What is Poetry?

What Is Poetry?

            A clear-cut definition for poetry is a very difficult thing to come up with. Poetry is forever changing and being made new by poets who play with new ideas. For example, over the course of this class, my personal definition of poetry has expanded to include prose poetry and language poetry. While it is impossible to create a perfect definition for something that is continually changing, I have slowly come to realize this: poetry is the Doctor Who of literature.

            Now, I am sure some of you are wondering what I could possibly be talking about. Doctor Who, as you may or may not know, is a British television show about a man who travels through space and time and has adventures, saving the world from aliens and the like over and over again. How is this like poetry? Poetry, unlike prose, does not have to be linear. It can travel through space and time as easily as a 907-year-old Time Lord. Prose, while having some flexibility, is more or less locked in place by a need to tell a story. When prose becomes lost in time and space, it become prose-poetry. Poetry is a free-moving, willy-nilly sort of literature that can explore places prose can never even imagine.

            An example of how poetry can travel through space and time is the language poetry of Lyn Hejinian in her prose-poetry book My Life. Hejinian describes language poetry in her introduction for the Best American Poetry 2004 anthology. Language poetry, she says, does not have to have a message in it. Language poetry looks at how language is used everyday and changes it, playing with it to find the meaning that is hidden underneath. In this way, language poems are not tied down by the idea of narrative or, really, deeper meaning. The meaning is in the words itself, which allows these poems to freely jump from subject to subject, time period to time period, or anywhere else the poet might want to go. Hejinian says, “Poetry, furthermore, is not a static art form – its source of energy (its virtues) are not frozen in perfection but flow through time…” (Hejinian 12). This captures the spirit of language poetry and poetry in general. Its beauty comes in how it changes and shifts depending on the reader. Hejinian’s own poetry is a great example of this. To read the poems in My Life and look for some sort of narrative sense would be idiotic. The beauty and meaning in these poems comes from the ever-changing images, the use of words to evoke tastes and colors and memories that do not necessarily link together. “Somewhere, in the background, rooms share a pattern of small roses. Pretty is as pretty does. In certain families, the meaning of necessity is at one with the sentiment of pre-necessity” (Hejinian 7). Here, there is no real sense of story, yet each sentence evokes an image that is beautiful or interesting. Hejinian’s poems move through space and time with ease, using the disjointed feeling to imitate the way we think and feel and remember, as well as using language to shape how we are feeling as we read the poems.

            Another poet who moves through space and time quite easily is G. C. Waldrep. In his book, Disclamor, he uses form and difficult-to-decipher content to imitate his thoughts and feelings as he wrote his poems. His battery poems, nine poems describing different locations, are good examples of this. The lines and stanzas stagger across the page, bringing to mind a man pacing back and forth or thoughts wandering freely from one subject to another. His content skips around, usually moving in a somewhat narrative way but often coming out like a stream of consciousness, making little sense when first viewed but on closer examination having a theme. “To the east, Upper Fisherman’s Beach/ pale bodies against black sand./ To the west, Point Bonita’s vigil./ And the south tower of the bridge, its harp, its/ iron mandolin curding the city/ into strips, grey, vertical,/ gleaming -/ Can you believe I once stood for war?/ (Can you believe I once stood against it?)” (Waldrep 10). The first six lines are all part of one story, but the last two lines skip somewhere else, a different location in time, a different though process. Waldrep’s poems, like Hejinian’s are not bound by a necessity to tell a story, but instead to show how Waldrep thinks and feels as he experiences new places. In the end, both poets’ poems tell the reader something about themselves. The freedom of these poems allows the reader to find a meaning unique to themselves.

            However, there is another side to poetry, as there is another side to Doctor Who. The Doctor does not just travel through time and space. He has a mission; to protect the universe and keep it going on a good path. Some poets believe poetry should also have a mission. The poet Yusef Komunyakaa writes his own introduction for the Best American Poetry 2003 anthology. In it, he talks about how poetry should be used to tell a story, to reveal something about the world so that people can become aware of it and do something to change it. “In some exploratory texts, those of over-experimentation, disorder becomes the norm – a blurred design that is supposed to depict wit, opacity, and difficulty as virtue” (Komunyakaa 14). Komunyakaa believes that poetry without a meaning behind it, language poetry that focuses on the words more than the meaning, is bad poetry. His idea of good poetry is poetry that shares something, for example, witness poetry.

            The book Against Forgetting is an excellent place to find good witness poems. This book is a collection of poems written by poets who experiences the terrors of war and then wrote about it. The poems found within describe how horrible life was during war, for both the poets and their enemies, in many cases. One poet found in this book, the poet I chose to research, is Walt McDonald. A Texan, McDonald was an Airforce pilot and teacher during the Vietnam war. Much of his poetry describes how life was during the war in Vietnam, “…Children/ climbed those bulldozed heaps/ for food, for clothes, for trash/ piled up to blaze. I saw them/ crawling the last flare of the sun/ spangled on garbage, the dump/ blazing in the sweat and blink/ of my eyes, children and old men…” (McDonald 685).  McDonald’s poetry began as a way to explore his feelings over the war and to talk about his fallen comrades. His witness poems show the reader how life was in Vietnam during that time. His mission was to show it as it was and change people’s opinions, make them understand how terrible it was. Even today, people use poetry for a similar reason. Poets like Heather Spears, whose poem “A Sent Photo” describes the ugliness of the war in the middle east, talk about the problems of today. Poets using the black-out method of poetry take pieces of literature and choose words from within them, using their poems to protest inequality and hate. These witness poems have a clear goal – to change how people think about certain subjects.

            Other poets have a simpler goal – to tell a story. Maura Stanton, for example, in her book Immortal Sofa, uses her poetry to tell the simple stories of everyday life using imagination and imagery. She can take something as simple as a trip to the vet’s office, a sofa, or a plant growing in her backyard and create a story out of it. She uses metaphor and form to make these poems unique, twisting time to suit her cause. Many poets use poetry to tell stories about simple everyday life, to connect with the audience by examining images that we all experience every day. Waldrep, in his own way, does something similar. Poets who use poetry for a distinct purpose, like Komunyakaa would advise, creatively handle their mission and change the way we think by revealing something to us about life.

            These two sides of poetry encompass many things. Language poetry is perhaps the most post-modern, while witness poetry is a more classical and, arguably, popular way of telling a story. Despite their differences, though, these are all poetry. It is amazing to think that two such different ideas can come from the same literary form, but poetry has that ability.

            How, then, is poetry different from prose? Prose, while able to examine language and tell a story, is much less free than poetry. Prose must, for the sake of its readers, stick to some sort of chronological order. Prose could never change subject, time, and theme from line to line, as Hejinian’s poems do. While it can play with form, there is only so many ways to arrange sentences on a page. Prose cannot dance around on itself like Waldrep’s or McDonald’s poems, imitating walking or climbing in a purely visual sense. Prose, while obviously telling a story and using metaphors, cannot boil an image down to its bare bones and redress it the way poetry can. Prose is trapped to one dimension. Poetry can go anywhere.

            Poetry is a literary form that can do anything it likes. It is not held back by any kind of rules or regulations. Poetry is a way of exploring this world and many others. In a way, poetry is like a garbage dump, collecting all the pieces that do not fit into prose. In this way, poetry, like Doctor Who, can do anything it wants. It can go anywhere in time or space, tell any story it wants (or none at all), it can save the world or simply look at it in awe. Poetry is anything and everything, dismissing hard-set rules for experimentation and purity, taking the images of life and laying them out for all to see.

Works Cited

Hejinian, Lyn. “A pause, a rose, something on paper.” My Life. Los Angeles, CA: Green Integer, 2002. 7-9. Print.

Hejinian, Lyn. Introduction. Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2004. Scribner, 2004. 9-14. Print.

Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.

McDonald, Walter. “The Children of Saigon.” Against Forgetting. Ed. Forché, Carolyn. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1993. 685-686. Print.

Waldrep, G.C. “Battery Rathbone-McIndoe.” Disclamor. New York, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd., 2007. 10-13. Print.

Walter McDonald, Against Forgetting project - unrevised

Walter McDonald: Vietnam Witness Poet

            Poets and critics alike agree that the poetry of Walter McDonald is some of the best poetry available. Poet Andrew Hudgins, for example, says, “Nobody has ever written better poetry about Texas than Walt McDonald” (“What the Critics Say About Walt McDonald”). McDonald uses his experiences, good and bad, and crafts them into poems that people can relate to. His poetry finds surprising and sometimes startling similarities between his experiences with death and life in Vietnam and Texas, and through examining his own experiences he allows the reader to inspect his or her own.

            Walter McDonald was born in 1934 in Texas. His father was killed in World War Two, a subject which many of his poems discuss. In 1956 he married Carol Ham, with whom he would later have three children and seven grandchildren. He served his first term of service in Vietnam in 1957 when he joined the Air Force. In 1960 he went from active duty to teaching English at the Air Force Academy, a job he stayed at for two years before going back to Vietnam. He returned to teaching at the Academy in 1967 and continued to do this until 1971 when he retired from the Air Force as a major. He began writing poetry while he taught at the Academy, because he “felt a need to say something to them [his fallen comrades]” (“Walter McDonald: Biography”).  He went on to teach at Texas Tech University, and in 2001 he became the Texas Poet Laureate. He retired from teaching in 2002. In that time he published over 2000 poems in various journals and collections (“Walt McDonald, Biographical information and bibliography”).

            Walt McDonald has several collections of his poetry. His 2300 poems have been published in such magazines as American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, The Atlantic Monthly, First Things, Journal of the American Medical Association, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and Poetry (“People’s Poetry Series to bring bring former Texas poet laureate to ACU”).  His collections of poems include Caliban in Blue and Other Poems (1976), One Third Leads to Another (1978), Anything, Anything (1980), Burning the Fence (1981), Working against Time (1981), Witching on Hardscrabble (1985), The Flying Dutchman (1987), Splitting Wood for Winter (1988), After the Noise of Saigon (1988), Rafting the Brazos (1988), Night Landings (1989), A Band of Brothers: Stories from Vietnam (1989), The Digs in Escondido Canyon (1991), All That Matters: The Texas Plains in Photographs and Poems (1992), Where Skies Are Not Cloudy (1993), Counting Survivors (1995), Blessings the Body Gave (1998), Whenever the Wind Delivers: Celebrating West Texas and the Near Southwest (1999), All Occasions (2000), Climbing theDivide (2003), Great Lonely Places of the Texas Plains (2003), A Thousand Miles of Stars (2004), and Faith is a Radical Master: New and Selected Poems (2005) (“Walter McDonald: Biography”). The incredible amount of his poetry is matched only by the quality of these poems. He has earned many awards, such as Lon Tinkle Memorial Award for Excellence Sustained Throughout a Career (“Walt McDonald”).

            Walt McDonald’s very successful writing career began as a response to the horrors he had seen while serving in Vietnam. He, like many others, was so changed by what he did and saw there that he could not remain silent. Vietnam was one of the most horrific wars in U.S. history, and was certainly the war the public hated the most. Vietnam was the first war to be broadcasted on the news into the living rooms of the average American, and as the average American began to see the horrors of war they also began to wish for the war to end (“Vietnam on Television.”). The alarm of the public eventually pressured President Johnson into not running for a second term, and President Nixon for finding a way out of Vietnam (“Richard M. Nixon – the vietnam war”). The soldiers, themselves, suffered extreme conditions that left many of them mentally and physically scarred (“The Postwar Impact of Vietnam”). Many of the soldiers turned to drugs to combat the terror they had to deal with, and even more, doctors believe, got post-traumatic stress syndrome from the fighting (Berinsky). Even after Vietnam ended and they were home, they continued to suffer from this mental illness, and unlike their fathers and uncles before them, they were not war heroes. The public hated them, having seen them commit horrible atrocities in the jungles of Vietnam. People on the street did not cheer for them or salute them. They spat at the soldiers and held protests calling for the wars end, something no other soldiers had had to deal with before Vietnam (Mongrain). The soldiers of Vietnam had to find some way to cope with what they had done and seen, and many, like Walter McDonald, dealt with it by creative means.

            One of Walter McDonald’s poems that relates to what he had seen in Vietnam is “The Children of Saigon.” “The Children of Saigon” is a poem about the children who live on the streets of Saigon during the Vietnam war. The persona reacts with these children after he sees them searching through the trash for food. He goes without his dinner that night, getting as much food as he can and giving it to the children, who react by taking the food and quickly moving away from him. “The Children of Saigon” is a blank verse poem made up of eight stanzas, each stanza being three lines long, each line indented slightly more than the one before it. There are several cases of enjambment in the poem, including enjambment across stanzas. The poem uses regular sentence punctuation and capitalization, and if it were written in one line there would be four sentences. “The Children of Saigon” describes not only the “ragged” children he sees, but includes many images of fire and burning. Soldiers in Vietnam often burned villages to the ground, an attempt to get rid of an enemy that looked civilian. In 1963, several Buddhist monks set themselves on fire in the streets of Saigon, burning themselves to death in protest to the war. Bombing and the use of napalm were used on villages and cities alike during the war. As a member of the Air Force, McDonald would have seen these instance of fire during his duty, and he repeats these fiery images in his poem. He combines the current pain of the homeless children searching for food with images of what made them homeless in the first place; the war. “The Children of Saigon” is one of several of McDonald’s poems that looks back on his memories of Vietnam and describes the things he saw there.

            However, not all of McDonald’s poems are about Vietnam. He also writes poetry about his homeland, Texas, and his father’s death. However, even these poems deal with the issues of war, as his father and uncles served in World War Two, and especially since his father was killed in action there. One of these poems is “Digging in a Footlocker.” “Digging in a Footlocker” describes the persona’s discovery of a box full of WWII memorabilia in his uncle’s home. It also shows how the persona, a young boy at the time, deals with the realization that his uncle and his own father are killers. “Digging in a Footlocker” is a blank verse poem of five stanzas with four lines each. There are many cases of enjambment in the poem as well as heavy use of metaphor, describing “a human ear” and “teeth” found in the box, evidence of the people who lost their lives at the hands of the persona’s uncle. “Digging in a Footlocker” begins by describing some of the “prettier” aspects of WWII. The footlocker has “Stiff uniforms on top, snapshots/ of soldiers young as our cousins,/ a velvet box of medals/ as if he fought all battles/ in World War II” at the top. It is only underneath these thing that he finds the evidence of his uncle’s darker days in the war. This image is very interesting in comparison to the way the WWII was viewed by the public, especially in light of how Vietnam was later viewed when the public saw the dark things before the pretty ones. In WWII, the soldiers returning from duty were treated as heroes. The people on the home front saw their uniforms and young faces, not the people they had killed. Later, in Vietnam, the shock of seeing soldiers as killers first changed the world. In his own smaller, private way, McDonald also goes through this when he comes to realize that his uncle and father are murderers. This startling change in view point is described in “Digging in a Footlocker.”

            Sometimes, McDonald’s poetry talks about both his experiences in Vietnam and in Texas. A good example of this kind of poem is “Plowing through Ashes.” “Plowing through Ashes” is a poem that, on the surface, appears to be a memory about McDonald’s family farm. However, it also holds images found in his poems about Vietnam, including guns and fire. It is a blank verse poem with three stanzas. The first stanza is eight lines, the second stanza is five lines, and the last stanza is twelve lines long. There are many instances of enjambment again, as there are only five sentences in the poem. The poem begins by describing winter months spent searching for pheasants to kill and eat in the fields left littered with crop stalks from the fall before. Here, McDonald describes how his family “took our necessary meat” from the pheasants in the field. The image of hunting for these birds and them reluctantly but necessarily killing them also brings to mind the war in Vietnam, with soldiers moving through the jungles searching for small groups of the enemy amongst the trees. Another parallel comes when McDonald talks about burning the stalks in the spring to fertilize the ground. He describes “the orange flames/ spreading like a prairie fire.” Here, again, is the image of fire that pervades the Vietnam war. Even the word choice he uses to describe setting the fields on fire is reminiscent of violence, “we torched the stalks.” Paired with the title, “Plowing through Ashes,” the fire imagery is thick here, and very reminiscent of Vietnam. The final stanza describes McDonald’s father plowing the field and planting grain in it. This stanza is the one with the most lines, and symbolizes the future after Vietnam. By using the ashes from the old field, McDonald’s father fertilizes his field and makes his future crops grow better. This represents McDonald’s own choice to use what he saw and did in Vietnam to create his poems. He uses the ashes of his past to create a future for himself in his writing and teaching. “Plowing through Ashes” is a wonderful example of McDonald’s body of work. It contains Texas, Vietnam, his father, and hope for the future in a few beautiful images that stick in the reader’s mind after they have been read.

            Walter McDonald’s large and prestigious body of work is his way of dealing with his past and moving beyond it. In his poems he confronts his memories of his father, his father’s death, his home in Texas, and his duty in Vietnam. He uses thoughtful and clear images to do this, creating some of the best witness poems of his time. McDonald’s work uses language and images that are so universal that even those who have never been to the places he describes can imagine them and feel what he feels, a skill that has led to McDonald’s success as a writer.

Work Cited

Berinsky, Adam. “Public Opinion During the Vietnam War: A Revised Measure of the Public Will.” Web.mit.edu. MIT, n.d. Web. 18 March 2011.

Mongrain, Jacob. “The Effects of the Vietnam War.” Cyberlearning-world.com. Cyberlearning, n.d. Web. 18 March, 2011.

 “People’s Poetry Series to bring bring former Texas poet laureate to ACU.” ACU.edu. ACU, January 2004. Web. 17 March, 2011.

“Richard M. Nixon – the vietnam war.” Presidentprofiles.com. Presidentprofiles, n.d. Web. 18 March, 2011.

“The Postwar Impact of Vietnam.” English.Illinois.edu. Modern American Poetry, n.d. Web. 18 March, 2011.

“Vietnam on Television.” Museum.tv. MBC, n.d. Web. 19 March, 2011.

“Walt McDonald.” Poets.org. Poets, n.d. Web. 17 March, 2011.

 “Walter McDonald: Biography.” poetryfoundation.org. poetryfoundation, n.d. Web. 18 March, 2011.

“Walt McDonald, Biographical information and bibliography.” Christianchronicle.org. Christianchronicle, September 2005. Web. 17 March, 2011.

“What the Critics Say About Walt McDonald.” Mockingbird.Creighton.edu. Nebraska Center for Writers, n.d. Web. 18 March, 2011.

IPP - long poem analysis

“Ode to Pokeweed” is the longest poem in the second part of Maura Stanton’s sixth and most recent book, Immortal Sofa. The book is divided into four parts, the second of which is called “Lost and Found.” “Ode to Pokeweed” is the second poem in this part, following a poem that has the same title as the section, “Lost and Found.” “Ode to Pokeweed” is (despite its title) a free verse poem that describes a pokeweed plant and how that plant has been viewed in history.

            “Ode to Pokeweed” is all one stanza, with 105 lines. Every other line of the poem is indented slightly, so that the even numbered lines start at about the third letter of the odd numbered lines. The lines range from medium to long, but there are all generally the same length as the lines around them. There are many instances of enjambment in this poem, as well as a lot of punctuation in the form of commas, exclamation points, periods, and dashes. There is much apostrophe in the poem, as Stanton is talking to and about a plant.

            This poem is a great example of Maura Stanton’s style of poetry. As time has gone on, Maura Stanton has taken a narrative stance with her poems. Most of her poems tell a story of some sort, and “Ode to Pokeweed” is no different. Stanton first describes her confusion over seeing the pokeweed plant growing in her backyard, until she finally looks up what kind of plant it is. She then goes on to describe how the pokeweed plant is the quintessential American plant, and she tells some of the plant’s history in the States. She uses a narrative style to tell about how different parts of the plant are poisonous and how the plant has been treated over the years. At the end of the poem, Stanton describes how rain knocked the plant down and killed it, and how it made her sick to her stomach with grief, as if she had lost a friend. This contrasts with her original stance on the plant, shown at the beginning of the poem, when she tried to cut the plant down at all costs. In the final line of the poem, she does not call the plant “pokeweed” but “Pokeweed” as if it were a friend named “Pokeweed” instead of a plant.

            Over the course of the poem, Stanton’s view on the plant changes dramatically, and the character of the persona evolves. At first she hates and fears the plant, and tries to destroy it. Then comes a period of trying to understand the plant, and valuing its rich history. After she has discovered how influential the plant has been, she begins to like it, and eventually to love it like a friend. When the plant dies, she mourns for it until she realizes that it will return the next year, and then she rejoices. She looks forward to a time when someone asks her why she is allowing a weed to grow in her yard and she can share with them all she has learned about the plant. Then she calls the plant by its name as if it were a person.

            This is a fantastic example of how Stanton uses narrative in her poems. She takes an idea, something from every day life, and makes a story about it. Then she uses poetry to tell this story. She also uses the pokeweed to point out a fascinating contrast in much of nature. The pokeweed is both poisonous and useful. It has a dark and a light side. Eating parts of it can make you sick or even make you die, but other parts of it are still sold to be eaten today. Its berries can make ink and it is, according to Stanton, being researched as a possible ingredient in medicine for HIV patients. Something most people would believe is useless – a weed – actually has many uses and a very layered and interesting history.

            When considering that Stanton often uses nature metaphors and looks at how people interact with one another, as shown in her other books and in many of the poems in this book, this poem, “Ode to Pokeweed” could very well be talking about human nature itself. When it comes to humans, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Neither are things so simple with the pokeweed plant. Everyone has some sort of usefulness in the world, and everyone has a history with many twists and turns that are almost unimaginable. Even the use of apostrophe helps to make the plant seem more human – perhaps Stanton’s attempt to show the reader that humans are not useless or boring, but beautiful and many-layered, like the pokeweed plant.

IPP - biography assignment - revised

Maura Stanton

Maura Stanton was born on the 9^th of September, 1949, to Joseph and Wanda Stanton in Evanston, Illinois. She has a BA from the University of Minnesota (1969) and a MFA from the University of Iowa (1971). Her first book of poetry, Snow on Snow (Yale, 1975), won Stanton the Yale Younger Poets Prize, a very prestigious award for a new poet. This book began a career of creative writing that stretched from novels to short stories to poetry and that was acknowledged by many universities and other poets as being the start of something excellent (“Maura Stanton” 1).

Molly Companion (1977) was Stanton’s next book, a novel. Molly Companion was followed by Cries of Swimmers (University of Utah, 1984), a poetry book, Tales of the Supernatural: Poems (1988), a collection of poems, Life among the Trolls (1994), poetry, Glacier Wine (Carnegie Mellon University, 2001), poetry, and finally Immortal Sofa (University of Illinois, 2008), her latest book of poetry. Since her first book, Stanton has also won many more prizes and awards for her poetry, including the Frances Steloff Fiction Prize (1975), the Lawrence Foundation Prize in Fiction (1982), and others (Maura Stanton Biography 1).

In 1972, before her first book of poetry was published, Maura Stanton married Richard Cecil. After her marriage and as her writing career began to unfold, she has also taught at many universities. From 1972 to 1973 she taught at the State University of New York at Cortland, followed by teaching at the University of Richmond from 1973 to 1977. She then went to Humbolt State University from 1977 to 1978, and the University of Arizona from 1978 to 1982. In 1982 she moved to teach at the University of Indiana, where she continues to teach creative writing (Maura Stanton Biography 2).

Maura Stanton’s work has mainly looked at the way human imagination works in the everyday. At the start of her career, she was compared to Sylvia Plath for her use of strange metaphors and themes, as well as her ability to take something from within herself and lay it out in a way that makes it seem real and stark. Her early work was full of “bitter irony” and cast a critical eye toward the way human beings act and think. With her second book, her poetry shifted to tell more stories, to become more “narrative,” perhaps a reflection of her work in prose, Molly Companion, between the two poetry books. As Stanton aged, her work matured, and in her poems she faced her “middle age” and the idea of death and mortality, especially in her book Glacier Wine. Her poems, while still holding a surreal air to them, became less magical and more rooted in the everyday magic all around. Living among the Trolls was even more focused on Stanton’s real life, as a way for her to vent her frustrations about certain people she knew and worked with at the time at the University of Indiana (“Maura Stanton” 2).

Immortal Sofa, the most recent of her works, is a continuation of her previous messages. She tells the story of everyday life, moments of her imagination that she captured on paper. Her poems are very narrative, a process she started with her second book, and fanciful without being explicitly supernatural, as was starting to show in the middle of her career. Immortal Sofa, like her book Glacier Wine, also deals with aging and how her views of the world have changed, as she has gotten older. It still contains a surreal air while looking at life as it happens every day, telling the tale of the world with strange metaphors and fanciful images while still being rooted in reality.

Stanton’s Bibliography

• Snow on Snow (poetry), foreword by Stanley Kunitz, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1975.
• Molly Companion (novel), Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis, IN), 1977.
• Cries of Swimmers (poetry), University of Utah Press (Salt Lake City, UT), 1984.
• The Country I Come From (stories), Milkweed Editions (Minneapolis, MN), 1988.
• Tales of the Supernatural: Poems, David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1988.
• Life among the Trolls (poetry), David R. Godine (Boston, MA), 1994.
• Glacier Wine (poetry), Carnegie Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2001.
• Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling (stories), University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, IN), 2002.
• Cities in the Sea (stories), University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2003.
• Immortal Sofa (poetry), University of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL), 2008.
  Works Cited

"Maura Stanton." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

Maura Stanton Biography. Book Rags. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

IPP - short poem analysis - revised

“At the Vet’s” by Maura Stanton is a relatively straightforward poem about how people react in the face of sadness and tragedy. It comes near the beginning of her book of poetry, Immortal Sofa and is a prime example of her use of high drama and narrative in her poems.

“At the Vet’s” tells the story of a group of people in a veterinary office overhearing a tragic conversation between one man and the vet. First, there is the description of the sick dog, which is brief but startling enough to catch the attention of the reader. The story describes the people in the waiting room as they listen to the vet discuss the man’s sick dog, and how it is likely the dog will not survive. The people in the waiting room, including the receptionist, listen with rapt attention. When the man leaves, his face shows that he is extremely grief-stricken over the news. Those who heard his story can only sit in stunned silence as he leaves, unable to reach out to him and yet unable to look away, either. His grief has changed their day, from routine to tragic, and this shock leaves them all unable to speak.

            When simply looking at “At the Vet’s” itself, the first thing one notices is that it has a very rectangular shape. It feels very heavy and has a lot of substance on the page. It is not a very long poem, but the shape of it makes it seem longer than it really is. The lines and the sentences of the poem do not match up. The second sentence in the poem takes up seven lines, and most other sentences run over more than one line, too. The sentences are long, somewhat run-on, which gives an urgent, hurried feel to the poem. This hurried feeling contrasts with the heavy shape of the poem itself. The combination of stable lines and rushed sentences makes the poem seem almost dream-like, as though reality and dream have mixed together. The poem reflects the feeling one would have at receiving bad news, or even when feeling empathy for one who has received bad news. The shock of something bad in the midst of the everyday goings on of the world is disconcerting, and the poem captures that feeling very well.

            The language of “At the Vet’s” is very straightforward and reminiscent of everyday talk at the beginning, which is a Modernist technique. The description of the smell of fear on the persona’s cats is also a very Modernist description, telling exactly what the smell is like and how the persona’s body reacts to it. As the poem goes on, the language becomes more metaphorical, as Maura Stanton describes the vet and the owner of a sick dog as singers and the people in the waiting room as audience members. The “audience members” listen as the “soprano” vet and the “baritone” owner talk in the examining room about the fate of the man’s pet dog, and when the man leaves the vet’s office, the people in the waiting room are “too stunned to applaud” the little scene they have just listened to. The metaphors Stanton uses liken the sad events to a play or an opera, something used to entertain. The fact that the people who overheard seem unable to reach out to the man, whom they obviously feel sorry for, also hints that they feel disconnected from him as they would actors on a stage.

            As “At the Vet’s” begins very simply, the use of this highly dramatic metaphor is interesting to the reader, and is a good example of Maura Stanton’s use of strange metaphors in her poetry. The transformation of the people in the office, who were once doing daily routines and are now stunned into an awkward silence, is an example of Stanton’s use of narrative. “At the Vet’s” tells a dramatic story about how certain events can change a person’s entire day and mood. It is a great example of Stanton’s use of imagination and metaphor in everyday life, a theme in Immortal Sofa.

N + 7 Poem - Shakespeare's Sonnet 130

My misusage's eyeglasses are nothing like the sunburst;

Corbie is far more red than her liquefaction red;

If snowbird be white, why then her breccia are dun;

If hairdressers be wisdoms, black wisdoms grow on her headgear.

I have seen rosewood damasked, red and white,

But no such rosewood see I in her cheese;

And in some perianths is there more dell

Than in the breechcloth that from my misusage reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That musk deer hath a far more pleasing soup;

I grant I never saw a godmother go;

My misusage when she walks treads on the groundhog.

     And yet, by hebetude, I think my lover as rare

     As any she belied with false compatriot.

Hotel d'Avignon - an analysis

For our next assignment, we were told to deeply study another Waldrep poem that was not a Battery poem. I chose to look at Hotel d'Avignon because I felt a connection with the imagery and it was one of the poems in "Disclamor" that really captured my imagination.

To begin with, I tried to look into the meaning of the title. Avignon is a place in France. During the 14th century, a series of popes decided not to live in Rome, but in an enclave in Avignon instead. Translated, of course, "hotel d'avignon" means "Hotel Avignon"... or, a hotel IN Avignon. I've noticed that the titles in Disclamor are often very hard to interpret... I think this is one of those times, although the poem does sort of have the same feeling as Avignon - beautifully crafted and also slightly rebellious, like the popes who lived in France instead of Italy.

"Hotel d'Avignon" is a poem made up of one stanza with 28 lines of mostly medium-long length (with a few medium-short lines thrown in here and there). There are many cases of enjambment throughout the poem. There is no rhyme scheme or particular meter. The poem has a very strong sense of the narrator's voice - it uses "I" many times, and the persona is the 'main character.'

A few words I looked up or translated:

• patois - something like a regional dialect, or the jargon/slang of a particular region
• portico - a roof held up by columns, sometimes attached to make a porch

Another note: In this poem, there are three "characters." The persona, the religious (a group of people, who fear what the persona has to say and hide from him. A connection between the title of the poem and the content!), and the persona's mother.

The very first line of the poem, "The religious cry in their patois of sand and dust." Here, the religious are introduced. They are already shown in a rather negative light - they are crying, mournful. Their speech, "patois," which is different from the persona's speech (he later mentions), is likened to sand and dust. This is an interesting image - not only does it capture the raspy quality of old voices, but also the idea that their ideas are dying, turning (returning?) to dust. The idea of turning to dust isn't a positive one with us!

2nd line - "If I could find the portico I would repaint the columns." The idea of change is brought immediately following the introduction of the persona. He wants to reinvigorate the "hotel" by repainting it, but he can't find it.

Lines 3-8 - Here the image of the key is brought up. The persona can't get to the portico because no one has given him a key to open the doors of the hotel and wander about. However, he has a piece of paper (and presumably a pen or pencil), so he simply sketches the image of a key.  He is a good artist, so he draws the key very well, with lots of dimension, making it seem real. The image of the key is an important one. The fact that the key is on paper leads me to imagine that here Waldrep is talking about words, poetry. As he is a poet himself, he uses his skill in crafting words (keys) to give himself access to things he wants to explore. Through his words, he can explore new ideas, change old ones, or, in fact, do anything he wants. I think this is the main image/message of the poem - the idea that words are like keys, opening any door imaginable.

9-14 - The persona uses his key to get into the hotel, and begins wandering around. He comments again on the sameness/oldness of the place when he says that "night is always the same here." Outside the hotel, the religious are hiding from him, "fragment"ing into the grass. The persona knows that his key is a good one, but the religious are still afraid of it and are trying to get away from it. Here is the idea of the old fighting against the new. The religious don't even want to come near the new ideas Waldrep is exploring with his words. They hide from it in the shadows.

15-18 - Here, the religious spend the entire night cursing the key and the persona for having it. They hope that he will either lose the key or leave it behind. The fear of the old to change is brought up here again. Even though the old are being slightly more active here, muttering curses from their hiding places all night long, they are still very passive. They don't try and get rid of the key, they only hope that it will be lost or left behind. At the very least, they hope the persona will keep his key to himself and not use it to make anything change.

19-22 - here, the persona tries to reason with the religious. He tries to tell them that "everything in the world is a knife,/ everything in the world cuts a little away from you." He is trying to explain to them that the way they did things was wrong, too, and that he is just trying to find a better way, a way that doesn't cut quite so much away from you. But the religious don't even speak the same language as him - they not only DON'T listen to his ideas, they CAN'T. Despite not being able to hear his reasons, of course, they still fear the idea and wish it gone.

23-26 - the persona goes on with his life, using his key to do various things. Sometimes he thinks about "drawing a new key" and sometimes, in fact, he does. This is another example of continuous change. The persona isn't afraid to reexamine what he knew before or try and find a new way to think about things, a new answer.

27-28 - here is the introduction of the persona's mother, who used to tell the persona that "light is untidy" and that he should "collect the rays scattered about you." Does this mean the persona holds a sense of wanting to tidy up his thoughts, which is why he is always searching for a new key? Does this mean that he wishes he could stop his search and just come up with a concrete answer, like the religious? Or does it mean that by gathering all his thoughts and trying to make them work, he is doing what his mother told him to do? I think these are all possible interpretations of these last two lines, although I think I like the final interpretation best - the idea that his quest for more knowledge, more understanding, is driven by his need to understand the world and make it fit into some kind of structure is one that I can relate to. Also the fact that he uses words from his own hand, things he has created, to find these answers is a very appealing one. I think anyone who has done creative writing can relate to this poem, which is why I like it.

Battery Alexander

For class I was assigned to deeply read the poem "Battery Alexander" in Disclamor by G. C. Waldrep.

After reading through the poem once, I had very little understanding of even it's basic meaning. So, initially, I began by asking some questions. The first thing I did was look up words that I was unsure of their meaning (or, in some cases, I knew the meaning but wanted to double-check my understanding).

These are the words:

• sanguinary - characterized by blood or bloodshed
• lupine - wolflike; ravenous, vicious, savage
• coulter - the blade on a plough that cuts the dirt vertically
• adze - a handtool with a blade at a right angle to the wooden handle, used for dressing lumber
• hasp - a clasp for a door with a padlock or pin

Adze

 

Then I looked up the different plants that Waldrep mentions.

• Monterey cypress - a California native that used to grow in a lot of places but now has gotten quite sparse (I believe)
• Scotch broom - an invasive plant species from Europe that has taken root in California
• Sea-fig - an invasive plant species from Africa that has taken root in California

I also looked up the quotation used in the poem, which is from the Bible, Matthew 15:11. This particular section of the Bible also mentioned the "blind leading the blind" - and earlier in the poem Waldrep talks about the  "blind shielding their eyes" - something that may be connected.

"Battery Alexander" is made up of five parts. Each part has a few stanzas, although some stanzas are made up of only one line.
In the first section, Waldrep describes Alexander as being like the Monterey cypress. He also says that while the capital is far from Alexander, it is still somehow close. He describes the capital as "sanguinary." And he says that "as we live within the bounds of the capital/the capital lives in us."
Alexander was one of not very many batteries built on that side of San Fransisco, which could be a parrellel with the now-lonely Monterey cypress. However, despite being out in the middle of nowhere, isolate and alone, the feeling of the "capital" still overwhelms the place. In other words, the place still has a sense of being American, and having a duty to America. This duty is described as "sanguinary" - an accurate description for a battery and also for America. Saying that we live in the capital and the capital lives in us is an example of a kind of word play Waldrep uses frequently, but it also describes patriotism and America very well - there is a sense of patriotism in places like Alexander, or the "capital" living in Alexander. the best way I can put it is to say that Alexander is American, but America is also Alexander. This first section is mostly a description of Alexander and the feelings of the persona while standing there.

The second section also describes Alexander, getting into more specifics about how this place is different from any other place. The first stanza talks about wandering through Alexander and finding different things - a garden, a maze of pipes, and nothing. Alexander had a rather complicated plumbing system, which explains the pipes. It's unclear whether the garden was planted after Alexander was turned into a park or when it was being used for defense - although Waldrep hints that it was there the whole time in the next stanza. Here, he makes a sort of riddle, asking what defense is without beauty. The answer is "geometry". I get the sense that Waldrep finds Alexander rather disturbing, and the fact that there is beauty there also upsets him. But geometry is also a reference to the use of angles and altitude in Alexander. The mortars at Alexander fired high into the air, using geometry so that they would hit enemy ships from above, striking their thin decks instead of their armored sides. This geometry is references throughout the rest of the poem. In the third stanza, Waldrep talks about "a meaning of intelligence" - perhaps acknowledging the intelligence of using geometry against the enemy, perhaps mocking the idea of using intelligence for killing. He then says that "the blind save their eyes/for the approaching flame" - perhaps referencing Matthew 15 again, although what I initially thought of here was the story that a blind woman saw the flash of the bomb hitting Hiroshima.

In the next section, Waldrep talks about some things he saw at Alexander. The first stanza talks about a hawk being annoyed by a small blackbird. It describes the hawk's prey as everything. The hawk is similar to the mortars of Alexander, as it attacks from above, going after the weak spot of its prey by coming down from above. This stanza also describes the only graffiti he found at Alexander, a violent message "PRO DEATH NOW" - there is no love here like in the other places, only more death. He also mentions for the first time an "object of desire" - something that comes up later and refers to Matthew 15.

The next section is in italics and talks about a dream Waldrep had while in Alexander. In the dream, he is a tour guide speaking another language that he doesn't understand, but everyone else seems to. This reminds me of the story in Acts where the disciples speak the story of Jesus in languages they don't know, a reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel. here, too, Waldrep talks about the different tools mentioned above - he is showing them to the people he is leading around, and they are amazed by them. Perhaps this is talking about advances in technology captivating the people, who then forget about more important things. Waldrep also says that the people and the persona then stand silently in a room with no windows (a prison?) for a long time - being trapped in a place where there is no light or hope. Perhaps this section is a comment on modern life as compared to a more rural life, a reference to the Amish?

The final section begins with a Bible verse, Matthew 15:11. Here, Jesus is saying that eating unclean things is not what makes a person unclean, but saying unclean things. In the next part he critics the Pharisees, saying that they are the "blind leading the blind" - another comment against modern life/war? In the next stanza, "dimension" is another geometry reference. Here, Waldrep is asking a question about war. If "we" are attacked and go to war, we are victims and blameless, but if we start the war, we are bullies who are blamed for the war? Yet America is still hungry for wars, despite not wanting to be blamed, and looks for any chance to get involved. Here also is when Waldrep talks about the invasive plant species. Perhaps he is talking about how wars invade a place, but I think maybe he is talking more baout the batteries. They are all along the coast, invading it, changing it, despite not really fitting into the natural setting. They are, he seems to think, ruining it, killing the natural things that are there, like an invasive plant.

Overall, this poem is slightly more depressing then the others. I get the sense that Waldrep was very disturbed by Alexander for some reason. I think this is reflected in his poem, which is very questioning and concerned.

A conversation with a friend

I don’t know how we got to that subject.
Sitting on my front porch in chilly autumn
waiting for the bus to come and talking
about band (her) and choir (me) and musical (us).
It must have come in a quiet place
but perhaps there was a reason for it.
She was talking about people she knew
in a place she used to live,
a different state to the south.
She didn’t live there long.
She didn’t live anywhere long,
as I would find out later.
Suddenly, she was telling me
about her friend, or neighbor, or cousin
(I can’t remember)
who tried to kiss her
then pulled her down behind a car where no one else could see.
That was it. She didn’t go on.
But there was an expression on her face that told me all I needed to know.
I was lost.
I had nothing to say, and too much to say.
Should I say, “What happened?”
“I’m sorry.”
Or simply, “I know.”
Instead, I made some sort of joke
something that we both used to get away from the subject
like I always do
and probably will continue to do forever.
And I don’t know if that makes me a bad friend
or a good friend.

Immortal Sofa by Maura Stanton - an analysis

Gwen Stephan

Ann Hostetler

Intro to Literature

Poetry Book Analysis

Immortal Sofa: Maura Stanton’s Narrative Poetry in 2008

            Maura Stanton has written six books of poetry. Her latest book, from 2008, is Immortal Sofa. Immortal Sofa is a book full of poems that examine Stanton’s viewpoint in the world, showing her imagination during everyday moments as well as highlighting the way her opinions have changed as she has grown older. The use of metaphor and narrative elements in Immortal Sofa set it apart from her other books, and also helped to convey the story of her life and how she has changed as a person over time.

            Maura Stanton was born on September 9^th, 1949 to Joseph and Wanda Stanton in Evanston, Illinois. She has a BA from the University of Minnesota (1969) and a MFA from the University of Iowa (1971). Her first book of poetry, Snow on Snow (Yale, 1975), won Stanton the Yale Younger Poets Prize, a very prestigious award for a new poet. This book began a career of creative writing that stretched from novels to short stories to poetry and that was acknowledged by many universities and other poets as the start of something excellent (“Maura Stanton” 1).

            Molly Companion (1977) was Stanton’s next book, a novel. Molly Companion was followed by Cries of Swimmers (University of Utah, 1984), a poetry book, Tales of the Supernatural: Poems (1988), a collection of poems, Life among the Trolls (1994), poetry, Glacier Wine (Carnegie Mellon University, 2001), poetry, and finally Immortal Sofa (University of Illinois, 2008), her latest book of poetry. Since her first book, Stanton has also won many more prizes and awards for her poetry, including the Frances Steloff Fiction Prize (1975), the Lawrence Foundation Prize in Fiction (1982), and others (Maura Stanton Biography 1).

            Before Stanton’s first book was published, she married Richard Cecil. As her writing career began to unfold, she worked at several universities, teaching creative writing. She taught at the State University of New York at Cortland (1972-1973), the University of Richmond (1973-1977), Humbolt State University (1977-1978), the University of Arizona (1978-1982), and finally the University of Indiana (1982-present) (Maura Stanton Biography 2).

            From the beginning, Stanton’s work showed an interesting use of metaphor, narrative, and supernatural elements that set her apart from other poets. Her work focuses on the use of human imagination in everyday life. She has been compared to Sylvia Plath for her use of strange metaphors and themes, as well as her ability to take her own thoughts and feelings and lay them out plainly for the world to see. As she went, her poetry, perhaps reflecting her similar interest in prose, became more and more narrative, something that has become a key feature in her book Immortal Sofa. Over time, too, the element of metaphor and supernatural occurrences has remained, though in Immortal Sofa these are not as strong as they have been in the past. Stanton does not look at ghosts and spirits, but at the magic that can happen in everyday life. She looks at aging and death, but in a realistic way tinged with metaphors and perhaps a hint of magic to soften the blow. Immortal Sofa, more than any book before it, uses narrative in poetry and imagination in everyday life.

            One example of a poem in Immortal Sofa tells a story is the poem “At the Vet’s.” “At the Vet’s” is a poem about three strangers overhearing a tragedy at a veterinary office and being unable to reach out to comfort each other or the man whose pet is dying. The poem describes the sick dog right away, then goes on to describe the other people and animals in the room. The poem does not describe the persona, focusing on her observations instead of her character. The strangers listen in as the vet explains to the man with the sick dog that his pet will not get better, and when the man leaves the office all the observers are stunned into silence. Stanton uses the metaphor of an opera to describe how the observers react and make the scene more dramatic, saying that the tragedy leaves “the audience – cats, terrier, people -/ sunk in their places, too stunned to applaud” (Stanton, 12).

            “At the Vet’s” occurs near the beginning of Immortal Sofa and gives the reader an idea of what the rest of the poems are going to be like. It is blank verse, with no rhyming and lots of instances of enjambment. There is only one stanza with thirty lines, and all of the lines are of similar length, giving the poem a very rectangular appearance. While there are thirty lines in all, there are only seven sentences. These sentences are long and run-on, which makes them feel urgent and rushed, not properly formed but running along at full speed the same way one’s thoughts run along at any point during the day. This poem is not focused on perfection in words, but instead hones in on the feelings of the people, focusing on capturing the moment. The use of run-on sentences and enjambment helps to capture this. The block-like format of “At the Vet’s” contrasts with the slightly dizzying pace of the poem and the strange, out-of-body feelings of the people in the poem, perhaps representing how jarring it is when average life is interrupted by tragedy.

            The fact that “At the Vet’s” is blank verse and uses no rhyme makes it feel even more like a short story rather than a poem, which is one of the features of Stanton’s poetry. The use of metaphor is strong in this poem, another common feature in Immortal Sofa. The people in the waiting room of the vet’s office, listening in on the man and the vet as they talk about his dog, are likened to the audience at an opera, while Stanton calls the vet a soprano and the man a baritone. When the man leaves, the people do not reach out to him, despite knowing his pain. They sit silently, an invisible fourth-wall built between them and the man, as if he really were just an actor and they audience members. The observer, while describing the people around herself, stays hidden, like an audience member in a darkened theater. Anonymous, unimportant compared to the actors. This metaphor is used to heighten the feeling of strangeness in the poem, to make the reader feel even more jarred when the tragedy is revealed in the midst of normal life. “At the Vet’s” is an excellent example of Stanton’s use of narrative and metaphor in Immortal Sofa.

            Another of Stanton’s poems that is full of metaphors and narrative elements is “Ode to Pokeweed,” a long poem from the middle section of Immortal Sofa. “Ode to Pokeweed” is a free verse poem that describes a pokeweed plant’s history and the persona’s changing relationship with the plant. At the beginning of the poem, the persona tries to get rid of the plant, but cannot. When the persona does some research, she discovers that the plant has a very long history and several uses. After she educates herself, she feels fond of the pokeweed, and is distraught when the plant is destroyed during a storm. “Ode to Pokeweed” has only one stanza, like “At the Vet’s,” with 105 lines. Every other line of the poem is indented slightly, so that the even-numbered lines start farther in on the page than the odd-numbered lines. The lines are all of similar lengths and there are many instances of enjambment and apostrophe in this poem. Stanton uses many different kinds of punctuation, including commas, periods, dashes, and exclamation points.

            The narrative element of “Ode to Pokeweed” comes in as the persona’s character changes as she educates herself and becomes more tolerant of the pokeweed plant. At first, the persona hates the plant and is fearful that it will poison the wildlife in her backyard. However, after taking the time to research the plant, and discovering how influential and ancient a plant it is, her attitude begins to change. She tells her friends about the plant and mourns deeply when the plant is destroyed by a thunderstorm. When the persona remembers that a new pokeweed plant will grow in its place, she rejoices, and looks forward to meeting the pokeweed plant again. The development of the persona’s character, similar to the development of a character in a novel, is a narrative element that Stanton uses to get the meaning of the poem across.

            Here, too, lies the use of metaphor. In “Ode to Pokeweed,” Stanton describes a relationship between a human and a strange, unknown plant. In her previous books, she has often used nature as a metaphor for humans, and this poem is another example of this. “Ode to Pokeweed” is talking about human nature itself. When it comes to humans, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Neither are things so simple with the pokeweed plant. Everyone has some sort of usefulness in the world, and everyone has a history with many twists and turns that are almost unimaginable. At first, when meeting someone new, one might feel afraid of him or her or even try to find a way to get away from him or her. However, in taking the time to figure this new person out, one might discover a deep friendship. Even the use of apostrophe helps to make the plant seem more human – Stanton’s attempt to show the reader that humans are not useless or boring, but beautiful and many-layered, like the pokeweed plant.

            The last poem of Immortal Sofa, which shares the same name as the book, also uses a shift in attitude toward an object to present an idea hidden in metaphor. “Immortal Sofa” is blank verse with one stanza and no rhymes, like “At the Vet’s” and “Ode to Pokeweed.” It has eighty-six lines and many instances of enjambment. “Immortal Sofa” talks about a sofa given to the persona by her mother-in-law, taken hesitantly but eventually assimilated into the home. The sofa becomes, after a time, an important piece of furniture in the home and the persona even imagines that it will be in Heaven, a quiet place to rest after life is over.

            Narrative is a large part of “Immortal Sofa.” The poem begins in the present, then goes to the past and works its way forward before guessing at what the future might hold, following a plot that many short stories and novels adhere to. In “Immortal Sofa,” as in “Ode to Pokeweed,” the reader can see a change in attitude toward an inanimate object. At first, the persona does not want to own a sofa, but has to take it because it is a gift. Over time, the persona comes to find that the sofa is a nice place to relax and read, and grows fond of it. Despite moving to several new cities, and despite the fact that the appearance of the sofa changes, it remains in each house she moves to, a place of comfort in new situations. The sofa is the last place of rest for her mother-in-law, who sleeps on the sofa until her death. Then the persona describes finding the sofa in Heaven, and using it as it is used currently – as a place to get away from the noise of everyday life and rest. The language of the poem is very similar to that of a prose piece, with no rhyming to set off this feeling. This poem is one of the most narrative poems in Immortal Sofa, using a distinct plot line, character development, and long sentences to reflect this.

            In “Immortal Sofa,” Stanton uses the metaphor of this sofa to represent the main theme of her book. Stanton often looks at aging and mortality in Immortal Sofa, and this poem is no exception. The sofa could easily represent aging and the acceptance of her own mortality. At first, she describes how college-aged students get rid of their sofas at the end of each year – commenting how young adults do not seem to comprehend their mortality. Then she goes on to talk about her own feelings of discomfort about the sofa and how she refused to get one until it was given to her, again showing the fear and denial of death in young people. Over time, she becomes more comfortable with the idea, and eventually Stanton even links the sofa directly with death when she talks about her mother-in-law’s death and its connection with the sofa. Finally, Stanton finds peace in the idea of the sofa, or death, and even looks forward to the reprieve from the noise of life coming sometime in the future. In “Immortal Sofa,” Stanton uses narrative elements and metaphor to talk about her changing ideas about life and, eventually, death.

            Immortal Sofa, Maura Stanton’s latest book of poetry, is about the way Stanton views the world, how the world affects her, and how she changes as she ages. Most of the poems face the idea of aging, new discovery, and death head-on, using metaphors to make the sometimes-bitter pill of mortality go down easier. Here, to a greater degree than in any of her previous books, Stanton uses narrative to tell the story of how she has changed as a person. She does so in a way that captures the real world and at the same time her own imagination, forming a book of stories in poetry form that is as complex as Stanton is, herself.

Bibliography

“Maura Stanton.” Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

Maura Stanton Biography. Book Rags. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

Stanton, Maura. Immortal Sofa. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2008. Print.

Stanton’s Bibliography

Poetry

Glacier Wine (2001)
Life among the Trolls (1998)

Tales of the Supernatural (1988)

Cries of Swimmers (1984)

Snow On Snow (1975)

Fiction

Cities in the Sea (2003)

Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling (2002)

The Country I Came From (1988)

Molly Companion (1977)

In the last summer of my childhood

Alternatives: A poetry imitation exercise

Based on “Building Walls” by Todd Davis

In the last summer of my childhood

I learned to read books

with my heart,

            sinking into a new world

            and realizing possibilities.

In the heat and humidity I played,

creating worlds in my backyard.

Worlds in peril

            that I would save singlehandedly

            becoming an epic hero.

There were three trees in front of my house

that shaded me from passing cars.

I was alone

            and the outside world

            had nothing to do with me.

Then the bees came out and the air chilled.

We went school shopping.

I changed.

            My worlds were gone,

            swallowed by reality.

The smell of cows is green

1. Poem that elaborates an image from rural life

There’s nothing quite like the way

a new calf will suck on your fingers

if you offer them.

They, like our own children, are hungry

for milk or knowledge.

That is a feeling I wish I could replicate.

The smell of horses is yellow

and the smell of pigs is brown,

but the smell of cows is green -

a glorious green smell that makes me homesick.

A smell that makes me remember quieter days,

happier days when everything made sense.

When I drive past a diary farm

I roll my windows down

in the hopes of catching a thread

of green scent.

And a longing, sad feeling

stirs in my chest.

The leaves mottle and shine a metallic purple

1. “Poem with a line by ------------.”

The leaves mottle and shine a metallic purple –Keith Ratzlaff

           

Maybe you wouldn’t understand,

I know there are many who don’t,

but I feel like a new, shiny penny

every time I leave this place.

In that wide-branched tree of my soul

I can feel the places where He has touched me.

The fruits of this tree swell or wither respectively,

the leaves mottle and shine a metallic purple.

He prunes me and shapes me into something

more beautiful than before, yet the same.

Poets Against the War poem

A sent photo


A child’s face
plane with the pavement
like a mosaic
pieced, flat
the pavement is a house levelled
the word is rubble
the word is collateral
a child’s face
flat to the ground
gray, inset
a perfect fit
the earth and bricks and bits of cement
pressed around it
no blood
not even her hair
just the entire face
moon round
part of the picture
icon among all the other fragments
melted into one surface
so tight
not even her shoulders

You saw it before you could stop seeing it
stop seeing it, you will
never stop seeing it
just her face
eyes closed
they have to be, or the sky overhead
could no longer bear
-Heather Spears

The thing that caught my attention with this piece was the easiness with which it reads and the way that is in conflict with the uneasiness it makes the reader feel. The sentences are short, simple, but not disjointed or jarring. There is an easy, flowing sort of meter underneath it, soft and barely there but also not completely absent. These things make me think of peaceful things, but the actual words of the poem are definitely not. The image that this poem creates is horrific, sad, and unfortunately all to common. The idea that the child's face blends in with the concrete around her, and that the photographer chose to focus on her face more than anything else, yet it still takes a few moments to be seen is a rather disturbing one to me. The final stanza is particularly uncomfortable. We've all seen pictures that we can't unseen, horrible things that someone steal an innocence from us. We wish we had never seen it but at the same time we don't, because we know that it is an ugly world out there and to live in a world where everything seems pretty is foolish. Even worse, the sky itself has trouble looking at the scene. The final three lines really strike me, making me sad and feeling true. "Eyes closed/they have to be, or the sky overhead/could no longer bear" The sky - heavens - themselves mourn for this girl the same way we do, and the only comfort we can take is that we don't have to see into her eyes, because the vacancy where there should be life would be too much for us.

WWI Poems

I think WWI poems are very interesting. They somehow capture the difficulties between the taditional and the new more easily than poems from other time periods. After all, everything was changing then. Modernization was happening. Industrialization. Even war itself was completely different than it had ever been before. And for the most part, the changes that were happening were bad. I mean, they turned beautiful countrysides into smoggy, gray, poverty-stricken cities. Everyone was struggling to change their views and their lifestyles to keep up. And then WWI comes along. It's horrific and strange in so many ways, it's almost incomprehensible. It's bigger than any war that's come before it. And at the same time, people can hear more about it because of technology, so it feels closer to home. Everything was in turmoil.
I really like the poems from this time because they capture that. They still, often, use the 'rules' of old romantic poetry - using certain rhyme schemes or meters, etc. - but they are drifting away from the old in subject matter (and, eventually, in form). They talk not about love and beauty but about the horrors of war and the changing world around them. They capture the feeling of being lost in a world that's moving ahead quicker than people can think. I sometimes feel rushed and lost in a similar way, and I can imagine what it must have been like during that time. So I really appreciate the blend of old and new and the feeling that gives WWI witness poems.

9/11 Poems response

Alabanza: While the entire poem has a lot of really great imagery, the end of it is the part that captures me the most. The second to last stanza has very interesting imagery, comparing the attacks to a storm, which I like. But it's the last four lines that I like the best. I like the idea of the spirits of the people talking to one another, seeking something from one another after they have moved on. And I especially like the idea of the Spanish-speaking spirits saying that all they have is music. It's a sad idea, because it's very truthful, but at the same time it is sort of beautiful. The idea that music is all they have, but in some ways it is enough (after all, the other spirits seek it and the Spanish-speaking spirits only offer to teach it, and don't ask for anything else).

Dropping Leaflets: This poem didn't feel as nice to my as the other ones did. I usually like disjointed poems, but in this case I felt it was a little overly separate and hard to get a hold of. At the same time, I like the idea of what she did, and how she made the poem, and the message of the poem is an interesting one. I think the short lines and disjointed feeling reflects how most of us felt after 9/11, too, which is something else about it I like.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World: I think this is the most technically beautiful of the three poems. It has a lot of imagery and a really nice meter without feeling forced. It is more subdued and perhaps traditional than the others, but not in a way that it feel old-fashioned or obsolete. I like this one the best, because of the imagery.

Modern Poetry

This is a blog discussing my thoughts and feelings on modern poetry. I am writing this blog for my Introduction to Literature class at Goshen College. This semester we are focusing on modern poetry, so this blog will contain poems by myself as well as my thoughts about poems by others.