jdocker

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though.
He will not see me stopping here,
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer,
To stop without a farmhouse near,
Between the woods and frozen lake,
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake,
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep,
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

 Robert Frost

I remember sitting in class a few weeks ago and Prof. Kuin saying that Robert Frost is a good poet to begin with. That is why I decided to share this poem. This is the, very first, poem that I ever memorized. I memorized it for an acting class while I was in theatre school and it has managed to linger in my head for several years. I love it because It can be read on several levels and still enjoyed for face value. It rolls off the tongue with a beautiful aaba bbcb rhyming scheme that paints a serene landscape for us to walk through.

The poem has its obviouse metaphors of death and awaiting it, but it also deals with obligation to a world of material goods. He has the peace of the woods that evening but also obligations with people “promises to keep”. His miles to go before I sleep is a wonderful phrase about how only death may truly bring about this sort of peace that the woods offershim. It seems as though the traveler is completely sure about this silent place while his hoarse is the one that is hesitant about there stop.

So… on my last post of the year I think that I should share something that is meaningful and true to who I am and to the peace that we are all looking to find.

Don’t forget the fun that is in the miles we travel before we sleep.

James

It seems as though every week I sit in tutorial and become more and more inspired to write and inspired to think. I am a former theatre student who’s idea of thinking does not fall into the common definition of thinking. I believe that “thinking” is the process of pondering things that truly move the soul. Things that grab a person by the ass (excuse the expression), lifts them out of their seat, and consumes them for a period of time. It may only be a short period, but for that brief period that person is excited and inspired.

-That is what this class has done for me. It has given me new material in which I have been able to play with and draw from. It has introduced me to the different shades, colour’s, and pitches of emotions. It has been a class in which grades have been secondary and the pursuit of knowledge has been at the forefront. I already feel a sense of loss knowing that it is almost over.

Like many of the other poems in this course, Wallace Stevens was able to draw a picture with words and fill it with the spirit of life. The Sparrow being watched and us watching the sparrow is such a huge idea that he is able to catch in a few lines. It is very Zen and yet is very approachable from all stand points. It brings together all that we have learnt over the year and makes us step outside of the first person while keeping us inside of the poem. The stillness of the great mountains and the life in the little sparrow would seem to be at battle with one and other but he is able to keep this perfect balance of the two and make it seem just as it ought to be.

I hope all have enjoyed this course as much as I have and I thank you all for you beautiful words and inspiring thoughts.

I will post again and I hope you all do as well.

James.

Remember, remember the fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, twas his intent
To blow up king and parliament.
Three score barrels were laid below
To prove old England's overthrow.
By God's mercy he was catched
With a dark lantern and lighted match.
Holler boys, holler boys, let the bells ring
Holler boys, holler boys, God save the King

I was fortunate enough this weekend to watch a Movie called “V for Vendetta”. This movie was about an anti-superhero who modeled himself after the one and only Guy Fawkes. After watching this movie I decided to look up this poem and found that it was not a great poem in the technical sense but a great poem for the way that it is used. This poem was taught to children after Guy Fawkes tried and then hung, drawn, and quartered. This poem instilled fear into children and adults alike and showed that treason would not be taken lightly. This poem was and still is accompanied by a commemorative day in which they still burn fake “Guy’s” and set off fire works.

This still shows the power of poetry and the many uses it can have on people. In this case it still acts as a warning for people not to smuggle barrels upon barrels of gun powder beneath parliament in an elaborate plan to blow it up.

This brought back memories of when I lived in England because I remember this day every November 5th in which a huge bonfire was lit and once more Guy Fawkes is burnt at the stake.

To say that I am a huge fan of the World War 1 & 2 probably comes across as a bad thing. What I really mean is I find them to be very interesting times in the last century. I find history to be so interesting and full of things that we, in our present time, have trouble wrapping our heads around. I also think that such a stressful time in a person’s life causes a person to prioritize their priorities.
I find Wilfred Owens, Anthem for a Doomed Youth, to be a conveyer belt for death. I love the idea of cattle marching off to the slaughter house to be killed. It seems to work quite well this reverse personification (I really don’t know what it is called) to make all the humans dying seem insignificant. This poem may be one of my favourites all year because it resonates so well with all the people who have dies and continue to die because if violent nature of the Alpha Male.

Owen makes people realize that when you die in war, you become a number and no candle will make your death seem worht while.

JAmes

I love Rudyard Kipling! As a child I had audio tapes of his “Just So Stories” and always used to listen to them before I went to bed. I know it’s not quite as good as reading but it did the trick. “How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin” was a personal favorite of mine. These stories seem to remind me, in a way, of Aesop’s fables because they sort of taught us a lesson in each story and a way of retaliation (at least in the case of The Rhino’s skin).
Tommy also reminded me of something. It reminded me of a movie with Bill Murray Called Stripes (I know it doesn’t have the same credibility as Aesop but hey, what can you do? A memory is a memory no matter how silly it is.). It reminds me of Stripes because at one part in the movie they begin to march and sing and that’s what Kipling’s poem reminds me of; a line of British soldiers marching and singing. It has a song-like quality with a chorus element to it. The sense of repetition is wonderful because it gives everyone a sense of familiarity, even if it’s your first time hearing it. I also get this picture of an old album I used to have of rugby songs. The picture on the front of the album was of a rugby team sloshing their glasses of beer together and singing.


I have included a Just So Story for you to read.

Just So Stories

How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin

Rudyard Kipling

________________________________________
ONCE upon a time, on an uninhabited island on the shores of the Red Sea, there lived a Parsee from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Parsee lived by the Red Sea with nothing but his hat and his knife and a cooking-stove of the kind that you must particularly never touch. And one day he took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and things, and made himself one cake which was two feet across and three feet thick. It was indeed a Superior Comestible (that’s magic), and he put it on stove because he was allowed to cook on the stove, and he baked it and he baked it till it was all done brown and smelt most sentimental. But just as he was going to eat it there came down to the beach from the Altogether Uninhabited Interior one Rhinoceros with a horn on his nose, two piggy eyes, and few manners. In those days the Rhinoceros’s skin fitted him quite tight. There were no wrinkles in it anywhere. He looked exactly like a Noah’s Ark Rhinoceros, but of course much bigger. All the same, he had no manners then, and he has no manners now, and he never will have any manners. He said, ‘How!’ and the Parsee left that cake and climbed to the top of a palm tree with nothing on but his hat, from which the rays of the sun were always reflected in more-than-oriental splendour. And the Rhinoceros upset the oil-stove with his nose, and the cake rolled on the sand, and he spiked that cake on the horn of his nose, and he ate it, and he went away, waving his tail, to the desolate and Exclusively Uninhabited Interior which abuts on the islands of Mazanderan, Socotra, and Promontories of the Larger Equinox. Then the Parsee came down from his palm-tree and put the stove on its legs and recited the following Sloka, which, as you have not heard, I will now proceed to relate:—

‘Them that takes cakes
Which the Parsee-man bakes
Makes dreadful mistakes.’
And there was a great deal more in that than you would think.
Because, five weeks later, there was a heat wave in the Red Sea, and everybody took off all the clothes they had. The Parsee took off his hat; but the Rhinoceros took off his skin and carried it over his shoulder as he came down to the beach to bathe. In those days it buttoned underneath with three buttons and looked like a waterproof. He said nothing whatever about the Parsee’s cake, because he had eaten it all; and he never had any manners, then, since, or henceforward. He waddled straight into the water and blew bubbles through his nose, leaving his skin on the beach.
Presently the Parsee came by and found the skin, and he smiled one smile that ran all round his face two times. Then he danced three times round the skin and rubbed his hands. Then he went to his camp and filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the Parsee never ate anything but cake, and never swept out his camp. He took that skin, and he shook that skin, and he scrubbed that skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full of old, dry, stale, tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could possibly hold. Then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and waited for the Rhinoceros to come out of the water and put it on.
And the Rhinoceros did. He buttoned it up with the three buttons, and it tickled like cake crumbs in bed. Then he wanted to scratch, but that made it worse; and then he lay down on the sands and rolled and rolled and rolled, and every time he rolled the cake crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse. Then he ran to the palm-tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself against it. He rubbed so much and so hard that he rubbed his skin into a great fold over his shoulders, and another fold underneath, where the buttons used to be (but he rubbed the buttons off), and he rubbed some more folds over his legs. And it spoiled his temper, but it didn’t make the least difference to the cake-crumbs. They were inside his skin and they tickled. So he went home, very angry indeed and horribly scratchy; and from that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the cake-crumbs inside.
But the Parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat, from which the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour, packed up his cooking-stove, and went away in the direction of Orotavo, Amygdala, the Upland Meadows of Anantarivo, and the Marshes of Sonaput.
________________________________________
THIS Uninhabited Island
Is off Cape Gardafui,
By the Beaches of Socotra
And the Pink Arabian Sea:
But it’s hot—too hot from Suez
For the likes of you and me
Ever to go
In a P. and 0.
And call on the Cake-Parsee!



So if you take away anything from the blog you should watch Stripes and read the rest of the Just So Stories.

Keep on Rocking the Paradise!

James

My last Duchess by Robert Browning is a great poem. It is the because at first it looks simple enough but as you look more and more closely it becomes clear that this poem has many layers to it. At first it looks as though Ferrara is just talking about his old wife who was just too nice and simple, but then as you read it over again, you begin to see that he is jealous. He wants to be the one that people fawn over and adore; he wants to be the one that people love. The poem goes through complex emotions, through the reading we can see that he is actually going through grief, it seems as though he is making excuses for why he doesn’t miss her. But he spends most of the poem doing this and in return ends up showing his immeasurable feeling of loss. It reminds me of my grandma, when my grandfather died. She didn’t cry at first, it was a few weeks later when all the fuss over was the first time that she really mourned the loss of the person with whom she spent most of her life with. This is, I believe, what Ferrara is going through. This is the first time he is really coming to terms with the fact that he will never see his wife smile again.
This poem is also written in iambic pentameter. This something that is always enjoyable to read. Another part of the technical aspect that I enjoyed was the use of punctuation because I think that it represents his stuttering and loss of words as he tries to justify his feelings at rather an inappropriate time.

And the question is; what do women do in the bathroom and why does it take them so long?

This question has proved to be unanswerable or hundreds of years and as the truth is revealed we find out that it is a truth that we (men) should leave unanswered. Jonathan Swift Began by answering this question in a satirical and humorous way that is bound to cause any reader to laugh out loud, but the more important question his poem brings up is why do men really want to know? Strephon is the main character in his poem and is smitten by Celia; a woman who is like a Goddess. This poem brings up the question of love and how it takes over a person's mind and body. Strephon begins rummaging and soon finds out that his goddess is more human than he could ever imagine. Her smells, her stains, and, oh yes, she shits all knock her off of this pedestal that this love struck fool has placed her on.

But more importantly as I read this poem I began to think of time and how it has changed this poem. First off, Peeping Toms would sooner be arrested than disgusted and bodily cleanliness is a much more important thing. Plus nowadays men are more educated and realize that women to complete these bodily functions that we find disgusting.

This poem does not stand out for its overall message, but for its ability to be humorous and satirical all by having great fun exploring love in a woman’s dressing room.

I enjoyed Thomas Gray’s poem, not for the godly sentiments, but for the beautiful imagery that is presented throughout the poem. His details to the images he presents are astounding and wonderful. They put you in his minds eye and allow you to look around. The churchyard is alive by the way he presents it from stanza to stanza. One of my favorite parts of the poem is:

9 Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
10 The moping owl does to the moon complain
11 Of such, as wandering near her secret bower,
12 Molest her ancient solitary reign.

I found this to be one of those stanzas that breath life into the churchyard. It gives a voice to the owl and personifies the moon in a way that makes it creep into secret places that nobody knows about.
I found the mages of God to be thrown in at the end. I’m not sure why only at the end he decides to bring god in, because up to that point I had found the poem a beautiful and stimulating read. The images of God however seem like an anticlimactic ending for a poem so rich in images. It Is only the Epitaph that takes away from the poem. It mentions “Melancholy” and really puts the poem into that state.

The poem is beautiful but could do with an ending that is richer and less somber. If the religious ending was as insightful as the nature images this poem end on a much more pleasing note.

Why should somebody use poetry in a play? Well…It is has been said, “if it can’t be said in words then we should be said with poetry, and if you can’t be said with poetry, then you should be sung with song.” These are all different layers of emotion and a good play offers all of these layers. This need for depth make plays the perfect place for a poem to sit. In Shakespeare a sonnet is often placed in the play and in Romeo and Juliet it actually opens up with one.

Chorus
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

I read somewhere (Professor Kuin’s blog) that poetry has the ability to say a lot in a very short time. It can uncover the world in the blink of an eye. This sonnet is beautiful because it maps out a two-hour performance in fourteen lines, with all of its “twists and turns” and “ins and outs”. Shakespeare talks about love, lust, death, civility, and hatred. He is also able to give the reader the location of the problem and the outcome as well. He also uses a chorus like the Greeks used for their tragedies, which, right away, foreshadows the tragedy that must follow. This use of chorus really exhibits how much authors/poets have to know about the past in order to master their craft in the present.


Look at the ballroom scene when Romeo and Juliet first meet and you will be happy to find a sonnet hidden in their conversation back and forth with one and other.

This has been a real problem trying to get my wheels in motions after the Christmas break. So in terms of Shakespeare and love poetry this is right up my alley. So I have chosen Sonnet XII, I know it's a classic but I think it offers a lot to imagery.

1. When I do count the clock that tells the time,
2. And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
3. When I behold the violet past prime,
4. And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
5. When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
6. Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
7. And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
8. Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
9. Then of thy beauty do I question make,
10. That thou among the wastes of time must go,
11. Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
12. And die as fast as they see others grow;
13. And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
14. Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.

I am going to point out the things that I notice and hopefully they will point in the right direction instead of being a maze of wrong turns and idiotic decisions.

In line one he uses the word "tells" to signify the clock showing the time but it also is speaking to the use of a bell or chime that rings out through the town to tell everybody that time is passing. (Remember Hunchback of Notre Dame)

2.In line two "Brave day" is used as almost to signify the epic battle between day and night, as well as, good versus evil.

3.Shakespear often uses the image of a flower because they are beautiful for a time and then wilt and die, much like a human in their youth with age sneaking up and taking youth but also beauty away.

4.Again Shakespeare talks about age, and Black turning to Silver and spring to fall, this is all talking about Time being deaths henchman, coming with his scythe (like the Grim Reaper) to cut us down when it our beauty is gone.

This poem offers beautiful imagery of clocks and time. I think that it should be noted that this is Sonnet twelve which is coincidentally the same amount of numbers a clock has on it. Coincidence…I think not.