Letter to a character

My Dearest Emily,

I hope you'll allow me to call you Emily. I know we don't know each another, but, honestly, I can't stand to see you being presented as a nameless thing--an object of pity or scorn--when you have an identity of your own--even if no one took the pains or even simply the time to discover it.

You see, in many ways I identify with you, with your plight. Abandoned by the man you loved...there was once a man I loved. Left to raise your child alone...I had three little ones, two of them before I turned nineteen. Treated as if you were mad...well, maybe I was mad. Maybe I am. I was. I am.

But we go on, don't we?

Only...

Only, I know that poet lied about you. He pretended to hear your voice. He pretended to know your mind. He told the world the secrets that you whispered to your child, the consolation, the commiseration, the promises, the pain.

But he knew nothing. He felt nothing. He saw nothing and heard nothing at all.

Maybe rumors.

And, to be fair, even poets can be deceived. By an ill fame with slobbering lips and stoppered ears, even poets can be misled.

Oh, but Emily, how long must we endure these lies? How long must we allow others to pretend to speak for us? If they leave you to wander about, an abandoned mother, with an abandoned child, searching for something in a world of nothing, what right do they have to call you the crazy one?

Emily, I don't know what to do for you. He called you mad--then he taught me how to call you mad as well.

But I've been played the fool too long.

So if it's madness he wants, madness they want, then...

Then maybe I'll be mad too.

With all affection,

In solidarity,

Another Mad Mother

Have I ever felt trapped?

Drawing on Coleridge for this question is so appropriate because in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" it seems that so much of what the characters suffer springs from feelings of guilt and compulsion. I've felt trapped in both literal and metaphorical ways: literally because of finances, family obligations, and--most often--a simple lack of knowledge and intellectual and/or emotional resources; metaphorically because of guilt and fear. Most of the time, I feel trapped by myself. I feel like I don't have the keys to access certain possibilities. And I never stop second guessing myself. And like the Mariner, I often find myself compelled to inflict my doubts on the poor, unsuspecting innocents around me.

Hmmm...I sense that this could easily turn into another one of those moments of self-pitying self-confession. So I think I'm going to switch prompts mid-blog. (How's that for a grand escape?)

So revisiting Tuesday's in-class freewrite:

My Grand Antarctic--er, make that Pullman--Adventures

The most foreign environment I've ever visited is probably--ironically enough--Pullman, Washington. But I should qualify this with "in comparison to where I was accustomed to being."

For me, Las Vegas has been home for over twenty years; it's the town where I came of age and where almost every horrible, agonizing, happy, wonderful thing has happened to me. There are also so many things I took for granted while living there: 24-hour grocery & even department store shopping; movie theaters with twenty screens; 112 degree heat three to four months of the year; lots of sun; lots of places to eat; lots of entertainment; all the places my kids and I haunted from the time they were born; and the ones I haunted even before that from the time I moved there when I was fifteen oh so many years ago (like the high school I dropped out of and the university where I made my way back up).

Then I moved to Pullman.

When I first moved here, despite missing all of the above, the biggest shock was the cold. Even though I moved in at the beginning of June, I felt cold all the time. And it rained and rained (and rained) until I felt like I'd never see the sun again. And even though July brought an end to the rain, it remained chilly (again, only by comparison to what I'd known for the last 20-something years, of course) so that I felt about ready NOT to start classes but to go into hibernation by the time September hit. I imagine the bodies of those Antarctic explorers must have felt a hundred times more out of wack than mine did--especially dependent as they were on a sun that never stood quite where it should (i.e. where they were used to seeing it) in the sky.

But gradually I've become acclimatized--though, admittedly, only after inflicting a year of whining about the weather on anyone and everyone who would listen. Sorry, guys.

One thing I haven't become accustomed to is the quiet and the darkness. I intentionally rented off of College Hill, thinking that I didn't want to be around all the undergrad partying, and, for the most part, this was a good decision. I've come to appreciate the chirping of crickets and birds. However, although I don't really miss the noise of cars and helicopters and people shouting and the occasional gunshot at all hours of the night, I do feel lonelier somehow and isolated here--especially when it's dark out. During the day, there are all sorts of people walking dogs and such, but at night, if I take a walk around the block or down the street, I might not see anyone the entire time I'm out there.

And the dark! Oh gee, sometimes I long for the glitter of the Strip or the glaring bright lights of the corner gas stations. At the same time, I have to admit that the stars haven't been this lovely to me in years. When I look at the sky, I'm not seeing it through a haze of smog and city lights. Again, I guess in a very distant way, I can compare my experience with those Antarctic explorers.

What I miss most about Vegas:

Female Innocence and Experience

I suppose the easiest way to begin is to refer back to Jim's discussion of the "Worlds of Blake" and to how Thel's world fits into this sceme. Of all the things we talked about, the idea that innocence also suggests a kind of sterility really stands out to me for some reason, probably because we generally think of that term--and associated ones like "childhood"--in a positive light. Similarly, to see Thel's world (Beulah) as a place of sleep and the moon makes me think of dreams and escape. Certainly in my own life both sleep and dreams hold some pretty heavy-duty appeal.

But then, in looking again at Thel, I'm reminded of how frustrated this character is in her seeming paradise. Rather than enjoying the flowers and clouds and loveliness around her, she instead laments her lack of purpose and the inevitable (progeny-less?) end to her existence. She's entirely lost and unfortunately is all too aware that her life holds no meaning. Her innocence, in other words, has been tainted by an overabundance of knowledge and a preoccupation with her lack of experience.

Perhaps this is why the seeming consolation Thel receives (from her discussions with the lily, cloud, and earth) is forgotten at the end of the poem with the image of the grave and Thel's flight from its words. She still longs to live and experience and...and I don't know. She's just not happy with what she has or doesn't have, I suppose, and so isn't ready to relinquish her hold on life.

Oddly enough, Oothoon seems to have the opposite problem. She has too much experience--at least according to Theotormon. The speaker speaks of her independent traveling as "impetuous" (23), and it seems that she is made to pay for that impetuosity at the hands of Bromion. But Oothoon isn't willing to part with her innocence so easily. For her, innocence seems to be a state of mind rather than a physical manifestation. So any practical experience doesn't detract from who she is. On the other hand, I'm not sure that it adds to her identity either...basically because there seems to be not reconciliation between her and Theotormon and the Daughters are all still lamenting at the end.

Hmmm...looks like I didn't really answer the question, but I suppose my short answer is that I don't really believe there is really any resolution--or certainly no happy resolution--in the juxtaposition of innocence and experience. But, thinking back to Jim's presentation, I don't think that resolution's necessarily the point. Maybe Blake was really intending to leave us unsettled / unresolved. *shrugs*

it's true

God's alone

And I'm alone

Inside of God.

Are they environmental texts?

I've always thought of the romantics as having a strong investment and appreciation for nature, but now after our discussion this last Tuesday I'm not so sure about the character of that appreciation. There's a certain self-absorption in all these works (that I never noticed on my own) that really precludes the idea of their authors seeing "human interest... [as not] the only legitimate interest." The texts we read seem to be ALL about the poet, and leave room for little beyond that, so I don't really see "human accountability to the environment" as playing any big "part [in] the text's ethical orientation." I always thought of the romantics as poets who went outside themselves to delve into the wonders of the world; now I see them more as writings about themselves and their own responses to, and the inspirations they receive from, nature.

At the same time, I can't help but see these texts / authors as strong precursors to current environmental movements. They do suggest a certain awe of and reverence for the natural world--even if they seem to uphold the feelings of awe and reverence above the subjects causing those feelings. For me, this was especially true in Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale." I don't know if the environment / nightingale was meant to become more than a framing device for the poet to explore his own poetical / artistic longings, but the natural images are so powerful, so immediate that they do seem to take on a life of their own apart from the poet's own egocentric meditations.

Thus, Keats begins his nightingale poem by focusing on his own responses--his aching heart, his numbed/pained senses, and just the way he feels in general (whether envious or happy) about the nightingale and her song (1-6)--but then he inserts this image in our heads of an almost magical creature, a dryad (7), a little goddess or fairy spirit of the tree, who somehow comes alive in a few short lines and stays with us even as the poet returns again to his own reflections and feelings and experience. And later, just when he seems to have left that which inspired him far behind and flies through the clouds in an almost drunken ecstacy of imagination, he comes back to her, telling us that all this while she has been singing and "Still woudst...sing" and that despite his intoxicating flights of fancy he is unable to capture / recreate her song himself (60). This seems to suggest the superiority of nature over man--even the poetic man.

And yet...

And yet the speaker actually appears to regulate the natural world itself to being an invention of human imagination when he wonders at the end, "Was it a vision, or a waking dream? / Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?" (79-80). Here it seems that the speaker credits the elusiveness of the song not to the superiority of nature, but to the poet's inability to translate his own vision/dream/feeling to the physical world.

How do you read a poem?

If you're at all like I am and don't have much experience with poetry, you might feel somewhat intimidated when faced with poems as complex as those we're reading for next week. Having just muddled through them myself over the last couple of days, I believe your best bet would be to start with the footnotes (to discourage your eyes from wandering as you try to focus on the poem) and then read the poem straight through, without pause, as if you understand everything. Don't glance down at the footnotes; don't try to figure out the metaphores; don't think too deeply about hidden meanings or even obvious allusions. Just pretend you know what's happening. This is a good time to appreciate the music of the language without the burden of analysis, so I highly recommend reading at least part of the poem aloud--but, again, don't let it slow you down. The goal for this reading is just to get done so if anyone asks, you can say in complete honesty, "Oh, yes, Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albion? Of course I've read it; hasn't everyone?" (Okay, that last was kind of a joke, but never underestimate the value of bragging rights when it comes to complex works of art.

But seriously....)

Now go have a cup of coffee: you're gonna to need it.

Okay, it's time to read it again...this time for meaning. Glance at the footnotes as needed, annotate the text itself, make notes / write questions in a reading notebook. This is your chance to play catch-the-allusion and to grapple with any unfamiliar words / images. You might also simply mark particularly difficult passages for further consideration later on. When you're done, spend ten minutes or so just freewriting about the poem--glancing at it once or twice if you need to, but not more than that.

With a long poem like the Blake piece mentioned above, this reading and responding could take a couple hours of truly focused study, so set aside some quiet time when you know you won't be interrupted. Don't rush it; give the poem the time and effort it deserves. Keep in mind that the poet him or herself probably spent far more time than that composing, revising, and editing the darn thing, so the least you can do is give it a couple hours. (On the other hand, I don't recommend doing this with every poem you come across or even all of the poems we've been assigned for this class. Instead, after your first read-through, decide which work(s) most interest and appeal to or offend you. Otherwise, you won't have time for your other classes, let alone family and fun.)

Now set the poem aside again. Go for a walk, hang out with friends, and, while you're doing that, think about poem and talk about it, too...even if it's just aloud to yourself. Try to remember some specific lines and repeat them--again, do it out loud. And, yeah, this is a good time to go online and see what the net freaks are saying about the poem, though I personally find engaging in conversation--even if it's just with myself--will give me a stronger appreciation for a work than simply reading someone else's thoughts does.

Realistically, the next step will be to skim through the poem at least once more before going to class.

But if you have the time and inclination, read the poem again several times, slowly, and maybe only a passage or two at a time. Savor the language, think about the nuances of the punctuation, examine the line length, and enjoy the rhymes and rhythm. And, by all means, test your earlier thoughts and conversations to see if the ideas / readings you came up with actually seem plausible when you have the poem right in front of you.

When you go to class, be sure to ask about those difficult passages you couldn't figure out and to share your interpretations if they contradict those of your teacher and/or classmate. You might be completely off base, or you might have actually discovered something they missed: you'll never know if you don't ask.

And if you actually find the time to do all that, pat yourself on the back. You still might not have found the ultimate meaning, but by this point you've certainly gained an appreciation and at least some sort of understanding for the work that you didn't have before.