Feminism
Maria Luisa B. Aguilar-Carino
I have learned your speech,
Fair stranger; for you
I have oiled my hair
And coiled it tight
Into a braid as thick
And beautiful as the serpent
In your story of Eden.
For you, I have covered
My breasts and hidden,
Among the folds of my surrendered
Inheritance, the beads
I have worn since girlhood.
It is fifty years now
Since the day my father
Took me to the school in Bua,
A headman's terrified
Peace-gift. In the doorway,
The teacher stood, her hair
The bleached color of corn,
Watching with bird-eyes.
Now, I am Christina.
I am told I can make lace
Fine enough to lay upon the altar
Of a cathedral in Europe.
But this is a place
That I will never see.
I cook for tourists at an inn;
They praise my lemon pie
And my English, which they say
Is faultless. I smile
And look past the window,
Imagining father's and grandfather's cattle
Grazing by the smoke trees.
But it is evening, and these
Are ghosts.
In the night,
When I am alone at last,
I lie uncorseted
Upon the iron bed,
Composing my lost beads
Over my chest, dreaming back
Each flecked and opalescent
Color, crooning the names,
Along with mine:
Binaay, Binaay.
Analysis
At the outset, it needs to be said that courses in creative writing and in literature are not exactly dissimilar things: both locate the literary text—poetic, fictional, dramatic—at the center of their attentions, even as the privileged perspectives between them are admittedly different.
A creative writing class, simply because it intends to make writers out of its students, looks at texts from the vantage-point of their production. In other words, as a discipline creative writing, by its very nature, aims at an awareness of literature as a species of artistry, an imaginative process whose workings can to a large extent be identified and discussed, duplicated.
On the other hand, a literature class can and does, depending on the persuasion of the teacher or perhaps even the student herself, choose to look at a literary text's meaningfulness in light of any number of concerns: its formal attributes, its writer's life and times, the reading practices of its intended and/or apparent audience, its artfulness, its thematic affiliations, the students' impressions or subjective "feelings" about it, etc.
Here we can see, upon closer scrutiny, a basic and even antagonistic divergence of interests presenting itself: while a creative writing class encourages students to revise the literary texts they themselves create, a literature class invariably treats the text as a kind of "self-contained" object of study, one which doesn't need to be "improved," since the assumption behind its being read and discussed at all is that precisely it is already "good" anyway, or at least it already finds itself falling within the teacher's own idea of a "canon."
I do not, however, wish my lecture to get embroiled in what is always a torturous and finally futile subject—namely, the question of the "Canon." What I wish to propose is this: the teaching of literature can be greatly enhanced by employing certain creative writing techniques and strategies. In particular, I am interested in advancing the old argument that creation is the highest form of appreciation.
Deconstructionism
| by: Francis Dunggan |
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|
| |
| They give her no credit they go to her past
Say that she was ex druggie and her new look won't last
She once worked in a brothel on sleaze side of town
And though she lives clean now they still put her down.
A family woman to good man good wife
And with two lovely children she live a clean life
But the knockers still knock her such cruel things they say
And her past held against her it won't go away
And the knockers still knock her it doesn't seem quite fair
As she's changed for the better and her type are so rare
And though the knockers too many and the fair minded too few
Credit ought be given where credit is due
And if you are not perfect yourself then leave others alone
As the one without sin ought to cast the first stone. |
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ANALYSIS
Insofar as a literature course is ostensibly about the activity of reading and appreciating literary texts, we might wish to consider how we, as literature teachers, can best instill the love of reading in our students. In teaching the short story, for instance, we might now consider taking our students through the process of story-telling, by not simply enumerating its elements, but by letting them experience these on their own: with our guidance, they can make up plots, think up characters and dialogue, imagine settings, play around with points of view, contemplate ideas or themes.
In teaching poems, on the other hand, the teacher might wish to end or emphasize certain lessons with a poetic exercise that may or may not eventuate in the writing of a poem, but at least a kind of demonstration of certain poetic skills: poetic description or metaphor-making, for instance, the correct use of other figures of speech, or even an illustration of certain rudiments of versification.
In short, we can encourage them to tell stories (for poems also tell stories)—either as "re-tellings" of stories they already know, or if the gods are being kind, original stories. Rather than alienate them from literature, we can enjoin our students to actively participate in its production by writing texts, and not merely passively reading them.
There are several fallacies that need to be unpacked here. One of them is that a teacher has herself to be a seriously practicing creative writer to be able to teach her students how to write poetry or fiction. This is obviously not correct. The requisites of teaching creative writing are, to my mind, the very same requisites of teaching literature: passion, method, observation, sympathy (which can sometimes take the form of patience—an inexhaustible supply of it), fairness, a courageous love for the written word. Off the cuff, I can only make one addition to this list, and if anything it's what a teacher of creative writing might need to have in greatest abundance: humility.
NEW CRITICISM
We Filipinos are Mild Drinkers
By: Alejando Roces
(Summary)
Once upon a time, some filipino guys took an american guy drinking. the american outdrank the filipinos at first. you see, the filipinos were simply taking their time drinking their beer. the american, on the other hand, just downed one bottle after another, thinking all the while that the beer here had just 2% alcohol like in the states. little did he know that the red horse beer he was gulping down had 6.5% alcohol - something that the filipinos knew all along. because of this, they just paced their drinking and watched the american get drunker and drunker.
in the end, the american got piss-drunk, and the filipinos still ended up drinking more than he did. nonetheless, they all still had fun.
ANALYSIS
A related fallacy has to do with the fact that most teachers—not just literature teachers—have been made to believe, rather self-importantly, that they always need to be the unassailable authorities in their respective classes. This imperative sometimes gets in the way of true learning, which should ideally be a dialectical, mutually beneficial process: students are supposed to learn from their teachers, true, but the great joy of teaching—a secret one, for I can see how revealing it can get the whole profession into an awful lot of mess—is that, unwittingly, our students teach us, too.
It's no mean feat: accepting the challenge of allowing our students to write, to create, to out-perform or go us the one better, so to speak. Thinking back, I cannot say I had a whole lot of literature teachers who possessed enough humility to allow their students to write creatively in the different English and literature classes of my youth. One teacher who did allow us to write I had when I was in fourth-grade—in Reading and Phonics, if I'm not mistaken. And what a difference this made in my life: the poem about my best friend whom I needed to say good-bye to (because she and her family were moving to another neighborhood far, far away) was the very first poem I ever wrote, and I can safely say it wasn't such an inauspicious start, after all—for, indeed, look where it's gotten me? To be honest, I am shocked that English and literature teachers in elementary and high school in our country generally frown at the idea of incorporating creative writing into their classes, when—let's be frank about it—it's what makes their disciplines, their occupations, possible to begin with.
What I mean here is this: there is no reason why the writing activities we give our students shouldn't be activities we ourselves perform—either in advance, or perhaps, alongside them. I am thinking in particular of the various "pre-poem" exercises I have used and found rather effective, a couple of which I will describe later on in my lecture. Among other things, these exercises aim to cultivate in students a stronger sense for language, as well as to tap the various sources of writing—chiefest of which, based on my own short and sometimes unsweet experience, are memory and observation.
I also want to say this now: teaching, like all meaningful undertakings, needs to be earned. I know I am being extremely optimistic—if not cruel—when I insist that every literature teacher write at least one poem or story in her life, but it makes sense, doesn't it—a math teacher is routinely required to solve equations, a chemist to combine and recombine chemicals, a doctor to heal. So why shouldn't we wish every teacher of literature to prove her mettle, no matter if only privately and, indeed, partly successfully, by attempting to produce literature as well? Again, I need to emphasize that it's the attempt—not so much the success or failure of the outcome—that matters in this respect, for all I'm really interested in here is the idea of having a commitment to writing, and being able to concretize this commitment, to lay claim to it and to prove it some way or other.
DARWINIAN
The Witch (Short Story)
By: Edilberto K. Tiempo
(Summary)
Stories say that a witch known as Minggay Awok (awok, meaning witch in Visayan language)resides nearby the creek separating the barrios of Libas and Sinit-an. Her strange appearance, solitary life and rare visits in the barrios feared the people. She has always been blamed whenever strange things happen. Thus, Minggay was often subjected to various killing attempts in order to stop the curse that she allegedly placed on them. However, their suspicions were never proven. One day, a boy who occasionally visits his uncle in Libas met an old woman while fishing in the creek. She had been so kind to direct him to a spot where he can get more shrimps. They chatted for a while until the boy finally realized that she is the "witch" that he had heard about. He immediately walked away with the shrimps and the dilemma of his encounter with the witch's contrasting image with the old woman by the creek.
ANALYSIS
Short of writing a complete short story or a poem, there are any number of creative "pre-writing" exercises the teacher may avail herself of. I shall be discussing two of them presently—but since poetry's been rumored to be my unfortunate specialization, I'm afraid my declared bias will be toward the finished poem, the writing of which being, to my mind, one of the best ways to end, summarize or highlight any significant discussion of poetry.
Strangely enough, the two poetic exercises I give students in the initial stages involve the writing of prose. The first aims to test and hone their skills in description, the other their ability to imagine from, or to make creative use of, memory. In both exercises, an implicit principle that I do not quite spell out until a little later in the semester is one of "design" or "order" —otherwise called "concept." I don't commence the reading or writing of poetry with a discussion of theme, because, in the early stages of the course at least, I am more interested in getting my students to write in as free and unhampered a manner as possible, for fluency in the language is, in my opinion, the bedrock of all learning.
Message or theme, on the other hand, is something a student must arrive at on her own—through the interimplicating processes of reading and writing, through her increasing awareness of the world she inhabits, through life. What I find to be lacking in most students is the simple ability to use words to describe what they perceive around them—even, tragically sometimes, what they feel. It seems the world and their very own lives have become, to many young people nowadays, most difficult things to articulate.
I must qualify, at this point, that my experience in this university as far as students' facility in the English language is concerned has been, in the main, not all that dismal. This, despite the much bewailed deterioration of verbal aptitudes—both in English and Filipino—among our youth already famously noted by language departments in many Philippine colleges and universities, including the English department of this school. I don't know if I've simply been lucky or if the innate cheerful recklessness of youth (one quickly passing me by: ahh, the bloom is off the rose!) has something to do with it. I suppose I've been able to cope better with this worsening national crisis (a crisis, I sometimes like to put it, of "a darkly encroaching wordlessness") because I am willing to be convinced of anything—even, you might be surprised to find out, of the idea that young people are not hopeless, that they do dream of better things to come, and that they are worth educating, still and all. In other words, I confess to being of the deluded opinion that students will heartily take to literature only if they are shown the good that they can get from it. And this can only happen if the teacher can bring herself to care enough to show them how.
HISTORICAL
Hunger in Barok (Short Story)
ANALYSIS
Certainly, I've not always been able to prove myself equal to this challenge. There have been dark and dreary days. There have been days of abject frustration and despair. But what I will share with you this morning is not the bitter sap of any of those days—but, rather, the sweet nectar of the good days, the days when success seemed easy enough to achieve. Over the years I have been able to evolve a personal "style," one might say, of teaching poetry, and to a great extent it involves getting the students to write—not just reactions or themes, but still other examples of creative or imaginative writing.
As I mentioned, the first activity I give my students serves to complement their reading: literature distinguishes itself from other kinds of writing because it trafficks heavily in image-laden words—words that renew our awareness of reality, of the world. Thus, unlike abstract argumentation or bare exposition, literature makes use of a whole lot of description. A simple way of putting it might be: where an essay will say that one is sad, a poem will show the sadness—by evoking it in the figures that may be found in the landscape where the persona happens to be, for instance.
This first activity doesn't have to be exhausted all at once: in certain instances, it might be wise to spread out a number of cumulative "description exercises" all throughout the semester. Since my students are lucky enough to be studying in a school whose campus is the last green place in the mega-city nightmare of Metropolitan Manila, there isn't a paucity of beautiful things they can describe. Weather permitting, I sometimes hold sessions outside the classroom and under the generous shade of UP's wizened trees, where I instruct my students to describe any particular scene or image that appeals to them then and there.
Or sometimes, I decide to make the class stay in the classroom, and bring an interesting, usually mysterious picture—a person, a flower, a landscape, whatever—instead. At other times, I ask the students to each bring a picture or an object to class, and I raffle these off back to them: whatever a student gets she is asked to describe it in writing before the end of the meeting. Depending on what I wish to accomplish, I may or may not ask them to have a "direction"—which is to say, to be "meaningful"—in their descriptions. Thus, I cannot really say I require that their descriptive passages have a point right away. The more important point of this activity is to help them bridge the gap between words and things, between language and the world it both serves and brings into being.
FORMALISM
On a Pencil (Essay)
By: Lydia V. Arguilla
ANALYSIS
Thanks for the question. Since it is not my job to do your homework for you, I will answer your question by describing what formalist criticism is, so you can think about it and find examples of it in Hamlet yourself.
Formalist criticism: An approach to literature that focuses on the formal elements of a work, such as its language, structure, and tone. Formalist critics offer intense examinations of the relationship between form and meaning in a work, emphasizing the subtle complexity in how a work is arranged. Formalists pay special attention to diction, irony, paradox, metaphor, and symbol, as well as larger elements such as plot, characterization, and narrative technique. Formalist critics read literature as an independent work of art rather than as a reflection of the author's state of mind or as a representation of a moment in history. Therefore, anything outside of the work, including historical influences and authorial intent, is generally not examined by formalist critics.
That should be all you need to start looking for examples in your Hamlet text. Start by looking for ironies, paradoxes and metaphors; they should be easy to find. In order to learn something, you are required to put in the work yourself rather than dig up complete answers elsewhere. If you are not sure which examples to choose, just pick some that you think might be fitting. As a student, you don't need perfect answers; you are engaging in exercises meant to educate you, and this is a gradual process.
As a supplement to this, I ask my students to keep a journal which I collect at the end of every week and try to read and scribble feedback in over the weekend. Problems relating to grammar invariably present themselves on these occasions, and if the errors prove systemic¾which is to say, enough students share them—I sometimes decide to devote a few minutes in the subsequent meetings to a quick review of these problem areas. (Offhand, they never fail to include varying combinations of the following grammatical topics: Subject-Verb Agreement, Tense, Pronouns, Prepositions and Idioms). My idea is that by asking students to write more or less constantly and with a generous amount of friendly supervision, these problems will resolve themselves somewhat. After all, the acquisition of language is necessarily a solitary thing—and as in any other skill, there is no substitute for hard and painstaking work, for practice.
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
With a wolfish look
to his calicoed face,
and eyes of amber true ,
Fat Cat lumbers
and keeps his place
as head of cat household,
demanding his due.
With Maine Coon's blood
in largeness of form,
and length of shaggy coat,
Fat Cat will wait
outside the door,
first in line for mealtime food,
which he loves the most.
When a new kitten comes
into our house,
twice now the others have died,
Fat Cat, though male,
without a grouse,
adopts the mite,
the other two go and hide.
With leaps and bounds,
he starts to play,
amazing young and old,
Fat Cat, so huge,
with legs asplay,
proceeds to dance,
acting limber and bold!
Dedicated to Fluffy
a lover of kittens
and all things catty.
ANALYSIS
I need to remind you that these exercises are meant to complement, not replace, the usual analysis we carry out in our literature courses. As far as I'm concerned, reading/appreciating texts is still the primary occupation one expects of a literature class. The idea behind incorporating creative writing techniques and strategies in such a class rests on the assumption, let me repeat, that writing or "creating" is already, in itself, the clearest and highest expression of literary appreciation. In other words: a good writer is necessarily already a good reader. Likewise, encouraging students to write imaginatively inevitably leads to their having a stronger grasp of ideas, which should prove helpful to them in their literary analyses, as well. In fact, I believe that as long as a student cannot use words to describe ordinary objects, she cannot be expected to use words to argue by or communicate complex ideas with.
The second activity I thought of telling you about today builds on the strengths that should've ideally been effectuated by these different exercises in description. It involves, this time around, the telling of a story—in particular, a story about a secret. It remains a poet's exercise, however, and in this case, the poet who suggested it to me is the Hawaiian American Garrett Hongo. I call it, simply, "Secrets," and what it does is to drive home the point that poetic writing involves imagining as vividly, as concretely, as meaningfully, as possible—a task admittedly difficult for beginning writers, who can only write about themselves, about experiences they themselves go through.
The activity goes this way: you ask your students to put down in writing, in a single, complete sentence on a small piece of paper they shouldn't write their names on, a secret about themselves. Because of the potentially scandalous nature of this exercise, I like to insert a proviso into this uneasy bit of instruction: the secret they write may not be completely accurate, even as it should, in essence, be "true." At this point the class becomes evidently excited.
The twist, however is this: after the class have finished writing their secrets down, you ask them to fold the pieces of paper once or twice and to put them inside a box or a hat (I bring my baseball cap to class just for this purpose). Everyone then gets to pick out a secret from this common repository—the moment a student happens to pick out her own secret, she is asked to refold it and put it back in, and to pick out another one. In the end, everyone should have someone else's secret in her possession.
The final instruction is a simple one, although it never fails to elicit a collective moan of despair from the class: they are now to write, in a page or two, the story behind and around that secret—a story that should be told in the first person, by the person (more accurately, persona) whose secret it supposedly is. The story doesn't have to be complete. It can end in the present or in the past. The important thing is that the secret gets to be revealed—and revealed in a well-described and interesting way.
The danger implicit in Lacan's 'grafting of an ambitious philosophy of "the human" on to an argument purporting to be a technical contribution to the study of specific mental disorders' has always been that 'the speculative welter of his own theoretical speech can easily drown out the undistinguished locutions in which ordinary human suffering finds voice. In his later years, indeed, 'Lacan seemed more interested in psychoanalytic theory than in clinical practice', particularly through his association with 'a circle of philosophers and mathematicians around his son-in-law, Jacques-Alain Miller. The result has been that a kind of 'militant intellectualism runs through the entire French psychoanalytic community...the problem of the philosopher manque.
At its most recondite - 'The One of meaning is not to be confused with what makes the One of the signifier...The Other is thus a dual entry matrix - Lacanianism could be considerd as 'in constant danger of degenerating into intellectual games. At its most succinct - Lacan's "mathemes" - as 'Serge Leclaire, who is one of the most respected and distinguished of all French analysts, remarked...they were basically no more than "graffiti.
At the least, however, as Lacan himself put it in the first of his Seminars to be published, 'through all the misadventures that my discourse encounters...one can say that this discourse provides an obstacle to the experience of analysis being served up to you in a completely cretinous way.
COMPARATIVE CRITICISM
Shelf Life
By: W.S.C Johnson
Two loose leafs of collected Plath
and ‘un-sent letters home’
are propped up by two tombs
of dust jacketed Hughes
accompanied by ‘aussie’ verse by Frieda.
Only the ‘old-master’ Heaney has spaces reserved,
Pollard, Holland and Padel exchange expletives,
just the brave Sophie and Hannah find time to write rhyme.
Three by Thomas of the valley lie flat on their backs,
undervalued and incomplete, buried before his time.
Duffy and companion front-up together.
Prof Motion and Sir Milligan, misplaced, rub alphabetic shoulders.
Zephaniah and McGough, are falling apart, having split their sides.
Fabre & Fabre elite classics are Bloodaxed, by the upstarts,
both fight off laughable laminates and glossy ‘self-pampered booklets’
by the overlooked, hard done by ‘vanity un-fair’.
Brave and upright, a spine of steel, yester-years young Owen
proudly stands ‘head and shoulders’ above the warring rest.
Pammie Ayres and Wendy try to Cope and take each other seriously,
Glossy and embossed, Paul McCartney is slotted in,
‘new kid on the block’, poetry or rock, lively or lyrical?.
Tennyson, Wordsworth and Byron solely occupy the elite upper shelf,
Shakespeare’s Sonnets are all ‘booked out’,
his plays and other ditty’s are filed under literature
ANALYSIS
I need to remind you that these exercises are meant to complement, not replace, the usual analysis we carry out in our literature courses. As far as I'm concerned, reading/appreciating texts is still the primary occupation one expects of a literature class. The idea behind incorporating creative writing techniques and strategies in such a class rests on the assumption, let me repeat, that writing or "creating" is already, in itself, the clearest and highest expression of literary appreciation. In other words: a good writer is necessarily already a good reader. Likewise, encouraging students to write imaginatively inevitably leads to their having a stronger grasp of ideas, which should prove helpful to them in their literary analyses, as well. In fact, I believe that as long as a student cannot use words to describe ordinary objects, she cannot be expected to use words to argue by or communicate complex ideas with.
The second activity I thought of telling you about today builds on the strengths that should've ideally been effectuated by these different exercises in description. It involves, this time around, the telling of a story—in particular, a story about a secret. It remains a poet's exercise, however, and in this case, the poet who suggested it to me is the Hawaiian American Garrett Hongo. I call it, simply, "Secrets," and what it does is to drive home the point that poetic writing involves imagining as vividly, as concretely, as meaningfully, as possible—a task admittedly difficult for beginning writers, who can only write about themselves, about experiences they themselves go through.
The activity goes this way: you ask your students to put down in writing, in a single, complete sentence on a small piece of paper they shouldn't write their names on, a secret about themselves. Because of the potentially scandalous nature of this exercise, I like to insert a proviso into this uneasy bit of instruction: the secret they write may not be completely accurate, even as it should, in essence, be "true." At this point the class becomes evidently excited.
Certainly, I've not always been able to prove myself equal to this challenge. There have been dark and dreary days. There have been days of abject frustration and despair. But what I will share with you this morning is not the bitter sap of any of those days—but, rather, the sweet nectar of the good days, the days when success seemed easy enough to achieve. Over the years I have been able to evolve a personal "style," one might say, of teaching poetry, and to a great extent it involves getting the students to write—not just reactions or themes, but still other examples of creative or imaginative writing.
POETIC
ITS A FEMALE FANTASY
By: Ronnie Frye
I’m a premier dream team
you know whatta mean
I night-scape, bringing my five alive.
vain.., maybe, long ago, bit of a game!
not these days, I’m neat and meaty
but... not a lot like Warren Beatty.
I’m a romantic hit... not a Brad Pitt
got creative talent.. but no bank balance
a poetic muse, daring, suggestive, but never crude.
I haven’t got a car, can’t take you very far..
don’t make a fuss... please get on the bus.
I’m a ‘he-mail’, throaty and course
not a seductive radio voice., rather a Marlboro horse
no other vice., only chicken tikka with rice.
Got moist, rosy lips.., but, unlike your perfect pair
mine are red raw with, ‘sad’... down turned tips.
Don’t sing for a tenner... or in Vienna, I’m a fan who won’t cling
but I do own a sizeable ‘ding a ling’.
Cally-Ally, I’m not a match for Downey Junior
but energetic ‘green fingers’... will grow you a perfect petunia.
Analysis
Literary criticism, poetic evaluation especially, has become increasingly negative. Forums designed for support in one's poetic ascent have turned into to an exhibition of ego-oriented digression, where one poet debases another and claims superiority. Commentary on poetry has developed into a competition, instead of a learning process. There are many methods of constructive annotation that are more successful than negative critique. One technique among these is the affirmative analysis approach, where the adviser emphasizes only the well written portions of the poem, and explains why he or she enjoyed it by using technical criteria. By implementing this method, the author grows confident and wary of what people know as excellent writing.
As I mentioned, the first activity I give my students serves to complement their reading: literature distinguishes itself from other kinds of writing because it trafficks heavily in image-laden words—words that renew our awareness of reality, of the world. Thus, unlike abstract argumentation or bare exposition, literature makes use of a whole lot of description. A simple way of putting it might be: where an essay will say that one is sad, a poem will show the sadness—by evoking it in the figures that may be found in the landscape where the persona happens to be, for instance.
This first activity doesn't have to be exhausted all at once: in certain instances, it might be wise to spread out a number of cumulative "description exercises" all throughout the semester. Since my students are lucky enough to be studying in a school whose campus is the last green place in the mega-city nightmare of Metropolitan Manila, there isn't a paucity of beautiful things they can describe. Weather permitting, I sometimes hold sessions outside the classroom and under the generous shade of UP's wizened trees, where I instruct my students to describe any particular scene or image that appeals to them then and there.
Or sometimes, I decide to make the class stay in the classroom, and bring an interesting, usually mysterious picture—a person, a flower, a landscape, whatever—instead. At other times, I ask the students to each bring a picture or an object to class, and I raffle these off back to them: whatever a student gets she is asked to describe it in writing before the end of the meeting. Depending on what I wish to accomplish, I may or may not ask them to have a "direction"—which is to say, to be "meaningful"—in their descriptions. Thus, I cannot really say I require that their descriptive passages have a point right away. The more important point of this activity is to help them bridge the gap between words and things, between language and the world it both serves and brings into being.
As a supplement to this, I ask my students to keep a journal which I collect at the end of every week and try to read and scribble feedback in over the weekend. Problems relating to grammar invariably present themselves on these occasions, and if the errors prove systemic¾which is to say, enough students share them—I sometimes decide to devote a few minutes in the subsequent meetings to a quick review of these problem areas. (Offhand, they never fail to include varying combinations of the following grammatical topics: Subject-Verb Agreement, Tense, Pronouns, Prepositions and Idioms). My idea is that by asking students to write more or less constantly and with a generous amount of friendly supervision, these problems will resolve themselves somewhat. After all, the acquisition of language is necessarily a solitary thing—and as in any other skill, there is no substitute for hard and painstaking work, for practice.
READER RESPONSE CRITICISM
The Anchor
By: George Williams
Terafirma’s cacophony green hues,
framed by sanded terracotta, mounted on a vast
eternal blue anaglypta wall, tinged temple grey,
are second heaven, breeze tousled, a-top the Golden Cap,
curved and serrated headlands arc
‘jig-sawing’ the Dorset sky and the Dorset sea
in a distant mingled, muffled and misty
‘Turner’ sky-seascape,
they add vision to verse, capture colour by paint,
on the ‘china-white’ canvas,
five graded shades of God’s green,
glinting gold, slicked ‘wet sand’ ochre,
the shaded burnt amber keels of upturned boats.
Amalgams of spume, white with aquamarine,
stark, strong, then waning, fade away
towards that illusionistic horizon,
and finally, almost in a shaky ‘Monet’ silhouette,
the vibrant life and focus of the authentic inn,
romantically ‘back-lit’ by a swaying necklace
of multicoloured bright bobbing lights.
ANALYSIS
Usually, in reader-response literary criticism, you apply both positive and negative commentary. To be constructive in your analysis, one needs not tally the negative aspects, but merely rely on the positive portions. In noting only the favored selections of a poem, the author assimilates the praise, and the explanation of that praise into a knowledge of what is ‘good’ poetry. Over time, by the continuous attention to the strong points of an author’s poetry, the poet grasps what his or her ideal style is. To acquire a view of what is important in one's own creative writing is essential to developing a unique presentation. As soon as one knows what kind of poetry they desire to write, their learning process truly begins.
The appreciation for the poets’ work, though praised, is not left unexplained. Through various technical terms and phrases, the critic details his or her understanding of why a particular portion of the poem is enjoyed. This analysis can include mention of sound, metaphor, syntax, format, association with literary texts, and so forth. From the account of technical description, that poet is reassured and gains knowledge.
To kick this off, I put forward a few ideas and suggestions that will help you in the critique process. I chose the letter 'I' to do this to remind us all that poetry is subjective and so is a critique. What one person may love may leave another cold. I have posted a poem in a few different poetry forums and received rave reviews in some and have had my work ripped to shreds in others. Remember when you critique the work of others, always be constructive and positive. Rather than say something offensive and hurtful, say nothing at all. When you express how you feel about a person's work, be careful to state 'I feel...' and 'I think...' rather than to say 'This poem is...' etc. When you do make these statements, always substantiate your words e.g. 'I felt that this poem could have been more effectively rendered by...' or 'I would suggest that you...' Always ask yourself the question 'How have I added value with this critique?' Critique should always add value. Your intention should never be to hurt the feelings of the poet. It should be to encourage, to educate and to inspire.
MARXISM
MIRROR IMAGE
By: Hillary Nicholson
A frame in France
An Hepple dated, alive, in 65.
Halo Hillary, youth re-visited, uncanny!
Stained and lacquered, grime on grain.
Dappled maple, ‘try-on’, dress up tableaux textures,
Slick ‘back-drop’, one on one, very vogue, spinster black.
Stern or aloof, coquette or vain, a pose, or expression of strain?,
Lithe and pretty, but boyish, shapeless, up and down torso.
Serene swan-neck, porcelain delicate, centre stage poser,
Even side on, you are bare of asset, breast-less, no form.
The hat, a dare to share!, a tease, a wheeze?, flower power,
A fruit plate, mad hatters tea party, pro-pose?, who knows?.
I’d like to like her, gem honed eyes, transplanted from pure skies,
Golden, flaxen blond, ‘tousle me please’, locks of free flow hair.
Almost, a still-life personality, ‘on-hold’, sophistication, coming of age,
Did you grow and ripen?, I’d like to believe so, grace the ‘glossy’ page.
ANALYSIS
Marxist criticism is a type of criticism in which literary works are viewed as the product of work and whose practitioners emphasize the role of class and ideology as they reflect, propagate, and even challenge the prevailing social order. Rather than viewing texts as repositories for hidden meanings, Marxist critics view texts as material products to be understood in broadly historical terms. In short, literary works are viewed as a product of work (and hence of the realm of production and consumption we call economics).
Marxism began with Karl Marx, the nineteenth-century German philosopher best known for Das Kapital (1867; Capital), the seminal work of the communist movement. Marx was also the first Marxist literary critic, writing critical essays in the 1830s on such writers as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and William Shakespeare. Even after Marx met Friedrich Engels in 1843 and began collaborating on overtly political works such as The German Ideology (1846) and The Communist Manifesto (1848), he maintained a keen interest in literature. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels discuss the relationship between the arts, politics, and basic economic reality in terms of a general social theory. Economics, they argue, provides the base, or infrastructure, of society, from which a superstructure consisting of law, politics, philosophy, religion, and art emerges. Subject. It’s possible to have a poem which is just a random collection of sounds — or even a carefully constructed collection of sounds — but 99% of poetry has a subject. The subject is what the poem is about —or, at least, the starting point. Quite often the clue is in the title. John Donne’s poem The Relic is about a ‘bracelet of bright hair about the bone’ dug up when Donne’s grave is eventually broken up again. John Keats’s To Autumn is, very obviously, about Autumn. Some poems are slightly more cunning. Browning’s My Last Duchess is about a murder. Generally, though, you don’t have to look far to find the subject, and, if you are under exam conditions, you should name it, and then move on. Theme. The theme is what the poem is ‘really’ about. It’s been said that all serious poetry is about God, sex (or love) and death, and that great poetry is often about more than one of them. The subject of Blake’s Tiger Tiger is, on the surface of it, a Tiger. But when you consider it further, it becomes clear that the poet is really interested not in the Tiger, but in the ‘immortal hand or eye’ that created it—in other words, God. The Relic, mentioned above, is about the power of love. Identifying the theme requires more reflection than the subject. Rhythm. Rhythm is one of the defining characteristics of poetry. Prose, of course, has its own rhythms, but poetry has rhythms which are much more apparent and distinctive. To appreciate a poem’s rhythm, read it silently-aloud — that is, speak it in your mind’s ear. Ask yourself, what are the distinctive rhythms of this peom. The Relic has a barking, biting rhythm to begin with, which is brought up suddenly sharp with ‘a bracelet of bright hair about the bone’. The rhythm in a good poem directs the reader’s ear to the most important parts. The rhythms in My last Duchess are much closer to speech—and direct the ear to hear the anger and then madness in the speaker’s voice. In free verse, there is no particular poetic form, and so rhythm becomes all important, as it is the only thing that holds the poem together. The love song of J Alfred Prufrock, TS Eliot’s first great poem, is strongly rhythmic, but has no particular form — even the number of stresses or syllables in the line vary. Eliot uses rhythm to break, to challenge, to cause flow and stop. Alliteration and rhyme within the line are part of the rhythm, and should be commented on when they are important.
CULTURAL CRITICISM
The Battle of the Brain
By: Anonymous
the revolt is revived
a decade of woolly wars
... all lost
defeated by the infiltration
of drug warfare
scatter bomb capsules
toxic terminators
first-aid, ‘pill-boxes’
‘anti-improper gander’
parachuted in by leaflet dropped prescription.
a reduction in brain border
forces and fodder
allows a ‘theatre of opportunity’
the level playing field
atop the brain roof.
potent drug arsenals are depleted
the underground resistance begins to swell
auto pilots are shot down
the bug-bandits are shell shocked.
nerve endings are repaired
roads to reason are re-built
the un-elected benzo-bullies
are on the retreat...
to the margins of the mind
and the deserted, long dead
labyrinths of hollow cells.
ANALYSIS
Cultural criticism is what is practiced by cultural critics, the
intellectuals formerly known as moralists and publicists, before those became dirty words. That is to say, they are those who have taken it upon themselves to describe the conduct of their fellow citizens to their fellow citizens, taking conduct in a very broad sense, including prominently that part of it which concerns
moving ideas from one mind to another; to judge whether and how that conduct is wanting; and to suggest more desirable states of affairs. No principled distinction can be drawn between cultural criticism and the writing of newspaper editorials, just as there is none between book reviewing and
literary criticism; the main
social difference is that people who say they engage in "foo criticism" are now more likely to be university professors than the op-ed writers and reviewers.
There are differences between cultural criticism and
sociology, apart from the merely conventional ones made by publishers, tenure committees, etc. Sociology is not (overtly) normative, and at least claims to prefer statistics and data, and logical and methodological rigor, to personal impressions and arbitrary or conventional generalizations, and
rhetoric and
emotional appeals. In reality, of course, much sociology is just disguised cultural criticism, and much cultural criticism is just conventional wisdom --- that is to say, prejudice --- in distilled form.
Imagery. Metaphor, simile, symbol, simple description. All poetry relies in conjuring up ideas through imagery. Literally speaking, of course, imagery would be about representing pictures in words, but in reality, it is about creating pictures or sensations in the mind which go beyond the factuality of words. In My last Duchess, the imagery is almost exclusively dramatic—Browning puts us into a fully imagined situation, but it is a situation largely without flowery language. To Autumn, on the other hand, uses ever poetic device to conjure up a completely sensual recollection of Autumn. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock uses elaborate similie, describing the yellow fog as if it were a cat, and powerful metaphor, but its fundamental imagery is the symbol of the women talking of Michelangelo, a symbol whose meaning is hinted at but never explained in the poem. A poem which is entirely built around one image is called a ‘conceit’.
Versification. Does the poem have a rhyme scheme? Is it presented in stanzas on the page? Are there a particular number of stresses per line? Versification is the most mechanical thing you can write about in a poem. You should be able to name the common verse types hexameters are six stressed syllables per line, pentameters are five stresses. Iambic verse is where the stresses typically (but almost never invariably) fall as unstress-stress. Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be. That is the question” can be read as an iambic pentameter with a weak ending (ie, and extra unstressed syllable), although most readers will put the emphasis on ‘that’ rather than ‘is’. Heroic couplets are iambic pentameters which rhyme in pairs. A sonnet is a fourteen line iambic pentameter with a very particular rhyme scheme. Iambic pentameters without rhyme are known as ‘blank verse’, and are the main verse form in Shakespeare’s plays. Very few poets will stick to a rhythm or rhyme scheme slavishly. It’s also worth commenting on whether the punctuation comes at the end of the line, or the phrases run-on from line to line.
