The Poem as Life

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The Poem as Life
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Basics

• Origins (formal or informal ceremonies/
• private or public moments)
• Life in spatial environment
• Seasonal or ritual moments of time

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Important Questions

• What piece of life, private or public, is a poem
  concerned with?
• Where and when is this life being lived?

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Clichés

• In greeting cards and magazines
• Babies are lovable
• Brides are beautiful
• 50th wedding anniversaries are happy
• Young men should fight in war
• Americans should take pride in their countrys
  history

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Clichés--Continued

• Time and Space
• EX The springtime of life leads only to the
  narrow space of the grave.

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Originality

• Good poets avoid cliché.
• They help us to see events in a new light.
• Great poems transcend being mere representations
  of life and become works of art.

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The Private Life

• Birth poems
• Infant Sorrow William Blake
• What is arresting about this poem?

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• Baby as a fiend hid in a cloud

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Other private life poems

• Poems about Childhood
• The School Children Louise Gluck
• What makes this poem disturbing?

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• The new clothes and apples are herestrangely
  sinister

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The Public Life

• Some commemorate communal celebration EX The
  Night Before Christmas
• Some concern crucial single public events
• EX American History
• Some question the state of common life (at a
  certain time and place)

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• Public and private lives as mirrors

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Nature and Time

• Nature (the earth, sun, moon, stars, animals,
  planets)
• Time (seasons, months, etc.)

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• Ancient resources for poetry
• A great achievement to write an original poem
  about spring
• Poets link human seasons and their counterparts
  in the natural world

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Time

• Images linked to cultural memory
• waves of the sea
• progress of the sun from dawn to dusk
• the fall of great men

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• The tragedy of early death
• Time as the Grim Reaper

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In Brief The Poem as Life

• What piece of life is the poem about?
• A disappointment in love
• The death of a parent
• An absence of a friend
• A crisis of personal confidence
• A moment of fear

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Seek Out

• Moments of Disequilibrium
• EXAMPLES
• Hope has come to rebuke despair
• Love has come to that coldness
• Envy has come to upset happiness
• Shame has come to interfere with self-esteem

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Ask Yourself

• Under what circumstances would I find myself
  saying these words?
• Poem is written for you to SAY
• A lyric poem is a speech made for us to utter.
• The poem is ABOUT lifeIt is NOT life.

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General Questions

• What has recently happened to the speaker?
• What aspect of his or her life has the speaker
  been thinking about? Is this a private life
  situation (a family death, for instance) or a
  public situation (a religious massacre, a war
  memorial)?

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Other Questions?

• What stage of life has the speaker reached?
• How much does the speaker tell you about his or
  her feelings?
• Are the feelings expressed normal? How do they
  compare with what people might normally say or
  feel?