Rhiannon Jones
Introduction to Literature
Ann Hostetler
Bone Disintegration
In Peter Cook’s piece “Poetry” from the book Signing the Body Poetic, he describes poetry in terms of an atomic bomb which disintegrates the body of the audience starting with the hair, then eyes, teeth, and finally bones. This description brings to light the power which a poem carries. Poetry uses various techniques to convey a message more clearly and more emphatically than could another type of writing such as expository writing. Poetry is a powerful tool for effective and powerful communication, carried by multiple methods simultaneously.
Poetry is a way to surpass or sometimes wiggle under the conveyance which can be accomplished by ordinary daily conversation. In The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot induces in the reader a feeling of discomfort by alluding to medical scenes. He evoked these feelings by such a subtle method that people may not even fully recognize at first why they are disinclined towards reading the work. In that way, the techniques of the poem can be very difficult to detect (Eliot).
Similarly, some poems such as “My Life” and Lynn Hejinian, “Dropping Leaflets” by Jenna Osman, and select poems created in the fifties utilize unusual methods of organization to make their points. Both works are very difficult to comprehend. Both use a method of disorganization. “Dropping Leaflets” was created from the remains of political speeches after those documents had been shredded. By understanding this, the audience realizes what the poet thought of the conveyance of those press releases (Filries). “My Life,” uses disorder to create a work which well conveys the task of trying to look back at one’s life and make sense of it. Other poems which use disorganization do so in order to confuse the point of the poem in order to point out senselessness (Kommunyakaa, 13). On the other side of the spectrum are poems which bring their methods to the forefront.
There are countless poetic devices by which a poet may convey their message, however those devices must be used for a particular reason. As Lynn Hejinian said in “The Best American Poetry,” were poems to be only about aesthetics, they would create a feeling of detachment from life (Hejinian, 12). The poet could utilize imagery such as in the poem “I Remember Sharpeville,” by Sipho Sepamla. In this poem, the protestors are described as if they were a flood:
a black sea surged onward
its might ahead
mind behind
it had downed centuries-old containment
one goal fed its dazed loyalty
to shed debris
on an unwilling shore
like a sponge
it sucked into its core
the aged and the young
school-children fell helter-skelter
into its body-might
as it rolled over
crushing the cream
and the scum of its make-up
into a solid compound (Forche, 729).
By using an additional image to describe what happened, Sepamla forcefully inserts particular ideas into the mind of the reader, such as that the group was mighty because it “surged,” and became “solid.” The imagery creates a strong, swelling feeling in the chest. He also implies that the protestors were an extremely various group. They included the “crème” of the crop, the best people there were, and the “scum” (Forche, 729).
As was indicated in the book “Against Forgetting,” and the book “Disclamor,” poetry can be used for documentation of historical events. It can be used as a way to make history relevant, and to remind the readers living in a different time or a different place that the people about whom students read had were more than words on a page. The poems can show how the people in those poems reacted and better convey how lives were during that period of time rather than listing things which happened to people who are a first and last name in a book.
By using vivid imagery, rhyme schemes and other techniques, poets create sounds and images which are to stay firmly in the mind. This characteristic is instrumental to the purpose of some poetic works. As in “I Remember Sharpeville,” and Shari Miller Wagner’s “A Capella,” many poems preserve information for the future. By creating an unforgettable image, rhythm, feeling, or rhyme scheme poems can live on, and tell a story to audience after audience (Forche, 729 & Hostetler, 117).
Poetry is a way of expressing controversial viewpoints. The modernist poets thought that poetry could be written on any topic (Filries & Walker). I do think that the poems which were about senseless events, such as those written by Daniil Kharms can be considered poetry. If one believes that he was trying to reflect the society in which he was living, senseless situations and tragedies, although an uncommon theme, do convey the meaning more clearly than a poem which directly laments and criticizes the situation would (Forche, 135). Another example of a poem on an unusual topic is The Impossible by Bruce Weigl. This poem is about the sexual assault of the narrator. It has no overtly stated inspirational message at the end of the poem, it simply relates a scene (Gilbert).
In poetry there is the use of certain attributes such as sound repetition, through alliteration, assonance, consonance, sibilance, and rhyme, and rhythm through the control of meter, number of syllables and punctuation, causing the poem to stop or flow at the discretion of the poet. If the poem isn’t written in a way which better enables it to convey its message, then there might not be a point in using the devices. One might as well use some other form of writing. The mechanism which causes a poem to convey its message varies greatly, from utilizing a memorable imager or rhyme scheme, to the story of the creation of the poem. Whatever the avenues used, poetry is a way of blowing a readers mind with a message.
Works Cited
Bauman, H-Dirksen L, Jennifer L. Nelson, and Heidi M. Rose. Signing the Body Poetic: Essays
on American Sign Language Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Print.
Eliot, T S, and Valden J. Madsen. The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Observations: Poems.
New York: Mud Puddle Books, 2007. Print.
Filries, A. "Jena Osman, "Dropping Leaflets" read at the Kelly Writers House November 7,
2001." The Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. University of Pennsylvania,
n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. <www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/osman-leaflets.html>.
Forché, Carolyn. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-century Poetry of Witness. New York: W.W.
Norton, 1993. Print
Gilbert, Paula R, and Kimberly K. Eby. Violence and Gender: An Interdisciplinary Reader.
Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004. Print.
Hejinian, Lyn. Introduction. Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry
2004. Scribner, 2004. 9-14. Print.
Hostetler, Ann E. A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,
Hostetler, Ann E. A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,
2003. Print.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best
American Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.
Waldrep, George C. Disclamor: Poems. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2007. Print.
