“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” “Buffalo Bill’s,” & “We Real Cool” (in Poetry handout) In this assignment, students are to assess, in a written analysis, who the Speaker is (be careful!! things can be tricky!!) in each of these poems and what the tone (attitude) of the Speaker is in each. Remember, the Speaker is NEVER the author. The Speaker is a device created by the poet to have an effect on the tone and meaning of the poem. You want to say as much as you can about the Speaker, but you have to be able to reasonably support what you say (read the Intro to Poetry Lecture). To reasonably support, one must use the language specifically present in the poem as much as possible.Tone is difficult. It will be described using adjectives (happy, sad, angry, contemplative, etc.) A tone can be complex, a combination of attitudes. Also, do not decide what tone is according to the theme of the poem. A poem may be about death, but the Speaker’s attitude may not be sad at all. So, when it comes to tone…LISTEN to how the poem sounds.The more detail and the better the logic, the higher the score.Buffalo Bill’sDefunct Who used to ride a watersmooth-silver stallionand break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat JesusHe was a handsome man And what i want to know isHow do you like your blue-eyed boyMister DeathTHE DEATH OF THE BALL TURRET GUNNERFrom my mother’s sleep I fell into the StateAnd I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died, they washed me out of the turret with a hose. WE REAL COOL The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
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Poetry Lecture: “Reading as the Discovery of Design”
There is an idea in our culture that it is not good to analyze creative things
like works of art because many believe that if you try to apply reason and logic to
things that are artistic, they can only be ruined. Reason kills beauty. Art is
supposed to be felt but not understood; and if you understand it with your mind,
you can no longer feel it with your heart.
Well, these are silly ideas in my estimation. I would suggest that beautiful
things get MORE beautiful the more we see, through careful analysis, how they
have been created, that is, how they have been designed. The designers of a
Porsche sports car, for example, would just die to have the chance to show you
how carefully and brilliantly they have designed their motor car—how all the parts
hang together to create a driving experience unparalleled by any other (I have
heard this from Porsche owners in marketing focus groups. They say: Once
you’ve driven one, it ruins any other driving experience). One axiom to this
course is simple: if something is artistic, it is very well designed, and seeing that
design can only improved the experience of it.
All the good artists I know, whether they are poets or teachers or football
players or good parents, work very hard at thinking about what they do and
“getting everything just right.” You should not be shocked to know that a good
poem might take months or years to get just right. The point is this: getting it
“just right” is a matter of getting it designed so that it will be beautiful and so that
beauty will be recognized by the people who look at it. Poets, for example, if
they are any good, DO NOT WANT READERS TO GET WHATEVER THEY
WANT out of a poem; good poets want a variety of readers to get what they, the
poets, are saying precisely and powerfully.
As a matter of fact, the word “art” is a Latin word, and it does not mean
creativity or beauty; it means…hold your breath now…it means…”ORDER.” Yes,
an artist is one who orders, not one who merely rebels against all order (it’s so
much easier to destroy that to construct!). Yes, some ways of ordering things get
old and boring, and when that happens we have to change those orders—maybe
even destroy them altogether. But, we are not to leave things in a state of chaos;
we must design new orders. That’s what artists do, thy design new orders (or
they use old orders in brilliant ways that haven’t been discovered yet).
Shakespeare, for example, wrote approximately 150 sonnets. A sonnet is a
poetry form with lots of rules and restrictions. Did you hear Shakespeare whining
about how he had to conform? No, you saw him USE those restrictions to make
kick-ass beauty. Ten of his sonnets are perfect (you’ll make pleasurable noises
involuntarily); the other 140 or so are quite competent. I dare you to write ONE
GOOD SONNET in your lifetime (Don’t worry: I will not give such an assignment
to you in this class!!).
Or, we can even look at this idea in athletic terms. When a bunch of beerguzzling, Dorito-munching fans yell “beautiful catch” at the TV, they aren’t merely
being metaphorical; the catch is beautiful because it has been made under
conditions of compelling limitation and duress (much like a good poet can make
something beautiful even though he is restricted to a handful of syllables per line,
a limited number of lines, and the pressing need to rhyme in one limited pattern
or another). So, a defenseman hangs from the receiver’s shoulder and the
sidelines tell him he can’t go a step further to get the ball. The receiver must lay
himself out, parallel to the ground, stretch like a just-wakened cat and strain to
grab the ball with two fingers. It sticks. Poetry in motion.
So, you see…
LECTURE 2:
UNDERSTANDING POETIC LANGUAGE
AS WINDOWS, VISTAS, AND SMUDGES
Here’s a good way to understand what poets are up to. They really, really, really
want you to understand the poems they’ve written. Good poets don’t get it right
the first time. They write, rewrite, scream, sweat, rewrite, melt when they finally
find the perfect word for line 16, take up prayer, blaspheme God, kick the dog,
love their spouses more, hate their spouses more, wish they had spouses, read
other great poets, watch the Super Bowl…
See, you only get to see the finished product, and this is misleading. A friend of
mine who is a very good poet averages about 6 months work on a good poem—
and she works at it every day sometimes. She’s creating, crafting, thinking,
rethinking, trying this, that and the other thing—until she feels she’s “got it right.”
And when she lets people test read it and they don’t get what she’s trying to say,
it disappoints her a lot and sends her back to the drawing board.
I know what you’re thinking: you feel the same way when you write school
papers—and God knows there’s no poetry in those things. So what are poets
doing that I’m not trying myself? Well, let me tell you. Most of the time, when
you write for school or business, you’re trying to be precise. You’re trying to get
an idea across hoping that the language you use will be clear. Clear like a clean
window. You are trying to get so good at language that it works like a clean,
clear window which people can look through and “see” exactly what you’re
saying. And, by the way, this kind of writing isn’t easy. You know this. You
mess up a sentence, forget where the semi-colon goes, choose the wrong word.
You goof up the language; you smudge the clean window. You call attention to
the dirt on the window and the reader can’t see past it to the view outside. When
you revise, you try to Windex the smudges off the window so that things can be
“clear” again. When you write school papers, you want the language to—
disappear, to be transparent.
But poets are trying something different and more difficult. A poem is not only
supposed to lead you to a clear view of something (seeing through the window),
but it’s supposed to do it by getting you to pay attention to the window (the
language) itself at the same time. Now, poets don’t want smudges or streaks to
get your attention. They want the beauty of the window itself to catch your eye.
It’s like poets are making stained-glass windows that you are supposed to LOOK
AT and LOOK THROUGH at the same time! Tricky business it is, but when it is
well done—well, a thing of beauty is a joy forever said one great poet.
So, in order to understand poetry, you will have to learn how to look at the
window of language itself. You will have to learn to see the different “colors” that
language has, colors you don’t use too much—because you usually don’t need to
when you write school papers or grocery lists or quick e-mails, tweets, or texts to
your friends. We can call these special, colorful, characteristics of language
POETIC FEATURES. True, you know some of them already, but some you don’t.
What follows is a sample list (not all of them, but a useful several you can carry
around like tools in a toolbox) that contains many of the most useful and
important poetic features.
LIMITED POETIC FEATURES LIST
The two most important poetic features—because they work not only in poetry
but in almost everything we write—are SPEAKER and TONE. Students seem to
have a hard time with these ideas, but they are really pretty simple.
The SPEAKER of a poem or essay or school paper is the voice you hear when
you read the text. You should always remember that the author of a text is not
necessarily the speaker of the text. Mark Twain was the author of the novel,
Huckleberry Finn, but the character of Huckleberry Finn is not Mark Twain, just a
creation from Mr. Twain’s brain. The only time we have the right to connect the
speaker and the author is when we are writing autobiographically, that is, about
ourselves. When you read poems, I want you to tell me as much as you can
(and as much as you can prove) about the speaker of the poem. I don’t care
about the author at all.
The TONE of a poem or other piece of writing is very specific: it is the Speaker’s
attitude toward the ideas he or she is discussing. One idea is especially
important here: TONE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR ATTITUDE toward
the subject, only the Speaker’s attitude. So, it might be possible that you are
reading a poem about suicide. You, the reader, may hate the idea of suicide, but
it’s possible that the Speaker of the poem speaks of suicide sarcastically or
comically—not in a normal way. You could never understand such a poem if you
replaced the Speaker’s attitude with your own. Look at this poem and hear the
humorous tone:
RESUME
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Noose give;
Gas smells awful—
You might as well live.
What’s the TONE of this poem? Who’s the SPEAKER? Unless you get good
answers to these questions, you’ll likely miss the poet’s meaning.
❖ GRAPHIC LAYOUT
▪
Pay attention to how the language is laid out on the page. The
stranger the Graphic Layout, the more important it probably is to
the meaning of the poem.
▪
Especially watch where poets decide to stop one line and begin
another one; they use this to create emphasis or ambiguity in
meaning.
❖ SOUND FEATURES
▪
Rhyme: We will pay attention only to End Rhyme, rhymes at the
ends of lines.
o Look to see if the poem rhymes or not
o If it rhymes, mark the pattern (if you look at the poem on the
previous page, you see that it rhymes and you can mark its
pattern in the following way (consult your text if you have
troubles):
RESUME
Razors pain you; (a)
Rivers are damp; (b)
Acids stain you, (a)
And drugs cause cramp. (b)
Guns aren’t lawful; (c)
Noose give; (d)
Gas smells awful— (c)
You might as well live (d)
▪
Assonance: Check out patterns and repetitions of vowel sounds. A
poem with lots of “ooohs” and “aaahs” will sound a lot softer than a
poem with “eeee” and “aaaa.”
▪
Consonance: Check out patterns of consonant sounds. You
shouldn’t try writing poetic lyrics for a lullaby with lots of “k” or “t” or
“f” sounds; you’d want “mmmms” and “nnnns”— softer sounds.
▪
Alliteration: Repeated word-beginning consonant sounds: “Peter
Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”
❖ IMAGERY
This is language which appeals to the senses; it’s also called “concrete
language.” There are actually six senses to which language can appeal,
some easier than others.
▪
Visual, imagery for the eye: Any color words or words that indicate
size. Words like “jagged,” “smoky” and “bright” are visual (although
they can appeal to other senses too at the same time.
▪
Aural, imagery for the ear: “Screeching,” “rumbling,” “humming.”
▪
Olfactory, imagery for the nose: “Stinky,” “sweet,” “aromatic.”
▪
Tactile, imagery for the sense of touch: “Soft,” “leathery,” “sharp.”
▪
Gustatory, imagery for the sense of taste: “Sweet,” “sour,” “bitter.”
▪
Kinesthetic, imagery for balance and internal sensations like
nausea, stomach nervousness, etc.
❖ FIGURES OF SPEECH (FIGUARTIVE LANGUAGE)
There are lots of these, but here are the most useful:
▪
Symbol: when something stands for something else
▪
Metaphor: when something is compared to something else
▪
Oxymoron: a contradiction in terms (“military intelligence”)
▪
Hyperbole (exaggeration): “If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a
million times!”
▪
Litotes (understatement): The British are known for their dry,
understated humor. If a British guard stood at the gates of Hell, he
might tell you, “Watch out; it’s a tad warm in there!”
▪
Euphemism: using non-harsh words for taboo or unpleasant things:
Instead of “dead,” PASSED ON; instead of “stupid,” A BRICK
SHORT OF A LOAD. There are lots of euphemisms for sex.
▪
Personification: giving human traits to non-human things.
▪
Synecdoche (pronounced [sin-EK-da-kee] ): referring to something
whole by focusing on one of its parts. Sometimes when we count
people we take a “head” count. If we really don’t like people, we
refer to them by naming specific body parts (you do the math on
this one).
❖ DICTION
This has to do with word choice; what words mean and how they achieve
their meaning.
▪
Register: checking to see how formal (Hello Mr. Reichle) or
informal (Yo, Homey!) the language being used is.
▪
Reference and Sense: we can refer to the same object using
different words. Watch how poets make choices as to HOW they
refer to things. It’s one thing to call someone an “economic
refugee,” another thing to call them “cheap labor.”
▪
Semantic Field: Sometimes poets will use words that come from
the same area of meaning. If a poet is writing about death, but
uses words like “womb,” “infant,” “maternal,” you’ve got to see that
he’s tapping the semantic field of BIRTH, and you’ve got to figure
out why.
This is all for now.
…
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