Week 3

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.  Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing.  He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates.  For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
                                                       –from Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in 1954

Welcome back. Hope you've had a good week.  Today we will continue discussing Week 1 poetry selections, including short stories by American writers Kate Chopin (1860-1904) and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1960), and by Frenchman Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893).  "My Uncle Jules,"  and the some 300 other De Maupassant  stories, were models of the short story form and known by both Americans.  The ones selected here for class focus on the trials of youth, how we grow up, the influence of family and the force of authority.

I'll return  your first written responses, submitted last week.   I've also a couple of extra pieces, just below.

when serpents bargain for the right to squirm            by e.e. cummings when serpents bargain for the right to squirm and the sun strikes to gain a living wage-- when thorns regard their roses with alarm and rainbows are insured against old age when every thrush may sing no new moon in if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice --and any wave signs on the dotted line or else an ocean is compelled to close when the oak begs permission of the birch to make an acorn-valleys accuse their mountains of having altitude-and march denounces april as a saboteur then we'll believe in that incredible unanimal mankind(and not until) 1944

 


Discussion Question:  What is the point the poet here makes about nature and about humans?  What is his method or means of address, or how is the poem formed?

----------------------------- In the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" we see a peculiar, dark humor of author Lewis Carroll.  So-called nonsense literature, like the prose novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is typically set in fantastical places and features strange creatures we wouldn't expect to meet in real life.  Often the plot events and speech are equally mystifying or silly but the premium seems to be on defying logic and authority by showing the irrational side of our being and imagination and all the flexibility and ambiguities of language; and, of course, on having fun! We have to let go for a time our reliance on strict logic and what is sensible and right to play along.  Nonsense works appeal to children and to the child in us all. And perhaps in them we may find something beyond age.

The poem below, in the form of a ballad, has always been a favorite of mine, and one easily memorized, by a poet much admired by the late Beatle John Lennon, who wrote some nonsense verse himself.

The Owl and the Pussycat               by Edmund Lear (1812-1888)

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea 

   In a beautiful pea green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,   

  Wrapped up in a five pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,   

  And sang to a small guitar,’

O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,     

  What a beautiful Pussy you are, 

      You are,       

      You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!   

   How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:   

   But what shall we do for a ring?’

They sailed away, for a year and a day,   

  To the land where the Bong-tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood   

   With a ring at the end of his nose,         

       His nose,         

       His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

    Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’

So they took it away, and were married next day   

    By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,   

    Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,   

    They danced by the light of the moon,         

        The moon,         

        The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

Here, too, a short commentary on nonsense lyrics by George Orwell:  http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/essays/orwell_1.html
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Writing Assignment #2

In 400-500 words or more, explore a theme addressed in the poem by Lewis Carroll and one or another of the short prose stories.  Compare the two pieces in terms of the theme and the perspective or interpretation each allows. You may use any prose piece from the handouts or links provided thus far, and may follow associated ideas and images, whether of authority, power, and rule, personal independence and freedom, experimentation, discovery and growth; peace, joy, fun or some opposite, as of obligatory work, rules, unwanted discipline, punishment, confinement, deprivation.  Recall the range of responses given in class and President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms:  Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear.