As Things Roll On

.:.Blog.:.  

          English may not be a fun subject for many, or may be exciting for others, but for me this class was truly a once in a life time class. I have enjoyed the class and what we have studied, including the extra credit that I had a chance to partake in this year. However, to wrap up this class, I am not here to talk about what happened in this wonderful class. What we learned in this class, besides being tied together by the Humanities and the time frames that these readings belong in, do tie in to each other. More importantly, everything in this class has tied together. From these blog postings to the actual readings, everything has been wonderfully held together by a single back bone. This backbone is from the very first reading that we had in this class. Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins puts this semester into a wonderful poem:




I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to fight out what it really means.


          One may wonder why this poem holds together this class so perfectly, but it is as simple as what Collins says. So much so, that the entire class takes themes from what is being said here. In stanza one, the class was asked to "hold up the poem to the light," and despite how the class wanted to beat the poems during the lectures, we managed to do so and found that within all the poems they all had one thing in common. In my opinion, all of the poems that we read in the first part of the semester truly had one thing in common: death. From Emily Dickinson's "I died for beauty" to Elton John's "The Last Song" to even the Vier letze liede [Last Four Songs] by Hermann Hesse, death is the biggest theme to them all. Dickinson says it right in her title that death is present, like the other two, as if they want you to take the feeling right off the bat that a theme here is death. Its the easiest one to spot, as their texts talk about the cycle of life and death and death itself but there are of course other meanings that the class took, which could be found in the postings that talk about these poems.


          The next theme that is found in all of these postings, the class was asked to "drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out." We are asked to go through the maze of the readings and find out all we can to it. To go down every path and every thought, just to find not just the way out or the meaning but the experience we take from it. The best way to explain this via textual readings were the readings that had many ways to go. Now, this could be said about a lot of the readings we had but the two I find to be perfect in this stanza are Midsummer's Night Dream and the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer and Shakespeare have something very common just by looking at the two stories; they both have stories within stories. Canterbury Tales is literally tales put together with a backbone, of which you can read more on in the posting, that ties the travelers together. The Dream is truly a dream with many stories within it and many dreams within those stories. So as Collins said, we literally have to "probe" our way out.


          "Walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch" explains it all, in my opinion to the next theme. To turn on the light to the meaning or to have the light turned on to a problem is, in short, the next theme. From Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto to the Declaration of Independence, we are truly walking around looking the for the light switch. Not only during the reading and interpretation but in the actual text. We are learning about problems and how to fix them, learning what's wrong and what's right, even as another theme between them all puts it: working. We are truly finding the light switch within these works to both their meaning and to our own lives.


          We mustn't forget while we read all of these works to "wave at the author," as found in the fourth stanza and most importantly the fourth theme. We need to stand back, or waterski, through what we read. Most of the time we get so caught up in what there is, what's happening, that we don't take the time to step back and find the overall appeal or even what the author themselves bring the to the table with these writings. "Eleanor Rigby" says the theme perfectly within the song just like the two arias from Vanessa or "Bisclavret" by Samuel Barber and Marie de France -- respectively of course. In these works, it is so easy to get caught up in their meanings, in what they are saying or doing, that we don't take the time to step back and just look at everything. We dive head first, or just skim without thinking must on it, that we never truly think of the overall appeal that they have, the general meaning or most importantly, how the world was when these were first put out to the public. We don't "wave" or even acknowledge the outside meaning to these works.

          Instead of stepping back from the poem, or looking for the light switch and holding the poem to it, or most importantly wandering through the poem, Collin's said that all we "want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it" and in truth that is exactly what we did. The class room was too quiet for good discussion, too much like they didn't read the material that we couldn't do anything or even felt like doing anything. In truth, that is the next theme, the fact that we were beating a dead animal, beating and beating and beating until we found no fun in it, no enjoyment. At least, that's how I felt while being in the class during the semester. I looked forward to avid discussions and participation that it was an emotional tie down and a confession beating of not just the works but of my enjoyment.


          Maybe, as I step back and look at it, what happened was just Fate. I do believe, if I look at the last stanza, I just put in the next theme: Fate. In this class, all we did was work on "beating it with a hose" and while this was close to the final few weeks of class, the entire lectures were rough and a drag. That may be thanks to Fate or the Desire to leave or even the Trojan horse that fixed itself into class with the deadly boredom and summer looming to kill us all. Oh? Did I make a pun? I do believe I talked about the Fate, Desire, and the Trojan Horse from the last three readings we did in this class. The Iliad started by bringing in the Trojan war with the Trojan Horse with the Oresteia following with Fate and Desire. These readings were truly the worst readings in this class thanks to the lectures. Don't get me wrong, I love these readings but the lectures were so rough thanks to no one truly enjoying them like I did. No matter what we tried, only a handful of us in the class got interested in these readings. Such a shame.

          I mustn't forget the final stanza in this poem. While it may be the shortest stanza in this poem, it is by far not the least important one out of them when it comes to this class. To "press an ear against its hive" talks about everything that we did in this class from jumping into the text to even what you are reading now. In truth, this one stanza holds the entire class together, and that is the most important theme I can mention. When we entered this class, we were told that we were going to be reading a lot of material and we, thanks to the policy here at college, also have to write a certain amount of works ourselves. I went into the class expecting essays and quizzes and a massive final project. However, as the first week went by, I learned that the massive final project was going to be happening throughout the semester.

          The "blog project" was the class involvement to the text that really got us to "press an ear against its hive" and get our hands into every reading that we had in this class. In my opinion its what help the class, as well as myself, to get more out of the readings than any quiz or test ever would, as they are just memorizing the information instead of truly learning what we are reading. The essays that I expected turned out to be these postings and in truth the postings are double the fun than any essay in my life could ever possess. Essays are gathering information together in a formal paper while blogs are learning about the text and having fun with what we are reading as we find new ways to look at the information give. What truly is memorable about this and I recommend every class that I have from here on out have, is something like these postings. While they take more time and are less words, they are truly the best way to not only learn but to keep with you. Essays and projects get lost, ruined, destroyed, and damaged no matter how hard you try to keep them. With these, the postings are not only portable but you can keep them safe while learning from them and going back to them many years afterwards. It is also a lot of fun to have them. Its thanks to these that all of the themes were able to come out and that I was able to see that the entire class revolved around Collin's poem.