Month: December 2017

Death By Lipstick- Navneeth Perumal

Navneeth Perumal Leave a comment

 

Everyone In Me is A Bird

Melissa Studdard

Mind was a prison, ruby lined
in its lipstick noir—everything woman
I was expected to be, trapped between
papered walls. What they said to do, I did not
but only levitated at the burning,
the body a water in which I drowned, the life
a windshield dirty with love. What they
said to think, I thought not but instead made
my mind into a birdcage with wings

The poem I chose is “Everyone in Me is a Bird”, by Melissa Studdard. To me this  poem felt similar to one that we read at the beginning of the year, “Lady Lazarus”, by Sylvia Plath. Both of the poems focus on the internal anguish felt by its narrators.  The struggles of both center around the feeling of confinement. In Lady Lazarus, the narrator was trapped by time. In this poem, the narrator feels trapped by her own mind. A final similarity is that both emphasized the narrator’s femininity. In lady Lazarus, the narrator specifically mentions how being a woman has contributed to her anguish, and this work has a similar theme. This is demonstrated with the line, “Mind was a prison, ruby line in its lipstick noir- everything woman.” In class we talked about how the structure of a poem could engender a specific feeling in the reader’s mind. I think this poem is a perfect example of that.  The poem is very short. This adds to the intensity of the work, as each words takes on added significance. Furthermore some of the lines create a confusion in the reader, like, “What they said to do, I did not/ but only levitated at the burning”. This confusion is probably analogous to the narrator’s own confusion. We also discussed  how imagery affects a poem. In this poem, the imagery reflects the narrator’s internal emotional state. The line “trapped between paper walls” really creates a sense of suffocation. One can understand her pain through this imagery. We also discussed how the visual form of a poem creates meaning. The work’s uniform creates a rigid structure. This rigid structure is exactly what the narrator feels trapped against. Finally, in class we discussed poetry concerning water.  This poem also has that theme, with its emphasis on the narrator’s drowning. Like in the other poem, it serves as a symbol for the loss of self.

Moonlight

Eric Leng Leave a comment

Moonlight

You said you like to look at the moonlight

Never thought that we would say goodbye

Until the day you really said goodbye.

You said I made your whole life bright.

In this dark and lonely night,

You leave my life without telling me why.

Walking on the endless road, I start to cry.

The pale moonlight is still as bright.

 

I won’t forget the day you went away,

Tried to beg you to stay,

But you just said, “No.”

Put on my headphones, rock and roll,

Nothing can ease my aching soul.

Sometimes you’ve got to let it go.

 

About this poem:

I basically wrote this poem because I want to compose a sonnet myself. I am trying to follow the Petrarchan form, which follows the a b b a a b b a format.

The fact I am taking this class is actually my passion toward poets’ exquisite description of simple objects, and give them more profound meaning. In Chinese culture, moon and moonlight normally represent nostalgia, reminiscence and similar sentiment toward an object, a place or a person. This is why I name my sonnet “Moonlight,” and I decided to write about a heartbroken boy’s thinking about the girl who left him. I am trying to put “moonlight” in my poem as a sign that makes the narrator reminiscent the saddest moment in his life.

In the process of composing, I tried my best to put in the right word to follow the rhyme. However, I think the hardest part is what kind of story I want to tell and how am I supposed to start and end the story. This become extremely challenging for me at the beginning since I have to do everything in fourteen line, but ultimately I decided to give the poem a relatively open-ended ending to leave some imagination for the readers.

Irish Proudness in W.B. Yeats’ writings—Eric Leng

Eric Leng Leave a comment

The lecture took place on November 6, 2017, held by Dan Mulhall in the topic “To Sweeten Ireland’s Wrong: W.B. Yeats in the 1890s.”

 

Being a great Irish poet, W. B. Yeats has been hailed for his great works. In this event, the topic has been centered on Yeats being a patriotic writer, who is “Irish in spirit, English in literature.” Yeats has intended to make criticism and literature as national as possible. However, the speaker, Dan Mulhall, Ireland’s ambassador to the U.S., has attacked that the national spirit, which Yeats tend to glorify in his poems are merely a combination of nationalism and narcissism, as he claimed that “Irish could be the whole of idealism,” and is “lofty” in its national spirit. Indeed, he believes that Yeats’ movement to accentuate “Ireland” in literature contributes to the wider transformation of Irish attitude, yet this cultural nationalism is based on Yeats’ version of Ireland. One of Yeats’ poems that we have read in class, “the Second Coming,” perfectly represents the Irish Literary Revival. The entire poem talks about the upcoming revelation, Yeats shows that the Europe continent is coming to an end, and the world is going into a new era.

Mulhall mentions, that in April 1900, Yeats publicly rebuke the queen. Since then, he has been energetically involving with Irish nationalism. He even attacks writers who do not write literature with the topic “Ireland.” Yeats attack the original romantic and poetical nationalism, because he believes that in ancient Ireland there is some kind of spirit that is powerful and should be rediscovered. Although Yeats aims to “recreate the glory,” no one would disagree that his ambition is actually a manifestation of Irish idealism.

An Inherent Interdependency: Suffering & Hope – Devon Bombassei

Devon Bombassei Leave a comment

May Perpetual Light Shine (Patricia Spears Jones) 

We have encountered storms
Perfect in their drench and wreck

Each of us bears an ornament of grief
A ring, a notebook, a ticket torn, scar
It is how humans know their kind—

What is known as love, what can become
the heart’s food stored away for some future
Famine

Love remains a jewel in the hand, guarded
Shared fragments of earth & air drift & despair.

We ponder what patterns matter other than moons and tides:
musical beats—rumba or waltz or cha cha cha
cosmic waves like batons furiously twirling
colors proclaiming sparkle of darkness
as those we love begin to delight
in the stars embracing

I chose this poem by Patricia Spears Jones as the narrative voice – mournful, yet inherently hopeful – echoes the underlying tension between suffering and hope also evoked by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Hughes, during the booming cultural and artistic expansion of the Harlem Renaissance, put his literary excellence, and pioneering spirit, in service to the voice of the common man, his works coming to symbolize an unflagging hope in the African American experience. Similarly, Hughes cultivated a resolute optimism in all of his pieces, often interspersing a lighthearted, charismatic touch into the turbulent world of the Civil Rights Movement. Nonetheless, Hughes consistently struck an intentional balance between this innate optimism and the unrelenting struggle of his subjects’ daily lives, similar to the balance reflected in Jones’ poem.

Both Jones and Hughes further illuminate this interconnectedness by making explicit the relationship between suffering and moral strength, and moral strength and hope. Jones states, “We have encountered storms/ Perfect in their drench and wreck,” acknowledging a series of battles has been fought, yet, in some ways, Jones contends, the fight has enlightened one’s perspective, and contributed to an improved sense of self. Hughes, similarly, made sure, particularly through the pioneering of the blues stanza, that the structure of his poetry always recognized suffering as a means of empowerment. Jones, pegging grief in a more positive light, states, “Each of us bears an ornament of grief/ It is how humans know their kind.” Jones’ diction, by characterizing grief as a communal, inherent quality of human life becomes an instrument to build communities of hope, and to connect her diverse audience; likewise, Langston Hughes used characters like Jesse B. Simple to project a beloved voice into his audience that not only served as an expression of common struggle, but also as a thread to sew together the experience of both subject and reader. Both Jones and Hughes never fail to acknowledge an inherent tension intrinsic in the lives of their subjects, but neither let the struggle, however brutal, overshadow the essential message of their poem: the prospect of a more hopeful future.

Jones states, “Love becomes a jewel in the hand, guarded.” In this sense, Jones is reviving her poem with what cannot be lost even through struggle: intangible, yet highly prized qualities such as optimism, hope, and love. Likewise, Hughes weds continual striving with intangible beauty in his poems to not only address the grievances of his audience, but, more significantly, to spark an enduring hope in an attempt to revive the heartbeat of those broken, or still struggling. Jones even references love as the “heart’s food stored away for some future/ Famine,” noting, just like Hughes, that shared love is a powerful – perhaps even the strongest – remedy to combat personal struggle. Likewise, Hughes, just as Jones leverages love as a binding force, uses Harlem in his play “The Strollin Twenties” to unite, and inspire, his audience stating, “It’s many hands working hard all day long – and the prayer you pray that keeps you going along – that’s Harlem.”

Finally, both Hughes and Jones use accessible, familiar language that eschews preachiness in favor of an emphasis on what endures: hope and love. While seemingly trite, both Hughes and Jones capitalize on these intangibles to reach a greater audience, and connect a larger community. Thus, both Jones and Hughes recognize the essentiality of suffering in reconciling with the past, and in garnering strength for the future.