Article on Passing from Sunday's NY Times

Photo of Ralph Ellison

I thought you'd all be interested in this article from Sunday's NYTimes Book Review section entitled "Do Not Pass." As you'll remember, we talked about passing when we read James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. Click here to read this great article by Toure, which references several other key works in the history of passing literature.

Streetcar Named Desire

As you read the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, think about if and how this play reaches any sort of resolution and closure. Keep reading the stage directions carefully and noting how Williams dramatizes internal psychological states through music, the play of light and shadows, and through dialogue. You might want to think about the following questions as you write your response to ANY aspect of the play, from beginning to end. Feel free to discuss your responses to the film version of the play.

1. What critique--if any--does the play make concerning gender roles? What do we learn about what it means to be a woman? To be a man? Is this a "feminist" play?

2. How are class differences treated in the play?

3. Why does the play end the way it does?

4. Does the play simply dismiss Blanche's need for fantasy? Or does it show us why fantasy may be necessary? Do any of the other characters struggle with or depend upon fantasy?

5. How is visuality important in the play? Think about the use of light, scenes centered on exposure, and Williams' techniques of staging. How does the gaze work in the play, especially between genders?

6. How does the play discuss and treat homosexuality? How do you read the fact that Blanche's husband kills himself? How is this event the central trauma of the play?

Comments on A Streetcar Named Desire

As you read the first five scenes of Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire for Monday, think about the relationships between characters, the role of the setting, and how you would stage and perform the play. Think about names of places, people, and the streetcars. What does the play say about the complicated dynamics of families? What is the role of music in the play?

The Harlem Renaissance

As you read for our class on Thursday, think about how these writers reposition and rethink African-American identity during the 1920s and 1930s.

Here's some sites to explore as you progress through the readings:

The Kennedy Center: http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/exploring/harlem

Library of Congress Website:www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/harlem/harlem.html

PBS resources

Post below on ANY aspect of the texts.

Eliot, The Waste Land and Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Please concentrate on reading "The Love Song" for Friday's class and The Waste Land for Monday. This post will serve for comments on both poems.

As you read these two lengthy, complex poems by T.S. Eliot, note that while the poems initially seem fragmented and disjointed, the two poems are held together by rhymes, sounds, repetitions, repeated themes. You might want to think about the following questions as you post your responses below.

1. How does "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" voice a stream of consciousness? Who is speaking? Who is being addressed?

2. What can you tell about Prufrock as a person? What makes his life trivial or meaningless? What is he afraid of? How do his aliments represent modern consciousness? What does he mean when he asks "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?"

3. How is the city portrayed in "The Love Song"? Does this sense of the city bear any relation to Prufrock's character and his dilemma? What is the picture of modern life given in the poem?

4. What does the song of the mermaids signify? How do you read the ending of the poem?

5. What structures The Waste Land? What is the experience of reading it like--does the poem disorient you? Depress you? Is it mystical? Religious? Explain your responses with specific references to the poem's language.

6. Is there a single voice behind the utterances in The Waste Land? Why? Why not?

7. What meaning(s) do you think The Waste Land offers?

Finally, here are some fun Eliot links to explore:

Bio and information at Poets.org.

His acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize.

Video reading of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." (via YouTube. Useful to listen to as you read.) And a cool animation of the same poem. And another.

Eliot reading The Waste Land (via YouTube). With images of the poem and its many, many revisions.

Poetryfoundation.org

I mentioned this website in class, but click on over to Poetryfoundation.org. It's an amazing website full of links to poems, podcasts, essays and more. There are also wonderful links to animated poems, including a great one by Gertrude Stein titled "A Very Valentine."

(Some of you might know Dr. Geoffrey Brock, who teaches creative writing here at the University of Arkansas. One of his poem was animated and can be found here on YouTube.)

William Carlos Wiliams

As you read Williams' poetry, think about the following questions and post your responses below:

1) How does Williams play with interrelations among "the sister arts" (painting, photography, music)?

2) How do his poems use simple words that become meaningful when placed in juxtaposition or when placed in a highly visual composition?

3) Like Frost's work, many of these poems directly or indirectly address the writing of poetry. How? What do they say?

4) How does Williams construct his speakers? What kind of voice do we find in these poems? How would you characterize his language?

Here's Brueghel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," which is what Williams based his poem on of the same name:

Tying Together the Poetry

As the semester began, we spent some time discussing the general principles of modernism, and I want to give you a brief list of some modernist principles to look for as you keep reading the poetry I've assigned.

*the address of aesthetic problems similar to those examined in art (Cubism in relation to "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and its aesthetics of fragmentation and multi-perspectival space and time)

*alientation brought on by the loss of historical heritage, the loss of religion, etc.

*disjointed timelines, loss of narrative/poetic coherency

*introspective / psychoanalytic contemplation of "selfhood"

*collapse between subject and object ("The Snow Man": one has to be nothing in order to know nothing)

*borrowings from other cultures and languages

*open form, free verse, unconventional use of metaphor

We'll keep building this list as we keep reading.

Comments on Wallace Stevens

Comment on any of the assigned poems by Wallace Stevens. How is his work different than Frost's? How do you interpret his abstract language and philosophical themes? Are there repeated preoccupations in his poems--and if so, what would you characterize as his major poetic concerns? Finally, in what way are his poems particularly "modernist"?

You can look up some additional information about Stevens on his Poets.org site.

And here's his obituary in the New York Times.

Comments on Frost (Continued)

If you are posting for Friday, please use the space below to comment on ANY aspect of Frost's work.

Robert Frost

Post below on any aspect of Robert Frost's work, though you might want to think about the following questions:

1) How do Frost's speakers view the American landscape? Furthermore, what makes his poems "American"?
2)What kind of relationships between humanity and nature are explored in Frost's poems?
3) What attitudes toward the passage of time are expressed?
4) How does Frost capture the rhythms of ordinary speech through traditional verse forms?
5) How does Frost marry form and content?
6) The theme of loss recurs in a number of Frost's poems. Compare the ways in which loss is portrayed in these poems.

You might also be interested in checking out some of these Frost resources on the web:

Poets.org page about Robert Frost

The Friends of Robert Frost House and Museum in Vermont

This video (link to YouTube) of Frost reading "After Apple-Picking." There are many, many videos of Frost up on YouTube, which--at least to me--are fascinating tributes to one of our most famous national poets.