Four and twenty Larks, baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing...

I like the "transcendent anti-Romantic" as opposed to the straight up ainti-Romantic Larkin. I kept Heaney's phrasing because describing poems like "Church Going" as simply Romantic is problematic to me. We discussed in class how lines like the ones pasted below undercut the establishment of the church:

"...I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce 'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for."

It seems obvious with lines like, "Reflect the place was not worth stopping for," that Larkin has no respect for the place he is in, a church. Someone who might have heard him awkwardly reading aloud probably would have thought he was rude, being loud, holding his dirty clips in an old church and all.

Obviously there are Romantic qualities to this poem, such as:

"For, though I've no idea What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, It pleases me to stand in silence here; A serious house on serious earth it is, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognized, and robed as destinies."

Doesn't it just sound Romantic? Especially in the line, "...in whose blent air our compulsions meet..." The idea of being transcendent, the passing or outgrowing of one's self to something larger, is embodied here. Compulsions, this motivation everyone feels in this particular place, disrobes Larkin's anti -Romantic beginning to the poem.

Having these two Larkins in one poem contrasts each other nicely. You only know how clean something is once it gets dirty, and I think Larkin's transcendent side is the similar in that it needs the anti-romantic side to strongly show its nature.

In "This be the Verse" the reader does not get any of the transcendence nature Larkin can write with.

"This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don’t have any kids yourself."

There is a good bit of room in this poem for a dash of a less anti-Romantic Larkin, but he does not act on this opportunity. Without there being a strong contrast of something more transcendent, the meaning of this poem kind of falls flat. Larkin is so witty and funny with this poem it comes off as more of a joke than anything else. I think his wit could be appreciated more if he had also added in some of the striking emotions, like the ones in "Church Going," for contrast. I will say that this poem is quite obviously spectacular, even without a clean side.

All That is Shimmers is not Gold

Shimmer

The pear tree that last year
was heavy-laden this year
bears little fruit. Was
it that wet fruit spring we had?
All the pear tree leaves
go shimmer, all at once. The
August sun blasts down
into the coolness from the
ocean. The New York Times
is on strike. My daily
fare! I'll starve! Not
quite. On my sill, balls
of twine wrapped up in
cellophane glitter. The
brown, the white and one
I think you'd call ecru.
The sunlight falls partly
in a cup: it has a blue
transfer of two boys, a
dog and a duck and says,
"Come away Pompey." I
like that cup, half
full of sunlight. Today
you could take up the
tattered shadows off
the grass. Roll them
and stow them. And collect
the shimmerings in a
cup, like the coffee
here at my right hand.


I think this poem is really interesting in two ways. One is the intimate conversational tone it conveys. It comes off as dialog one would be saying over the breakfast table, especially here:"Was/it that wet fruit spring we had?" These are lines you say to someone you live with, and Schuyler is including the reader in this conversation. I'm sure the time spent with Fairfield Porter and his wife influenced this casual tone. Given what I know about his personal mental and social issues, I don't think he could have achieved this level of intimacy without those people around him who gave him the opportunity (which they probably gave him with intention since he was less social) to have intimate connections.

Another reason I think it interesting is the images it convey. They're very strong and seem to ring a similar bell to Jane Freilicher's paintings, where she super imposed flowers or vases over windows. Schuyler is looking out of the window here and does focus on the pear tree, but not too much else about the landscape. He does notice the light:

"All the pear tree leaves

go shimmer, all at once. The
August sun blasts down
into the coolness from the

ocean."

...

"The sunlight falls partly

in a cup: it has a blue
transfer of two boys, a
dog and a duck and says,
"Come away Pompey." I
like that cup, half

full of sunlight."

Freilicher, or any painter, has to take note of the light and how it affects the image they are rendering. However, poets do not have to do this.

At First Glance

The above posted painting is "Nell Blaine," painted by Jane Freilicher. I want to talk about this painting in relation to the O'Hara poems we have already discussed. Dr. Watson said in class yesterday, about both Pollock's and O'Hara's work, that it looks very easy and simple. Of course, it isn't. The above posted painting makes me think of a first glance or (and I hate to use this word) first impression. The first time you see anything, unless you are extraordinary, you do not remember absolutely everything about that moment. Instead you remember in thoughts like Freilicher's painting invokes: I am painting the scene I saw this morning and oh! how blue the floor was or she was sitting, but on or in what, a chair, obviously, but what did the chair look like? What was it's color? I think O'Hara's poem invites the same type of questions, but he doesn't quite answer them: I looked at watches and then I-- Oh! There were cats, but who was working the table? Were the cats afraid of someone taller than them? Doesn't matter, I am writing about death here!

I realize that both artists choose to leave out some details while capitalizing on others, but it obviously isn't simple or easy because they both have to make those choices while maintaining an over message. I will never forget that the woman's mouth was red in the Freilicher painting, and that O'Hara wrote or was inspired to write all of those poems on his lunch break.

Float Like a Butterfly

I don’t really know why “Stings” has gained my attention to the degree it has, but since opening Ariel I have certainly read it the most.

So the “two ways of interpreting the poem.”
1. Literal.

She, presumably Plath, is working with a man over a bee hive:

“Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,
The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I

Have a thousand clean cells between us,
Eight combs of yellow cups,
And the hive itself a teacup,
White with pink flowers on it,
With excessive love I enameled it”

She is concerned for the health of the hive, specifically the queen:

“Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells
Terrify me, they seem so old.
What am I buying, wormy mahogany?
Is there any queen at all in it?

If there is, she is old,
Her wings torn shawls, her long body
Rubbed of its plush ----
Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful.”

The health of the hive is highlighted (or low-lighted) with the first line of the above section, “Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells” along with “wormy mahogany”. Both of these images are dilapidated and negative.

The Queen’s health is vital to a hive. An elderly one with torn wings and a poor, bare body is a strong indicator that the overall vitality of the hive is lacking.

Then, someone unrelated to her and the bee keeper walks through the garden:

“In eight great bounds, a great scapegoat.
Here is his slipper, here is another,
And here the square of white linen
He wore instead of a hat.
He was sweet,”

Because this man did not wear a protective suit, he was attacked by her bees:

“The sweat of his efforts a rain
Tugging the world to fruit.
The bees found him out,
Molding onto his lips like lies,
Complicating his features.”

He lost his slipper, probably while running from the defensive bees. Those worker bees died when they lost their stingers stinging the stranger, but Plath is more concerned about her Queen. Without the queen, the hive has no future, so she searches for her:

“They thought death was worth it, but I
Have a self to recover, a queen.
Is she dead, is she sleeping?
Where has she been,
With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?”

Finally, she finds the Queen and see she is healthy enough to fly and seems vibrant with the color and adjectives Plath chooses.

Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet
Over the engine that killed her ----
The mausoleum, the wax house.

Now.
2. The way I think it should be interpreted.
Or, Husband, husband, and Me.

I will not enthrall you by re-quoting “Stings,” but I will be referring to the sections I pasted above, so I do hope you read over them.

I am keeping Plath as the speaker (“I”) of the poem, but also as the Queen bee she is searching for.

Both the bee keeper at the beginning of the poem and the man walking by her bee hive are her husband, Ted Hughes. At first I thought the bee keeper was her father, Otto Plath, because he authored a book about bumblebees and was a professor of Biology. That being said, I have no problem reading the beekeeper as her father, but I prefer it this way.

This was another poem written in October of 1962, one month after Hughes and Plath split, about three months after she discovered her husband’s affair. Although Hughes and Plath’s marriage has been shown to be far from perfect, I am sure uncovering an affair would have shattered Plath’s previous view of her husband. This is why I changed my mind about the bee keeper being her father. I thought since Plath is being duplicitous with her character, by being both the bee keeper’s helper and the queen bee, Hughes should also be two-fold. I am sure this was especially true to Plath, seeing that her husband had shifted from being a part of their marriage to an unliked stung stranger, as seen in the second half of “Stings.”

In the first two stanzas pasted far above, Plath and Hughes are over a bee hive, bare handed, with thousands of cells between them. I think Plath is describing the calm before the storm in their marriage. The thousand cells between them is referring to their family they constructed together and are sharing. They could also refer to the poetry both had written. It would not surprise me if, at times, Plath thought poetry more intricate than a family. They are also bare handed, with is dangerous. She is saying what they had worked for, their family or marriage, is not being handled with care. However, even at the end of the second stanza there seems to be a nostalgia note on her part, “With excessive love I enameled it.” She wanted this life, with a family.

The second selection I pasted described that dilapidated hive. I think this is the calm AFTER the storm in her marriage. Before the cells were clean and a healthy yellow, but now they are grey and seem old. After her marriage crumbled, so probably did the rest of her family. Or at least it was perceived that way at times by Plath. By asking, is there a queen, she was asking herself if she was still up for the challenge of raising a family. The forth stanza, describing the old queen, is describing the way she felt after realizing her husband wanted and obtained another woman. She probably felt broken and useless from such a blow to her esteem.
After this moment of self-pity Plath seems to gain momentum as a person through her poetry.

“It is almost over.
I am in control.
Here is my honey-machine,
It will work without thinking,
Opening, in spring, like an industrious virgin

To scour the creaming crests
As the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea.
A third person is watching.
He has nothing to do with the bee-seller or with me.
Now he is gone”

By claiming control of the situation, Plath is asserting that she can be over her hive, her family, without her husband. The machine and honey making process she refers to is probably a tip to her writing poetry. If I wrote 25 keepers in one month. . .Well I don’t know what I would do. The third person she mentions is the beginning of the stranger. He, the stranger, has nothing to do with the person who was a part of her marriage. Right after these stanzas are the ones finding the stranger’s clothing. I have no doubt this is literal. Once Hughes moved out I am sure Plath found a sock or two of his in some forgotten and rediscovered box.
Then the bees attack her cheating husband making him unrecognizable. Payback is a bitch. The last stanza, which I kind of promised to not re-quote is below. I do apologize, but it’s so good.

“Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet
Over the engine that killed her ----
The mausoleum, the wax house.”

Plath regains her regal stature through, I believe, poetry and surviving without the wax marriage to Hughes.

Howl

Part I (read: The Trinity of Spiritual, Street, and Howl Ghost)

Part III continues the discussion brought up in the latter portion of Part I in Howl, specifically the following lines:

"Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,
...
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time"

In the first thought stanza or however you call it, Ginsberg introduces Rockland, which as we know he calls back to around nineteen times in Part III of Howl. Since it is mentioned in Part I the reader is already aware of the madhouse setting that is referred to in Part III. Something that also sets these lines apart and makes them special is that they do not start with "who." To me it makes these lines stand out and seem very purposeful. Not saying that some lines in Howl are not purposeful, I believe they are, but changing the beginning word in this section calls attention to it.
The second thought-breath-stanza caught my attention during the first day of discussion. This line, to me and hopefully I am not the only one, is one of transcendence. Finally, one of the best minds achieves this greater state and all he had to do was accomplish madness and coexist with other mad-labeled people. If Ginsberg would have left this part with no continuation it would not have left such a strong impact as it does in Part III.
This feeling of transcendence is one of the spiritual realm, brought up with words like angel headedhippsters and the like, but also one of the street. Madness to a 'normal' person might be more in the realm of the base or street, maybe even under the street.

I am going slightly (read: completely) out of numeric order because Part II (read: Part Moloch) is slightly less obvious of a tie in because "Moloch" is not referenced in Part I by name. Instead we see Moloch behind the terrible happenings and bleak language that appears in Part I:

"incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud...
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars...

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts...."

And a ton of other lines with dark cloud no rain images that manage to rain on a drug waking nightmare accompanied by alcohol and cock and endless balls. The problem with something that is not blatantly named is that an enemy is hard to find. Luckily in Part II Ginsberg introduces the reader to Moloch. Suddenly it is not an unnamed invisible karma or bad life decision that ruins the best minds of a generation. It is the machine that enters the young soul while it watches PBS- of course!

Switch back to Part III- the answer already mentioned up above. Trinity- Combination of Spiritual, Street, and Howl Ghost. Only the combination of Spritual (transcendence) and street (naked madness) beats up on the Howl Ghost (Moloch). So, let's all go mad together. Only, if we're mad, we wouldn't know that we were.

That is right, you are already on your way.