Poetry 3: Nature and Art (2)

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Poetry 3 Nature and Art (2)

• Rhyme and Rhythm (2)

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Outline

• Musée des beaux arts
• Stevens, Wallace  Anecdote of the Jar (1923)
• Vincent

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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

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Musee des beaux arts

• Three paintings
• The Census  at Bethlehem, based on Luke 21-5
• The Massacre of the Innocents --???????????????
  ???
• Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus.

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

• Image source http//www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/mm/ma
  ssacre.html

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
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"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The Massacre of the
Innocents

• Images source http//bruegel.pieter.free.fr/innoc
  ents_soldats.htm

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
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"Musée des Beaux Art" (1)The Massacre of the
Innocents

• Images source http//bruegel.pieter.free.fr/innoc
  ents_soldats.htm

by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569),
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The Census  at Bethlehem

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"Musée des Beaux Art"

• Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus

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"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?

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"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

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"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.

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Musee des beaux arts

• Three paintings
• The Census  at Bethlehem, based on Luke 21-5
• The Massacre of the Innocents --???????????????
  ???
• Landscape with the Fall of  Icarus.

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"Musée des Beaux Arts"

• Theme human suffering vs. daily activities
• daily activities banal, trivial, and
  commonplace
• Innocent childrens play, animalistic survival,
  routine work of peasants, the sun shining,
• Indifferent expensive delicate ship
• 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.

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"Musée des Beaux Arts"

• In Historical Contexts
• Ovids Metamorphosis Some fisher stood stock
  still in astonishment in Bruegels 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
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Journey to the War qtd Nemerov 786
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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.
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For your reference
Icarus Atop Empire State Building, 1931Photo by
Lewis Hine Courtesy George Eastman House

• Some other poems http//www.eaglesweb.com/IMAGES/
  icarus.htm
• -- WAITING FOR ICARUS the wifes perspective
• -- TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO TRIUMPH
  passion and idealism vs. pragmatism
• Icarus by Carolyn Leaf (an animation at
  Intro2Lit)

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Anecdote of the Jar (1923 p. 1043)
Stevens, Wallace 

• 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.

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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.)

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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)

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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.

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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?vdipFMJckZOM http//
www.youtube.com/watch?v6QiZQYPtI7ctranslated1
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Mr Tambourine Man

• I have no one to meetAnd the ancient empty
  streets too dead for dreaming
• Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for meIm
  not sleepy and there is no place Im going
  toHey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for meIn
  the jingle jangle morning Ill come followin you

http//www.youtube.com/watch?vfgRzOBzVgBE
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Mr Tambourine Man

• Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin
  shipMy senses have been stripped, my hands cant
  feel to gripMy toes too numb to stepWait only
  for my boot heels to be wanderinIm ready to go
  anywhere, Im ready for to fadeInto my own
  parade, cast your dancing spell my wayI promise
  to go under it

http//www.youtube.com/watch?vfgRzOBzVgBE Trans.
http//blog.roodo.com/honeypie/archives/6523255.ht
ml
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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

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Journal Writing

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

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Journal Writing Possible Topics

• "We Real Cool
• "I'm Nobody!  Who are you?
• "A Noiseless Patient  Spider
• Aunt Jennifers 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 Deathrhythm 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

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How do we analyze a poem? All the elements
should be examined in relation to its theme(s).

• Aunt Jennifers 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)

• soundmeter/rhythm rhyme
• syntax, use of dashes
• tone,
• form free verse, vilanelle, sestina
• figurative language metaphor, symbol
• rhetoric (O)
• Pattern of contrast repetition

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See you next time!!!

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Reference

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