Silvia Plath

     I thought that it was interesting as I read Lady Lazarus by Silvia Plath that it kept running through my mind that the speaker was either speaking about suicide or divorce throughout most of the poem.  I had not yet read Plath's biography.  I followed up by reading her biography to see if I was right on one of those guesses.  As it turns out, I was correct on both counts.
     Lady Lazarus seems to be able to rise from the dead.  The death of her father was the first time she died.  Her first suicide attempt was the second time.  This poem is about the divorce:  "This is Number Three. / What a trash / To annihilate each decade" (Lines 19-21).  Each decade of her life was marked by a significant tragedy:  the death of her father when she was eight, her attempted suicide in college, and the divorce from her husband in her early thirties.  It helps to read her biography and reread the poem to see how Plath refers to the second time she "died":

                                            "The second time I meant
                                             To last it out and not come back at all.
                                             I rocked shut

                                             As a seashell.
                                             They had to call and call
                                             And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls."  (Lines 37-42)

Her many references to Nazi behavior seem to be a statement as to her suffering.  She is comparing both her father and her ex-husband to Nazis.  To be honest, reading about how her ex-husband "edited" her poetry after her death, I'm thinking that she was not far off in that comparison.
       I really didn't know whether I would enjoy Silvia Plath's poetry or not.  I knew the name of course, but I had never read her poetry.  To be perfectly honest, I went into it not expecting a great deal.  It has been my experience in this class that some of the things that I don't expect much out of end up surprising me.  I didn't think to much of Ginsberg when I heard a recitation.  Then I read Howl and was sorry that I had judged so harshly before.  Silvia Plath was the same way.  I enjoyed Lady Lazarus a great deal.  While I have not enjoyed everything that I have had to read for this class, I have been pleasantly surprised by a great deal of it.  While much of the reading was not what I would have chosen, it was what was necessary to open my mind to some new poets and writers that I had not previously considered.  For that, I am thankful.  After all, that was the purpose of taking the class.

A Streetcar Named Desire

     When it comes to plays, whether I am acting in them or just reading them, I prefer not to see them on film or onstage until after I have read them and made up my own mind how a character is to be portrayed.  Most times when you see the movie or the play before reading it, you will always picture that actor's portrayal of the character from that point on.  If you see it before acting in it, you will unintentionally or intentionally act out that character the same way you have seen it acted out.  That just seems to be the way it is.
     With Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, I had seen neither of the films, nor had I seen it onstage before reading it.  I have since watched the film versions, both with Marlon Brando/Vivien Leigh and with Alec Baldwin/Jessica Lange.  I have to say that both Leigh and Lange played the character of Blanche DuBois a little more crazy than I would have thought.  True, she was a bit dillusional and was even more so after the assault by Stanley.  I just did not picture her as that downright batshit.  I will say that Leigh was much closer to what I had pictured.  Lange went over the top with the craziness.  The character of Stanley, on the other hand, was pretty much as I had seen him.  Brando, of course, doing the much better job of acting the part.  Baldwin had his moments and he is not a terrible actor, but he is no Marlon Brando.  On a surprising note, though I am a fan of John Goodman, I did not care for him in the role of Mitch.
     All things considered, though the Brando/Leigh film version was not quite as true to the original play, it is the much better film adaptation.  The acting was superior by far.  There is a great deal of merit to the newer version but the classic is still the best.  It is difficult to take on a role that has been done so well to be deemed a classic and still be able to make it your own.  I give Kudos to the cast of the newer version for trying but you just cannot live up to the original.

Invisible Man

     I found Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man more than just a story about race.  Yes, the story (at least the section of the story that we read) is primarily about a group of wealthy, white jackasses making young black men fight each other and humiliate themselves for amusement.  However, the deeper part of the story is that no matter what is done to this young black man, he still craves the attention and respect from people who do not deserve his respect.  No matter how much they put him through, he still wants to impress them with his speech.  After all of the nonsense, he still tries to give his speech with blood running from his mouth and nose.
     I have brought this story up to my wife a time or two.  I know that she is going to have a fit if she reads this and I will spend some time in the doghouse, but oh well.  Throughout her life, her family has abused her.  I cannot even go into detail about the majority of it.  The constant abuse has been physical many times.  The majority of it has been psychological.  There is even some that I will simply categorize as "other".  All of this makes my blood boil every time that I think about it, so I try not to.  Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man brought some of it up again.  The reason is that, despite the years of abuse, she still desires their approval.  She puts on the blinders and tries to have a relationship with these abusive people because they are family.  They do not deserve her respect but she craves their approval.  Much like the older white men of the town in the story had control and power over the young men, they have control over her and her emotions.  These "respectable" men of the town used their power and control over these young men in order to abuse them.  I see so many similarities between Ellison's story and the crap that my wife chooses to endure from her parents.  The physical abuse is no longer an issue, thankfully, nor will that be an issue as long as I'm breathing.  I'm trying to get her to understand that it is her choice to eliminate the source of the psychological abuse.  It pains me to just have to sit back and hope that she comes to the same conclusion:  These people do not deserve her attention and respect.

Storm Warnings

     It's a shame that we didn't get the chance to cover more of the literature in class.  The problem is that so much of it deserves much more dicussion than time allows.  That is the heart-break of a literature survey class.  I had the same problem with the British Literature survey class.  There was a great deal more reading assigned in the British Literature class.  However, the issue of wanting to spend more time on everything was still present.  The authors represented in both classes deserve much more time than we are able to give them in a survey class.  Storm Warnings by Adrienne Rich is a short poem that, by itself, deserves far more time than we spent being confused by Gertrude Stein.  Sadly, we weren't able to get to Rich.  My suggestion for the next class is to leave out the Tender Button crap and go on to some actual poetry.
     The descriptive quality of Storm Warnings paints a real picture that the reader can understand and relate to.  On the surface, it is a poem about weather warnings and predictions.  It discusses how little these warnings mean to those who live with that weather often.  When one lives with that type of weather, they realize that the weather will come regardless of predictions and warnings.  Underneath, the speaker seems to be struggling to control their emotions.  Perhaps they suffer from depression.  Rich writes, "weather abroad / and weather in the heart alike come on / regardless of prediction" (Lines 12-14).  In the final stanza, the speaker discusses what to do when the weather comes.  The speaker's depression is revealed by the final two lines:  "These are the things that we have learned to do / Who live in troubled regions" (Lines 27-28).  This is how the speaker has learned to deal with the depression.  The only thing we can do is close the door and wait for it to pass.  So, perhaps it is not the healthiest way to deal with depression, but there it is.
     I recommend reading some of what we didn't get a chance to read for class.  After all, that is kind of the idea of a survey class.  It is to get the students interested in the literature enough to continue on without being told to do so.  Since many of the students in literature classes are English majors or similar, we probably should be reading on anyway.  Who knows, perhaps Gertrude Stein will start to grow on me, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

The "Bravery" of Hippies

     There was a comment made in class a while back with which I take some issue.  We were told as a class that the hippies protesting the Vietnam War took as much risk as the soldiers in the jungle.  As well as that some of the soldiers only went to war because they weren't brave enough to stay home.  Well.  Bullshit.  Let us weigh some of these risks.
     First of all, there is the risk of life.  For the soldier, there is an entire army on the other side that not only wants you to die but is actively working toward that goal.  For whatever reason, they are enemies.  For the hippies, sure there were lots of people that would have liked to see them die off, but it was not their daily occupation to kill them.  Aside from a few clashes with police and national guardsmen at protests and rallies, the chances of them dying was not very great.  They risked jailtime.  However, Canada did offer asylum so they could avoid that too.  However, I will agree that there was tremendous courage involved in getting the movement started.  Who wanted to be the first person to burn that draft card, not knowing whether or not the military would try them for treason?  After a while though, the movement became little more than an excuse to avoid serving their country in order to sit in the mud and get high.  I know many people who did exactly that.
     The second risk worth discussing is the risk of public alienization.  Who was it that took the biggest risk there?  Many younger people see how our military men and women are treated today in an unpopular war that has been going on for far too long.  They tend to draw comparisons, thinking that the treatment of our soldiers during the Vietnam War was the same as it is now.  These days, we respect our soldiers regardless of how we feel about the war.  This was NOT the case during the Vietnam War, as soldiers came home and were spat on where soldiers used to be given parades.  They were called "baby-killers" because a couple of Jane Fonda / John Kerry traitors communicated with the North Vietnamese and helped them make propaganda films criminalizing our troups.  This is the treatment our soldiers received:  A silver-star winner who had risked everything in four tours in Vietnam was spat on while arriving home, in the airport.  A silver-star winner!  I knew the man.  In fact, I knew two silver-star winners from the Vietnam War.  Both have passed on.  One of them had passed away without his closest friends knowing that he was a silver-star winner.  Most people never even knew he was in the military.  He hid that fact so that people wouldn't judge him.  So, the hippies hated our soldiers.  The public hated our soldiers.  Surely, soldiers from previous wars would have some understanding.  Nope.  They hated them even more because they lost the war.  The best that the soldiers could hope is that it would never come up that they were soldiers.  Many employers wouldn't even hire them.
     I will, however, admit that I love the music from that era.  The hippies that made the music I could do without.  I just have a hard time comparing the bravery of our soldiers in battle with the bravery of a hippy risking an overdose.

We Real Cool

     In reading We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks and in hearing it read in class, I have come to the conclusion that we are all too white to make this poem sound the way it is written.
     I had a different take on it than just an empathy poem.  Yes, the poet does get inside the heads of the pool players a little bit.  I can understand that she may care greatly about them.  She may even admire them and find them to be cool on the surface.  It sounds very much to me like she is criticizing their choices in a somewhat sarcastic tone.  She may be speaking through their voices, but not their words.  After all, they would never admit that they are going to "die soon".  More than likely, they are young enough to think that they are immortal just like every other young person that thinks that they are "real cool".  The poet is making the statement of the sad reality that they will die despite how cool they are.  In fact, the choices that they think make them so cool are the choices that will lead to their end.
     It is often an amazing thing that so few words can have so much meaning.  That is the beauty of poetry:  You don't have to say a lot in order to say a lot.  I've never been a big fan of the minimalist or imagist movement in poetry.  However, there are a few that occasionally catch my attention and stand out as something worthwhile.

How to Tame a Wild Tongue

     I have been trying to figure out how to tame a wild tongue for years.  I am told all the time that I don't know when to shut up.  Of course, this has little to do with my language; my word choice perhaps but not my language.
     In Gloria Anzaldúa's How to Tame a Wild Tongue, the author addresses the way in which the Spanish language has changed and adapted to the changing situations throughout history in order to survive.  An unchanging language is a dead language.  This story is of particular interest to me as a Spanish student.  In fact, I am considering a double major of Spanish and English when I transfer to Wright State in the fall.  I appreciated the fact that the author changed language throughout the story between Spanish and English, including that most of the Spanish was not translated in footnotes.  This went to the heart of what she was trying to convey:  the Spanish language will not die out but will continue to change and evolve.  In other words, you cannot tame her "wild tongue".
     Until I began seriouly studying the Spanish language, I never really thought about there being different dialects.  I had always thought that Spanish was Spanish.  However, there are different dialects in every region of every country in which Spanish is spoken.  Not only does a student need to learn "classical Spanish", but in order to communicate successfully we must learn several dialects.  This way, if we are speaking to a person from Madrid, we can choose a dialect that is closer to their own.  If we are talking to someone from Chile, they will have a very different dialect than someone from Mexico.  The issue is also with slang words that vary from region to region.  Many of these could get you into trouble if you get them confused.  For example, madre means mother but you would not want to use that word with someone from Mexico.  In Mexico, it would be mamá because in Mexican Spanish, madre is used with many terrible insults that you would not want to accidently throw around in public unless you are a good fighter.
     It is a shame that Spanish is not more embraced in the United States.  Who hasn't heard some idiot say, "learn English or go back to Mexico"?  I say "idiot" because there is a reason that we have not declared a "national language".  It is the same reason that we haven't declared a "national religion".  When we continue to stamp out ideas and languages from other cultures, we weaken our own culture.  Of course, there is also the danger of taking such a "cleansing" of cultures too far.  This has happened many times throughout the world and throughout history and if we don't keep our idiots in check, it will happen here.

"The Spanish language... and the English covering nearly the whole face of America, they should be well-known to every inhabitant who means to look beyond the limits of his farm." --Thomas Jefferson