Mid-Century Modernism

This week's selection was written some years after the early modernist works we have read. It includes Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath. It seems that these authors, having written a little later, are more comfortable discussing controversial topics as well as personal issues than were the modernist authors from the previous week's assignment. They also do something interesting with the structure of their work.

In his poem "Howl" Allen Ginsberg writes about underwear, "pubic beards," alcohol, marijuana, and "cock and endless balls." He takes a big risk in making this decision, as sex is an uncofortable topic for most audiences and inappropriate or some; furthermore, drug usage is illegal in America and alcoholism has its own set of problems. His inventive poetic style mimics his bold choice of topics--he arranged his poem so that the word "who" appears in nearly every line and may be traced in a straight line down the page. Another example of Ginsberg addressing a controversial topic is homosexuality in "A Supermarket in California."

Elizabeth Bishop's structure is particularly interesting in "The Fish." She uses at least six similes so the poem describes an ordinary incident--catching a fish--in very figurative terms. Furthermore, she enriches the account with constant details of color. The skin is brown, the interior flesh and sea-lice are white, the weeds are green, the swim bladder is pink, the eyes are yellow, the thread on the hook is black, and the boat engine is orange with rust. At the end of the poem Bishop uses the word "rainbow" four times. The poem itself is like a rainbow and it is easy to create a mental image of the scene because of her elaborate description.

Sylvia Plath's father died when she was eight years-old, and it seems to have had a great impact on her writing. The idea behind "Lady Lazarus" is ressurection of the dead. She presents several words connoting death: "grave," "skin and bone," "worms," "dying," and "scars." Right alongside these, however, are "miracle" and an allusion to a phoenix--a mythological creature which dies by fire and then rises from its own ashes. It can be argued that this peom expresses Plath's longing for companionship with her father. Her poem "Daddy" has an interesting structure with repetition in the eighth, ninth, tenth, and twelfth stanzas. The subject seems to be a stepfather whom she views as a sort of vampire, contributing to the idea that she misses her biological father.

The writers from this week have interesting subjects: risky ones such as alcoholism and drugs in Ginsberg and personal ones found in Plath. They also structure their work in an interesting way; Bishop lists a series of colors which constructs the rainbow she mentions in her final stanza of "The Fish." Ginsberg, too, takes care with his structure in "Howl," including "who" in nearly each line and aligning the word down the page. All of these techniques add flair to their writing and contribute to the overall enjoyment of their work.

The Rise of Modernism: Fiction

Sadly spring break has come to an end, but fortunately I am back safe and sound. This week's reading includes fiction by Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Anne Porter, and Ernest Hemingway. Like the modernist poetry from the previous week, these short stories are very different from any I have read before. They are very personal in that elements of the stories are unique to their authors.

In "The Gilded Six-Bits" Hurston describes her "Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement." The story is regionalistic in both its dialogue and Biblical allusions. The characters' dialect is distinct of the South, a region known as the Bible Belt. There are references to the Jordan River, Samson (Judges 13-16), and Lot's wife (Genesis 19). These elements reflect Hurston's background as an Alabama native and the daughter of a preacher.

Katherine Anne Porter expresses conflict between a character's "way of living and her feeling of what life should be" in "Flowering Judas." Laura, like most us, wants the American Dream. She is discontent with her current way of life and wishes to achieve something fantastic which lies outside of her immediate reach. Porter's biography makes the point that she lived in several different places and perhaps Laura's unhappiness with her current situation mirrors Porter's nostalgia for home.

Ernest Hemingway tells "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" through a narrator who can be described at best as a jerk. He calls his wife a "rich bitch" and blames her as the source of his misfortune and unhappiness. But she should not be at fault on the sole basis that she possesses wealth. We sympathize with the wife and realize that she has done nothing wrong; the man has destroyed his own talent. This unfavorable description of the male is interesting when considering a fact about Hemingway's life--his father committed suicide and Hemingway blamed his mother. This story may be an attempt to gain redempion for this accussation by portraying woman as an innocent figure.

Next week we are reading more modernism, this time a mix of poetry and fiction, so I am looking forward to identifying characteristics of later works from the same period as these. Maybe the same ones will exist but will be handled in a different way by the younger authors. See you then!

Rise of Modernism

This week's reading focuses on poetry written by modernists. This poetry is different from other things we have read in a few key ways. It often takes the form of free verse, meaning it lacks both rhyme and meter. It also presents discreet images using very few lines, so that readers may offer several interpretations. Many of the poems seem fragmented--they join many images which are often random into a sort of literary collage. Finally, some of them are self-conscious, such as Langston Hughes's "Theme for English B" and Marianne Moore's "Poetry."

William Carlos Williams's "The Young Housewife" is an example of few lines from which many questions and interpretations arise. The speaker compares a woman to a fallen leaf and then drives over dried leaves with his car. It is unclear whether Williams means to say that the woman is frail and that the man has power over her, or if his smile and bow reveal that he has no harmful intentions.

T. S. Eliot gives an example of fragmentation in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." He speaks of "cheap hotels," "sawdust restaurants," "yellow smoke," and before we know it women are talking about Michelangelo. We do not know for sure why the smoke is yellow or who the women are. Mysteriously he speaks of being "pinned and wriggling" on a wall and then he throws an allusion to Shakespeare into the mix. Eliot does not spend much time developing any given image before he moves on to the next and the connection between them, if any exists, is not evident.

"Anecdote of the Jar" by Wallace Stevens seems to elevate art through the image of a jar. It sits upon a hill around which the widerness gathers, "no longer wild." Creations of nature and one of mankind are juxtaposed here and it is nature which devotes its attention to the jar. It is uncertain whether nature is in awe of the work of man or if nature views it with uncertainty and as an imposter. However, there is no implication that nature wishes the jar to disappear.

In short, modernist poetry is unique in the way it strings together unrelated images without explaining their significance. The result of this is that readers are left to interpret the poem in a variety of ways. They are deceptively complicated in their short length and raise many questions.

Chopin- The Awakening

This week's text is The Awakening by Kate Chopin. The novel is the story of Edna, a woman who is unhappily married to the busy Leonce, and her quest for happiness. In her husband's absence she finds herself developing feelings for two other men--Alcee and Robert. The former eventually gets dismissed when Edna realizes the extent of her feelings for Robert. She dreams of venturing off to a distant island with him so that they may be alone together. As her affection for Robert grows, that which she has for Leonce diminishes, as does her obedience to his orders. She begins to loosen the chains that have bound her by demonstrating acts of independence.

One thing Edna does to show her rebellion is to stop attending social gatherings on Tuesdays. This shows her strong desire to be her own person rather than to conform to the person that society wants her to be. She also remains outside on the hammock one night, refusing to go inside when Leonce tells her to. This marks her change from the submissive role she has assumed until this point in the relationship to one in which she has control over herself. Her demonstrations of independence reach a climax when she moves out of the house with all of the things her husband has bought and into one of her own.

The sea symbolizes both freedom and rebirth. It serves as a means by which Edna may escape the life she has grown tired of. Her immersion in the water stands as a sort of baptism--the ocean is boundless and, by surrendering herself to it and becomining one with it, Edna too is free.