure as the waves will crash to the shore; That is all. For within the whimsy of Dickinson’s reflection, her innocence wanders into darkness. Her white dress remains perfect, but with a humble rag-tag soul. Because of this venture, Dickinson is not always deserving of the white dress—and how could a wasp retain this honor? The young girl, however, deserves this even in her worst behavior. Why shouldn’t a girl have a twelve-button white dress?

“or rather—He passed us—
The Dews
Gossomer, My Gown
My Tippet—only Tulle” (Western Wind page 423, lines 13–16)[9]

A tippet is glamorous and ceremonial strip of cloth, while a tulle is a more common soft cloth for veils and dresses. The encounters of “Started Early, Took My Dog” and the gallivanting “Because I Could Not Stop For Death” behold the racing spirit of this imagery.

With simple alliteration, Bell aptly describes Dickinson’s body of poetry as “much more and much shorter.” (line 4) That’s how she wrote. The slight breath of caesura before line 3 and the unrhymed free verse that follows is counter to Dickinson’s works and Bell’s gift with this poem. Dickinson abided by and was a master at all forms of rhyme and rhythm. One could analyze her work and find that it features nearly all of the poetic devices, with iambic tetrameter instead of iambic pentameter. “The barefoot quick step,” (line 18) is another nod to Dickinson’s rhythmic demeanor and how we know her by her words and subjects like a binding thread. With infusion, Bell gives us Dickinson and defines the mystery with but one properly used set of dashes:

… so softly!, carrying her shoes. It must be
she surprised me—her barefoot quick-step
and the earliness of the hour, your dress—
or surely I’d have spoken of it sooner. (“Mystery”, 17–20)

He could have capitalized “her” as set off by the ensuing dashes, but Bell is referring to the girl so quickly and innocently passing by as the mystery. Man will always remember this youthful imagery and eternal muse. If you are a man and could play an image over in your mind, what would you choose—is it divine? Bell gives us a hint of consonance as the “wasps struck glass.” It’s his use of consonance in the poem’s final paradoxical moment as Bell asserts that “Eternity’s plenty” leaving the reader to reread and approach this mystery delicately. Does Eternity own plenty? Of course an eternity can own a plenty! This loaded finish also suggests that eternity can show possession or utilize a verb.

Her poems are the wasps with stingers—“Or surely I’d have spoken of it sooner” What else would Bell have been waiting for as Dickinson’s essence speaks to him and he is casually afraid of being stung? After centuries of poetry in both Western and Eastern cultures, the metaphor of the white dress still bonds the sexes while defining the difference between man and woman, boy from girl, man from girl, and woman from boy. Except this one: Marvin Bell’s paradox of Emily Dickinson and the 12 buttons of temptation or fastened purity. Like Dickinson and her modern poetic and ironic mechanics, Bell leaves the ambiguous, open ending for the reader to decide how the surface allusions superbly cling to the mystery of Dickinson’s intentions. “Mystery” is a reverential homage, not a parody, with no obvious replication of Dickinson’s body of work. Bell masterfully paints a new picture of her with elements that define the white dress, the stings that surround it, and its enduring mythical allure through the postmodern age.

Sources:

[1] Bell, Marvin. “The Mystery of Emily Dickinson.” Contemporary American Poetry; Eight Edition. Edited by A. Poulin, Jr. and Waters, Michael. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston. 2006. Page 26.

[2] Dickinson, Emily. “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass.” Western Wind: An Introduction To Poetry, 5^th Edition. Edited by Mason, Nick and Nims, John Frederick. McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, New York. 2006. Page 124

[3] http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/white_dress. Emily Dickinson Museum. Trustees of Amherst College, Amherst, MA. 2009.

[4] Dictionary.com, LLC. 2015.

[5] Dictionary.com, LLC. 2015.

[6] Dictionary.com, LLC. 2015.

[7] Dickinson, Emily. “I Heard a Fly Buzz, When I Died.” Western Wind: An Introduction To Poetry, 5^th Edition. Edited by Mason, Nick and Nims, John Frederick. McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, New York. 2006. Page 422.

[8] Dickinson, Emily. “Started Early, Took my Dog.” Western Wind: An Introduction To Poetry, 5^th Edition. Edited by Mason, Nick and Nims, John Frederick. McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, New York. 2006. Page 423.

[9] Dickinson, Emily. “Because I could not stop for death.” Western Wind: An Introduction To Poetry, 5^th Edition. Edited by Mason, Nick and Nims, John Frederick. McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, New York. 2006. Page 423.

Enchantment at Dover Beach

Long and Short Lines in Arnold’s “Dover Beach” 

Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold, is not a mariner’s tale but more a poem about the battle of the ocean tide in classic ebb and flow that carry the sound of centuries of battle that drift with all the rhythms of the night’s ocean that have preceded this moment. It reads like a speech carried by different lengths of meter rich in pentameter and allows for tetra, tri, and hex to offset some of the general rhythm in caesura (Sea of Faith) and emphasis. The poem’s lines leave waves of meaning but also stir the ancient sediment. The overall classic pentameter form suggests the ancient battle while the shorter lines keep the syllables and ideas condensed with the gift of anapest. Just like an ocean, in 36 lines the poem returns to form.

Near rhymes carry an unsteady rhythm. This is not the simple echo of Washington’s crossing the Delaware River but Navy ships battling like oarsman on the Aegean Sea and their ancestors brining it to rest at the rough northern Atlantic shore of Delaware.

There are enjambments that stretch lines, to even them out over the next line and to keep the flow. Lines 14–19 remind the reader through their form:

“Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.” (14–19)

Arnold utilizes three feet to a meter anapest dimeter, trimester, and pentameter to great effect to illustrate and emphasize critical elements at work such as the Greek Tragedian Sophocles, Aegean, and ebb and flow, and misery. These bits flow together with enjambment, like the tide stirring and then depositing its sand and pebbles.

He carries the rhyme of the o from Sophocles and long ago through flow at mid stanza then connects brought and thought like the peaks of the surf heard rocking towards a northern shore. The anapest of misery delivers the sound of tide and battle of our thoughts and completes what was brought from Sophocles and includes the readers with the tragedian and we and sea.

Arnold allows the reader to pause with near caesura in anapest dimeter “Retreating, to the breath” like a little tide pool and only a temporary stop before the personification of battle that the ocean carries day tide after tide:

“Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, …” (26–27)

Dover Beach

BY MATTHEW ARNOLD

The sea is calm tonight.                                       trimeter

The tide is full, the moon lies fair                           tetrameter

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light          pentameter   enjambment as the light gleams

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,        pentameter

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.           Anapest pentameter   CONSONANCE with G AND Q

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!                         Pentameter   Break here, emphasis on Come, sweet

Only, from the long line of spray                            anapest trimester   FIRST RHYME

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,           pentameter                                    STAND/LAND

Listen! you hear the grating roar                             caesura followed by trimeter

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,                  tetrameter

At their return, up the high strand,                         tetrameter (strand without saying sand)       STRAND without the mention of sand or island

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,                   pentameter   like battling waves, with sand and pebbles.

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring                  pentameter, complex internal rhyme, brilliant shaky cadence

The eternal note of sadness in.                               tetrameter

Sophocles long ago                                              anapest dimeter   effectively illustrates TWO things     ENDS AND BEGINS IN O

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought                     anapest trimester   THREE things doing action

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow                      pentameter   imperfect waves in perfect tide pattern     COMPLETES THE O

Of human misery; we                                           anapest dimeter enjambment

Find also in the sound a thought,                           anapest tetrameter, dual meaning of sound, the sound of tide and battle our thoughts                   COMPLETES THE BROUGHT FROM THE Greek Tragedian SOPHOCLES,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.                    anapest pentameter WE AND SEA

The Sea of Faith                                                 anapest monometer th’

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore     anapest pentameter

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.                pentameter

But now I only hear                                             trimeter

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,                   pentameter                                    THE FADING ROAR HEARD FROM THE SHORE, AS THE BATTLE FADES OFF

Retreating, to the breath                                        anapest dimeter

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear            hexameter

And naked shingles of the world.                            tetrameter

Ah, love, let us be true     trimeter

To one another! for the world, which seems              pentameter

To lie before us like a land of dreams,         pentameter   SEEMS/DREAMS

So various, so beautiful, so new,    anapest triameter

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, pentameter

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;   pentameter

And we are here as on a darkling plain         pentameter                                    NAKED AS THE SHINGLES in the sand, HELPLESS ON THE DARK BEACH (like a sand crab or hatchling sea turtle)

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,     hexameter

Where ignorant armies clash by night.         Pentameter   LIGHT/FLIGHT/NIGHT all that remains after the tide withdraws from the shore.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172844

Arnold, Matthew. Dover Beach. Contemporary American Poetry; Eight Edition. Edited by A. Poulin, Jr. and Waters, Michael. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Boston. Page 220.

And February made me shiver with every paper I delivered

Responses to the Exercises:

B 2-3 (p. 164)

2. What do you notice about the use of sound in Pound’s Alba (p. 12)

Repetition of

Soft Liquids l = pale, lily, valley, lay

long u,e peaceful assonance = pale, cool, leaves, lily, valley, she, lay, beside, me

The dawn stands alone.

3. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 129 (375) was referred to earlier as a poem of disgust or revulsion. Point out the ugly sounds.

To point out the sounds is to point out the words as they rhyme and create meaning.

I include purpose as its P links to pursuit and possession. Together they imply greed.

Shakespeare’s genius was using sounds to elicit a sick feeling in the reader in this sonnet.

-ame generally denotes ugly sounds or concepts in verb form such as shame, frame, name, same, lame.

Expense, waste, lust, These three make me think of disgust.

Perjured, murderous, bloody, full, blame   The –ers do the work and set the reader for the ugliness of blud and bl-ame, and its full too, not just a little. A lot!

Savage, rude, cruel, not to   Savage it rips apart, it severs   Rood and CRool to boot like drool

It’s alive, an animal

Despised straight   The despicable subject has neither bend, heart, nor soul

Hunted, hated, swallowed bait   short U sound like grunt or punt, long A hated rhymes internally with bait, but swallowed like wallowed or drowned. This ugly, this clown.

Purpose, laid to make the taker mad  The stop before the assonance and consonance mingle and acknowledgement why he wrote this sonnet.

Mad in pursuit, possession   Shakespeare effectively held off the alliteration until the last to make it more powerful with a stop

Well, shun, hell   Before he releases his countenance in the sonnet’s final deuce.

C 1-12 (pp. 164-5)

Conspicous sound effect / Decide if too conspicuous or appropriate and expressive.

1. Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!

Appropriate

2. I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room.

Appropriate

3. Oh for the night! When I in Him / Might live invisible and dim.

Appropriate

4. I saw, alas! Some dread event impend..

Expressive mixed language here. When I read alas as an exclamatory, I expect concrete to follow, not a mystery. But it does spell doom.

5. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, / the furrow followed free; / We were the first that ever burst / Into that silent sea.

Conspicuous : borderline on inappropriate glee.

6. Over the water the old ghost strode

Appropriate assonance

7. Like some black mountain glooming huge aloof.

Appropriate, great visual descriptor,

8. A vacant sameness grays the sky

Assonance begs the question and we ask why

Appropriate

9. The mother looked him up and down, / And laughed—a scant laugh with a rattle.

Conspicuous. We don’t know why she is laughing at the boy (her son) and why her laugh contains a rattle. We do know that this image is a little grotesque, conspicuous, and inappropriate.

10. Some morning from the boulder-broken beach

Coming from Frost, we are cast into an uncomfortable and sad plane with a series of b stops to remind us that our path will not be smooth this day. This is conspicuous because it is uncomfortable like a broken down barnacle barge.

11. Tossed / by the muscular sea, / we are lost, / and glad to be lost / in troughs or rough / love.

This is appropriate to the highs and uneasy lows of love. The –ough (off) are the muscles that do the tossing so we can be lost.

12. then back to housework, / we hunched over our ironing or bunched / in froggy squats beside our soapy buckets, / backs buckling, all elbows and buttocks.

This is conspicuous and antipoetic, but beautiful in its use of hard consonance K and T and short vowels to keep it nice and ugly: buk-its, bukl-ing, el-boes, butt-ox

D 1-2 (p. 165)

1. think of ten common alliterating phrases like might and main, friend or foe, sink or swim

Dime a dozen

Silly Silo

Sell your soul

Bucking Bronco

Giggling girls

Makers Mark

Happy hooker

Jumpin Jack

Ku Klux Klan

Runnin’ Rebels

2. We discussed words beginning with sn and st. Do you find any pattern in words beginning with bl and br? Recall what words you know (blare or brisk or skim a dictionary).

(sn) kind of unpleasant vs. (st) stand steady

blanket, blond, blue, black, blizzard, blimp, blow, blare

brown, brick, brack, brawn, brave, brine, brittle, brisk

The Bl words show a little more action and some discomfort.

The Br words are solid descriptors just like St.

Another year, another tine

Five-minute valentine

Something like
a party to
we give our best
shot every time.
Sometimes when we
dodge an arrow
all the while
we walk on wounded.
But even in
the waking hour
we begin again
with a hot shower.
And next time that
we meet
I know that you
will whisper louder.
So enjoy this day
and smile and say
let’s have a toast
and extend this cheer.
Between now and then
when we meet again
this love has endured
another year.

Emotions at work and word play

Convey the experience of reading a poem as well as its meanings and technical workings.  Feel emotions and convey them to readers.

Sonnet 18  by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buts of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

For this poetic example of emotions running through a poem’s meanings and technical workings like oil throughout the engine or rain into the soil, the exercise of retyping instead of simply copying and pasting allowed me to fully understand its emotive context.  As I typed the words “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” it was easy to keep going because I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about.  What is the entirety of this written entity?  Yes, I have read this one before, but a very long time ago.  Yes, it is purely classic and quintessential.  Yes, I will share it with others.  Yes, I have experienced thus.

I believe William Shakespeare had encountered a maiden so pure and so fine that he knew he would have to let her go at the end of the summer.  Even after his golden complexion has dimmed by the passing of seasons, he still honors this beauty worthy of summer’s pleasant comparison after the harsh winds of spring.  He’s afraid to touch her after the rough winds had shaken the darling buds of May.  He feels sadness for the buds shaken by the rough wind of spring.  The Poet is angry at those rough winds too!  But wait  …. love is immortal.  It lasts forever, long after the shade of death, the same shade that is pleasant in the summer.  Properly, thy eternal summer shall not fade for she is the eternal summer with its enduring beauty.

His love for her transcends eternity, just as the line goes forever.  This love gives him life, despite the boast of physical possession and death.  The sadness resonates as he is forced to bid adieu to possession through death or change of season, yet feel joy because this love will endure for all of time, just like the memory of summer.  This sonnet is the essence of poetry and Shakespeare on many levels.

There is tragedy in this perfect sonnet but also an ode to joy and making it purely classic.

Shakespeare, Wiliam.  Sonnet 18.  Contemporary American Poetry; Eight Edition.  Edited by A. Poulin, Jr. and Waters, Michael.  Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.  Boston.  Page 374.

What happens at The Mill stays at The Mill

Charles A. Watson ENG 206 Withheld Image Example February 4, 2015

Withheld Image at “The Mill” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

 [ Upon further review, this poem is of a double suicide. ]

The primary withheld image of this poem is that There are no millers anymore said by the male protagonist before his “Long lingering at the door / Sick with a fear that had no form”. The mystery precedes an event into the mill that has a “warm mealy fragrance of the past.” Mealy contains a double meaning of corn or flour meal or a) with granules or b.) pale like an animal’s muzzle or bird’s plumage. Robinson alludes to a bird with ruffled feathers in line 23. The poem flows with a reminder of copulation. What are we being set up for—an encounter, a murder, a suicide?   What does a miller do?   He (or she) makes flour down at the mill by the water. What is a weir? The footnote reminds us that it is a dam like that holds water for the wheel to turn at the mill house. How many water-passing rungs are there on a typical mill wheel? This poem has twenty-four lines over its three inviting stanzas. My guess is that each rhythmic line might represent a place on the wheel. What does the black water signify? (21)   “Smooth above the weir”. The mill turns water, above a river making a waterfall and an energy source to turn the wheel. It works in tandem with a weir. Was the husband’s initial statement a shove off or an invitation for his wife to join him at the mill and its energy source? A mil is a place of rhythm reflected in the poem’s ABAB rhyme scheme and pulses the energy to keeps the wheel turning but not always grinding. The withheld images of this poem include blood, the husband, their ghosts, copulation, or possibly an event more dangerous and mysterious. Since this was written by a man in 1920, I would venture to say that their romance was rekindled with heated grinding passion at the mill, like a couple of love birds splashing at the bath. “There are no millers anymore” is code for Meet me at the millhouse where no one will be around but us. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174243 Robinson, Edwin Arlington. “The Mill”. Contemporary American Poetry; Eight Edition. Edited by A. Poulin, Jr. and Waters, Michael. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Boston. Page 436.

Poetic devices

Charles Watson
ENG 206
Responses to A and C, 41-43
January 28, 2015

A. Ponder similes and metaphors. Which succeed, which fail?

1. Metaphor (succeed)

time = her pure face

2. Simile (fail)

dainty leg

white and hairless as an egg

3. Metaphor (succeed)

Sweet marmalade of kisses newly gathered

Yes! Bits in the marmalade, embedded in sweetness

4. metaphor (fail)

Sweet maidens with tan faces and bosoms fit to broil

5. simile (fail)

like one with hornets in his hair

would one leap if he had hornets in his hair?

Maybe.. frantic would be more operative response; to leap would be wasted and possibly risky movement

6. metaphor (fail)

No. Even though inviting, as one’s own rump is not shaped as a one-dimensional, heart-shaped valentine (symbol). BUT, a sow’s rump might be inviting to the bull swine.

7. Simile (fail)

A dog looking for a place to sleep does not growl, it whines.

8. simile (fail)

An orchestra does not struggle, a musician has an individual struggle.

9. Simile (success)

Waiting to testify “as still as a flag on its stand”

Proper courtroom etiquette.

10. Simile (success)

True, if the trees could hold intelligent memory, they would hail the swaying bat of Ted Williams.

B. Identify, evaluate examples of Analogy, Synesthesia, Allusion, Personification

1. Analogy: Demonstrates our appreciation of flying creatures in allegiance to their appearance and grace.

2. Allusion: Blood down palace walls; the central command; medieval castles; the kings, the queens of old Europe.
   synesthesia: A sigh running in blood.

3. Synesthesia: The yellow noise of sunrise

Personification: Interrupt this ground

Analogy: A sunrise has the potential to interrupt the ground, especially if that ground is unfrozen

4. Personification: Sun laying his chin

Analogy: A weary sun with poppies gathered round

5. Synesthesia: Sound went up like smoke.

Analogy: low sounds continuing, after his hand left the strings, and the sound went up like smoke.

6. Personification: War opened his mouth; trumpet and drum

Allusion: Taps

Analogy: Marching young men, Us, green and dumb; youth go into war with big ego and little understanding of the length and stamina necessary for battle

7. Personification: Wind, breathless from playing; and resting in the bare trees

Allusion: Comparing elements of nature to human activity (wind, rain, fire, earth)

8. Analogy: an overflowing dust collector like a fully grazed cow’s udder

9. Analogy: equipment of old ladies = broken tractors and hidden equipment

Synesthesia: little windows dulled by cataracts of hay and cobwebs

Allusion: woman of the farm

Personification: Loosening barns hide broken tractors under their skirts

“their” has a double antecedent

10. Allusion: yum-yum / apple pie are clichés of antiquated Americana

Synesthesia: Apple pie symbolizes sight, smell, taste, especially following yum-yum.

Analogy: country girls = yum-yum and apple pie

A poem I hadn’t read and what I found compelling about it

Charles Watson
ENG 206
250 words / Compelling read
January 25, 2015

Elements

The reader’s senses are allowed to play in this eleven line free-verse from Theodore Rothke. The organic imagery calls from the pulp of this anthological paper with rich imagery of pulpy stems that “rank silo-rich”. (“Nothing would give up life”) Random are the shoots and roots in store for the following spring. The owner of the cellar parks them deep in the cellar to keep them from freezing and from active squirrels and possums.

Literally the whole root cellar is alive. That which is considered dead serves as food for the living in the form of mulch and manure, and begs to hold on with mold and with bacteria. There is nothing inherently repulsive about this root cellar, except that perhaps it is living like the thing under the stairs or the body kept in the basement.

Roethke wants to alert us to all the possibilities that lie beneath here before we begin the answer in “Cuttings” on the following page.

The cellar is alive with simile, (“dank as a ditch”) and begs for personification with “roots lolling obscenely from mildewed crates” and shoots that “hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes” with a nod of synesthesia (“roots ripe as old bait”) as we cross senses to see, smell, and even taste them. However, since they are organic and pure as food, we don’t have to fear them. His viewpoint might even be that of an older child experiencing such an adventuresome place for the first time.

There is slight analogy as Roethke alludes to an unheralded motely crew with “And what a congress of stinks!” that calls the reader to liken the dangly root cellar to a political group or to consider the word congress in a different light as a sexual congress and the act of coming together.

“Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.”

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/theodore_roethke/poems/16315

Roethke, Theodore. “Root Cellar.” Contemporary American Poetry; Eight Edition. Edited by A. Poulin, Jr. and Waters, Michael. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. Boston Page 423.

The jam of the sandwich meets the pups of the frontier

The New Bypass

I heard them again
at nearly midnight
under the ink
of a moonless
starry sky.

Scuffling southbound
in a hurried gang
like a happy swarm
of children
laughing and playing,
yelping, dancing, and singing
as an unbound one
without fear of mile-marking gravel.

No cares for they
ran altogether–
orderly
yet not single file,
this moment we have duly prepared
for hundreds of years.

And I thought,
when they build the new school
to reflect and bridge new beginnings
in infinite easement
on this patchwork plain
of needs, wants
and desires,
where the jam of the sandwich
meets the pups of the frontier;

Will the coyotes
still charge on–
invisible in the dark
of some yonder field
as they have
for thousands of years?

I didn’t write this twang / wish I had or could

“Guided By Wire”

Voices that did comfort me
Are furthest from my sanity
And come from places I have never seen
Even in my darkest recollection
There was singin’ my life back to me

The life you learn from someone else
That you can only trust yourself
Sometimes that is still too much to want

Gravity won’t get you through the mazes
You can never travel by the way you’ve come

I could never choose the ones to love
And the ones who took the credit left me reelin’
But I owe much to the nameless and all those surrogates
Those who’re singin’ my life back to me

Life is not a constant thing
It’s only made of short stories
I couldn’t even tell you where I’m from
Guided by the voices I’ve deflected
Guided by electric wires’ hum

I could never choose the ones to love
And the ones who took the credit left me reelin’
But I owe much to the nameless
Those who’re singin’ my life back to me

I see you in the future, skippin’ time
While the eyes of all the faithful rest in peace
Yet tonight I see the highway
And someone singin’ my life back to me