Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae: In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Hey, guess who's back? I'm returning to 3BPoetryThoughts to finish the last 3 posts I never got around to 1) because poetry's important and 2) I need to warm up for NaNoWriMo in July and although I saw 642 Things to Write About in Urban Outfitters the other day, I was too cheap to buy it.

This, in case you didn't know, is the poem that inspires the Veterans of Foreign Wars to give you red poppies when you donate, and many countries around the world to use red poppies on their various Remembrance/Memorial Days. I first read this poem/made a poppy at Empire Girl's State when I went summer after my junior year, and I now have a red poppy living on my purse after donating to the VFW ladies at the local Farmer's Market on Saturday. They were very pleasant, and said, "Oh look, we've got a brain over here!" when I mentioned I went to RIT (I had my Imagine RIT Volunteer shirt on, which they asked about).

Memorial Day was also this past Monday. Both of my Grandfathers served in the military; on my mother's side her father was a veteran of the Korean War, although I never met him and she barely knew him at all (he died when she was 9) and my paternal grandfather didn't specifically serve in any wars but was a Green Beret Paratrooper and toured as a sharp shooter with the military afterwards. He died, what, five years ago now? Maybe 6. Given my stats with Left 4 Dead 2 I clearly did not inherit any of his sharpshooting ability.

In regards to the poem I guess the overwhelming feeling it emanates is legacy. The people in the poem are the Dead, yet part of them remains 1) in the poppies that have spouted up where they are buried (the author John McCrae had to personally bury one of his best friends shortly before he wrote the poem) 2) their spirit, previously very alive as described in the second stanza and 3) their cause, which their comrades must take up after them. And not to mention John Green again (spoiler alert, I only have two posts after this one, but he's gonna come up again) but An Abundance of Katherines, which Adam is reading now, is partially about whether or not we create something that lasts forever, and The Fault in Our Stars likewise deals with the impact we have after death. Having read both of those and, well, just living, it's obvious that not everyone will make the kind of impact that will be remembered centuries onward. I'm almost done reading Don Quixote at the moment, and part of me wonders if Cervantes actually knew that people would be reading his stories for ages to come, because Cervantes was extremely meta and does mention at numerous points that Don Quixote will live throughout history. An Abundance of Katherines reaches the previous conclusion and decides it's ok, and that living your life beholden to making an impact to be remembered for times to come is not a fulfilling way to live your life. Living life the way you want to, doing what makes you passionate, and positively affecting those around you is the fulfilling way to live your life. If you manage to create something powerful enough to live on after you by doing this, all the better.

That being said, I think those who are put through the perils of war and make the kinds of sacrifices that war requires deserve the kind of legacy this poem resonates. It's rumored that McCrae tried to throw this poem away but his colleagues saved it and made him publish it, and I'm glad they did so. Veterans deserve some way to continue to live on, even if it's through a small red flower. McCrae's simple poem, written probably out of his grief, is a very good memorial not only to the soldiers he fought with in WWI, but all soldiers before and after as well. Once again, poetry's important.

Happy belated Memorial Day everybody.
-Val

William Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I know. Late again. Bahhh. Was busy multivariabling last night, but I probably could've done this at some other point in the day.



So in my late desperation this morning (in which I should be studying for that same multivariable) I flipped open John Green's The Fault in Our Stars with the intention of finding this poem, but ending up going too far and just reading the ending which was making me extremely sad. For those of you have read it (I think you should if you haven't, although I disagree with Isaac's sentiments on love, and his opinions annoy me a bit now) I'd say it was one of the sad parts with Hazel and her parents. Bad idea to read, I haven't seen my mother in months and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to see her this summer. (My folks moved to Arizona, I'm going back to my hometown outside of Buffalo. This stupid summer coming up.) This is a poem the Hazel says at one point to try and distract Gus, because it is a poem she remembers, although all she says on it is, "Williams was a doctor. It seemed to me like a doctor's poem." She's a little bit busy at this point in the book, so I'll excuse her for not going on a long rambling spiel about it. When I was looking it up I thought it had been an ee cummings poem, but I guess not.



I think it's simplicity that really makes this poem stand out. In trying to remove the formatting after copy/pasting it in this post it all turned into one singular line of text, yet it doesn't feel any less than a full poem.


That, and it's really vibrant, I think. A weird word to use on a poem, but the red wheelbarrow and the white chickens really stand out. Those two lines really contribute to the imagery, but I think it's the "glazed with rain water" that really seals the deal. Now that it's raining here a lot, I'm used to that thin layer of water that covers the benches and things after it's rained. "Glazed" is a good way for Williams to put it.

Why does so much depend on this red wheelbarrow? A lot depends on all the little things in our lives. Sam left his laptop in the lounge late at night a couple of days ago, so I took it and returned it to him on academic side the next day. He hadn't even noticed it was missing which surprised me, because my laptop takes up the dead center of my desk, which, at the end of the room by the window, is kind of unavoidable. If it weren't there and it should be I'd be freaking out. I'm stupid enough to have gotten myself locked out of the room a few times this year, except by now Emily is smart enough to not lock the door even when she's leaving if my keys are sitting on my desk. During our CS Midterm Adam was just starting to get sick and was dying with his nose running, sitting next to me during the exam, but I was able to help him out a little bit with some of the tissues in my purse. Adam, in his own right, can use his phone to access his desktop, submit our CS project, and code in C. (He has an iPhone though... Android all the way haha).

So while I think being materialistic is pretty bad, we have to acknowledge that sometimes it's the little objects in our lives that get us through. The red rain soaked wheelbarrow, so that we may feed our white chickens. I think I'll wear one of my flower hair berets today. They're pretty, and they kind of make me happy to wear. I've been complimented on them, so I guess other people do too.

It's always the little things.

I'm going to be late to Spanish,

-Val

John Donne: The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deny'st me is;

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be;

Thou knowest that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pampered, swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, we are met

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that self murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou triumph'st, and sayest that thou

Find'st not thyself, nor me, the weaker now.

'Tis true, then learn how false fears be;

Just so much honor, when thou yieldst to me,

Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

John Donne just hit on a girl using a flea as a metaphor. That girl wasn't having any of it and killed the flea, so take that John Donne. You're not getting any today my friend.

I'm not really sure what else I want to comment on this. John Donne is really kind of huge in poetry, but I only know him because in a Scholarship Essay for the Exchange Club of the Tonawandas (Shoutout, didn't win the main prize but they as an organization were very nice to me and the other people I knew who were Student of the Month) I tried to use "No man is an island" as a proverb, and one of the ladies from our local group of the Exchange Club who were kind of our mentors  scolded me for not giving Donne the proper credit. When I expressed my surprise that it wasn't just some anonymous proverb she kind of went on a John Donne spiel in which she mentioned this poem because, and absolutely no disrespect here, she is clearly one of those people who is at the age where they don't really have the most concern for prudence anymore. I wish I could remember her name because she was really awesome. She apparently taught English at Tonawanda for almost a decade, and still cared deeply about Tonawanda as a community, which was nice. The fact that she thanked us for not being as snobby as NT didn't hurt either, hahaha.

But yeah, other thoughts on this poem are that the more things change, the more they really kind of stay the same. Silly guys will try and get girls by saying stupid things. I remember my English teacher Mr. Mercer always trying to highlight how bawdy William Shakespeare was. I think when you're first starting Shakespeare it's kind of a surprise how racy he really is. I mean, think of the porter complaining about alcohol affecting his love life in Macbeth. Shakespeare's happy to go there, to walk that line, and it's not surprising, because Shakespeare was a twenty year old guy. Granted, a really talented, eloquent, twenty year old man who deeply understood the human condition and was deft at social satire- but he was still a twenty year old guy who made penis jokes. Mr. Mercer would have you know he was actually quite good at it. Right now I am likewise reminded of Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream messing up his line and saying that the lion deflowered poor Thisby.

The fact that guys haven't changed doesn't make it any less amusing to watch John Donne hit on a girl while using rhyming language like "Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered, swells with one blood made of two,". But at the same time, it's kind of nice to be reminded, even with silly things like this, that people haven't changed all that much throughout the centuries.

Nobody's used any insect metaphors on me yet, so I guess that's reassuring.

Emily Dickinson: "ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted,"

ONE need not be a chamber to be haunted, 

One need not be a house; 

The brain has corridors surpassing 

Material place. 

Far safer, of a midnight meeting

External ghost, 

Than an interior confronting 

That whiter host. 

Far safer through an Abbey gallop, 

The stones achase,

Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter 

In lonesome place. 

Ourself, behind ourself concealed, 

Should startle most; 

Assassin, hid in our apartment,

Be horror’s least. 

The prudent carries a revolver, 

He bolts the door, 

O’erlooking a superior spectre 

More near.

Hey guys. I know, I know, I'm late. Even by our blog's West Coast time frame. If this were a video project I guess I'd be subjected to punishment of some sort, but unless one of you suggests something, I think I'm free. Yesterday was oversleeping a bit, working an Accepted Students Open House, CS Lab Class, Physics test, Racquetball (I actually scored some points, aww yeah) then working on the CS Project. We kind of called it quits at midnight, and I wasn't really coherent enough to be blogging at the point, you can ask Adam.

So this morning I was looking around and was going through some Emily Dickinson (because she seems like someone I should use) when I found this, which really reminded me of my Writing Seminar Final Research Paper, which I think I'm going to talk about. That's right, I'm late and I'm reusing old material. Oh well.

So my Writing Seminar class was a study in Mysteries, and at one point we read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Our Final had to somehow use another work we did not read in class and be related to some topic we had discussed, so I decided to compare Jackson's Hill House with Stephen King's The Shining, because they were similar and I wanted to read/write about Stephen King. It ends up that King was inspired by Jackson's Hill House to write The Shining, and when I found that out I was like, oh, I've hit the research paper jackpot. 

The thesis of my paper was that King and Jackson were able to create truly terrifying stories by treating both of their respective houses as characters in the stories. Each house (err, hotel in one case, but that's really only semantics) has a history, its own personal motivation, and serves as a mirror for the emotions of the people inside it, which made them more real and all the more terrifying.

King has a book called Danse Macabre in which he discusses the horror genre because it's something very near and dear to his heart and he likes writing about writing almost as much as he likes just writing (His memoir/guide book On Writing lives in my purse). In it he discuses how there are two types of horror: external and internal. External is when the horror is caused by some sort of outside force, a giant plague tearing apart and wreaking havoc through the town. Internal horror is the more psychological stuff, the character study of an individual going through personal hell. The external horror has the pro of being able to do anything, because it's a mystical, outside force, it's capable of any atrocity you can conceive of, it's not bound by physical limitations. But that also takes away some of the realism, draws against the willing suspension of disbelief. That's where the internal really benefits; it has the emotional draw because it's so real and personal. It's a person, a person who could be you, you could be inside the story. What King ends up arguing is that haunted houses, despite their connotation of cheap tricks or the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World, are prime for combining both- they can be the ghosts of slamming doors, changing hallways, blood filled corridors if we're thinking of Kubrick's The Shining film adaptation, but it can also be a result of the psychological states of the people inside it. Eleanor Vance's insecurities written on the walls, Jack Torrence's greed and lack of self control ripping his poor family apart. The grandeur of external horror with the intimate, personal fear of internal.

And that's where we get back to the poem. Dickinson is saying here that internal demons are so much worse then any haunts or spooks of your local, deserted, decrepit house. That's very true. But sometimes, with writers as talented as Stephen King or Shirley Jackson, you can get the worst of both worlds, a double whammy. An even worse nightmare- the supernatural working with ourselves, hidden behind ourselves, to come at us from every angle. The things that hurt of the most, ubercharged by forces we can't even hope to understand.

I'm going to stop now at risk of rewriting my 10 page paper, but I did want to bring up that the funniest part of Hill House is when two new people come to the house, and one of them makes a point of cleaning and getting his gun ready. "I shall have with me a drawn revolver", he says, "do not take alarm, ladies; I am an excellent shot—and a flashlight, in addition to a most piercing whistle." Wow Arthur. Good job. What are you going to do, shoot the ghost? That'll show it. Hill House is really kind of disturbing, but it's not without its humor. The other person keeps whining that the ghost won't talk to her via old school Ouija board because the rest of the group isn't behaving. " 'Planchette,' she said bitterly, 'will not speak to me tonight. Not one single word have I had from planchette, as a direct result of your sneering and your skepticism;' ".

Have a good weekend everybody, I should probably get school work done before job work.

-Val

William Wordsworth: The Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

 

It's finally spring! I know, because it has rained but been far above freezing for the last three days. I personally am really happy that it's Spring, because I miss the sun a lot (Florida was a little lacking in February) but now, if the rain lets up, I can be out in the sun either eating lunch or running each day. If it doesn't let up, then at least I can enjoy the nightly thunderstorms, because lightning's awesome.

 

Daffodils are one of my favorite flowers. The lilac is my absolute favorite, as we had a giant lilac bush outside my childhood home, but I also really liked the wild daffodils that reappeared each spring in the back yard. Sure, roses are nice (I have a rose ring/ hair clip) but spring flowers like daffodils are so nice for much less cost. I really like flowers, but I'm pretty cheap- carnations are cool too. Also, reason #89 why RIT ended up being the perfect choice despite my real lack of effort deciding, Rochester's the Lilac Capital of the World, and I am SO looking forward to the Lilac Festival in May. I'm going, someway somehow.

 

I guess if I'm actually going to talk about the poem I want to bring up the really awesome opening line- "I wandered lonely as a cloud." Clouds are nice and majestic in the sky, but one reason that it's easy to lie on a soft patch of grass and make shapes out of them is because of the space between each cloud formation. Clouds are awfully removed up there in the statosphere, and we love their beauty and variation, but only from far away. They're free drifting but alone, and the metaphor is really appropriate for a person out meandering on their own.

 

My only other commentary is that I like the idea that maybe we as humans need nature to be a part of our existence. I brought it up in Sam's original poem about trees that nature seems to have significance in a lot of human lives. Nature is something to keep us grounded and appreciative of the beauty and grandeur in life, which is maybe why we're drawn to things like trees (my favorite thing to draw on Sol's boxes when I'm bored) or fields of daffodils. Not to sound like a hippy here, but sometimes I think we need to just forget about the millions of little minutiae that we occupy and worry ourselves with just appreciate something as simple as the flowers coming up for spring, or the fact that somewhere in the RIT forest someone took the time to spray paint the words"I LOVE TREES" on several trees, the entire phrase only visible from one specific location.

 

It's Spring everybody, go out and enjoy it.

Tyler Knott Gregson: Untitled

Tyler Knott Gregson is someone who I discovered through Tumblr by seeing one of his love poems. The vast majority of his poems are love poems and the sad, lonely hearts of Tumblr love him all the more for it. As someone who wouldn't necessarily call love poems their thing I can't deny that his stuff on love really is truly fantastic. Tyler Knott Gregson is someone who deeply understands love in all of its forms, and I would highly reccommend any of his works, although forewarning that you will have intense feelings of all kinds. A lot of time my breath catches in my throat reading some of his stuff, not going to lie. 

Sam and I are discussing doing a week of just love poems, and if that's the case then you'll probably see him again from me, but I don't really want to talk about love at the moment, I think.

I like this poem but I'm not sure if I completely understand it. What exactly is the swimming supposed to be? As previously stated a lot of his stuff is about love, so swimming could be falling in love, except then what does that make the treading water? If the treading water is living life, just getting by, then what exactly does that make the swimming? 

Something about the swimming is taking risks, I feel like I know that much, especially given the "trying to keep your head above the water" line. There's trying to float and then there's keeping your head above water- the latter definitely has the anxious connotation of trying not to drown. There's a sense of danger there that's kind of carried over to the swimming part. 

And swimming is kind of dangerous, especially with how terrifying drowning would be. My mom's deathly afraid of water- has never gone swimming, never been in the ocean, can be in a pool, but not comfortably and especially not at a point where she can't stand with plenty of room between her head and the water. I used to be thankful I didn't inherit that, except now that I don't swim all that much and I need to learn how to drive and probably have her driving anxiety, I think I've changed my mind. It comes up fairly often in Would You Rather stuff if you'd rather drown or be burned alive, and I always choose being burned alive. I've had people tell me that burning would be so much more painful and so much worse and you'd be watching your flesh melt but at the same time, drowning just seems terrible. I don't have my Mom's fear of the water, but I can appreciate the sheer terror of drowning.

(In my opinion the worst way to die is Death by Molasses, by the way. It's like drowning except worse, because molasses.)

Yet we shouldn't forget how much we love to swim. Swimming is a risk of not swallowing water or knocking yourself unconscious or a million other things that can go wrong when you're underwater, but it's a freeing experience of propelling yourself and cutting through liquid and floating and it's something that we should keep doing. Whatever swimming is supposed to represent here, our lives should still have a measure of risk in it. There's something comparable between the feeling of zipping across a pool underwater and the feeling of taking risks. In Brave New World the Savage complains of no love, no hurt, and how are these people living with no risk? Mustafa Mond calmly explains that monthly or so citizens have their blood flushed with endorphins and adrenaline and then flushed out, and they merrily go about their lives. They realized that the sense of risk was necessary, but took care of it in other ways.

So may we never forget how much we truly love to swim or to take risks, for that matter.

Langston Hughes: Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run? 

Does it stink like rotten meat? 

Or crust and sugar over— 

like a syrupy sweet? 

Maybe it just sags 

like a heavy load. 

Or does it explode? 

I would count Langston Hughes as one of my favorite poets, and this is a poem that, while I may not be able to quote it verbatim, has stuck with me ever since I read it probably in middle school. From this poem alone and from what I vaguely recall from whatever English class I learned about it in, Langston Hughes seemed like a very interesting person. I'm always kind of thinking of hypothetical situations (let me tell you about parallel universes) so I have the inclination sometimes to say that me and current or dead celebrities would be friends, if we knew each other. I'd probably say this about Langston Hughes also, but maybe we wouldn't- we come from very different circumstances. It's been a weird day in which I lost my keys, lost my phone and got assaulted many times by a racquetbal ball but overall let's face it- I'm a privileged college student. Langston Hughes, if I remember correctly, suffered throughout his life. He had it rough, and his poetry reflected that. He'd probably be cool enough that we could still be friends, but you never know. It'd be an honor to be friends with him if we had lived at the same time. These are weird hypothetical things that I think about sometimes- would Langston Hughes and I be friends?


In this poem I like the idea that in all of his different metaphors, Hughes represents a dream (even deferred) as some sort of form of energy, or a force. It's a loss of water, the source of life with the raisin. It white blood cell pus in the sore. It's dying flesh with the meat. It's a chemical reaction with sun and sugar in the sweet. It's a heavy weight baring down on your back with the sagging load.


Or maybe it's something more violent and dramatic than that. Maybe the energy or force can't be contained and it's bursting and violent and an explosion. It's small and silly, but that last line just has to be italicized. It's representative of the severity of the situation, isn't it? It's a climax that the poem is inevitably reaching.


A dream deferred is a theme I feel like we've seen a lot: the idea of the sad, disillusioned middle aged person who is living a life they're very dissatisfied with. It killed Willy Loman, as Death of a Salesman came up in conversation today. (Occasionally when I'm in an area that's hard to navigate, I'll mutter to myself, "I'm all boxed in, the woods are burning!", a reference people who haven't read the play don't get.) "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads is a really scary song if you think about it.



Sometimes (like when I'm writing a poetry blog) I wonder if I'm in the right major. I've done a fair amount of creative writing that I really enjoyed doing, and I'm probably more of a right brain thinker than a left brain one, which I think matches up with me being left handed, but not necessarily a technical degree.


But I haven't felt like I wanted to switch majors at any point in this year either, and I feel like that's got to be a good sign for things. I came to RIT with no programming experience, and have been thrown into Python (oh, such a derpy language) and Java (public static void main (String[] args), unless you decide to name args something like Spaghetti). It's been rough but I haven't felt like I wanted to switch majors.


I think intellectually I believe people can have more than two dreams. I'm pragmatic (along with sarcastic, according to Sam), and I believe that when you're in a hard situation you kind of just have to get yourself through it, except I have quit things I had to, I think. Tech Crew (at the end of a season, didn't return Junior Year), Driving School (can't put that off altogether though). So maybe Computer Science can be my dream, too.


It may be one in the morning and I have a 5K to run at 9:30am and homework and work to do this weekend, but I'm surrounded by people I enjoy being with and doing things I enjoy, and I'm living the dream in that regard, at least.


"Val, Val. You're only 18 Val. You have your whole life ahead of you. It'll get better, I promise."
My mom said that to me in a much different, much harder context, but I think it'll probably hold true here, too. I may be 19 now, but I have my whole life ahead of me. I think I can figure things out, and not end up as "Once in a Lifetime", or maybe even "Call Me Al" by Paul Simon, regardless of Computer Science and my ability to cohabit.


I need to go to bed right now though.

Update as of 4/6: I ran a 23 minute, 36 second 5K (3.1 miles), which reduces down to 7 minutes, 36 seconds per mile, which is a new personal record and really exciting for me.

In more mundane news my laundry still isn't folded. Maybe I'll do that after I shower/eat.

Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;-

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

She was a child and I was a child,

In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love-

I and my Annabel Lee-

With a love that the wingéd seraphs of Heaven

Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,

In this kingdom by the sea,

A wind blew out of a cloud by night, 

Chilling my beautiful Annabel Lee;

So that her highborn kinsman came

And bore her away from me,

To shut her up in a sepulcher

In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,

Went envying her and me;

Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,

In this kingdom by the sea)

That the wind came out of the cloud, chilling 

And killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love

Of those who were older than we-

Of many far wiser than we-

And neither the angels in Heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:-

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride

In her sepulcher there by the sea-

In her tomb by the side of the sea. 

This blog post is dedicated to two dear, really awesome friends of mine: Laura, who gave me my copy of Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales and Poems for my birthday (how perfect for National Poetry Month) and Xandra, who recommended "Annabel Lee" when she saw I was doing Poe, and who is also able to recite quite a bit of "The Raven" without prompting. As a whole I've always enjoyed the Poe I've read, although it's mostly been short stories- The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart in high school, The Purloined Letter and The Mystery of Marie Roget for Writing Seminar Quarter 1 this year. The Masque of Red Death is quoted in the beginning of Stephen King's The Shining. I've obviously read the "The Raven", also mentioned, but don't know much of the rest of his poetry.


With a name like Annabel Lee, in a kingdom by the sea, many and many years ago no less, the poem reads off like a fairy tale. I bet the kingdom by the sea was on a cliff, that's appropriately fairy tale. At first thought fairy tales doesn't really seem to suit Poe, except, when you think about it, he is really good at the long, sweeping, romantic syntax that needs to be the backbone of a fairy tale. Except this is Poe, so the woman ends up in a sepulcher by the sea. A tragic fairy tale. Those are things, right? Apparently the Little Mermaid actually commits suicide in the original tale, so tragic fairy tales are very legitimate.


Most fairy tales seem to center around a beautiful maiden, which is something I'm not sure I understand right now after midnight alone in the lounge (because nightblogging). What about women inspires swordfights and gallantry, far away lands, castles, and lines like, "For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams" in their honor? What about my gender causes intense metaphor, the need for a quest and a bard to tell the story later? There's something about making the maiden the crux of any fairy tale that kind of removes her from the story, because she's this all encompassing force that has to drive so much action and language. Think of Rapunzel in the tower- the maiden's this beautiful symbol, a proverbial tower to be seen across the land, but who is she as a person?


Poe uses the intensity of a beautiful woman quite frequently in his works and even acknowledged in "The Philosophy of Composition" that, "the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world". He backs up his use of this theme in "The Raven" in particular by arguing that true Beauty (like that of a woman, I suppose) effects not the heart or the mind but the very soul itself, just as sadness permeates the soul. Therefore combining the death, the pinnacle of sadness, with the paragon of beauty, a woman, will have the greatest emotional, poetic effect. Obviously this theme worked well for Poe, as he used it throughout his works, and I actually discovered that quote originally because someone had applied it to Christopher Nolan as well. This gets joked about a lot on the internet, actually, that every Nolan film has a dead girlfriend/wife in it. (Dark Knight- Rachel, Inception- Mal, Memento- Lenny's wife, it applies for his lesser known films as well.) I wrote about this theme in my write up for Writing Seminar about Marie Roget, citing Chandra Levy and Natalie Holloway as contemporary, real life examples of beautiful dead women still holding intrigue in the media.

Obviously I can't ignore the effectiveness of this theme, sure, but this sure is a lot of responsibility, importance and significance for Poe's Lenore to hold, having all of the epic "The Raven" be about her.


John Green, a young adult novelist in case you don't know, calls this the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" archetype, having men put a woman on a pedestal and have them signify so much. He, for his part, tries to write three dimensional young woman who are very flawed and therefore harder to see as perfect archetypes. Pudge may be infatuated with Alaska of Looking for Alaska, but that doesn't make any difference to the plot that splits the book into two parts (spoiler proofed in case you haven't read it- you should). I don't admittedly remember much of Paper Towns, but its arguably most popular quote is Margo saying, "Imagine me completely." I guess that's why romanticizing woman doesn't make a lot of sense to me personally, because I don't see myself as something inspiring quests, or something to be written sonnets about every other minute. I smashed two bottles of Sparkling Grape Juice on my foot a few weekends ago, I still don't have all of my Physics done for the night, goodness knows how long I left my laundry sitting in a dryer down in Sol's, and goodness knows how much longer it's going to be until I fold it. If you expect me to communicate within the first 30 minutes after I wake up, it's probably not going to happen.

This has kind of turned into a feminist post, I think, but not a radical one in my opinion. The Tl;Dr version of what I think about feminism is that I don't want to be an object, and I dislike the idea that people may only talk to me because I don't have a y chromosome. I want people to talk to me because I seem like a cool person overall. I dislike the fact that I am seen as a scarce resource because of the demographics of the college I go to, and that I as an individual are more or less something that obeys the law of scarcity. There's a reason I hang out with the people I do- they don't cause me to feel any of the above things (well, occasional asshole friend with the occasional asshole comment aside. He eventually apologized). In a semi-related note, we're watching Tangled this weekend, in which Rapunzel gets out the tower, has her own non-male fueled motivations, and fights along with the male protagonist instead of just being fought for by him.


It's not that I don't appreciate Poe's love of Annabel Lee, it's a beautiful poem that grabbed my attention as such when I read it. It's just that its beauty and the effect that that creates is a high standard to live up to even for a girl in a kingdom by the sea, I think.

Shel Silverstein: Two Boxes

Two boxes met upon the road,

Said one box unto the other,

"If I'm a box,

And you're a box,

Then you must be my brother.

Our sides are thin,

We're cavin' in,

And we must get no thinner."

And so two boxes, hand in hand,

Went home to have their dinner.

from his collection of poems Where the Sidewalk Ends

So I definitely knew I wanted to start this project out with Shel Silverstein, as he is one of my favorite poets and probably has had the largest impact on my life. My older sister Jess owned all three of his poem collection (Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, and Falling Up) along with Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. Lafcadio is one of my three favorite stories ever because of the way my adopted brother Brian reads it, with a different voice for every character, as there are quite a few. I was the Saludictorian at my school and therefore had to give a speech, and if my speech could've been said to be about anything then it was Shel Silverstein's poem "Ations", which I chose because 1) I loved Shel Silvestein and wanted to use something from him (totally my reason for also quoting Bruce Springsteen and Ray Bradbury in that speech, no use denying it) 2) it was simple, had a graduation-y theme, and I thought it'd go over well while still almost making a point (my speech didn't really have one. I said before writing it that I just wanted to thank some people and sit down, so instead what I did was thank some people, quote some people, then sit down, because that more or less constitutes a speech. I don't like a lot of attention on me all at once, so public speaking's a nightmare). 

Shel Silverstein, in my opinion, is kind of like the Pixar of poets. You can be a kid and love the quick-shooting, marshmallow loving Lafcadio mentioned earlier or an adult pondering the identity issues it raises and what it means to be or not be part of a society, I guess. Likewise you can be a kid terrified of Lotso and wanting Woody and Buzz to save the day, or you can be a college student/parent sobbing your eyes out about the idea of childhood being over. "Two Boxes" is a simple poem that really seems to say a lot. A box is a box is a box is a box - "then you must be my brother,". And people are people are people are people. A long repetitive tautology, sure, but if I'm a person and you're a person then you must be my brother. I'm really sick of University Physics and a lot of time I don't know how to deal with people and I'm probably not really eating all that well and I simultaneously want this quarter to be over but am dreading going back to my home town- my sides are getting kind of thin. Other people have crazy M&P midterms or are working two jobs and are finding it hard to deal with people, or they're probably not sleeping well and they're probably really anxious and I don't think people have been treating them too well lately or ever- their sides can't get no thinner. But I'm a box and you're a box so you must be my brother.

I think I told somebody once that every work of fiction is about the human condition, and what do you know here I am talking about it on page one. All of us are struggling but we're getting through it together- the human condition.

I am also probably too long winded and rambling to have been responsibly given a blog page. I don't see this stopping any time before May though.