After watching the video on poetry with Donal Hall, I definitely started to think way more about the sound/shape/cadence of poetry and a type of musical connection that I haven’t been thinking about as much, but listening to him read his poetry really stuck with me. I thought many of the things he spoke of regarding his early life and the beginnings of writing poetry were so cool. I loved how he described feeling at ease in the right university atmosphere and how much the cultivation of a fantastic writing community can be for someone’s craft – the seriousness surrounding their work and a type of competitive push for each other to excel. I loved listening to that and connecting with our class, and how much I think we strive to be professional, take each other’s work seriously, and be helpful in our environment. Another aspect I took away from this video was how beautiful his poems about his grieving process with his wife are – one thing he said that stuck out for me was, “It was not grief and horror to write them; it was making grief and horror into poems.” I thought back to our class discussions on the shadow/bag we carry with us, the idea of writing from the scar, and how to remove ourselves from all that unhelpful venting to truly make something out of the less-than-ideal aspects of life. Both his insights surrounding defining poetry and his advice were just so reflective and appreciative of the way of life poetry can cultivate in us – like in his focus again on sound as both an entryway into defining poetry but also in how we as new poets can listen to and read aloud the work of great poets before us and get an ear for the meter. He also brought up such an interesting concept that all good poems should have this opposition and tension built into it, and the phrase where he said ambivalences are characteristics of every human mind and that it should be mirrored within the poem was a truly compelling moment for me in this interview.
Category: Uncategorized (Page 14 of 24)
- From the Novel:
“St. John is unmarried: he never will marry now…No fear of death will darken St. John’s last hour: his mind will be unclouded; his heart will be undaunted; his hope will be sure; his faith steadfast. His own words are a pledge of this: – “My Master,” he says, “has forwarned me. Daily he annouces more distinctly, – ‘Surely I come quickly’; and hourly I more eagerly respond, – ‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!” (Brontë 556).
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Broadview Press, 2022.
- Critical Commentary:
“…The way I think about it is theological, right? Whenever we’re dealing with someone’s death and the reasons behind their deaths. Brontë is always someone who thinks that there is a real Christainness to the way someone dies…Like Aunt Reed summons Jane, St. John is saying “Here I come, Lord Jesus,”…What’s theological about it to me is that every other character is given at least some conversation around their death, but this white creole woman, this mad woman, right – this alcoholic woman, this licentious woman, right, isn’t”
“On eyre: final thoughts”. Hot and bothered, Not sorry productions, 2023
- Historical Context:
“Henry says he is comfortably settled in Sussex [ where he was then a vicar], that his health is very improved and that it is his intention to take pupils after Easter – he then intimates that in due time he shall want a wife to take care of his pupils and frankly aks me to be that wife…I asked myself two questions – “Do I love Henry Nussey as much as a woman ought to love her husband? Am I the person best qualified to make him happy?” Alas Ellen my conscious answered “no” to both these questions”.
“What became of St. john rivers,” https://www.annebronte.org/2019/05/13/what-became-of-the-real-st-john-rivers/
- Visual
British Library “The Juvenile Missionary Magazine.” 1844.
october If anticipation was a song it would be you – your melody swept up in the floral curtains that mask my view of an outdoor not-so-dissimilar from your last coming now opaque through the soft light of your day's end. Your forecast is unknown the year spreads before you blind to the barren chill still fanning the flames that scorched your ground. Your sporadic pleasures you don’t seem to register hold my attention as I look out the window, It is you – October – that I hum along to.
If truth is pure and therefore simple we’d know deep down it is to endure and forget all this talk of the typical so we’d not so much care that nothing in love is ever fair. (ababcc)
- From the novel:
“What Janet! Are you an independent woman? A rich woman? “Quite rich, sir…”But as yiou are rich, Jane, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you, and not suffer you to devote youself to a blind lamenter like me?” “I told you I am independent, still, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.” “And you will sta with me?” “Certainly…”(Brontë 536).
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019.
- Critical Commentary:
“Theres, in examining Jane Eyre as Brontë’s rebellious commentary on the conventional marriage model as one that leaves wives in a powerless subject position, I both place the novel into a social context and explore the importance of doubles. In readings of Jane Eyre as Brontë’s critique of nineteenth-century marriage, one element of doubling that has been considered only tangeltially is that of remarriage. By placing the novel within the novel within the nineteenth-century social practice of doubling I argue that the gothic device of the doppelganger reveals the potentially powerless subject position of both first and second wife in that Brontë contstitues Jane as Bertha’s alter ego, rather than the other way around”
“Nicole A. Diederich, Gothic Doppelgangers and Discourse: Examining the Doubling Practice of (Re)Marriage in “Jane Eyre” • Issue 6.3 • Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies.” Www.ncgsjournal.com, www.ncgsjournal.com/issue63/diederich.html.
- Historical Context:
“A woman of twenty-one becomes an independent human creature, capable of holding and administering property to any amount; or, if she can earn monet, she may appropriate her earnings freely to any purpose she thinks good…But if she unites herseld to a man, the law immediately steps in, and she finds herseld legislated for, and her condition of life suddenly and entirely changed. Whatever age she may be of, she is again considered an infant – she is again under ‘resonable restraint’ – she loses her seperate existence and is merged in that of her husband. “In short,” says Judge Hurlburt, “a woman is courted and wedded as an angel, and yet denied the dignity of a rational moral being ever after”. “
Smith, Barbara Leigh, and Boston Public Library. A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws Concerning Women : Together with a Few Observations Thereon. Internet Archive, London : Holyoake and Co., 1856, archive.org/details/briefsummaryinpl00smit/page/n5/mode/2up. Accessed 5 Dec. 2023.
Garrett, Edmund. “The Figure of Bertha Mason (1897).” Illustration of Bertha Mason, The British Library.
Wanting
The leaves fall about – telling of the
passage of time
eyes pierce out of the havoc
– wanting to soak up all the
elements – utilize every sense
The feeling that comes – an unquenched
desire for these flickers of outside
can never completely satisfy
Just then – the wind quiets, a breath
– a moment of respite –
just as it returns in a gust ten-fold
in strength that breath – sucked away
Solace scrapped away from fingertips
the thrust is great – the spin is strong,
the ride continues
Stillness of the morning Close your eyes see the beauty that surrounds that warms Listen to the stillness feel the strength of the quiet Look far – way out to the horizon as it changes its hue There is so much beauty here to feel The sun, its power is immense capable of lifting the spirit enchanting the coldest soul warming it to a smile Lie still here for just a moment, feel the warmth in your face feel the wondrous life that if given the chance, can completely engulf you – surrender to this beauty.
Blank slate The counter looks at me – an icy-white canvas that’s coolness penetrates my gaze. When the day ends lost and tired it is a blinding pyramid that beacons far and wide calling my attention blindingly. To tarnish so soon, to stain, smear, smudge, and splatter. It’s gaze asks where to go, what to do, its canvas waits to be created.
Vienna by Moonlight Only less than twenty-four hours before, they filled the scene as celestial kin. The anxious train pulls into the station, hesitates with a humming thrill of tomorrow, aching as it trembles in the echos of its end, then, off again with a magnetism untouched. Wanderings in an evening, transient players posing as shooting stars – they were there last night – though no marks were left, no stone etched littered by our desire to be remembered, daydream delusions, as quickly as the taste of honey pricks our tongue, ravaged by the inevitable break of day. Now, mists of seething stardust settle on the stone, yet know, the pull of dawn will remember that they were there that night.
I Care/Who Cares What happens when the smile of reassurance fades – who cares when the giver receives no reciprocation. What happens when there is simply too much too deep too overrun. What happens when the warmth of my words my actions find their home perfectly, I, calloused and shivering. What does that leave me? Why should I care peeling away ripping out to speak what I feel toward you. I don’t care, who cares?
Writing Reflection:
To start the reflection process of my writing for this project, I also should mention that I had a draft of this poem sitting in a journal from the middle of August – a very rough draft, more just some phrases and feelings – that I knew I wanted to write about and explore more fully, especially as I also tend to gravitate towards this writing around the turn of the seasons and my own self-reflection. For the first few drafts of the poem in the book, I stayed pretty close to my original day one entry with the ideas and structures and this emphasis on the heavy connections between the change of the season and the awareness of change within myself – growing up, different versions of youth, etc. But then I knew the emphasis wanted to be on the torn feeling of being in awe of the changes and this feeling that you cannot quite describe. That shifted me away from some of the really heavy, cliche-like phrases into more of a narrative questioning but still some natural imagery. As I moved from draft to draft over the course of the days, I found phrases that I liked and tried to incorporate them in different places within the poem and witnessed how they changed the meaning or reading of the poem. I still am not sure which version best encapsulates the feeling I had – and still have – but I do know that the themes and descriptors of nature and almost this existential awareness and longing can be universal throughout time but also can totally consume one singular moment.
Bookmaking Reflection:
For the bookmaking aspect of this project, I wanted to stick with primarily collage and then add a few emphasizing marks within the poem itself, but to keep it simple. For the imagery, I found some magazine clippings and photos I had in my vogues, New Yorker, etc., and just leafed through until I found something that hit the poem’s feeling. For one, this idea of seasons and nature seemed to play along with the essence of the poem and its drafts, where there is this subtle change but an apprehension to acknowledge it fully and to be conscious of the passage of time. For this, I chose the front and back covers to go together and be cohesive from start to end. There was this great set of an image where a bud was coupled with the word arrival and then a blooming flower labeled departure. I felt this was so evocative and played into my poem, where change doesn’t always mean gloom or decay but can actually indicate growth and a moment of reflection. Other elements, such as the pear and the greenery of trees, were very reminiscent of August and this almost past-ripe, souring of days at the end of summer to then the back cover showcasing a crisp change with more blues and oranges and also this emergence of a mountainous peak and the clock. Within the pages of the drafts themselves, I chose some colors, such as blues and greens, to embellish some of the key phrases or elements of each draft – also the spiraling leaves to match the words of the rustling leaves, some ocean doodles on the drafts with the ocean reference.
Final Poem:
Season’s End And so, this simple thought just sitting, asks why the night’s intoxicating luster blinds us to the overripe morning whose hour threatens to catch us. What is it that just sits within yet cannot clearly be defined through the murky dew-soaked air. For it is not sadness, joy, or fear, and its peak – though never clearly seen – invites the turn of the scene, each tired rustle of the leaves chimes of wasted time
