Nuts and Blots Poetry

So this week's lecture was on simple poetry that deals with everyday topics. I recalled a poem that a teacher used to refer to constantly within class, during lecture and have found it and have posted it below.

Its not a long poem which makes me think that it may be an epigram, which I have found a number of definitions for. Some definitions include: a) an inscription of verse on a tomb or a coin, b) a short poem appearing at the start of a longer poem and c) a short humerous poem written in couplets used to make a satiric point. I'm not sure if it really is an epigram but here it is anyway:

This is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Hope that the silliness of the poem brought a smile to your face! Any ideas on whether that is an epigram or not?

sv

Heros, Honour and Epics

Monday’s lecture the topic was about Heroes, Epics and Honour. I looked up both honour and hero on the Merriam-Webster On-Line Dictionary. I also looked up chivalrous, why I have looked up that word as well will be revealed to you in a few moments.

Honour has several meanings, a few of which are:
- A keen sense of ethical conduct
- One’s word given as a guarantee of performance
- A good name or public esteem

A hero is listed as being:
- An illustrious warrior
- A man admired for his achievements and noble qualities
- One that shows great courage
- The central figure in an event, period, or movement

Chivalrous is explained to be:
- marked by honor, generosity, and courtesy
- Valiant (possessing or acting with bravery or boldness)

I realize that the prof discussed the definitions of these words I just wanted to post them here as a further illustration of their lack in our present society. This lack of honour and heroes leaves us baffled as to what they are, how are we to find them, and wondering if they even exist?!

To me honour involves those things listed above but also deals with conduct in battle, a sentiment that was echoed in tutorial. In my previous post, the fact that there is no longer honour in our type of battle is what I was trying to express...there is nothing respectable or fair in picking off people with machine guns or bombs! The prof’s example about the British using long distance archers to kill the French was perfect! It is a prime example of how combat has changed from being melee (hand to hand) to long distance (bows and arrows, guns, bombs). With that change of how wars were fought came a change of ethics. Now almost anything goes in warfare…with the exception of intentionally killing women, children and attacking hospitals but even that happens sometimes.

To me another adjective that accompanies honour wherever it goes is chivalrous. As the definition mentioned it includes acts of honour and bravery together. Interesting? Since we no longer have honourable combat or chivalrous acts, how could we possibly still have heroes? Those two aspects are central to the classification of a hero and therefore we can conclude that heroes are a historical myth!

My proof for stating that heroes are historical myth comes from my medieval history class, where coincidentally we are talking about the evolution of culture, circa 11th and 12th century. One of the cultures that emerged is that of men of war. The central characteristics of these men of war were honour and chivalrous behaviour…is not that neat how it all seems to come together! Due to these characteristics being exemplified in certain individuals, a number of the outstanding warriors became known as heroes. That brings us to the topic of epics. When these warriors became known as heroes, there came a certain amount of notoriety associated with it because people would talk about him and all of his brave deeds. Eventually this talk, turned into lyric poetry which was to be performed on stage with the accompaniment of music. This oral tradition all created a genre referred to by my medieval history professor as courtly romances which were long prose narratives about young knights going on a quest for adventure to validate his sense of masculinity. Sounds kinda like parts of the Iliad?!

At any rate, to me there is a lacking of honour, heroes and chivalrous behaviour in our modern day world. This is troubling because as we can tell from the both the history books and the literary masterpieces we are truly missing out on something stupendous.

sv

Lest We Forget

Remembrance Day is tomorrow and it seems fitting that something should be written about war and its modifiers. Tomorrow I have class, as many of us do I’m sure, and I wonder if we will take a minute of silence at the appropriate time (11am) to remember our lost ones? I doubt it greatly and this saddens me because:

"Remembrance Day confers upon us a moral obligation to pay to tribute those 1.5 million fellow citizens who went overseas last century to fight for freedom. They represented one-sixteenth of this country’s population, three-quarters of whom were teenagers, boys trying to be men. They scarcely knew what they were living for, much less had enough time to learn what they were dying for. Their lives were extinguished like a flame in the wind."1

I realize that I am being pretty presumptuous in stating that my prof will not be upholding the minute of silence! But somehow I feel that he will find his lecture material more pressing to cover and despite being a historian who has studied the tragedy of numerous wars through time, will neglect to pause in remembrance for those that died for us. As a side bar: I will feel like a total schlep if we did take time for a minute of silence!

These young men and teenagers had families, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, and children that they were leaving behind in order to go overseas to battle in a war. Granted the mentality or reason for the war was important…FREEDOM…but at what cost is war justifiable? “The unvarnished truth is that war always begets more war and more killing fields. It generates the very evil it seeks to destroy and its psychological, social, spiritual and human costs are immeasurable.”2 That idea that war generates more killing is eerily accurate since it truly does. All we have to do is look into our history and realize that there are minuet periods of…what I will not refer to as PEACE because no such thing exists anymore if it ever did…re-organization, repopulation and re-arming.

As a rough estimation there is about twenty years between most of the modern wars, such as WWI and II, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf. Is that merely a coincidence that it takes about twenty years for the population to grow up and reach an ideal age for a soldier? Twenty years provides enough time for societies to organize their military operations? In twenty years, manufacturers are able to produce more sophisticated weapons? Or have I watched one too many X-File episodes so that now my head is filled with conspiracy theories?

At any rate…the repercussions of World War I reverberated in society for years and in my personal and non-expert position, consumed society until the start of World War II:

"A war changes people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations…provid[ed] you don’t take flight from a burst shell, you emerged from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you’ve gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone who, through a bizarre coincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but must have died in the war. And you have no choice but to live as an imposter because you can’t remember who you were before the war."3

We all think of how horrible it must have been for these soldiers to have died gruesomely in battle…and indeed it must have been horrible and none of us could ever experience that! But after reading the above excerpt would it not be more terrible to come home? Imagine trying to live your old life but not being able to because all you can hear is the ringing in your ears from the bombs and bullets? Or see the faces of your dead friends? Look at your hands and seem them covered in blood and human waste? I would think that coming home would be far worse. It would be like living in your own private hell from which no matter how hard you try, you cannot escape.

I will return now to being killed it battle and who that affects because it seems that I have glossed over that point…something that I did not intend to do. In pre-modern history, to die in battle was honourable and desirable for warriors and soldiers. There was no greater honour than to die for one’s country on the battle field after having wielded ones sword or bow to physically stun and beat the opposition! However, with the invention of live ammunition battles were no longer won based upon skill with a sword but with who possessed more powerful guns. The use of guns and bombs in war only escalated the number of deaths amassed in war…there is a poem called Grass and the accompanying comments on Joanna Roberts' blog which helps illuminate this phenomenon of death quiet well.

There is no way that I can encapsulate the emotions and sensations felt by a soldier dying so I really will not even try. What I can try to describe is the feelings of those left at home: “Mrs. Luvovitz never recovers [from the loss of her two eldest sons in World War I]. She functions, has to because she has her youngest son, she has [her husband]…She took the news about
the boys very hard.”4 That example is what most mothers must have experienced after receiving the news that their children had died in a foreign country under painful circumstances. How would one continue to go about their daily business knowing that your children will never come home? I suppose that it can be paralleled to dealing with death in general…no it really can not! There is no grave to visit, no funeral mass and no opportunity to say a final goodbye. There is no consolation in being the mother of a soldier who has gone off to war. Plus it is a commonly held sentiment that parents should die before their children. No one should have to bury their child, but what happens when you cannot even do that?

I have never understood the concept of war…call me stupid if you would like…but I don’t understand how two opposing sides can face each other on a flat field and then either run, march, ride or walk towards the other one. Once close enough one side would fire and then the other side. Continuing this civility until either someone turned around and ran or all the people were killed. How bloody stupid! How could you stand there with your weapon ready and know that the next shot that will be fired could kill you?

We lost some of our best and brightest men and eventually women to war. An example of this is the poet Sidney Keyes. While leafing through the Norton a while back I came across his poems (there are only three!), the one that caught my eye was Elegy (In memoriam S.K.K.). It was well written so I wanted to know if I could find more of his poems and out of morbid curiosity I guess, I checked when he had died. To my shock he only lived for 21 years! I was stunned and then flipped to the back of the Norton where small biographies are provided and as I suspected because of the year of his death: “he was commissioned into his father’s regiment…[and] after only two weeks of active service he was captured…and died.”5 His life is not the only life lost, but it simply shows that war robs us all; of immediate family; security; stability; and on a more simplistic level of beautiful things like poetry.

War Poet
By: Sidney Keyes

I am the man who looked for peace and found
My own eyes barbed.
I am the man who groped for words and found
An arrow in my hand.
I am the builder whose firm walls surround
A slipping land.
When I grow sick or mad
Mock me not nor chain me:
When I reach for the wind
Cast me not down:
Though my face is a burnt book
And a wasted town.6

sv

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1 Mikelic, Peter. “Remembrance Day a Time to Recall the Lessons of War”. The Toronto Star 8 November 2004, Life Section.
2 Ibid.
3 MacDonald, Ann-Marie. Fall on Your Knees. Vintage Canada, Toronto: 1996. pg. 115.
4 Ibid. pg. 104.
5 Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, eds. The Norton Anthology of Poetry, fourth edition. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, New York: 1996. pg. 1910.
6 Ibid, pg. 1540

Where Did it All Begin...For Me Anyway!

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Let me start off by saying that it is a mircle that this blog is even being posted! Everytime

that I have tried to post it either something has come up, I've had technical trouble or my crazy family has been harassing me. So grrrrrr....and thank goodness it has finally made it!
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I can recall doing poetry units in grade school but they were nothing fancy or awe inspiring. I do not even have any of the poems to post here as examples of my lack of poetry brilliance.

A memory from childhood that sticks out in my mind very clearly is the borrowing of a particular poetry book from a friend. I was maybe in grade four at the time and just finding my independent reading legs. The book was Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein and the friend (I think!) was Tonia who is incidentally in this class.

Here’s a brief bio on Shel Silverstein…he was an American poet, who also illustrated, composed and performed musical works. Some of his other popular works include: The Giving Tree, A Light in the Attic and Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros? He never actually planned to write children’s books but was convinced by several of his friends to try it. What resulted was astonishing poetry and accompanying illustrations that were playfully clever and stone cold serious. His works were enjoyed by both adults and the young alike. His death was a loss to the literary community and to us all.

At any rate, Where the Sidewalk Ends totally captivated me! Silverstein’s creativity, imagination, illustrations and spontaneity were intoxicating. I kept the book for weeks on end and Tonia had to ask for the book back since I kept it for so long. Before giving the book back I recall photocopying almost all of it…how was I to know that was against copyright laws at the age of eight? Oops.

What Where the Sidewalk Ends did for me a child was inspire me to go to the library and delve deeper into poetry books. I can vividly remember sitting in the children’s book section at the Richview Public Library in Etobicoke with poetry books strewn every which way. The organized chaos was orchestrated to help me decide which books I would take home with me to read until the next time I could go to the library.

Another poetry book that I vaguely remember from childhood has something to do with blackberry jam. Since I could not remember the title I could not find the book. I am pretty sure that there was a picture of a toy bear on the cover eating blackberry jam from the jar. If anyone knows what book I am talking about please let me know!

Below I offer up a bit of a teaser from Where the Sidewalk Ends. These are by no means the only poems that I like from the collection, but these are the ones that I specifically remember catching my eye so many years ago.

Invitation

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer…
If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

This poem starts off the collection of poems and literally beckons us to read further into the collection. Silverstein is appealing to all types of people to come and enjoy his poetry; there are no biases in his fantasy world of flax-gold stories. The double use of Come in! at the end of the poem, makes me think of knocking on a door. This image is constructed by both the way it is placed on the page and the actual rhythm of the words.

The Crocodile’s Toothache

The Crocodile
Went to the dentist
And sat down in the chair
And the dentist said, “Now tell me, sir,
Why does it hurt and where?”
And the Crocodile said, “I’ll tell you the truth,
I have a terrible ache in my tooth,”
And he opened his jaws so wide, so wide,
That the dentist, he climbed right inside,
And the dentists laughed, “Oh isn’t this fun?”
As he pulled the teeth out, one by one.
And the Crocodile cried, “You’re hurting me so!
Please put down your pliers and let me go.”
But the dentist just laughed with a Ho Ho Ho,
And he said, “I still have twelve to go –
Oops, that’s the wrong one, I confess,
But what’s one crocodile’s tooth, more or less?”
Then suddenly, the jaws went SNAP,
And the dentist was gone, right off the map,
And where he went one could only guess…
To North or South or East or West…
He left no forwarding address.
But what’s one dentist, more or less?

No how fun is that poem?! Who actually pictured the dentist crawling into the crocodile’s big mouth?! I know that I did! In the text, there is actually a drawn picture of that which I think is just awesome! Anyway…The poem makes use of some good devices, such as a patterned rhyme scheme with alternate lines rhyming. This gives it that sing-song quality which makes it rather endearing to children and to me. How the word SNAP is put in all caps makes the reader hear the sound, plus the word is onomatopoeia.

For those of you that have never read anything by Silverstein, I recommend going to the library and taking something out by him. You will not regret it.
sv

some information taken from: http://www.nassio.com/silverstein/books.html