Contemporary Fiction

This week's reading explores contemporary fiction. It deals with authors Toni Morrison, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Sandra Cisneros, to name a few. Their stories, like the contemporary poetry, are bold in both style and subject matter. My personal favorite from this selection is "Woman Hollering Creek" by Sandra Cisneros. Cisneros writes in English, but her style incorporates certain Spanish words and phrases into her work. A few examples are "en el otro lado," "farmacia," "burro," and "arroyo." The efect is that her work is very regional, in the sense that we never forget Cisneros's background. However, her subject matter--gender inequality--is so universal that it is not limited to any particular region.

Her work differs from other writing about gender discrimination in that it takes a very informal approach. That is, her language is conversational rather than flowery. Cisneros creates an image of a woman holding the "bloody fork she used to salvage her good name"--a reference to an abortion--describes her husband as a "man who farts and belches and snores," and says that the flowers are so red that they appear to be "bleeding a thick menstrual color." Before this contemporary period, literature focusing on women's rights did not take such a vulgar tone. But I believe the point of this period we are in is to challenge convention, to do something that has not been done before, and Cisneros accomplishes that.

The story has a happy ending: Cleofilas escapes her abusive husband in a pick-up (not some "pussy car," Cisneros says) and experiences cathartic laugher as she crosses Woman Hollering Creek--a symbolic name because not many places in the area are named after women. Cleofilas succeeds in fleeing from her inferior position in the relationship, therefore Cisneros succeeds as a women's rights advocate. I like her style because she empowers women to take a stand without presenting an angry critique of males in general and without glorifying women to the point that they almost appear on a higher pedestal than men. Her work is fresh and that is a nice change of pace from the classic literature to which our society gives so much importance.

[BONUS] Irish Folk Music Concert

I just returned from a concert performed by two Irish folk singers: Mairtin de Cogain and Jimmy Crowley. The music was very pleasant and I had a great time. The concert was held outdoors in the Shell and the weather was perfect. I expected more decorations for the event, but the layout of the stage was very simplistic--two microphone stands, two speakers, and an Irish flag. This layout facilitated enjoying the music without being distracted by visuals, which was nice.

Mr. de Cogain played an instrument I had never seen before; it resembled a tambourine without the bells and is played using something similar to a drumstick. The music was very relaxing and a few of the songs were funny. One song was about a female character who nagged too much and was drowned in the river for being a neusance. My personal favorite was about a woman named Maria de la Rosa. She is described as having green eyes and red hair, and as their singing created a beautiful mental image for me. I laughed when they said that she sings in Spanish, given the Irish theme of the event. I also enjoyed de Cogain's description of Ireland's geography--it is a big, fuzzy, green teddy bear lying down on its right side. Each time he provided the origin of one of the songs he would point to the part of his body that represents its location on the bear, err....country.

I am very glad that I attended this event as it was more entertaining than anything else I would have done. Also, this opportunity does not present itself often so I feel blessed to have been part of the audience. Now my desire to visit Ireland is greater than ever before!

Contemporary Poetry

This week's reading focuses on contemporary poetry. Authors include Rita Dove, Michael S. Harper, and Adrienne Rich. Having come even after the modernist movement, I expected the poems of these authors to be to most bizarre yet. I expected that they will find new ways to challenge old conventions of poetry and to create a style that did not exist before their time. In some instances, my expectations were met, but I found some of them to be surprisingly ordinary.

Rita Dove's poem "Fox Trot Fridays" is interesting in that the first 8 stanzas have two lines each and the final stanza only has one line. This form lends itself to rhyme with 8 couplets, but there is no rhyme scheme anywhere in the poem. Dove also uses enjambment a lot--most of the time there is no punctuation at the end of her lines, or even at the end of her stanzas. Her stanzas also often begin in lower-case. As for her subject, she seems to delight in the ordinary. In "Banneker" the subject does nothing but "lie under a pear tree," and she says of Parks in "Rosa" that "doing nothing was the doing."

Like Dove, Harper too celebrates African American culture. He wrote a poem for John Coltrane, a famous jazz musician, in which he immortalizes Coltrane's birthplace, music, and instrument. The form of this piece resembles jazz in that there is no overall pattern. It is not governed by rhyme, meter, or rules of grammar. Harper pays tribute to the four black girls killed in a church in Alabama in "American History" and to Martin Luther King Jr. in "Martin's Blues."

Rich is like Harper in that she admires civil rights leaders. Rich herself has struggled with homosexuality and her role as a female in society. Just as the girl in "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" is only a family member by default (there is no blood connection), females were not always welcomed in the male-dominated world of the past. She advocates gender equality in "Diving into the Wreck" by giving account of both the mermaid and the merman, also by following with "I am she: I am he." In her final stanza she says, "We are, I am, you are." The idea is that we are all one and the same; gender should not be a discriminating factor. Poems like this make her, in a way, a sort of civil rights activist herself.

After This- Alice McDermott

This week we are reading and discussing the novel "After This" by Alice McDermott. McDermott has been selected by the college to receive the Corrington Award. One of the things that sets her novel apart from others is its unusual structure--there is no distinguishable beginning, middle, and end. McDermott begins in medias res and does not wrap everything up neatly at the end. Some may think that this makes McDermott an inferior writer, but this is simply her style. Her goal is not to create and develop characters in the same fashion as other novels do, but rather to tell a story through a series of events. Another technique of hers is to bypass an entire decade in a single sentence. Therefore it is important that readers say alert while reading her work, lest they miss important details.

The novel is not only unusual in its structure, but also because of the many paradoxes it presents. For example, the docile son gets sent off to fight a war while the one who would make a good soldier stays in school to further his education. McDermott also gives accounts of fond memories as well as sad moments, making the tone both nostalgic and melancholy. This pair of conflicting tones emphsizes what seems to be her central point: there are good times and there are bad times, but life goes on.

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.