Hey all. So take a minute. Imagine our classroom. And then imagine that class starts in the way it usually does: I’d ask you how the world is, and then I’d ask you how you’re reacting to our poems today. Answers to either question are welcome in the comments.
I’ll also offer a few prompts there more specifically. And here is the Mark Doty poem listed on our syllabus for distribution in class!
ENG 222: Literary Genres 
…and how are you reacting to today’s poems? (This might be different in light of the way the world feels today!)
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the poem seems to be very intuned with nature, the beauty and complexity in this person’s surroundings. In light of reason events I find it so ironic that we’re discussing this poem during this time of fear and caution we’ve adapted in recent days towards the outside world and its uncertainty.
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I also find this poem particularly moving today—it’s really true that “fear and caution…towards the outside world” have been such a thing in the last few days. We’re literally in a time of a fear of contamination. But the poem seems to suggest that by naming or describing the world, we make it part of us. (That feels like it reminds me of something else we’ve read, but I can’t quite think what!) Does that feel dangerous right now, or interesting?
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I was actually writing a blog for the short story prompt, though I will say that I read the poems but only “Diving Into the Wreck” caught my attention. I’d like how I kind of get what the author was saying since she also writes war or political poems.
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Interesting! Does that poem feel political to you? (I’m taking a moment to visit it over here with that in mind…)
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She mentions in the last line “our names do not appear” like a sense of being forgotten. Also she checks a shipwreck which can also be symbolic to a “wreck”/disaster in general. I guess political was a bad? choice in words, it felt more towards war like.
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Oh, I don’t think it was a bad choice at all! I think you’re onto something.
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First of all, totally agree that the shipwreck speaks to something collective—ships are collective endeavors!
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Second of all, sharp observation on that line—there’s a “we” in that “our,” and a sense of a bigger story being told. That goes political too, right? (So interesting that this poem is about how we tell a story & the Mark Doty poem above is about what it means to describe something—that’s not a similarity I had in mind but it’s really interesting.)
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One difference is that Mark Doty is the teller, whereas Rich seems to be the told-about…
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Maybe social justice? To think about or show respect to the one’s who were forgotten.
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I’m pulling out the question of politics in “Diving Into the Wreck” for more general discussion (…and also seeing if I can increase the thread level of replies…). If this poem is a political statement, what does it suggest to us?
It’s perhaps especially relevant because we are confronting something of a collective wreck right now.
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The poem is here, by the way: https://poets.org/poem/diving-wreck
My reading of the poem today really responds to the relationship between the I of the poem and the various groups of people who surround the speaker but aren’t exactly named or described. The first stanza has the speaker “here alone”; the second stanza has a “we”; the third has the speaker alone again but there is also the reference to “our human air,” and so on…can we track that through the poem?
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The question of storytelling also seems really central here: the poem begins with the speaker preparing: “First having read the book of myths.” And then we arrive where Jessica is pointing out we do—”a book of myths/in which/our names do not appear.”
What’s going on with that? What is the book of myths & why does it matter so much in this poem? How do myths interact with the wreck? (There’s the mermaid stanza…maybe that’s a place to start?)
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For some reason I could not understand “Beyoncé is Sorry for What She Won’t Feel” I was having difficulty trying to understand it but mostly because I keep imaging Beyonce no matter how many times I read it. Also I really like “there is religious tattooing” mostly because I love the parts where it feels like the author is talking about sewing and at the end they author gets a tattoo (I believe) but also like how usually tattoos are something that mostly the older generation would strongly warn us about getting them because it will somehow link us to a gang. But this poem will make us forget about all of that.
(sorry in advance for any run on sentences).
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I think what we can’t relate to is often as interesting to think about as what we can!
(Again, for those following along, the poem: http://www.levelerpoetry.com/beyonce-is-sorry-for-what-she-wont-feel/)
It’s interesting to think that the imagined Beyoncé sort of takes over the space of the poem…I wonder what it tells us that it’s so hard to change Beyoncé’s context in this way. Is it that it’s hard to imagine what’s going on inside her, because we’re so used to looking at her from the outside, or because she means something specific to us, or because she’s just so familiar?
Looking at the poem, this also makes me realize that it doesn’t do a ton of imagistic describing—it often combines things we might be able to picture with abstractions that we can’t. Maybe that has something to do with it? I wonder why the poem makes that choice.
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The stuff about sewing in “there is religious tattooing” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53481/there-is-religious-tattooing) is such a nice catch—there’s really a lot of that language. Maybe it converges with tattooing when Moten writes that “the man/who clothes me in my skin is gonna write//on me.”? Because sewing is the making of clothing like writing is the making of text (or a textual tattoo)? I’m not quite sure…what are you making of it?
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…so how’s the world? How are you holding up today?
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I’m trying to get adjusted to this app and hey; not too bad. I do wonder where do we go from here. I do want to travel to see everyone however, I know that’s the not safest idea as of now.
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Definitely not too bad! I do think there’s a bit of a learning curve here, but we’re a sharp crew & will get the hang of it.
I also worry about the health & safety issue of meeting in person, & I’m watching the news carefully to gauge a sense of risk (I’ll also probably need to be in touch with the department about liability, unfortunately). I think a balance between some “live” virtual meetings and some other kinds of collective space will help…and then we can think about adding a few (optional!) in-person meetings back in, public health situation permitting.
This sad little New Yorker piece about what we lose when we lose classrooms hit me real hard today: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-coronavirus-and-the-ruptured-narrative-of-campus-life
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When I read through it, it’s true; there are those suffering in their household and seek refuge in school/campus. I believe this will die down yet, due to lack of information and communication, this has caused hysteria throughout the community and schools. I feel we should’ve been prepared. Other than that, I feel there is a bright side to all this.
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I hope there is and I hope we can contribute to it.
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Oh man, that was sad! I thought about my sister when I was reading this because she had dropped out of college a couple of years back because she was emotionally overwhelmed and just life hit her all at once so she started again this semester and she was so excited getting the hang of it and happy that all of her professors were nice and then this happens it definitely does suck so I can only imagine bigger situations that students face today.
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I hope it helps to know that right now every professor I know is thinking about and working hard to do everything we can do for our students. We’re all in this one together.
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It does, I think it’s a good time to show, that even without the government, people around the world are trying their best to help others. As you mentioned, we’re all in this together.
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