Mark Jarman: Assignment 4

Mark Jarman (1952 - ) is a New Formalist. He takes traditional forms (for example, the Petrarchan sonnet) and applies to them a twenty-first century spin. Jarman grew up in Southern California, where his father was a minister. He is currently the centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Here are some especially interesting/useful websites to familiarize you with Jarman:

a brief guide to New Formalism

a recording of Jarman reading Ground Swell

a January 1999 interview with Jarman published in The Cortland Review, in which he discusses his poem "The Word 'Answer'"(which is like four sonnets together):

"The Word 'Answer'"
"Prayer exerts an influence upon God's action, even
upon his existence. This is what the word 'answer' means."
-- Karl Barth, Prayer

Lightning walks across the shallow seas,
Stick figures putting feet down hard
Among the molecules. Meteors dissolve
And drop their pieces in a mist of iron,
Drunk through atomic skin like a dreamy wine.
The virus that would turn a leaf dark red
Seizes two others that would keep it green.
They spread four fingers like a lizard's hand.
Into this random rightness comes the prayer,
A change of weather, a small shift of degree
That heaves a desert where a forest sweated,
And asks creation to return an answer.
That's all it wants: a prayer just wants an answer,
And twists time in a knot until it gets it.

There's the door. Will anybody get it?
That's what he's wondering; the bath's still warm;
And by the time he towels off and puts on
His pajamas, robe, and slippers and goes down,
They'll be gone, won't they? There's the door again;
And nobody's here to answer it but him.
Perhaps they'll go away. But it's not easy,
Relaxing in the tub, reading the paper,
With someone at the front door, ringing and pounding,
And -- that sounds like glass -- breaking in.
At least the bathroom door's securely bolted.
Or is that any assurance in this case?
He might as well go find out what's the matter.
Whoever it is must really want ... something.

We ask for bread, he makes his body bread.
We ask for daily life, and every day,
We get a life, or a facsimile,
Or else we get a tight place in a crowd
Or test results with the prognosis -- bad.
We ask and what is given is the answer,
For we can always see it as an answer,
Distorted as it may be, from our God.
What shall we ask for then? For his return,
Like the bereaved parents with the monkey's paw,
Wishing, then wishing again? The last answer,
When we have asked for all that we can ask for,
May be the end of time, our mangled child,
And in the doorway, dead, the risen past.

With this prayer I am making up a God
On a gray day, prophesying snow.
I pray that God be immanent as snow
When it has fallen thickly, a deep God.
With this prayer I am making up a God
Who answers prayer, responding like the snow
To footprints and the wind, to a child in snow
Making an angel who will speak for God.
God, I am thinking of you now as snow,
Descending like the answer to a prayer,
This prayer that you will be made visible,
Drifting and deepening, a dazzling, slow
Acknowledgment, out of the freezing air,
As dangerous as it is beautiful.

-Mark Jarman


Finally, here's a performance of Jarman's Unholy Sonnet 20 ("If God survives us, will his kingdom come?") set to music:



Prompts for Tuesday (select one):

1)Pick one of Jarman's Unholy Sonnets and discuss it in depth. Is Jarman's poem a sonnet? Why or why not? How does it differ from Donne's poetry? How is it similar? Do you believe Jarman is still a formalist if he takes such liberties (ie, for you, when is a sonnet no longer a sonnet?)

2)Examine one of Jarman's Unholy Sonnets in relation to one of Jarman's longer poems in the packet (or "The Word 'Answer'") Would the sonnet have worked better in longer form, or the longer poem been more effective condensed into a sonnet?

Please be as specific as possible, and remember to PROOFREAD your response before you post. As always, I'm available to answer any questions.

John Donne: Assignment #3

For next Thursday, I'm asking you to write a Petrarchan sonnet. You'll appreciate the Divine Meditations (Holy Sonnets) more. So, let's get 'er Donne!



John Donne often "broke the rules" when writing his sonnets: meaning he departed from a strict Petrarchan form. He deviated knowingly and skillfully. In order to break the rules, you first need to learn them.

The poet Petrarch (1304-1374) popularized the sonnet in Renaissance Italy. He penned a sequence of love poems addressed to Laura, a married woman he saw in a church and idolized/stalked.



The English later adapted the form, adding a closing couplet and a different rhyme scheme, and the Shakespearean sonnet was born.

Donne wrote in the original Italian form. A Petrarchan sonnet specifies 14 lines divided into two parts. The first part is the Octet (8 lines), which presents an idea, often problematic and doubt-inducing. The second part is the Sestet (6 lines), which comments on, or offers a solution to, questions raised in the Octet.

Now things get crazy. The Petrarchan sonnet employs a set rhyme scheme which changes between the Octet and the Sestet. Remember -- the Octet introduces a philosophical quandary or question, and the Sestet attempts an answer. So the rhyme scheme in a Petrarchan sonnet changes to reflect the shift in subject matter.

The movement from Octet to Sestet happens in line 9. In Italian, the word for this "turn" is Volta, and it marks the introduction of the poem's second idea. The first eight lines in a Petrarchan sonnet have an ABBA ABBA rhyme scheme. After the Volta, the next six lines can rhyme a variety of ways:

1) c d d c d d
2) c d e d c c
3) c d c d c d

(Of course, once you've considered subject matter, and sectioning, and rhyme scheme, you still have to write in iambic pentameter .)

OK, a sonnet isn't easy, so take a deep breath. It starts with baby steps. I would first decide what I wanted to write about. Visualize the separation between Octave and Sestet. What is your speaker struggling with/questioning in the first eight lines? What happens at the Volta to change the tone of the poem, to attempt to resolve or clarify doubt in the last six? Read Donne's Holy Sonnets closely. Read them out loud . Get a feel for his sounds and rhythms.

In your own sonnet, think about using enjambment as well as slant rhyme (hurt/heart) to contemporize your voice. Be creative. Think metaphorically. If you aren't writing in perfect iambic pentameter, keep going -- Donne did -- and remember that poets tweak form, that sometimes, like Donald Hall says, a poem starts out north but ends up south. Check out Marilyn Hacker if you're stuck (she writes modern Petrarchan sonnets). Wikihow also has a decent explanation of how to write a sonnet (be sure to focus on the Petrarchan).

Next Thursday, I'm asking that you submit not just your final sonnet to me, but your multiple drafts.

Finally, here is your prompt for this week (response due Tuesday by noon):

Pick one of Donne's Holy Sonnets and examine the Volta. Consider some of the following: What happens in the turn? What consumes the speaker in the first eight lines? Is it a spiritual concern? Is it stated explicitly, or indirectly through metaphor? What resolves in the last six lines? Do questions get answered/problems fixed? Does the speaker's tone change towards his subject?

Jane Kenyon: Assignment #2

In a March 1993 interview with David Bradt, Kenyon says about her poems:

"Almost always if I search I can find something in the natural world -- an objective correlative in Eliot's phrase -- that embodies what I'm feeling at the moment. That's when a poem really takes off. For instance, I wrote a poem recently called 'Coats', in which I'm going into Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital and a man is coming out of the hospital with a distraught look on his face, carrying a woman's coat over his arm. I see that, and I know what's happened. That poem threw itself at my feet: 'Write me! Write me!' I found that my talking about the coats -- the man's coat and the woman's coat -- I was able to write the poem. I made up the part about the man's coat in this poem. I say that even though the day was warm, he had zipped his own coat and tied the hood under his chin, as 'if preparing for irremediable cold.' It's only three stanzas long, about twelve lines, and it's all about the coats. Maybe he was taking his wife's coat to the cleaner. I doubt it; the emotional truth for me was that he had lost his wife. Lots of people would walk past that man without seeing his situation. I couldn't help seeing it!"

After carefully reviewing the definition of Eliot's objective correlative here, look at one Kenyon poem in the packet and discuss, much in the way she herself discusses the creation of "Coats," how the situation/location/thing in the poem evokes an emotion.

You also have the option of picking one poem and arguing why you think Kenyon fails at the objective correlative. What is it about the situation/location/thing in the poem that doesn't translate into an emotion? Or does the poem simply state the emotion too explicitly? How would you have altered the poem to produce a deeper reader response?

Remember, you must post by noon on Tuesday, and you need at least 500 words to receive credit.

Anna Akhmatova: Assignment #1

After you have read through the packet of Akhmatova poems, please respond to one of the following two prompts in the comments section of this blog. You need at least 500 words to receive credit. Doesn't it look like these instructions are coming straight from Akhmatova's mouth? Yes, yes it does. So pay attention.


Prompt #1: In her introduction to Twenty Poems, Kenyon writes "Because it is impossible to translate with fidelity to form and image, I have sacrificed form for image. Image embodies feeling, and this embodiment is perhaps the greatest treasure of lyric poetry." Do you agree or disagree? Pick one of the translations by Kenyon in this packet and discuss her use of imagery. What are the images in the poem? Are they symbolic or, as Gumilev proposed with Acmeism, simply literal ("a rose is beautiful in itself, not because it stands for something")? Do the images succeed in the poem, or leave you unsatisfied? Why?

Prompt #2: I have provided you with side-by-side Kenyon and Kunitz translations of "The Guest" and "Heart's Memory of Sun." Pick one of those two poems and explain to me, citing specific words or lines, how two translations of the same poem affect your experience of it. (Do you like one translation over the other? Why?) What do you like/dislike about Kenyon's linguistic choices? Can you trace the reasoning behind the different decisions each translator made?

Remember: you have until noon on Tuesday to post your response -- although the earlier you post, the easier it will be for me to note your comments before class. You are encouraged to agree/disagree with each other as well. Just be respectful, and if you piggyback on someone else's response, don't simply rehash his/her argument (or you won't receive credit).

Finally, I found a video of Akhmatova reading her poem "To the Muse" in 1946. It's only 39 seconds worth of footage, but gives you an idea of what her poems sound like in Russian. You can hear a musicality lacking in the English translations.

Welcome!

I am proud to unveil the ENGL-233 class blog. Very few of you proposed names, so it came down to either "Fantastic-Super-Happy-Fun Blog" or "Spiders" (I found the latter to be a bit ominous, but maybe that's just my arachnophobia). Check back Thursday night for the prompt on Akhmatova.

Here is a list of the poems (with links if possible) you chose as memorable. The only two poets still living are Maya Angelou and Melissa Underwood, so I look forward to introducing you to more contemporary writers.

"Richard Cory" by Edwin Robinson
"A Poison Tree" by William Blake
"Only a Curl" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"The Will to Win" by Melissa Underwood
"Continuities" by Walt Whitman
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot
"Sniper's Serenity" by Robert Baird
"Dream Deffered" by Langston Hughes
"Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou
"If you were coming in the fall" by Emily Dickinson
"Footprints in the Sand" by Mary Stevenson
"Bluebird" by Charles Bukowski
"I had a guinea golden" by Emily Dickinson
"The Daffodils" by William Wordsworth
"Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes
"Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot
"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe
"Sick" by Shel Silverstein
"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas
"Whatif" by Shel Silverstein

A poem that continues to matter to me, with increasing resonance, is "I Go Back to May 1937" by Sharon Olds. Sharon was my instructor in my N.Y.U. Graduate Program, and I was her assistant for a year. I admire how the poem is simultaneously specific and expansive. The speaker uses a particular photograph as a spring-board for reflection; in just 30 lines, we learn of a troubled parent-child relationship and a destructive marriage, and most interestingly, past and present overlap. The poem is also a kind of "Ars Poetica," or statement of poetry's intentions: that it bears witness to the difficult, that art sublimates pain ("I say/Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.").

I Go Back to May 1937

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the
wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips black in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don't do it--she's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty blank face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don't do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips like chips of flint as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Here's a clip of Sharon Olds reading a lighthearted poem on Def Poetry Jam: