Bukowski

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way’ -Charles Bukowski

Emerson and Huxley: On the Poetics of Poetry

While poetry has been a literary facet throughout history, its poetics or the subject matter and style of expression, have gone through considerable shifts. These alterations in the poetics of poetry have been critiqued fairly extensively by two of the greatest philosophes of our time: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Aldous Huxley. Although these two had slightly different opinions, they both held contempt for the industrial ages in which they lived, citing the blandness and lack of range in its poetic works. Because of this, both Huxley and Emerson explain ways of diversifying topics and expanding poetry outside of its mechanical stalemate.

For Huxley, one of his main concerns with the poetry of his time was the fact that its themes seemed shallow and narrow, not allowing for any philosophical ponderings or the presence of science. To Huxley this was troubling as he felt science is especially important as it conveys truth in a concrete and secular manner. The only problem he sees however, which is preventing science from being introduced into poetry, is the fact that the average man or woman at the time had very little knowledge of the subject and therefore would be unable to fully appreciate it. Also, this lack of knowledge too applies to the poet and his/her ability to convey the information. “All subjects- ‘the remotest discoveries of the chemist’ are but one unlikely theme –can serve the poet with material for his art, on one condition: that he, and to a lesser degree, his audience will be able to apprehend the subject with a certain emotion” (Huxley 92). Here, Huxley explains by quoting Wordsworth that the inclusion of more diverse subject matter can not only be by the delivery of the poet but must also include the reader as their aptitude to both endure and understand the subject matter will be crucial to the success of the piece.                 However, the main burden is still given to the poet as he must not only intimately understand the field which he chooses to write about but, must also have a great interest in it as well. From this one may draw that Huxley is commenting on the lack of integration in poetry. He does not agree that science and philosophy have no place in literature such as poetry, as many have separated the fields of science and literature completely, polarizing the two into their own distinct realms. The poet whom Huxley felt was the most apt at blending both science, philosophy, and poetry was Lucretius. Although Huxley felt that science should hold a place in poetry he also felt that the poetic world had not yet “Worked out a satisfactory artistic means of dealing with abstractions” (Huxley 94). “There was Lucretius, the greatest of all philosophic and scientific poets. In him the passionate apprehension of ideas, and the desire and ability to give them expression combined to produce that strange and beautiful epic of thought which is without parallel in the whole of history” (Huxley 94). One can assume that in this passage Huxley is referring to Lucretius’s epic poem “De Rerum Natura”, which translated means “On the Nature of Things”. Huxley uses some interesting diction to describe it, using the phrase “epic of thought” instead of epic poem. I do not think this was a mistake as Huxley is exceedingly diligent in his word choice. Instead, I think that Huxley purposefully chose to differentiate Lucretius’s poem from those of other poets for it is a work of insight and complexity which goes beyond the mere lyrical storytelling of many poets and draws on multiple scientific resources to develop a manifesto on how one should prosperously and happily live one’s life. In “De Rerum Natura” “Lucretius presents the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind and soul; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The universe described in the poem operates according to these physical principles, guided by fortuna, “chance”, and not the divine intervention of the traditional Roman deities” (Fortuna). This break from religious influence which is replaced with a desire not only to understand the world from a purely scientific viewpoint but to examine life itself through a secular lens, may not seem as profound now within the context of our highly technological and scientific society yet, this work was years before its time, more resembling a piece from The Renaissance, Enlightenment or even the Twenty-First Century.  However, this epic poem dates all the way to 1^st BC Rome and still draws upon values and concepts which would not be widely accepted or even recognized until hundreds of years after his death.

In the time when people felt the weight of religion,

wallowing upon the ground and—a ghastly spectacle—

heaven scowled down upon them and showed no mercy,

a Greek man was the first to raise his eyes,

daring to make a stand against it.

He took no notice at all of the thunder and lightning,

religious recitations merely incited him;

He said he would expose the secrets of nature

and so, by force of intelligence, and no other (Epicurus).

The “Greek Man” whom Lucretius is referring to in his poem is the great philosopher Epicurus. “Epicurus taught that the basic constituents of the world are atoms, uncuttable bits of matter, flying through empty space, and he tried to explain all natural phenomena in atomic terms. Epicurus rejected the existence of Platonic forms and an immaterial soul, and he said that the gods have no influence on our lives” (IEP). When studying the ideas of Lucretius and Epicurus which negate religion, only acknowledging its fear mongering and its part in the degradation of society, while turning to science for truth, it is obvious why Huxley favored Lucretius as the best poet of all time. Like Huxley who felt that science was the concise and accurate means of determining truth and enlightening the masses, Lucretius felt that religion served only to intimidate and frighten the people into to blind obedience while science had no ulterior motives other than the pursuit of truth. Also, in his poetry Lucretius is not grandiose but instead gracefully states his convictions and praises the verdicts of others, raving about the intellectual matters of earthly science in a fashion which Huxley claims no other poet has been able to recreate.

Lucretius refers to Epicurus in his poem, stating that “religious recitations merely incited him” (Epicurus). That line really stood out as Epicurus’s journey for knowledge knows no bounds, even as he is submerged in a society which avidly values religion in a time where the scientific theories which he is discussing will not be validated till over a thousand years later. Huxley values the fact that Lucretius relies purely on personal knowledge and nothing else, certainly a more surprising and daring claim is him time than ours yet, nonetheless holds the ideals of a  genius who was truly years ahead of his time.

Huxley also relays his frustration of how modern poetry flaunts its “newness” yet sticks to the same convention of attempting to depict modern life in a profound way, as Huxley cites how the same formula has existed since the writings of Homer. “There is nothing intrinsically novel or surprising in the introduction into poetry of machinery and industrialism, or labor unrest” (Huxley 94). To Huxley poetry on industrialism is just another way of elevating the generally uninteresting subject of “everyday life” while ignoring many of the things which make living so interesting in the first place, remaining formulaic and ignoring breakthroughs in science and philosophical ideas. He continues speaking about the topics of modern poetry saying: “That is not extending the range of poetry; it is merely asserting its right to deal with the immediate facts of contemporary life, as Homer and Chaucer did” (Huxley 94).

Huxley goes on to say that poetry should never be purely sensual or intellectual but, instead a blend of many things, a renaissance-like puree of ideas, senses, facts, and figments of the imagination. On content and inherent significance of poetry he comments: “An abstract idea must be felt with a kind of passion, it must mean something emotionally significant, it must be as immediate and important to the poet as a personal relationship before he can make poetry of it” (Huxley 92). From this, one can gather that part of what frustrates Huxley about the conventional writings which center around machinery, is the fact that he does not believe that the poets which write on such subjects have an intimate enough relationship with their machinery to merit them writing about it.  To paraphrase Huxley, he is saying you must have not only an intense interest in your poetic subject matter but, in fact a deep love for it. Furthermore he is commenting on the grandiose and bland style of “contemporary” poetry. He remarks on the intimate relation between the poet and his poetry which he feels is necessary in order to compose a truly enlightening or provocative piece of poetry. As he argues much of modern day poetry is devoid of the passion and hunger for expression. He frowns on the poetry which is labeled as experimental or free-verse yet, takes no advantage of the “freedom” of free-verse which allows you to venture through endless topics, genres, and subjects.

Emerson also shares a disdain for the poets of his time saying “I could cite from the seventeenth century sentences and phrases of edge not to be matched in the nineteenth” (Emerson 452). He continues to further collaborate with Huxley’s concept that the modern poet is missing a more diverse range of subject matter and knowledge. He refers to poets like Ben Johnson saying “The manner in which they learned Greek and Latin before our modern facilities were yet ready, without dictionaries, grammars, or indexes, by lectures of a professor, followed by their own searching’s,-required a more robust memory and cooperation of all the faculties…” (Emerson 452). This idea builds off of the concept that a poet must have a wide range of subject matter from which to draw on and must not fall into the conventions of modern poetry which plagues so many.  Emerson is remarking on the amount of work which it took the men who lived before many of the modern conveniences which we take for granted; not to mention the advances in technology which have come since his time and brought us lightning fast Google searches, spell check, online encyclopedias, and e-books, things unimaginable in a time where the invention of the assembly line was a mechanical breakthrough. Because of this the poets who had none of these resources yet retained a vocabulary by far more extensive than any modern poet, had a brutal wit, a perfect rhythm, and lyrical styles yet unmatched.

Ben Johnson lived during the 16^th and into the 17 Century and had to rely only on a meager high school education from which to write his now famous poetry. After school Johnson became a bricklayer, yet still found time to be “A man of vast reading [who was in fact so well received that he] had an unparalleled breadth of influence on Jacobean and Caroline playwrights and poets” (Wiki). However, Johnson was not just a embellished poet, he was considered to be incredibly controversial for his time, writing satirical plays which at times bordered on farcical yet, still managed to have incredibly intricate plots and vivid descriptions as “ Coleridge, for instance, claimed that The Alchemist had one of the three most perfect plots in literature” (Wiki). I think  Emerson appreciated not only Johnson’s comedic abilities paired with his knack for lyricism but, most enjoyed the fact that he pushed the envelope and was always expanding his literary boundaries. This is supported by Wesley Trimpi in a critique of Johnson in which he claims “That Johnson chose the plain style because it allowed him a range of subject matter which no other style allowed” (JSTOR). Johnson’s unique style and eclectic pairing of inspired prose and crude topics to Emerson must have seemed a whole planet away from the unimaginative and rigidly written poetry of the Industrial Revolution.

   

   A Celebration of Charis:1.

       His Excuse for Loving

                                                      -Ben Johnson

Let it not your wonder move,

Less your laughter, that I love.

Though I now write fifty years,

I have had, and have, my peers;

Poets, though divine, are men,

Some have lov’d as old again.

And it is not always face,

Clothes, or fortune, gives the grace;

Or the feature, or the youth.

But the language and the truth,

In this poem the words just seem to drip off the page, the rhymes so subtle, and the beauty so underplayed. Ben Johnson was a Renaissance poet, so it’s no wonder that Emerson appreciates his writing, as one of the central ideas of the Renaissance was that all schools of thought should be blended and integrated, not separated like in the contemporary poetry which Emerson felt failed to provoke thought and lacked depth. The last four lines of this passage from Johnson’s poem are the most telling. It seems almost as if Johnson was attempting to relay a concept in as little words as possible and had chosen love as his subject matter. His writing is superbly elegant and almost verges on overly simplistic, yet through his skillful diction Johnson makes the reader wonder: is there really anything more to love than communication and honesty?  In such simple words Johnson conveys a huge amount of meaning and without withdrawing to romantic clichés conveys the message of the importance of trust and compatibility in a relationship. However, the poets of Emerson’s time either ignored or forgot the sweet purity of Johnson’s writing and instead strode off in the opposite direction, making their poetry more complex and convoluted.

Emerson also found that in his time poetry was being inundated by a different kind of formulaic writing than just the lack of “intimacy” which Huxley describes. Emerson thought that the science and the many conventions which came with it were counterproductive to the freedom of poetry and therefore that they should not exist in the same literary space. This is similar to Huxley’s thoughts, although instead of presuming that the proper method of joining poetry and science has just not yet been developed, Emerson instead prefers the freeness of philosophy and claims that analogy itself without fact should be sufficient for poetic expression. “Whoever discredits analogy and requires heaps of facts, before any theories can be attempted has no poetic power, and nothing original or beautiful will be produced by him” (Emerson 453). From this Emerson is implying that anyone who cannot simply analyze a text or subject and draw from it its essence without first doing an abundance of study and research simply has little imagination and a lack of any true analytical or poetic skills. He believes that philosophical reflection can hold great importance while science ponders nothing and instead seeks out truth with methodologies and procedures which remove the majority of human thought. Although Emerson valued science’s contributions to society and found it wholly interesting and necessary for our progress as a society, I believe that he also disliked its certainty and held contempt for its unchecked convictions, especially as the archaic science of his time is almost unrecognizable when contrasted against modern science.

While Emerson favored philosophy as the discipline which was most lacking in the poetry of his time and Huxley preferred scientific explorations to the sensual ramblings of the poets of the 1900’s, they both still provide interesting ways of thinking about the purpose and applications of poetry. To Aldous Huxley poetry must be a composite of both the fanciful world of figurative language and the concrete and fascinating realm of scientific discoveries. Ralph Waldo Emerson however, was perturbed by the conventions which science brought to poetry and sought instead to fully embrace the abstraction which poetry allowed through philosophy and analogy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Work Cited

“Ben Jonson.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 05 Apr. 2013. Web. 07 May 2013.

De rerum natura 5.107 (fortuna gubernans, “guiding chance” or “fortune at the helm”): see Monica R. Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge University Press, 1994, 1996 reprint), pp. 213, 223–224

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, and Charles William Eliot. Emerson: Essays and English Traits. Danbury, CT: Grolier Enterprises, 1980. Print.

“Epicurus.info : E-Texts : De Rerum Natura, Book I.” Epicurus.info : E-Texts : De Rerum Natura, Book I. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2013.

Huxley, Aldous. Collected Essays. New York: Harper, 1959. Print.

“Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Epicurus []. IEP, n.d. Web. 07 May 2013.

Wesley Trimpi. “Ben Jonson’s Poems: A Study of the Plain Style.” Renaissance News. Chicago Journals, 1964. Web. 23 Apr. 2013.

This is a rough outline of what i would like to do for my essay

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Emerson and Huxley on Literature

            Thesis:

1 What Constitutes Poetry?
            2 What is the best period of poetry/poets?

            3 Analysis of Emerson and Huxley’s poetry (Compare actual poetry to their ideals of poetry)

“…For the most part the poets do not concern themselves with fresh conquests; they prefer to consolidate their power at home, enjoying quietly their hereditary possessions” (Huxley 91).

            -Here, Huxley comments on the formulaic nature of poetry; noting how the subject matter and the interests of the poets themselves vary only a small amount. This he finds to be tedious and boring as he sees the intrinsic beauty and significance of science and poetry to be largely ignored.

“All subjects- ‘the remotest discoveries of the chemist’ are but one unlikely theme –can serve the poet with material for his art, on one condition: that he, and to a lesser degree, his audience will be able to apprehend the subject with a certain emotion” (Huxley 92).

            -Here, Huxley explains by quoting Wordsworth that the inclusion of more diverse subject matter can not only be by the delivery of the poet but must also include the reader as their aptitude to both endure and understand the subject matter will be crucial to the success of the piece. However, the main burden is still given to the poet as he must not only intimately understand the field which he chooses to write about but, must also have a great interest in it as well. From this one may draw that Huxley is commenting on the lack of integration in poetry. He does not agree that science and philosophy have no place in literature such as poetry, as many have separated the fields of science and literature completely, polarizing the two into their own distinct realms.

            -He goes on to say that poetry should never be purely sensual or intellectual but, instead a blend of many things, a renaissance-like puree of ideas, senses, facts, and figments of the imagination. On content and inherent significance of poetry he comments:

“An abstract idea must be felt with a kind of passion, it must mean something emotionally significant, it must be as immediate and important to the poet as a personal relationship before he can make poetry of it” (Huxley 92).

            -Here, Huxley again comments on the grandiose and bland style of “contemporary” poetry. He harkens back to the “intimate” relation between the poet and his poetry which he feels is necessary in order to compose a truly enlightening or provocative piece of poetry. As he argues much of modern day poetry is devoid of the passion and hunger for expression. He frowns on the poetry which is labeled as experimental or free-verse, takes no advantage of the “freedom” of free-verse to venture through endless topics, genres, and subjects.

——Huxley feels the 1890’s was the golden age of poetry (94).

——Huxley also cites Lucretius as “The greatest of all the philosophic and scientific poets” (Huxley 94).  –Goethe and Dante are also noted.

            -Like Emerson however, Huxley falls short of his own standards when his ideals of poetry put to use. I find his poetry to be cold and emotionless, and yet like Emerson his essays are so brimming with sentiment and insight.

Emerson also shares a disdain for the poets of his time saying “I could cite from the seventeenth century and phrases of edge not to be matched in the nineteenth” (Emerson 452).

            -He continues on to further coaberate with Huxley’s concept that the modern poet is missing a more diverse range of subject matter and knowledge. He refers to poets like Ben Johnson saying “The manner in which they learned Greek and Latin before our modern facilities were yet ready, without dictionaries, grammars, or indexes, by lectures of a professor, followed by their own searchings,-required a more robust memory and cooperation of all the faculties…” (Emerson 452).

—–What does Emerson consider poetry?

 

—–Both Emerson and Huxley hold contempt for the industrial ages which they live in as poems about the revels of everyday life speak only of machines and machinery.

——————-“There is nothing intrinsically novel or surprising in the introduction into poetry of machinery and industrialism, or labor unrest” (Huxley 94).

            -Here, Huxley relays how modern poetry flaunts its “newness” yet sticks to the same convention of attempting to depict modern life in profound way, as Huxley cites how the same formula has existed since the writings of Homer.

He continues speaking about the topics of modern poetry: “That is not extending the range of poetry; it is merely asserting its right to deal with the immediate facts of contemporary life, as Homer and Chaucer did” (Huxley 94).

 

“Judge the splendor of a nation by the insignificance of the great individuals in it” (Emerson 452).

 

 

Impactful Books

 

The Cask of Amontillado (1846)

-Edgar Allen Poe

 

Essays and English Traits (1909)

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Brave New World (1931)

-Aldous Huxley

 

Anthem (1938)

-Ayn Rand

 

Collected Essays (1943)

-Aldous Huxley

 

Animal Farm (1945)

-George Orwell

 

Doors of Perception (1954)

-Aldous Huxley

 

Lolita (1955)

-Vladimir Nabokov

 

 

On the Road (1957)

-Jack Kerouac

 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)

-Hunter S. Thompson

 

Flow My Tears the Policeman Said (1974)

-Philip K. Dick

 

Love is a Dog in Hell (1977)

-Charles Bukowski

 

Women (1978)

-Charles Bukowski

 

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

-Tim Robbins

 

Different Seasons (1982)

-Stephen King

 

Ham on Rye (1982)

-Charles Bukowski

 

 

Libra (1988)

-Don Delillo

 

Fight Club (1996)

-Chuck Palahniuk

 

The Rum Diaries (1998)

-Hunter S. Thompson

 

Choke (2001)

-Chuck Palahniuk

 

Running With Scissors (2002)

-Augusten Burroughs

 

Einstein’s Dreams (2004)

-Alan Lightman

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do it. Bridge the gulf well and truly from edge to edge, and the dunces will find out. There is but one verdict needful, and that is mine. If I do it I shall know it.” (Emerson 99)

Here, Emerson is touching on one of his most prevalent themes: self-reliance. By saying bridging the gap, Emerson is using the metaphor of knowledge as a bridge which carries us over the vast gap of the unknown, ignorant, or that which is not yet understood. He continues on to convey the idea that this bridge of knowledge allows dunces to comprehend that which they should not be able to or gives them the false notion of understanding that which they truly do not. It seems in fact that he does not want any information disseminated because of its ability to sway the ignorant masses. Also, he could be commenting on critiques of his works, how the dunces or critiques comment on his work yet the only verdict which matters is his own. This can also be said of his overall theme, that one should continually look inward, searching the soul for advice instead of drawing on the decisions of others, his last line indicating that the only way to truly gain insight is to do it yourself.

“If what we hate was murderable, that were some comfort. But, unhappily, no knife is long enough to reach the heart of any enemy we have” (100).

Emerson, in his greatly metaphorical writing, discusses the concepts of hate, enemy, and murder. He begins by saying that if the things we despise, such as ideologies, misconceptions, ignorance etc; were of flesh and blood and therefore tangibly accessible, it would be comforting because they could easily be defeated. However, when something exists conceptually, it cannot so easily be destroyed or contained. Because of this Emerson relays his discontent, saying how we can never truly destroy that which see as our enemy because it exists outside of the realm of tangible existence.

“Some minds are viviparous like Shakespeare and Goethe. Others are oviparous, alive though incomplete; and others like trees which leave seeds and fruits on which the living can feed” (160).

In this quote, the words viviparous and oviparous are used very interestingly. Emerson refers to Shakespeare and Goethe as viviparous, a word used in botany to describe a plant which has seeds which germinate before detaching. He uses this concept to exemplify the way that both Shakespeare and Goethe present fully formed ideas in their work, not just leaving crumbs from which the reader must decipher the larger concept. He goes on to say that other minds are oviparous, referring to plant whose seeds gestate off of the plant. This metaphor indicates that some writers put out partial ideas, leaving the reader to draw from that what they like.  Emerson also uses the metaphor of minds like seeds and fruit, an ingenious way of describing the ideas of writers littered across pages, the seeds of thought from a person long-gone, taking root in the mind of the young reader.

 

 

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than material force, that thoughts rule the world. -Emerson

In his essay The American Scholar, Emerson discusses the idea of the thinking man. The scholar as he sees him is being usurped by the values placed on manual labor and use of machinery during the industrial revolution. Also, the division of labor moving from trained professionals who worked broadly within a field to individuals who have very specialized and easily replaceable services troubles Emerson. He sees the world as a place which no longer values philosophy, poetry, or the intellect but, instead cares only of the mundane, and in his eyes the decadent, concepts of increasing profits and maximizing efficiency. “In [the] distribution of functions the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking” (Emerson 56). Here Emerson comments on how the thinking man in our society is viewed as unimportant as the humanities are undermined and capital is valued over deep thought; in fact, he says these thinkers often fall victim to the schemes of those who control the capital.

He also speaks on the corrupting power of money and how it has become the focus of too many occupations, driving the person to do their work instead of the accomplishment of satisfying their patron or some other external reward. “The priest becomes a form; the attorney a statute-book; the mechanic a machine; the sailor a rope of the ship” (Emerson 57). Through their jobs the men become trapped in their one-mindedness and fail to reach the full potential of a man who is multi-faceted and capable of multiple roles. “Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parceled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his” (Emerson 56). It is apparent from Emerson’s writing that holds distain for our capitalistic society which essentially allows for many people to continually perform rudimentary tasks which take little skill so that there is no need to pay the workers any substantial amount of money and so that they are easily and cheaply replaced. This labor only truly benefits those who are at the top of the pyramid while those at the bottom are suspended in a perpetual state of poverty. This kind of society, although it is often said to value the individual, does exactly the opposite; exploiting the individual and instead using the concept to divide and discourage the masses from any collective thinking which may intimidate the government. And while Emerson also values the individual he values it in a very different way, believing that a man should be independently conscious yet belong to a collective, whether that be an intellectual commune, nature, or society at large. He believes that men should serve each other, empathetically, looking to improve the common good instead of only achieving individual success. “…That the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end” (Emerson, 56). Here Emerson credits God with giving us the now squandered ability to work together with rest of mankind, something which is downplayed today in a society which wants an isolated and delusional public incapable of peaceful, altruistic cooperation.

Charles Bukowski’s Love is a Dog From Hell

 

Although many poets use an extensive amount of figurative language in their works, and in fact it has become a staple of the art, some authors choose instead to use simple, crude language, using the poem as a whole as a means of metaphorically examining an event or idea. Charles Bukowski’s prose differs greatly from that of the stereotypical poet, using no grandiose language, glorifying nothing, and hating everything. In his book of poetry “Love is a Dog from Hell” Bukowski observes, what seems to be his everyday life, from an almost philosophical yet plain viewpoint; often using the device of Authorial intrusion in order to give his poetry a more narrative and one on one feel, as if he is speaking directly to you.

The very first poem in his book, Sandra, begins the first stanza entirely as a metaphor describing a woman named Sandra.

Sandra

“is the slim tall

ear-ringed

bedroom damsel

dressed in a long

gown”

Here, Bukowski uses a string of adjectives and nouns to describe Sandra, giving an abstract yet telling metaphorical description. His diction denotes a classy woman as he uses words like damsel and describes her as ear-ringed and wearing a long gown. The next paragraph continues misleadingly with this theme of a woman who seems proper and sophisticated using a common metaphor throughout by using the word “high” in a multitude of interesting ways; “High” being used both literally and figuratively to describe not only the woman’s height but also her personality, demeanor, and habits. In this way Bukowski uses denotation, bluntly explaining the woman.

“…she’s always high

in heels

spirit

                                                                           pills

booze”

When Bukowski writes that the woman is high in high heels he is elevating her, as if she’s on a pedestal or some angelic figure. He also plays with the words high and heel, separating the two cleverly through two verses. Going further he describes her as being high in spirits but then it is immediately contrasted by her being high on pills and booze. It can be assumed from this that the reason for her jovial demeanor is because of her consumption of narcotics and alcohol.

As the poem continues, other unsavory aspects of Sandra begin to unravel as Bukowski seems to lament on her choice in men.

“at 32 she likes

young neat

unscratched boys

with faces like the bottoms

of new saucers”

Here, Bukowsi uses the simile of unscratched saucers to ingeniously illustrate the image of boys like fine china; pristine, porcelain, Ken dolls, and about with as much intelligence and personality as he later describes:

“silent blonde zeros of young

flesh

who

a) sit

b) stand

c) talk

at her command”

In this stanza it becomes apparent that Sandra likes small minded people who she can control. She seems manipulative and domineering as Bukoski demonstrates through his interesting syntax, using a, b, and c to demonstrate through his euphemism that she treats her lovers like dogs, leaving out conjunctions in order to underscore her commanding tone.

As he concludes Bukowski harkens back to the beginning of the poem with the line “Sandra looks very good in

long gowns”

This seems to continue again with the somber tone which Bukowksi had before. This is unusual because most of his poetry is crude and chauvinistic. Yet he appears to truly miss this woman who is assumedly an ex-lover.

“Sandra could probably break

a man’s heart

I hope she finds

one.”

            Bukowsi closes by saying how Sandra has the looks and possibly the personality to really have a man love her and cherish her and one could assume that Bukowski longs to be that man. He however, is confident that she will never find a man amongst the dull, generic, timid boys who she loves to rule over. In the end Bukowski uses the poem as a brilliant metaphor of the poem as Sandra and Sandra as the poem.

 

 

Jungian/Archetypal Criticism

 

Jungian Criticism is based off of the belief of Psychologist Carl Jung that there exists a “universal unconscious”. This idea posits that every individual has access to “A shared set of images, called archetypes, common to all people. The universal unconscious was expressed in art, literature and myth, and Jungian literary criticism focused specifically on the analysis of archetypes in literature and written mythology” (Wise).

Much of the prolific literary characters that we are most familiar with from legends, fairy tales and mythology such as Paul Bunyon, or Achilles are all examples of what Jung would classify as archetypes. Archetypes are “ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective unconscious” (Fiest). This definition is explanative and provides the individual with the idea that archetypes are something that has existed since the emergence of the cerebral human, yet it leaves the reader unaware of how exactly it can be interpreted through literature.  “The archetype [in literature] is a tendency to form such representations of a motif – representations that can vary a great deal in detail without losing their basic pattern … They are indeed an instinctive trend” (Jung 58). These “Archetypical motifs” are represented as the quintessential good or bad characters, as archetypical characters never rest in a static state but instead are always at one extreme of the other. The tragic hero, first introduced by the Greeks, is one of the most recognizable archetypes. “While reading literature in Jungian literary criticism, the central character is viewed as real, while most other characters are seen as symbolic representations of aspects of the hero’s unconscious self. A woman, for example, represents the anima, the feminine side of the hero’s personality. An antagonist represents shadow” (Wise).

Dissimilar to other types of literary criticism, such as psychoanalytical criticism, where the characters each represent a part of the author’s psyche or visa-versa, the character’s in Jungian criticism all stand for parts of the protagonist’s unconscious desires or parts of the unconscious which the character has yet to access. A novel which can be easily viewed through a Jungian lens is J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. In this book Frodo, the protagonist, can be viewed as “real” while the rest of the characters serve as tangible facets of Frodo’s untapped unconscious. “Frodo is clearly pitted against his shadow figure, Gollum. Gollum represents all the things in Frodo’s unconscious self that Frodo has not psychologically recognized” (Wise). As Frodo first sets out on his journey to Mordor, a place of evil, he is good-hearted and pure. However, as the tale progresses and they draw nearer to Mordor, aspects of Gollum begin to manifest in Frodo and he must face the evil within himself in order to conquer the evils of middle earth.

Another type of criticism which stems directly from Jung’s work is Archetypal criticism. This type of criticism, like Jungian criticism, is rooted in psychoanalysis. Archetypal criticism saw its heyday in the 40’s and 50’s with its most prominent contributor being Northrop Frye. Frye however, disregarded much of Jung’s work noting that “It was unnecessary: since the unconscious is unknowable it cannot be studied” (Abrams 224-225). Frye instead focused mainly on the function and effect of archetypes, proposing that the context/genre in which a text is viewed is central to how it is understood. While I agree with this, I still do not believe that Frye can simply dismiss the notions of Frazer, who dealt with archetypes in archaic and modern religions and Jung “Who’s theory of the collective unconscious accounts for a considerable share of writings in archetypal literary criticism; it also pre-dates the height of archetypal literary criticism by over a decade” (Segal 4). While the three had varying views on the subject of archetypes and their relation to the environment, self, and literature, both Frazer, Frye, and Jung bring up interesting points and give the reader multiple ways of interpreting texts.

 

Work Cited

Fiest J, Friest G, Theories of Personality (2009), New York New York; McGraw-Hill

C. G. Jung, “Approaching the Unconscious” in C. G. Jung ed., Man and his Symbols (London 1978) p. 58

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-jungian-literary-criticism.htm

Abrams, M. H. “Archetypal Criticism.” A Glossary of Literary Terms. Fort Worth: HBJ, 1993. 223 – 225

 

 

What is English?

English is the study of prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and rhetoric, as well as the writing of these types of texts.

When attempting to determine what English truly is, it is important to remember that “English” appears in very many forms. It can be viewed as simply reading and writing, as a dialect, or in the academic sense, as a general field of study.

English is defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “The West Germanic language of England, now widely used in many varieties throughout the world.” English does not of course mean, descending only from England in this sense, but instead, is a misnomer. English, in fact, has become a broad term used to describe British and American works of literature or any writing done in the English language. When people use the term English, in terms of scholarly work, they are usually referring to English literature.

English is obviously also a language, as in America we do not speak American. This dialect is shared with us by our British cousins who first contrived it and although the two languages have discernible differences, they are, on the whole, very similar. The same can be said about British and American literature as diction and overall style are the only main variances.

“English majors and minors study the historical development of literary and rhetorical traditions, of literatures written in English, as well as world and European literatures in English translation Students in the literature option read a wide range of literature from various cultures and historical periods. Students in the writing option also read a great deal of literature and study literary method, but focus their coursework on the writing of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.”

–Keene State College

This definition of English is obviously an academic one as it addresses English as a course of study. It infers that English is not only written but also spoken. It also brings up the interesting point that foreign works can be translated into English and, in that sense, they are then English texts. It also puts no cap on the culture or time periods which can be explored through English. Interestingly, this definition divides writing into three concise categories: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction.

On Writing in School

I did not always enjoy writing as a child however, I was constantly reading. My love for writing certainly spawned from the respect and admiration which I began to develop for the authors of my favorite novels. At first I adored Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Thomas Harris for their use of elements of suspense and action, keeping my hands glued to the books for hours on end. Later I began to appreciate genres other than horror and fantasy, indulging in poetry, philosophy, and fiction/non-fiction some of my favorite authors being Charles Bukowski, Henry David Thoreau, Hunter S.Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Aldous Huxley, Philip K. Dick and Chuck Palahniuk. These authors helped to shape my vision of what I hoped to aspire to as a writer, with many of them writing not only fiction but poetry, essays and creative nonfiction. This, to me, showed that you can be a mulch-faceted writer, not tied down to a specific genre or subject matter.

However, if it was not for some great high school English teachers I most likely would not have taken to writing as quickly and eagerly as I did. My freshman year I took Honors English I with Mrs. Muratori. She constantly pushed our writing abilities, emphasizing the need for parsing quotations thoroughly and properly as well as exposing us to myriad writing devices and their proper uses. For my sophomore and junior year I took AP literature and language with Mr. Bless, another inspirational teacher who taught us to look deeply into texts, questioning the authors’ diction and sifting through complex works to find their intimate meanings.

My favorite and most rewarding English class in high school however, was my senior year Humanities class, again with Muratori. The class was split into four sections, power, beauty, truth, and knowledge, and during each section we would explore texts and visual works, discussing in a “Socratic seminar” the ways in which each work related to our current topic. There was also a conclusive essay for each section in which we analyzed the topic through either the works we had discussed or through some outside research.

Possibly one of the best essays I have ever written was for that class was for our section on beauty; I decided to question just how we perceive beauty and what it means to be beautiful in the universal sense. I approached this essay from a scientific viewpoint using research and case studies from scientists and authors such as Charles Darwin in order to provide a biological reasoning for why and how we perceive individuals as beautiful or aesthetically appealing. I received an A on the essay and was thoroughly pleased, it was one of the first times that I had truly integrated my work, using biological and sociological reasoning to write a persuasive English paper. Doing work like this also further demonstrated to me the importance of using evidence to support claims in order to write a proper and convincing essay. In college I have also had good luck so far finding interesting and enjoyable English courses. Last semester I took Creative Non-Fiction with Professor Sandy and it opened my eyes to a genre which I did not before know existed. In fact, most of my favorite authors fall under the umbrella of Creative Non-Fiction and having never written anything other than poetry recreationally, it spurred me to branch off and explore other areas of writing. I enjoyed taking events from my life and transforming them into written works, preserving the memory and, in a sense, making them larger than life. Taking that class showed me the many different mediums afforded to authors and the various ways in which you can submit works for publication. After taking it the goal of becoming published is on the top of my list; although I haven’t submitted any works yet I still write fairly regularly and definitely plan to be submitting some pieces this semester.

Overall I have had mostly pleasant experiences with writing as I have grown increasingly fond of writing creatively and recreationally since I first began to enjoy reading as a child. This has led me ultimately to the conclusion that I would like to become a professional writer. However, I am still very unsure as to what type of career I would like to aspire to. The options are innumerable; I could write editorials for a newspaper, do technical writing, poetry, become a novelist or write a memoir. And while all the options are nice, they are also quite overwhelming. However, I know that writing will assist me in finding a suitable career, no matter what it is.