Where Do We Go From Here?

Anyone who knows Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita knows that this isn't where we intended to be. Or at least, it's not for me. I spent the past year maintaining this blog for a directed reading in education policy I did at the University of Georgia. In theory, I was learning about queer theory and attempting to transform a theoretical perspective into an actionable poetry pedagogy for secondary students. That was shortly before a semester in which I realized that designing curricula is something best left to professionals--read: people who do things like write the Common Core Standards Curriculum. Then I started doing what I do best: writing about poetry, with only limited treatment of how to teach poetry (I'm starting to wonder if Billy Collin's wasn't right when he suggested that a poem should be a sensory experience beyond reduction to what it "means.")

Whatever my views about reforms to be made to the reading and teaching of literature, I found that I missed writing about what I read. I also found that the blog was a wonderful way to express my engagement with my personal favorite artistic medium: literature. I know what you're thinking, and you're right! I read! Serious contemporary fiction! On public transportation!

Since I live alone in a basement in Georgetown (don't worry, folks, it has windows), there's no one to talk to about what I'm reading. Instead, I'm throwing my thoughts to the unadulterated font of unsolicited and un-reviewed wisdom--the internet. So here's to an undoubtedly fruitful summer reading great books and trying not to sit too close to the homeless guy on the metro!

PS: For those interested in the outcome of my paper, it actually turned out wonderfully. I didn't use many of the poems on this list, though Dickinson and Whitman did show up (A Narrow Fellow in the Grass (because the typically female Dickinson speaker adopts transgenders herself) and Song of Myself (the creepy scene with the bathers and the woman getting off to them)). My main point? The same thing it's always been: without culturally relevant curricula, students don't care--but augmented to reflect my conclusion that queer theory offers a way of destabilizing traditional perspectives and revamping the way students think about "the other" in literature.

O Captain! My Captain!

"O Captain! my Captain!"
Walt Whitman

1

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

2

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

3

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Walt Whitman's famous poem treats the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The extended metaphor in the poem, in which the "Captain" is Lincoln and the "ship" represents the United States of America, is an unusually conventional poem for Whitman. The only poem to be anthologized during his lifetime, the metaphors and regular rhyme and meter make the poem fairly boring as far as tropes and figuration goes. Once the comparison between Lincoln and the Captain are realized, the poem easily gives up its meaning.

The more interesting topic for this study, at least, is the implicit homoeroticism of the the poem. Though both sexes have written about elegy ("Elegy in a Country Churchyard" and "Lycidas" come to mind for masculine elegies), this kind of sentimental, lyric elegy is a form more commonly associated with women than with men. The common meter and fairly unimaginative trope, however, give the poem a decidedly feminine sentimentality. Coming from a male poet, this complicates the relationship between the speaker and his metaphorical object. Other moments in the poem, including the "bleeding drops of red" from the Captain's heart, the speaker's "arm beneath your head", and the Captain's inability to feel the speaker's arm, suggest more physical and emotional intimacy than Walt Whitman had with Abraham Lincoln. I would never argue that this poem is about a lover of Whitman's, but the way in which Whitman sentimentalizes Lincoln's assassination and their intimacy suggests a deeper connection than merely one of national identity. Written by one man about another, the poem posits an interesting relationship between citizen and political leader, figuring the relationship in terms of a man to his slain beloved, in this case another man. Discussing Whitman's poem should lead to a discussion of biography--Whitman was decidedly homosexual--and the ways in which experience can alter poetic utterance. A straight man would likely not have written such a poem, positioning himself so close to his metaphorical subject. Why Whitman figured himself so close may be a subtle nod to his sexuality or a re-imagining of citizenship and the relation between citizen and elected leader. Either way, the poem offers a way of discussing the subtleties of sexuality in poetry.

1) Analyze the meter and rhyme of the poem. Is it regular? Is it sentimental [this poem would get a brief discussion of sentimentality]? Knowing that sentimental elegy is a primarily feminine form, what can you say about the Whitman's chosen form?
2) Consider the extended metaphor--what are the primary objects? Knowing this poem was written in 1865, who do you think might be the Captain? What might be the ship or the "fearful trip"? Is it strange to be sentimental about such a horrific event in American history?
3) Note the relationship between the speaker and the Captain. How close do they become? Knowing what this poem is about, does this relationship seem realistic? Why might Whitman, a man, write about becoming so close to his male leader? Is the relationship homoerotic, or merely a figuration of the relationship between a citizen and a beloved leader?

She being Brand

"she being Brand"
e.e. cummings

she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on

the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

I think this poem is a fun one, if it at first appears difficult to read. e.e. cummings (who'd likely be irritable that I put periods between his initials) isn't known for conventional punctuation or diction. In this case, however, it's easy to discuss the ways in which cummings uses punctuation and spacing to mimic the rhythm and pacing of a sexual act. An academic could spend a great deal of time delving in to the meaning of each punctuation, elucidating the code that cummings develops over the course of his work. For my purposes, though, it's more important to note the way cummings plays with conventions of language to convey his purpose. Line length beginning short, becoming long, and then becoming short again increases the intensity through the middle section before arriving at the end of the poem and, presumably, orgasm.

These textual methods of evincing sexuality and sexual rhythm queer normative conventions of language, but that point is subsidiary to the fact that cummings has written an overtly sexual poem using an automobile as a trope. cummings has come forward and stated that the poem is merely about a vehicle, but the language obviously invites a comparison to a sexual experience. This question becomes, for me, the main focus of a queer analysis. cummings has made an intimate act extremely public in writing this poem, even referencing public spaces in the poem (the Public Gardens). Sensibilities shocked, the reader is stunned by the speaker's brazen sexual exploit. In this way, cummings destabilizes assumptions about "normal" sex, where it should take place, and its mechanics all while maintaining a metaphorical distance from his subject. Public--and apparently exuberant--sex is couched in the language of the mechanical. This technical aspect of the poem lends the experience a kind of normality and legitimacy--this subversion of societal convention, dramatized as nothing more than an exciting car ride, integrates the experience into the norm. It is cummings' ability to make a sexual act simultaneously thrilling and quotidian that queers the public space.

A caveat: the poem does not apparently treat women very kindly. The mechanization that makes the experience so acceptable in a public space also dehumanizes the speaker's sexual partner. Though the poem queers the public space, it hides the feminine narrative in the car metaphor. In fact, such a stereotypically "manly" activity, driving and playing with cars, (re)affirms dominant masculine hegemony. I see this poem as being taught as a kind of "not QT," then. The public space certainly becomes queered by the public sex act, but the metaphor of the car simultaneously reinforces the kinds of narratives that QT has the power to subvert. Leading the students through this line of reasoning will provide an opposite perspective to the remainder of the anthology, allowing them to better understand queer theory by understanding the ways in which poetry can enforce gender and sexual norms.

1) What is the dominant metaphor in the poem (what does the speaker feminize)? How does the car metaphor play on stereotypical masculinity? Why might cummings choose a car metaphor to illustrate a public sex act?
2) Did you find the unusual punctuation difficult to read? What do you think it contributes to the poem? What kind of rhythm and structure does it evoke? How might such unconventional language be useful in a poem about an ostensibly normal activity (driving) with heavy sexual undertones?
3) Do you think the poem subverts or affirms gender/sexual norms? Why?

The final question is one I have a difficult time answering myself. The mechanical language could be a way of referring to the natural, biological mechanics that go into a sexual act. Alternately, it could be a way of dehumanizing the speaker's sexual partner. I'm leaning toward the latter, but I think, in light of the unconventional language, there's a case to be made for the former.

Much Madness is divinest Sense

620
Emily Dickinson

Much Madness is divinest Sense -
To a discerning Eye -
Much Sense - the starkest Madness -
'Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail -
Assent - and you are sane -
Demur - you're straightway dangerous -
And handled with a Chain -

Emily Dickinson is difficult at the best of times--her seemingly random punctuation and profligate capitalization tend to evoke confusion rather than significance--but I think this poem falls right in line with my project. I came to it while thinking about Cathy Park Hong and her overt troubling of the public space. Though that poem was published in 2007, Hong's idea is at least as old as Emily Dickinson (this poem was written in 1863).

The first three lines are, to me, the most intriguing. The chiasmatic arrangement of the nouns--from madness to sense to sense to madness--add a symmetry to the opening that frames the "discerning Eye". This symmetry suggests a pattern to the movement of the poem, the kind of pattern that the purportedly mad revel in exploring. We begin the poem, then, with the hint that the speaker might border on insanity; however, the fact that the speaker summons a classical rhetorical device to make a coherent argument demonstrates her ability to impose her own order and structure. The "discerning Eye" suggests both visual apprehension of the rhetorical trick, in that a discerning reader will understand the text, and "I" as in self-hood. The rhetorical trick, the structural fancy, also frames the speaker's identity and self-awareness. Her understanding of identity involves a simultaneity of "madness" and "sense", which she amalgamates in herself to form a fundamental statement of being. The third line, it might be mentioned, is parallel to the first line in all but the absence of a verb. In its place, Dickinson places a dash. The question of Dickinson's unique punctuation has a different answer in every poem, but in this particular instance it contains all the energy of self that the speaker channels from the rhetorical structure. The absence of the verb is more important than any word she could insert there, given that the silent dash holds all the possibility of vocabulary.

If the first three lines represent Dickinson at her most clever, the last five show her at her most biting. Her poetry has often been criticized as detached from politics (the fact that she mentions slavery a handful of times in the midst of the Civil War substantiates this claim), but in this poem she decidedly subvert the public space. Her nod to the "Majority" is a clear invocation of all the conventions of American democracy and its rule over the public utterance. The aside, "as all," hints at Dickinson's distrust of the Majority. Dickinson resists the well-established fact that an individual must assent to certain normative processes of society in order to become a member of the Majority. The dashes between "assent" and "demur" and their predicates serves to frame the predicates in dashes, to define them inside a constricting space. Dickinson sets up a societal equation, an if-then statement that leaves no room for exploration. She demonstrates in her first three, complex lines, however, that retaining a voice, that actualizing the self allows the individual to escape the confines of the Majority to instead enjoy poetic freedom. Whether or not the poet's place inside the chiasmus is constricting is another point entirely. Though "handled with a Chain," Dickinson subverts the restriction, queers the definition of "madness" to create a personal freedom to embrace her unique structuralization of her world. With that in mind, here come the questions:

1) What is the main struggle in this poem? What does the Majority do to individuals who don't agree with it? How might someone who doesn't agree with the Majority be threatening to it?
2) In light of the major conflict, how might the first three lines of the poem make more sense? What is the "discerning Eye," and what kind of critical faculty does it represent?
3) Do you think Dickinson is responding directly to her readers, or to a broader audience? How might her readers develop a "discerning Eye" from reading and understanding the poet's difference?

Guiding students through the conflict between the Majority and the individual will allow them to access the need for self-expression, even in the face of oppressive socialization. I think this might be a good poem to begin talking about "queering" spaces by introducing elements that crack the monolithic face of cultural dominance. The first three lines, though complex, offer a way into a discussion of how to understand not only Dickinson's poetry, but to understand how to appreciate other cultures or viewpoints.

Toasts in the Grove of Proposals
Cathy Park Hong

Lo, brandied man en rabbinical cape
dab rosy musk en goy’s gossamy nape,
y brassy Brahmin papoosed in sari’s saffron sheet
swoon bine faire Waspian en ‘im wingtip feet,
les’ toast to bountiful gene pool,
to intramarry couple breedim beige population!

Lo, union o husky Ontarian y teacup size Tibetan,
wreath en honeysuckle y dew-studded bracken,
lo, union o Cameroon groom kissim ‘e gallic Gamine’s cheek
en miscengnatin’ amour dim seek to reek
les’ toast to bountiful gene pool,
to intramarry couple breedim beige population!

Clap away, Greek chorus o gay sashayim crowd,
clap away, chatty flackmen y pre-nup hackmen,
bine fort, ruby-lined pachyderms who trundle here proud,
bine fort, madders who nag fo proposal enactment,
les’ toast to bountiful gene pool,
to intramarry couple breedim beige population!


Though I hesitate to introduce this poem to a group of ninth or tenth graders because of its linguistic difficult, I think its dialect has a interesting and readable enough meter and rhythm as to make it comprehensible. More importantly, though, I think the dialect enacts the political statement the poem makes out of a private intimacy. It would have been one thing for Hong to simply write about miscegenation. Here, she enacts its consequences: fluidity of language and culture, embodied in a distinct, creolized space. The dialect draws on English, French, Spanish, Latin, and "an amalgamation of over 300" languages, according to Hong, reflecting the increasingly enmeshed global culture. Hong's book, Dance Dance Revolution draws on global conflict to make extreme political statements, whereas the poem here makes it more subtly, as if to suggest that the logical end of globalization is miscegenation of relationships.

If I do include this one, I'll no doubt have to provide loads of footnotes--similar to the handy marginalia Shakespeare editors provide to explicate Elizabethan nonsense. Nevertheless, I think reading the poem aloud makes it easier to understand. Its unique orality should resonate with students invested in the hip-hop/rap tradition, I think, and there are plenty of recordings of Hong reading it on the internet.

The queerness of the poem lies primarily in its proclamation of unusual sexual contact, for its "queering" of the public space. I like the way the speaker celebrates the public intimacy of such diverse combinations. This poem confronts the public space with subversive, non-normative relationships, but does so in the language of a paean or hymn. The apostrophes and choric voice acclaim the individuals pronouncing their love for one another--in a way, Hong consecrates the individuals to a higher purpose than merely their expression of love, she sanctifies the inter-mixture of cultures. The underlying irony, of course, is that the celebration produces a "beige population," a bland repitition for such an exuberant poem. The tension, then, arises out of the forced mixture of a global culture versus the organic amalgamation that arises out of a personal relationship. What will the "beige population" become, a collection of individuals speaking a creolized language of globalization or a featureless mass of beige?

1) How does the invented language make reading this poem difficult? How does reading it aloud make it easier to understand? What might this suggest about the future of language? How does the language reflect the miscegenation of races in the poem?
2) Why might this poem be set in a "grove"? How does the public setting change the reading, if at all? How might having so many interracial couples proposing in public disturb the normative space?
3) The repetition in the poem gives it interesting, hymn-like feel. What are hymns for? Where are they usually sung? Why would having a hymn to interracial coupling in someplace like a grove trouble the significance of hymns to the cultural milieu in which the poem was written?

Engaging with the idea of public and private and how language can problematize the space shows how speakers can actively "queer" a space with their utterance. The formal aspect of the poem, including the hymn-form and meter, further subvert the normative use of hymns in praise of a higher power. Hong queers the form to make a political statement that is made simultaneous to her celebration of interracial, intercultural love. If that's not something that will engage multicultural students in an interesting dialog, I don't know what is.

My Papa's Waltz

My Papa's Waltz
Theodore Roethke

The whisky on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

This Roethke poem takes an affectionate scene from childhood--a father dancing with a child--and problematizes it with a complex tone. The rhythms and rhymes suggest comedy and playfulness; "dizzy" and "easy" as well as verbs like "waltzed" and "romped" contribute to the sense that the speaker is enjoying the experience. In contrast with some highly adult images--whiskey, a battered hand--however, the poem becomes much more difficult to read. The violence of the poem is fairly explicit, with the speaker's ear scraping a buckle and hanging on "like death." Images that could decide the poem's tone are ambiguous, such as the father beating time on the speaker's head, an act which could be violent or playful. Whether comic or violent, the speaker is bound to his father for paternal support, if not for love and affection.

The poem's unique speaker--clearly a child--makes it unique. The elements of voice that suggest childhood are also easy enough to recognize that I think this poem is a good one to introduce the idea of speakers and voice. With that in mind:

1) How old do you think the speaker is in this poem? What makes you think so?
2) What is the tone of this poem? Is it violent, or playful? List tone words that suggest each. Can you arrive at a conclusion, or is the poem ambiguous?
3) Consider the concluding image. How does this change your reading of the poem's tone (if at all)? What does the speaker's age tell you about this image?

The instructor should note that the speaker is clearly young, or remembering an experience with his father. The instructor should note the presence of a mother, the playful language, and the rhyme as a way of communicating the age; however, the instructor should also note the imagery of violence that complicates the tone. The importance of the ambiguity serves to reinforce the idea that meaning is flexible. The concluding image should serve differently in context of the two different tones. In the playful tone, it suggests paternal affection. In the violent one, it speaks more to the need for a paternal figure in the speaker's life.

This poem, another softball, represents another easy way of thinking about ambiguity of meaning. Moreover, the unusual speaker allows students to understand that poetry is not a form for old white men, but a venue for disparate and varied groups to expose their emotions and air their concerns.

Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

I usually don't go in for poems about poetry, but in this case I make an exception because Collins migrates toward a more salient question than what a poem should be--he asks and answers how we should read it. I think this is a pretty important question to ask when reading anything; it speaks to why people continue to write and read poetry. It answers the perennial question of the value of literature by suggesting that poetry reflects experience. Collins' imagery makes a poem a sensory experience, mingling aesthetic sensibility with experiential narrative. The union of imagery and narrative allows a poem to relay deeply significant emotions.

As a kind of instruction manual on reading poetry, the poem would work well as the first poem in the book. I think it would be a good start to getting kids to think about imagery in structured way--instead of going straight for the meaning, they need to identify things. Once they've got a sense of what's going on in the poem, they can figure out how those things work together to create a holistic theme. The idea of "meaning" also offers entree into the concept of the "center" that I intend to address with the other poems. The idea that poems could have a multiplicity of meanings will be important when trying to destabilize meaning in later works.

My intention with this poem, then, is first to engage students in identifying images. When they have done that, they should be able to show how the images appeal to the senses (auditory, tactile, visual) to suggest that the goal of a poem is to engage the senses. Finally, I'll ask about the concluding image and how the satirical phrase "what it really means" denies that a poem has a "real meaning" as opposed to many meanings that arise of its presentation of sensory images.

1) Identify three images in the poem. What senses do these images appeal to? Why would the author choose to appeal to so many senses in his poem?
2) What is the tone of the concluding image? Why might the author choose such loaded words to describe reading a poem? How do you think you should read a poem? How does the author think you should read a poem?
3) Given the author's description of how to read a poem, why do you think there are so many different kinds of sensory appeals in the poem? What does a poem "mean" in light of these appeals?

The first question should allow the students to get a grip on the figurative language and realize that the author is engaging many different senses. The second should orient the student to how not to read a poem. The instructor should highlight the contrast between the two sections of the poem to spark discussion about how to read a poem. The final question should begin to bring up the idea of "meaning", how it is created, and how it is reinforced with language. Specifically, thee instructor should bring up the idea that poem's may represent an experience rather than a substantive meaning. Reading a poem, then, may be less about a means to an end than a way of exploring a topic. The conclusion does not represent a hard and fast truth, but a potential way of thinking about or responding to the world.