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.