Poetry discussion group

I've been thinking the same thing for awhile.
I'd definitely be game to participate in such a forum/thread.
When you mentioned Prufock on the other thread I went and re-read it.
There are some sections in this awesome poem that I don't understand,
like "streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent."
Would be neat to post a part of that mutually appreciated poem,
or some other classic one of yore, and discuss it from a variety of standpoints.

Great idea, JBI. Would you recommend a book to start?

I'd also mention the Rate-a-Poem threads in Poetry Discussion, and the Blind Spots thread as well. Just, you know, for other ideas.

My first thought was the Norton Anthology of Poetry, which covers poetry in English, from the tenth century to a couple years ago--it's lovely, and encompassing, and huge and about fifty bucks.

So now I'm thinking The Seagull Reader, which just came out in a second edition last year, and is easy to hold and read, and is about twenty bucks, and covers English and American, and all time periods.

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/titles/english/seagull2/contents_poems2.htm

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393930939/?tag=absolutewritedm-20


I also really like The Making of a Poem, but it too is huge and costly.

http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring01/032178.htm

Err.... there's this, if you'd like.

I created it for an intro to lit class a few years ago.

Another idea: maybe The Rubaiyat? Of course, quatrain after quatrain may be tedious.

I think Marvell and Donne are excellent ideas for starting points.

Or we could go for a full Chaucerization: Lisa could just conduct the whole workshop in Middle English.

* rubbing hands in anticipation *

Looking forward to talking about some works. I have a few in mind, but I have to check the public domain thing before I post. That's always such a pain. Maybe I could suggest reading things that aren't in public domain. What do ya think?

First off, I love this idea. I'm in!

Secondly:

Medievalist said:

Err.... there's this, if you'd like.

I created it for an intro to lit class a few years ago.

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Lisa! Thanks. That's an amazing resource. I'd love to work with an anthology like this. Great span of poets and time periods.

Another thought:

How cool would it be to book the chat room, say every Thursday night at 9pm (or whenever) so that we could discuss specific poems in detail?

how 'bout a line by line break down of what each line might mean, for starts.
Maybe just lines 1-9 for starts.

good job JBI! Have to study these a bit and think them over.
One technical question I have: Is "wind" pronounced why-nd so it rhymes with "find" and "mind?" If so do examples in other poems follow suit, in accordance with the ways words used to be pronounced? When reciting poems, aloud, I never am sure if I'm doing so correctly.

anis said:

good job JBI! Have to study these a bit and think them over.
One technical question I have: Is "wind" pronounced why-nd so it rhymes with "find" and "mind?" If so do examples in other poems follow suit, in accordance with the ways words used to be pronounced? When reciting poems, aloud, I never am sure if I'm doing so correctly.

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Donne's making a pun; "wind" is pronounced like the verb, as in "to wind"--like a watch, which is the underlying metaphor of "serves to advance an honest mind." Note too that the noun "wind" is also at play, wind as a propelling force, and that links directly to the nature/science dichotomy Donne obsesses over.

Honest here is also a pun; meaning honest or "true," and honest or "chaste."

a pun on wind? Wow, I'd never have guess that in a million years...or 2 billion ticks of the clock as it were. That really sheds light on the stanza.

Only thing I was able to glean myself, with JBI's explanations, was that it might be in reference to the immaculate conception: star falling from heavens, mandrake root impossibly begetting a child.

Will try my hand at second stanza. Try to refrain from laughter. If nothing else my lame interpretation may give you both an idea of how off base many average readers are when trying to grasp the meaning of a poem, without the requisite knowledge for a proper evaluation. Here (gulp, gulp) goes:

10If thou be'st born to strange sights,
11 Things invisible to see,
12Ride ten thousand days and nights,
13 Till age snow white hairs on thee,
14Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
15All strange wonders that befell thee,
16 And swear,
17 No where
18Lives a woman true, and fair.

Well this entire stanza actually seems pretty straighfoward.
Donne is praising the woman by asking readers to traverse 10,000 days into the future and to see if they don't find any woman as comparable in charms as she.
I'm particularly intrigued by "snow white hairs" as a way of describing our age as hypothetical time travelers. Why the use of "snow," and not some other word?

chuckle, chuckle: Donne's specific mention of "nights," as well as "days," to imply that the woman's chasity/trueness is also to be contrasted and compared, which would be a piece of cake in these liberated times of our own

How about helping out with the interpretation/critique of the last stanza Medievalist...
(much appreciated)

JBI said:

2] mandrake root: a forked root supposed to resemble the human shape. Always male.

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Err, no, not always male. There are references in early texts, texts that Donne would have known, to both male and female roots. The other names of the mandrake are Mandragora and May Apple. Here's some more. If you look at the pictures here you can see why it's also called May Apple.

Donne was exceedingly well-read and vastly over educated; I suspect Milton was the only person who would have given him a run for his money, in that respect. So he knew that Pliny and Dioscorides discuss the mandrake as a soporiphic and aphrodisiac. In fact in another poem, The Progresse of the soule," Donne says that when Satan plucked the apple and gave it to Eve, the apple's soul fled and inhabited a plant in the soil nearby:

[quote="Donne's Progresse of the Soule]XV.

His right arm he thrust out towards the east,
Westward his left; the ends did themselves digest
Into ten lesser strings, these fingers were:
And, as a slumberer, stretching on his bed,
This way he this, and that way scattered
His other leg, which feet with toes upbear;
Grew on his middle part, the first day, hair.
To shew that in love's business he should still
A dealer be, and be used, well or ill:
His apples kindle, his leaves force of conception kill.

XVI.

A mouth, but dumb, he hath; blind eyes, deaf ears,
And to his shoulders dangle subtle hairs;
A young Colossus there he stands upright;
And, as that ground by him were conquered,
A lazy garland wears he on his head
Enchased with little fruits so red and bright,
That for them ye would call your love's lips white;
So of a lone unhaunted place possess'd,
Did this Soul's second inn, built by the guest,
This living buried man, this quiet mandrake, rest.

XVII.

No lustful woman came this plant to grieve,
But 'twas because there was none yet but Eve,
And she (with other purpose) killed it quite:
Her sin had now brought in infirmities,
And so her cradled child the moist-red eyes
Had never shut, nor slept, since it saw light:
Poppy she knew, she knew the mandrake's might,
And tore up both, and so cooled her child's blood.
Unvirtuous weeds might long unvexed have stood,
But he's short-lived that with his death can do most good.[/quote]

In Genesis 30:14 Reuben finds mandrakes growing in a field, and gives them to his mother. His mother, Leah, is one of Jacob's wives, as is her sister Rachel. Rachel wants the mandrakes and trades a night in Jacob's bed for the mandrakes. Leah, who had not conceived for a long time, then bore a son.

There's a tradition in Hebrew commentary for mandrake as an aphrodesiac, which makes sense given the references in the Song of Solomen/Canticles 7:13.

There were also folklore beliefs that under proper growing conditions that the mandrake would in fact sprout a human.

I think, then, that among other ideas in the line "Get with child a mandrake root," is essentially suggesting that, among other "impossible" things, that the mandrake, the plant that makes women pregnant, will itself become pregnant.

There's also a bit of what modern critical theory calls gender fuck, as JBI notes; the idea of a "male" plant becoming pregnant, for instance.

anis said:

Only thing I was able to glean myself, with JBI's explanations, was that it might be in reference to the immaculate conception: star falling from heavens, mandrake root impossibly begetting a child.

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I think maybe that the idea of virginity is a red herring.

There's a rhetorical tradition associated very strongly with the University tradition of Donne's time of assigning orations on paradoxical themes, like the value of a flea, or that women can be chaste. Thes prose paradoxes were an exercise in wit, more a mock oration than one to be taken seriously.

Donne actually wrote a number of these, and one of them is about women's inability to be constant, or faithful. In Donne's Paradox VI: That it is possible to find Some Virtue in Women, he provides spurious instances of feminine virtue, or “fortitude”:

Donne's Paradox VI: That it is possible to find Some Virtue in Women said:

consider how valiant men they have overthrown, and being themselves overthrown, how much and how patiently they bear.” Concluding “it is my great happiness that examples prove not rules, for to confirm this opinion, the world yields not one example.

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Again, notice that Donne has a thing for using one word with two meanings.

If we look back at the second stanza:

10 If thou be'st born to strange sights,
11 Things invisible to see,
12 Ride ten thousand days and nights,
13 Till age snow white hairs on thee,
14 Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
15 All strange wonders that befell thee,
16 And swear,
17 No where
18 Lives a woman true, and fair.

The basic argument of this poem, with its references to things that are impossible, like catching a falling star, getting a mandrake root pregnant, seeing invisible things, etc., is that it is just as impossible to find a woman who is both true (meaning truthful, and sexually faithful) and fair, that is, attractive.

This is a standard misogynistic trope, a commonplace, if you will.

This is, by the way, an actual song--Donne did apparently set it to music, as did several other contemporary and near-contemporaries.

Knowledge of a poet's stylistic manner of grammatical construction would seem helpful too in deciphering the meaning of lines, like: "Get with child a mandrake root." How would this be rearranged into an ordinary sentence, by Donne and other poets of the time. Probably no general standard, but still some fixed parameters I'd suppose. So along with an examination of prosody (have no clue what this is, shamed to say) how about a rewrite of the stanzas into conventional english?

Thanks Lisa. Now I completely understand the 2nd stanza. Didn't know that misogyny was so rampant back then. My only near familarity with the era comes from reading 18th century novels, based on 17th century ones, which had heroines in them like Clarissa Harlowe.