First, excellent work in class on Thursday. On the topic of sonnets, the "smashing" sonnet (Claude McKay's "The Lynching") can be found here. Sonnets that comment on the conventions of sonnets themselves include Shakespeare's sonnet 130, Billy Collins' "Sonnet", and our own dear Mr. Wordsworth's "Nuns Fret Not".
Second, please read the assigned Mary Robinson poems for Tuesday and post your response below.
Happy reading,
Prof. M.
P.S.: Speaking to her social status (or aspirations thereto), the following portrait of Robinson was painted by the premier English portraitist of fashionable eighteenth-century society, Thomas Gainsborough.
A London Summer Morning:
ReplyDeleteI love the construction of it, opening with a rhetorical question that, with sparing language captures a full-bodied sense of the moment, without providing any specific descriptions: “the busy sounds/Of summer morning,” feels like something I recognize, though I might not be able to pinpoint the how or why; similar also, “the sultry smoke/Of noisy London,” which quickly directs the mind to realize this is not a summer’s day out in the country, we aren’t going to be hearing about the buzzing of flies and chirping of birds. It is “sultry smoke” sounds.
Robinson creates the idea that all of these characters, all of these moving parts, are a single organism. She does it with her repetition, “Now…Now…Now,” one element butting up against the next, and in the way she describes the de facto interactions of the people, “The sooty chimney-boy…Rousing the sleep housemaid,” at whose door “The milk-pail rattles.”
She is good the single adjective holistic description, “fresh-sprinkled pavement,” “early walkers,” the “hunger-giving cries/Of vegetable vendors.” They provide an immediate sense of the image and her intention. This makes her use of repetition noticeable and interesting. She takes three lines to describe “The din:” the “coaches, wagons, carts…trunk-makers/Knife-grinders, coopers…” But, each one feels right, adding a specific noise and color that would be missing otherwise.
In appropriate Romantic fashion, this survey of man must come back to her: “And the poor poet (fun alliteration) wakes from busy dreams (again, one adjective is quick and precise)/To paint the summer morning.” A really evocative line, especially in the unexpected “paint” being used for a poet.
Robinson’s poems seem to exemplify the ideals of “Lyrical Ballads”, as they were all written upon being prompted by experiences-- many of those being other manufactured works of art, however, which is what is different about her work. Her relationship with Coleridge sparked a great amount of poetry from her, which shows the the creative and inspiring cycles never truly end, as they bounced poetry off of each other, and in response to each other over the course of her lifetime.
ReplyDeleteOverall, Robinson seems to be a fan of refrains, specifically in the last lines of stanzas, such as in “The Haunted Beach”, “--To the Poet Coleridge” and “The Savage of Aveyron”. Specifically in “To the Poet”, she makes allusions even to her own work in order to please him, in the way of a private joke of sorts, with the term “silv’ry rays”. If anything, that is the epitome of reflection and memory, and writing upon the memory, as not only is she taking inspiration, but she’s /recycling/ it-- it never dies.
For Robinson, poetry wasn’t merely a way of expressing her memories or emotions, it was a way of communicating with people of like minds. Poetry is often lauded as otherworldly, but she brought it to the level of casual correspondence among her peers, as well as to social statements (which I will admit, is not as rare an occurrence to see in published poetic works). Poetry is a part of life, and it is, to her, the “language of man”-- the common language, and the purest form of self-expression, not for the sake of art, but for expression’s and connection’s sakes alone.
I really enjoyed reading "The Savage of Aveyron." I think the main reason is that it's a story (I like Wordsworth's stories, too). The story is told in rhyming verse, so it's necessarily histrionic, but I found the meter of "Aveyron" the easiest (out of all the other Robinson poems I read) to read quickly, like prose. The rhyming scheme seems complicated to me: abba ccca deed. The first and last stanzas end with an extra ddb. I spent some time figuring it out. It's a form of Petrarchan sonnet, maybe? Probably. It's interesting and adds a lot to the dramatic tension, which I don't think sonnet form is designed to do. I felt like I was reading one of Poe's poems, perhaps "The Raven." Robinson's theme of solitude or loneliness, a horror or supernatural element, and even the use of the word "dreary" reminded me of Poe's poem. The following excerpt from "Aveyron" is a good example:
ReplyDelete"...mazy woods of Aveyron,
Dark wilds of dreary solitude,
Amid your thorny alleys rude
I thought myself alone."
Of course, Robinson didn't copy Poe--if anything, Poe could have been influenced by Robinson.
Both poets also repeat their last lines over and over for emphasis, but subtly change a few words each time to heighten dramatic tension by maintaining an ominous and steady rhythm.
Poe and Robinson also introduce a refrain or even catchphrase--"alone" and "nevermore," respectively--which represents a mysterious trauma a character in the tale underwent and is still undergoing. Incidentally, both traumas involve the death of a loved one--because, again, both poems incorporate the theme of loneliness and loss.