I chose to respond to this poem, because it emphasizes the aesthetic appeal of what is being said.  I tend to find my poetry is very similar to that of a Coleridge or Wordsworth.  My poems seem to be romanticist in nature, drawn to very large epic embellishments.  Also it is interesting to note how Colerdige, ever the romanticist, said he composed his entire poem in one day, writing as if he had no idea of the source of the words.

The language is incredibly strong in “Dejection”.  Lines such as “A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,” exemplify the dramatic style in order to convey emotions or feeling.  Other lines such as “In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;” exemplify this same dramatic style, however this time to portray a metaphorically driven image.  Coleridge displays a masterful control of the English language in writing this.  The poem as a whole is a shining example of the beauty that can be depicted simply through the use of words.

The poem is just as dramatic when read aloud.  The rhyme scheme, while not consistent throughout the piece, gives it a very romantic feel whilst furthering the idea that Coleridge can conform language to portray his exact feelings.  The poem rings within me because of its beauty of the words.  The words themselves seem to bend beneath Coleridge’s will, he wields them with such finesse.

It is my hope to emulate Coleridge and other romanticist poets because what they have written is pure art and incredibly powerful.  It resonates within the reader’s head for days as images are seared into the mind.  It is truly art at its greatest.

Bernstein relies heavily on misspellings and thus strange pronunciations of words.  As such he is able to comment upon the link between both reading and writing.  Although they do share a strong connection they must still be regarded as separate entities.  This poem is hardly noteworthy when only considering the basic writing, however once read it manifests into a beautiful lyrical piece of art.  When read, the poem can take the form of a taunting parody of modern poetry.  Where is the ever so fine line between creativity and absurdity?  Bernstein takes what may be incorrectly construed as a slapstick, humorous poem and has it transcend some of the greater themes of poetry itself.

The poem is so powerful because it has this aforementioned central theme running through it.  Theme is very important in poetry because the emphasis is less on telling a story; the emphasis is more commonly working towards conveying ideas and images.  These ideas and images are more easily linked if there is a clearly identifiable theme during the entirety of the poem.  It has focused my attention on the clearly identifying a theme prior to writing a poem, or else the poem comes across as largely dysfunctional and not succinct.

A final note, this was an audio poem, which is another crucial part of poetry.  Poetry was initially intended to be spoken, it adds a great deal to the poem, this rings true for “A Defense of Poetry”.   The poem is made by Bernstein’s oratory skills.  In addition, it is easier to see the true intentions of a poet when that poet is reading his or her own work.  Poetry becomes much more impressive when spoken aloud.

On the first read of this poem by John Agard, the voice is quickly apparent.  It is written in the local creole dialect so it reads as if a foreign man is writing.  Normally poetry isn’t particularly associated with strong, distinct characters.  In this case, the speaker of the poem is very unique in the readers’ mind because of his accented text.  The dialect alone makes the poem an enjoyable read, it flows incredibly due in part to the addition of the dialect.  The narrator is also incredibly self aware, it seems that his dialect may be even more embellished to keep up with appearances.  This gives the poem a rather satirical feel.  These are all things typically associated with fiction, but it works well in this poem.

The poem picks up a darker undertone towards the end.  Two of the final three paragraphs absolutely drip with sarcasm before mentioning revolution.  The reader gets the sense of being mocked by the narrator, again very strong feelings that normally do not come across in poetry.  The poem showed me that I could use broad literary techniques not commonly associated with poetry to strengthen my poetry.  In particular I like the inclusion of a strong character.  In a longer poem it could be beneficial to the poem to include multiple strong characters to give the poem the feeling of a story.

The poem is essentially written in a free verse, with rhyme not coming in a typical pattern.  The words come across as spoken dialect even more, it conveys the sense of someone talking, as opposed to being a poem, which works magnificently in this poem.

A lot has been said about John Updike and sexism.  His writing is sometimes viewed to objectify women and it has been said he does so in the short story “A & P”.  In “A&P” the sexism seems justified when considering the point of view; first person from a teenage boy.  Speaking form experience, I would have to admit that the objectification of women is an accurate portrayal of that specific age range.  Authors create a world in which the characters are given free will.  If a character has sexist tendencies, it is the duty of the author to portray that.   For this individual story, there is not an issue of sexism because what is being said is the reality for the world of this story.

I connected with this story quite simply because of the main character Sammy.  His final sacrifice is unappreciated and goes unnoticed.  It is a very realistic depiction of the world.  A character in an attempt at heroism makes a great sacrifice, he does not fall in love, nothing happens.  The poetic gesture goes unnoticed.  Often fiction, short stories in particular is idealized to portray a perfect situation, which is naturally entirely unrealistic.  “A & P” in no way falls in this category.  Updike used this to help the reader identify with the reality of the situation.  Updike is instantly able to relate with any male who has been unnoticed by a female (a large number of males I assume), simply for being realistic.

I also liked the use of time scale in this story.  It is a brief time, not more than a couple of minutes, yet the entire story is told in these minutes.  Intense detail paints every second, any and every movement is documented to enhance the reading experience.  While it may not be much time, a large amount of information is given to the reader.

At some point some males most realize they have a sweet spot for well-put together love stories.  I am one of these males, and I think I must admit it after reading The Horse Dealer’s Daughter.  The Horse Dealer’s daughter presents a bleak dreary situation and from that something pure and beautiful is born.  Admittedly, it sounds fairly typical of stories from the genre, but D.H. Lawrence provides such a degree of reality to the characters that the story feels genuine.

All characters in the story are given time to show the reader their personality and background story.  Such an approach may be chastised for being useless, but I personally am a fan, as it tends to bring a sense of wholeness to the story.  The characters have individual problems and attributes just as any real person does.  By providing such a high degree of detail, the story feels more accessible and could be easily seen as its own little world.  This is vital for any love story.  If the love story does not come across as sincere it is horrible.  D.H. Lawrence does not overload the reader with tired love clichés and instead allows the characters to tell the reader their own story.

A critical point in the story is Mabel’s attempted suicide.  Having seemingly nothing left to live for she chooses not to live at all.  After Mabel is “re-birthed” the story dramatically shifts to an idealized love story.  Mabel is born again and now resembles a pure small child, and she expresses this with what is ideally the purest of human emotions; love.  It is in her drastic character growth and change that the love story unfolds, thus emphasizing the importance of character growth in the story as it is deeply entangled in the plot.  By realizing this, the author can manipulate the plot by using the characters the author created.

Upon initial reading the italicized introduction to this short story, I was thoroughly expecting a vindictive angry woman venting at the former practices of a physician.  I was apprehensive to say the least.  However, the result came nowhere near my expectations, in an entirely positive way.  What resulted was a very well put together introspective to the world of madness.

The most fascinating part of this short story is the concept.  It is a first person narrative so the readers’ only point of view is that of the narrator.  What can be trusted from this point of view is anyone’s guess as it soon becomes apparent that madness provides a slightly altered take on reality.  The reader can never be entirely certain as to the unequivocal truth, and perhaps the point is that one does not in fact exist.  This leaves much of the story open to interpretation and is genuinely thought provoking.  From this story, I now understand the importance of point of view in how it can drastically alter the story.  If “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written in third person omniscient the story is radically altered.

The voice used by the narrator provides a striking contrast to the story.  The tone is very matter of fact and in doing so creates a very light air for what is being said.  However, this is in complete opposition to the depression the narrator is going through.  Such an irony adds an entire dimension to the story.  It makes the story enjoyable and even darker than it already was.  The brilliant addition of a light tone of voice accentuates her madness by comparison, to the point in which the narrator sounds almost sane.

As part of the Webster Reading series I saw Amy Berkowitz read her particular brand of prose poetry.  Admittedly, going in, I was never the biggest fan of prose poetry.  I always had trouble distinguishing it from being a short short story.  I never seemed to understand how exactly it was considered poetry and I almost resented the fact that it was still regarded an equal to other seemingly much more potent and powerful pieces of poetry.  Walking away from the reading I took a new outlook on the subject of prose poetry.  It still is not my favorite type of poetry, but now at the very least I respect it as an art form and I believe I am beginning to warm to it.

Upon hearing Amy’s first couple poems aloud I was surprised at the way each sentence moved in a very crisp neat fashion.  The way the words were spoken seemed to indicate a poetic flow that would carry throughout an entire piece.  This was consistent for every poem she read that evening.  The words had a lovely way of floating from one sentence to the next, yet they still maintained a fairly focused purpose.  This allowed for the poetry to tell a story in addition to it being pleasing sonically.  Also, she had some subtle internal rhymes, which made the reading feel more like poetry.  It appeared to me to be fiction with some unknown guide, allowing it to feel and sound like poetry.  I was initially taken aback, but found myself gradually warming to a genre I had previously discarded.

Perhaps another reason I warmed to the genre was due to the content in each of Amy’s poems.  They were all very open, inviting poems.  The content was easily accessible to a casual listener and usually extended warm feelings and felt as if I was personally welcome to partake in the poem.  It was able to provoke me emotionally, as all good forms of writing should, to the point where the room seemed a little brighter and the day a little warmer.  Occasionally the poetry would have a subtle or not so subtle joke, the humor also helped to push me toward happiness.  These two factors combined turned these poems into “feel good” poems that because of their kindness simply brightens the reader’s day.  Not bad for a genre that I only loosely considered art but an hour earlier.

Although I do not think I am going to consider becoming a primarily prose poetry writer soon, I still have an infatuation with the sonnet, I do realize I enjoy hearing a good prose poem.  Also, creating “feel good” poems does not only apply to prose poems, it can apply to a wide variance of poetic forms.  I will have fun in experimenting with this in my poems.  Feelings of good will towards the reader coupled with a sprinkling of light humor would create a perfect recipe for a very nice poem.

As part of the Mark Webster reading series I saw Brad Wetherell read essentially an introduction to what he says is a fairly long short story.  Brad uses central characters that tend to be outcast from the traditional social hierarchy, put simply they are different.  This allows him to tell a story that sounds exciting and promising purely based upon simple plot structure.  Even the settings take on this obscure outcast feel, as they tend to be as strange as the protagonists negotiating throughout them.  I learned all this from the introduction that was read, but I quickly discovered it to be truth when Brad started to read.

The story read centered around two boys in high school, who weren’t cool, a fact the boys themselves would probably admit to.  Being from a family of farmers, the main character was ridiculed.  Without doing much, essentially only establishing the character’s backgrounds, Brad has already created a point of conflict for his protagonist.  This inherent conflict associated with a character seems to give the story more depth, conveying to the reader that the story goes beyond what is written and the characters appear to actually exist.  To add to this, the main character works as a lifeguard at a pool in a mentally handicapped institute.  This clearly is not a typical situation, and provides an example of how the setting can very easily contribute to the plot in obvious ways.  By using distinct, conflict prone characters and settings much of the story will probably write itself.  This is a strategy that I would like to focus on more in my own writing; truly creating a world in which the story is merely a small part of.

During this reading I felt I got a fairly good feel for Brad’s writing style and in particular his brand of diction.  He didn’t blow me away with complex grammatical arrangements or large flowery words.  Instead he cut the unnecessary and still painted a good portrait of the situation.  The words were obviously very carefully chosen, and there appeared to be nothing unnecessary or over the top.  Each individual word was contributing to the meaning of the sentence and the paragraph and the entire story it lay inside.  These brief sentences lend themselves excellently to satire and there also seemed to be some dark humor lurking behind the story.  Again the characters and setting helped to reinforce this dark humor, strengthening the story because the speech was very much in agreement with the plot.

The story was even read in a voice that could probably be described as an animated monotone.  Monotonic speech carries unnecessary negative connotations; in the case of this reading and story it worked well.  The story was not meant to be read in a flamboyant boisterous manner.  It needed to be given the dry realism associated with a flatter vocal delivery.  The delivery aided the poem tremendously.

This reading was a very useful one for me in particular because my fictional writing style is very similar to the one being used.  I saw a performance that was very much all in agreement, and this fact above all others I will try to emulate the most in my fiction writing.

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20031

Bernstein relies heavily on misspellings and thus strange pronunciations of words.  As such he is able to comment upon the link between both reading and writing.  Although they do share a strong connection they must still be regarded as separate entities.  This poem is hardly noteworthy when only considering the basic writing, however once read it manifests into a beautiful lyrical piece of art.  When read, the poem can take the form of a taunting parody of modern poetry.  Where is the ever so fine line between creativity and absurdity?  Bernstein takes what may be incorrectly construed as a slapstick, humorous poem and has it transcend some of the greater themes of poetry itself.