Anyone that really knows me will tell you that I absolutely love games. Board games, card games, sports, etc. I play them all. What I love is the strategy involved. My mind is actively at work to win the game and be creative about it. If I employ a trick, it is within the rules of the game. When I first read the trickster stories that I going through with my group I really did not think that I had anything in common with the characters I was reading about. They were often so morally depraved and they took from the rich and poor alike to achieve their own selfish needs. Trying to look at their tricks the way I utilize them I realized that the full extent of their trickery knows no bounds, because their rules are survival, pride, and pleasure. These conditions must be met for them to be fulfilled even be it dangerous, unlikely, foolish, or immoral. I have tried but I cannot pity them. I can understand them. They truly do ring the all to familiar bells of selfishness and pride within man. There is one trickster that particularly intrigues me.
Though not always tricksters, for the most part, are skilled at their art. Employing a number of strategies and ruses. The most skilled at this is Loki. He is the trickster that I most connect with because he is the one that ,usually, employs the most intricate schemes and strategies. It is because his motivation is not food, or survival, but power. Looking at this from a class struggle position he is possibly the least relateable to the common man. Yet, it is his difference that excites interest. His hunger for power and domination are unique among tricksters, his human nature is all to familiar among man.
I really want any and all thoughts you have about these poems. I had such a fun time writing them and hope that you will have as much fun reading them!
Jonathan Polus
Ushers of Jubilee
Out rush the ushers, sea about their knees.
Swirling, twirling, gleaming, beaming; singing songs of jubilee.
Receding light creates a sight, innocent and free.
Summer-bright shadows dancing on the sea.
Train behind them follows, hearts a-mirth with hope.
Into freedom straight they plunge, birthed anew in love.
One-by-one they leave behind old waters, death, and fears.
Ushers romp about the surf, splashing joy shed tears.
O Democracy
Jury, Jury on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?
The people answer tongue in cheek that he is, he is, lord of the hall.
Our Judge is worried not a bit,
He knows the outcome shall acquit.
Decision of the people wide,
When votes were cast and outcome lied.
He makes decisions from his throne,
Millions voted. “WHAT OF THEM!?” Their fate I, decide.
Lost is the voice of whole generations,
Hung upon ropes of our court, and back door litigation.
Thinking about poetry this week I was reminded of this poem that I had done two years ago. This is a piece of Riddled Poetry as I like to call it. It was my attempt to write about something that I had seen but really make it a difficult riddle as well. We were talking a lot last week about how poetry and its meaning is so subjective. I think this was evidenced most to me now looking back on it, when I think of this poem. Riddles by their nature have a specific answer to them. Poems on the other hand are known for their ability to have a multiplicity of meaning. I had a specific thing in mind as the answer to this riddle yet when others read my poem they had answers that were so convincing that I was tempted a few times to change my "answer"! Now, I wanted to share this with anyone that happens to come by and see what your answers are. I am sure that I will be just as surprised when I hear your answers.
Just wanted to hear your thoughts and answers.
A Fall to Life
As violence forms my outer being, Life is captured in my womb. Twisting, churning, ever clinging, What gives me life will be my tomb. I babble on in search of meaning, The gift I give will till death fume. As life whirls by solace springing, A world around me comes to bloom. In death I ask to all yet breathing, Whom am I and I am whom?
This poem began in our class room workshop. In my four years at California State University Northridge I have not actually had a class where I was asked to write creatively in the moment. It was actually enjoyable, although I will say that I realized I have to have a topic that I am passionate about. I started out thinking about our title and the idea of death. It was not at all interesting and I did not know what to do with it. It was only when I was able to relate the issue to something that was more ethereal and fictional that I began to enjoy myself. The ability to relate the topic to the politics that I had been mauling over all day, and then frame the story in the world of fantasy fiction with a Lilith and Magic Carpet made it interesting. Poetry here we come.
The author C.S. Lewis commenting on the writings of Rudyard Kipling once said, “Our author gives us no rest: we are bombarded with felicities till they deafen us. There is no elbow room or leisureness. The fault of which I am here accusing Kipling is one which only a great artist could commit” (Quotable Lewis 363). Reading the poem “Gunga Din” by Rudyard Kipling the word bombarded describes exactly the way I felt. I was bombarded by the words, bombarded by emotions, bombarded by the most poignant of images. This was different from the romantic poetry that had come before. It created an image that was not complete through excessive words but that gave a vivid image through word choice and a focus on “the thing”. This was much more attune to the values of the modernist movement that came soon after. Though Kipling’s poem “Gunga Din” is considered a romantic poem of the Victorian Age it is actually in line with the standards of the Modernist literary movement on a stylistic level.
The modernist movement had three tenants according to Ezra Pound that guided the way their poetry was to function and be written. Those tenants were, “1. Direct treatment of the ‘thing’ whether subjective or objective. 2. To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome” (Pound). Rudyard Kipling was alive during the founding of this movement and had preceded them in his writing “Gunga Din” by only twenty or thirty years. This poem shows that that in regards to these literary elements Kipling displayed similar values. Talking about Pound’s diction and reasons behind his word choice we are given a history by Donald Lyons saying, “he writes with laconic sobriety and decorum self-contained freeverse lines informed by Greek patterns--is here miraculously supple and delicate. In lines like "When we set out, the willows were drooping with spring,/ We come back in the snow," we see technique at the service of something significant” (Donald 4).
Looking firstly at the second point regarding using no needless words Kipling was an avid believer. He said in advising Augusta Tweddell by letter, “Read the Bible ... and see how much can be said in how few words." "There is any amount of loose slipshod English in the world and its influence has affected my style incurably, but do you avoid it” (Park 3). Kipling does not do himself justice. He would revise and revise until all the words that were in the poem were to the right point. This is evidenced in lines 68-73 from “Gunga Din”,
'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died:
"I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din (Kipling).
In these lines the reader is given words that excite the imagination to create an image of this situation. You are not fed all the smells and sounds and feelings of the moment. In fact the words chosen are extremely impersonal and unfeeling. No, you are simply presented an image of this “water boy” and the image of duty and nobility that he is as he dies.
There is then the other two points by Ezra Pound regarding “direct treatment of the thing” and its musical sound not meter. Clara Park wrote in her essay “HowKiplingTaught Me to Write” tells of what she loved about Kipling,
“I was left to the irresponsible pleasures of pure language, its pricks and tremors and rumbles and runs and full stops. And yet it wasn't wholly pure. It wasn't music. It was words, hung together by something more than their several rhythms; mysterious sounds offering even a child glimpses beyond sound, into meaning.None ofKipling's contemporaries, seemingly, could be more remote from him than James Joyce. And yet they are uncommonly alike--for it is not at all common, even for writers with weak eyesight, to experience the world through sound” (Park 5)
She was taken by the words that came together not just for the sound of the thing but for something that goes beyond sounds and rhythm, meaning. As a reader she was looking into “the thing” rather than just a circumstance or story. This is what the Modernists were trying to ultimately accomplish themselves. They were trying to more beyond the look, meter, and rhythm of the thing and get to the image and the meaning. I do not think it is coincidental that Park mentions James Joyce in as being related to this tradition. Joyce was a famous author within the Modernist movement whose works such as “Ulysses” and “The Dubliners” both show this story form reliance on meaning and image over story and lyrical beauty.
Rudyard Kipling exemplified Modernist literary elements in his writings and acted as a bridge between the romantic and modern schools. He was found to have abided by the modernist call for precise word choice. He was also one that dealt with the issue and the “thing” at hand while emphasizing the musical nature and of a word instead of its metronomic qualities. Rudyard Kipling was a man filling in a very difficult gap of poetic history and on that did so with a public appeal that is a testament to his professionalism and richness of imagery. Readers have since returned to battle again and again seeking to lose themselves in the roar of Gunga din, din, din!
Works Cited
Kipling, Rudyard. "Gunga Din"100 Best Loved Poems. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. 76-78. Print.
Lyons, Donald. “A Major Minor: Ezra Pound’s Poetry”. New Criterion. Volume 17, Issue 10. 1999. Web.
Martindale, Wayne, and Jerry Root, eds. The Quotable Lewis. Carol Stream, Il: Tyndale House Publishers, 1990. Print.
Park, Clara. “HowKiplingTaught Me to Write”. The American Scholar. Volume 4 Issue 72. Autumn 2003. Pg. 5 Web.
Pound, Ezra. “A Retrospect.” Heath Anthology of American Literature: Volume D. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2010. 1402-1403. Print.
How much I truly enjoyed Walt Whitman's poetry. When we were reading this poem I a gained a newfound respect for the ability of poetry to be so smooth and rhythmic.
We had brought of a lot of terms about poetry to the table that class. What moved me the most about Whitman's Elegy "O Capitan, My Captain!" was the shear sincerity. It is difficult to sound sincere when you are using complex words and yet it is hard to make it sound beautiful and meaningful without them often times. That is what I believe made this poem so powerful.
That and the metaphor of Abraham Lincoln being the Captain of a ship called America. He would have gone down with the ship trying to save it, instead he saved everyone else besides himself.
If I were to be honest with you I would tell you that although I am enjoying every class and extracurricular activity I have this semester, I am spread thin. What has been hitting me is that there are so many people, like myself last semester, who are taking things easy and fittering their days away. I began to question whether or not I should have taken as much on my plate as I have. However, in the presence of all the added work I was challenged to do even more. What I really noticed was that I had a desire to continue writing a number of stories I had started, yet now I was filling even more of that "free" time on my calendar.
It was in this moment that the poem, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost was really an encouragement. Reading the words,
"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry I could not travel both,
And be one traveler long I stood,
And looked down one as far as I could,
To were it bent in the under growth...
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference."1
I know that although I may look down that road filled with free time, board games, and fantasy fiction, I am going to enjoy my road and accomplish much that is rewarding. Thinking along this train of thought I got a laugh at a Youtube video by Pomplamoose someone showed me. It also was an encouragement to the work I was setting myself too.
These artists used their music to show the importance of spending our time wisely in dreaming and creating. Their own video and word creativity is wonderful. I hope you enjoyed the video and are motivated to tackle those ideas and dreams that you might have put on hold. Life truly gets dull when we stop dreaming.
Jonathan Polus
1 Frost, Robert. "The Road Not Taken" 100 Best Loved Poems. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. 84. Print.
To begin what I hope will be a truly exciting and productive journey for all of us allow me introduce myself. I am Jonathan Polus, a English Literature Major at Cal State University Northridge, and someone who has a passion to teach and mentor young adults. The ability to nourish and foster a love of learning and an interest in the books and words I love is something that truly excites me.
It is in my nature is not to do anything quickly, but think through and process all that is before me before making a decision. I am truly an Ent in the fashion of J.R.R. Tolkien's ancient tree giants that never make a decision hastily and rarely appreciate change. Likewise, change is not one of my favorite vocabulary words. As I mulled over media technology and its relationship to teaching I found myself with a few overarching reservations, one which I will share.
I sincerity fear the loss of interpersonal relationships and mentor ship within the educational system. My teachers and my parents are the reason I have pursued and dedicated myself to a life of scholarship and education. My one experience with an online class at Cal State University Northridge was not something that I wish to repeat. There were no anecdotes, no spontaneous theorizing, no striking and sharpening of personal belief and theory. I fear that if teaching is given wholly to technology we will lose the life, emotion, and enthusiasm in the subjects as quickly as we lose it in the students themselves. This rather apocalyptic reservation aside I have experienced some wonderful benefits of technology in the realm of education.
One such aid came while attempting to understand Shakespeare and the intricacy of his many plays. What benefited me the most were the BBC theatrical enactments of the plays. These, often word for word, enactments allowed me to follow along highlighting in my book noting the truly important stage and set element of the plays. This media resource was invaluable to me and my understanding of the text. I have recommended every teacher I know who teaches Shakespeare to at least incorporate clips of the performed plays along side or outside their regular lectures.
Though I am hesitant by nature, I truly am excited to learn and utilize more of these media teaching techniques. As tools, they will no doubt be invaluable in the field I am soon to enter and with the bright young adults I will have the honor of teaching.
