First Blogging Assignment

The most significant aspect of poetry which we have discussed so far, in my mind, is the relationship between form and content. Poetry seems to be the place in which the use of the language (form) really collides and pushes up against what he poet is trying to say. It’s fascinating to see that as the rigid forms of poetry began to break up, poets began to write about material that was less traditional as well. Or did the form loosen in response to the new material covered? Either way you look at it, in the material we are now covering we can see the poets pushing up against the limits language, and beginning to play with those limits. It was interesting to read Tate’s reaction to Lowell’s “new” style of free verse and confessional material and realize that to Tate this was not poetry at all. Looking back at the influence that “Life Studies” had on the movement at the time is a testament to staying true to the aesthetic which you feel best reflects what you are trying to say.

Another significant move made by the poets we are now studying, as opposed to more traditional poets, is the inclusion of the author’s own voice and perspective within the work. The poem we read by Tate was written in some kind of universal, almost disembodied voice, and was concerned about the history of literature and art as much or more than what was going on around him at the time. The effect of such poems leaves the reader feeling as if they had attended some kind of lecture on the merits of “high art” and are included or excluded based on their ability to read these predefined set of codes. I noticed in our groups that so many more interpretations were able to be arrived at from the works of Lowell. One gets the feeling that every reader is able to take from the poem his or her own ideas, and to me that’s really what art is all about.

One reading that I was able to take away from the poem “Skunk Hour” by Lowell turned out to be based on class or hierarchal position. The poem seems to generally work on a kind of zooming in effect, in which we start out looking at the island and its various inhabitants, middle up on the author driving his car up the hills, and finish with a look at some skunks ravishing a garbage pail. For me, the poem seemed to be speaking of class layers as it moves from the upper crust, the heiress with old money, to the next level down, the L. L. Bean wearing millionaire with his new money. Then the middle class is introduced in the form of the lobsterman who now has the millionaire’s boat. The author presents himself as cut off from the rest of the human inhabitants of the island, watching the others playing at love, but himself in hell. He IS hell. The author’s only refuge seems to be the skunks that he sees scavenging around for “a bite to eat.” The only form of resolution seems to be in the fact that these, the lowest of all the island’s creatures, will not scare. It seems significant that it is this lowest level of society, where one must feast on the garbage of others, from which Lowell takes his solace. Perhaps the author is pointing out our common struggle for survival, and the follies that come from thinking that one has more than another.

It will be interesting to watch as language continues to be stretched and broken in the effort to convey meaning, to step beyond the realm of form and touch upon that which is formless. One can not help but feel that these verses and ideas are simply language at play in the fields of endless possibilities.