Eric Whitacre

I guess I'm still stuck on this idea of understandings and epiphanies. I love the idea of something changing your life, and making you see something in another way, if only for a moment. A part of me believes that this is exactly why some people come to college, they are searching for a personal epiphany, as though that will some how give them validity in their experiences, and especially on their decisions for their future. It seems to me in a lot of ways Wallace Stevens must have been searching for something similar in his writing. The difference between Harmonium and his Ideas of Order are vast. Everything seems to have changed from his metaphors, to even the questions that he is asking us, or perhaps himself. Now I am honest enough with myself to note, that perhaps the change has not taken place within the poetry of Stevens, but rather within myself. Is it possible for you to have an epiphany, and not even be aware of the process? I don't know but I believe I shall continue to read...in the hopes of an answer.

As it is, I would like to end his particular post, with an epiphany of another person. Eric Whitacre is an absolutely amazing composer, in this video clip he talks about his own personal epiphany and how that shaped his life. I'm hoping to incorporate Whitacre into my research paper, incorporating his ideas/compositions/and accomplishments with the writing of Stevens. So I would LOVE to hear your suggestions and thoughts, and if nothing else enjoy listening to his music, he's kind of a big deal :)

Mozart, 1935

We were asked to have the "Ah-ha" moment by the next class. While I cannot say that I found this exact moment, I can say that I had a "hmmm" moment. While reading "Ideas of Order", or perhaps more accurately flipping through the pages looking for my "Ah-ha" moment...my eyes latched onto the piece titled "Mozart, 1935" It reads as such:

Poet, be seated at the piano.

Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,

Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,

Its envious cachinnation.

If they throw stones upon the roof

While you practice arpeggios,

It is because they carry down the stairs

A body in rags.

Be seated at the piano.

That lucid souvenir of the past,

The divertimento;

That airy dream of the future, 

The unclouded concert...

The snow is falling.

Strike the piercing chord.

Be thou the voice,

Not you. Be thou, be thou

The voice of angry fear,

The voice of this besieging pain.

Be though that wintery sound

As of the great wind howling,

By which sorrow is released,

Dismissed, absolved

In a starry placating.

We may return to Mozart.

He was young, and we, we are old.

The snow is falling

And the streets are full of cries.

Be seated, thou. [108]

I found this poem to be particularly interesting. First of all, because Mozart was 35 when he died. The line that states "He was young, and we, we are old" says so much. To have died so young, and to have still accomplished so much, is absolutely amazing. How amazing is it then that Stevens would choose this particular year to write immediately after this very specific name. 

Other things I find interesting include, but are not limited to, what was going on in 1935. This is right around the time of the redefinition of the arts, the beginning of some serious Jazz movements, and moving from these "classical" ideas. When he keeps asking Mozart to sit down, be seated, its almost as if he's saying "okay you have had your  turn, you did some really cool things, but check out what we have coming"

Mozart is one of the greatest composers in history, but even he ended up being no more than a table. He was buried in an unmarked, mass grave. So upon his death, even though he accomplished much, he was no more and no less than any other man. It just seems interesting how very related he is to Lucrecius, in spite of how moving his music is. And perhaps that is the point, that even though, Mozart, Lucrecius, and even Stevens created beautiful, lasting pieces of work, there was much to come after them, and they died just as all men die. 

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird IV

Looking at the poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" I was struck most by the fourth passage: 

A man and woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird 

Are one.

Summer just got over, how many of us had the opportunity to go to a wedding and listen to the same three or four readings from the bible. It is statistically likely that you also heard the following verse:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him--a threefold cord is not quickly broken. 

--Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

Now we know that Steven's is a Lucrecian, ergo, this poem cannot actually be about religion, so how do we take this? I keep thinking it is a perversion of religion. The "Holy-Spirit" or one of the three representations of the Lord is often found in the form of a snow white dove. If we believe that Stevens is deliberately taking away from that pure image and is rather inserting the blackbird as a metaphor for what life is without God, or religion then this poem becomes a lesson on what married life must be like. 

"A man and woman/Are one" this seems to refer to Ecclesiastes and the joining of the two people to create one partnership. Stevens seems to be saying sure, joining two people creates one life, but also adding in a blackbird, instead of religion, is in no way affecting their life. Whether the bird is white or black is completely irrelevant and consequently the lives of these two people are exactly the same without a religion. Life is Life. 

Language Acquisition

A few days ago (ok let's be honest, weeks) Professor Sexson made the association between Language, Ideas, and the concept that we understand the world best before we dilute our world with more words. I was particularly struck by this notion, since I have been studying how to teach languages. What I learned was that we learn languages in a very specific way. First we Listen, then we Speak, then we Read, and finally Write. This is the order by which we understand language.

 I tend to  believe this theory, especially after I come to class and listen to the poetry. Here is where I begin to understand what is going on, where as when I sit at home, with my Bible in hand, and try to understand Steven's words all on my own, I struggle. And perhaps this is because I am actually trying rather than simply "listening" to the words. Maybe we focus too much on what we need to learn from the piece, rather than simply letting the information wash over us. This being said, I think what is beautiful about language, is that we move on from this, just as we will with Stevens. As we move past Harmonium, and into his later work, I know that I will need to speak (memorize) the poetry, Read more in-depth, and finish with Writing. Hopefully by using this process I can gain an open and deeper understanding of Stevens.

A Postcard from the Volcano

The woman walked past the many tourist shops littering the boardwalk, their brightly colored windows designed to draw the gaudily dressed visitors, like moths to a flame, and snickered slightly to herself about the lack of creativity associated with each of these little tiendas. Stopping briefly, she looked at the postcards lining the revolving metal cage. One particular photograph caught her eye. It was a picture of happy Caucasian children playing at the base of the ancient ruins at the edge of town.

A part of her died a little bit at the way her country had sold itself for the sake of economy, completely disregarding the history and the trials of the ancients who had worked the ground before them. She wondered if those same happy Caucasian children would understand how her anscestors had worked through the season's starting with the autumn, how even now you could sometimes smell the pungent coiling aroma of fresh grapes. Or if they understood how to tell if the winter was just around the corner by the smell of the frost in the air that would bite at the harvest trying to stunt and freeze their growth. She wondered if those children could have felt the paralyzing breath of the first frost of the autumn and know that summer had finally ended.

She knew that very few natives of this country visited the ruins anymore. No one seemed to care about the ancestors or wanted to pay homage to their bones. Could the natives understand, or even guess all that those bones had meant? That the ruins, and the remnants of once vital bodies and countries were important? She supposed that maybe a few did, maybe a few understood all that the land meant to them, but not enough to make a real difference.

The once fertile ground was now commercialized, and the mansions that littered across the town were mere tourist traps, placed here to show the discrepancy between the rich and the poor. The poor, the ones who maybe understood the land around them were completely blocked from the land that had once helped them to prosper, now the land belonged to the foreigners. The schools teach things that the kids do not understand, the native tongue is taught in an objective manner, not meant to inspire but rather to fill time. The children speak words now of t heir fore-fathers not knowing what the words mean, and why they are important.

She wondered if the people living in  those mansions understood what they had done to the country. If they knew that they were part of the reason why there were so many poor here in this country. If they knew that because of their greed many of the houses that the local urchins lived in were nothing more than the gutted ruins of what had once been a home.

A Postcard from the Volcano

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of t hings, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became

A part of what it is...Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived t here left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

Explanation

The world weary hands of the old woman pushed her out of bed. They reached for the worn closet doors, with its brass door knobs, and pulled them open. Looking at the clothing revealed by the light, she signed at the unending colors of black upon black upon black, with not a single shade of color to break up the monotony. After donning one of the many black gowns, she turned and sat at her sewing table. There draped over the table next to her thread and needles, was the dress that she had been working on embroidering. Though on the outside, she must maintain the same stoic appearance that every nun must maintain, however, underneath, on her petticoats she embroidered beautiful flowers with French silk thread. The actual flowers held no romance, no sense of what was ideal, but rather because of a deep longing for what could have been. Here and now, years after joining the German convent, was the first time she had ever felt real regret over here choice. Nein, she thought, Nein.

Years before, when she had yet to think of joining the convent, there had been a young man who had wooed her. “Liebchen” she said to herself as she smiled. Oh how her life would have been different had he lived. After his death, she turned to the convent for help and healing. Had she married him, perhaps she would have turned into one of those women standing by the church wall, wearing her orange dress, waiting to take her fussy children to the back of the church during Sunday mass. Now in the twilight for her life, she longed for the man and the children she was never allowed to have. Sighing she turned back to the little flowers and dreamed for the romance was never allowed to blossom, just as these flowers would never be allowed the same. 

Explanation

Ach, Mutter,

This old, black dress,

I have been embroidering

French flowers on it.

Not by way of romance,

Here is nothing of the ideal,

Nein,

Nein.

It would have een different,

Liebchen,

If I had imagined myself,

In an orange gown,

Drifting through space,

Like a figure on the church-wall

Lyricality

Today's class was particularly thrilling for me in that I have been a student of music for most of my life. Since I have been in college I have had the opportunity to participate in several of MSU's choir. I am currently a member of MSU's Chorale. Throughout the past several years I have listened, and sun many different types of music. Many times there are composers that fall in love with poet's words and feel the need to place these words into a song. Currently, we are singing and e.e cumings poem "i carry your heart with me" Absolutely beautiful! But it is just as you would expect the song is as lyrically, and quintessentially beautiful as the poem. However there is a piece we sang last semester that reminds me SO much of Stevens, and the gibberish story told by Levi's daughter. It is called "Les Noce" or the wedding by Stravinsky. Don't know who Stravinsky is? No worries. He was the guy who wrote Rite of Spring (The Dinosaur part of Fantasia). When this was first performed there was rioting in the theater because of the attendee's reaction to the music. It was unlike anything that they had ever heard before. The percusiveness was supposed to represent the primitive rituals of humans. Though they did not understand it, there was a powerful story behind it. Essentially Stravinsky was attempting to "tell it like it is" Though both Stravinsky and Wallace are not easy to understand, I think it is important to consider that though we do not understand their "meaning" they still have something valuable, and beautiful to say, we just may not see it...yet.

Sublime

After having sat through the first class, absorbing the mass amounts of information that accompany the first few sessions, I feel somewhat confidant in my attempts to make my first post on this blog. One of the things that I found to be very exciting about this class is the idea of "Sublime." This idea thrills me....no, literally...it thrills me. The idea of sublime, in my mind is unknown, and all the feelings associated with it land me somewhere in the vicinity of  anxious, thrilled, excited, terrified, and with the out of breath feeling that I imagine accompanies sky-diving. How will we get through this entire class with this heightened sense of feeling? I haven't a clue, but I look forward to the experience.

Professor Sexson had asked us to look up a little bit about Lucretius, my research (or ramblings through the internet) led me to some information that stated that there is are different ideas about the writing of his poem. There is some research that suggests that his poem was writing in between hallucinations brought on by a love potion. In my mind I keep asking, is love sublime, or perhaps in this case what drives us to sublimity. We are continually searching for both it seems. There are adrenaline junkies that must feel sublimity is the moment of excitement and fear in the realization that they are doing something risky. Perhaps love accomplishes the same thing.

So love and sublimity, I once took a class from Professor Sexson, in which he proclaimed "all that is past possesses the present." A phrase has never been more apt than this, in which love and sublimity have made themselves relevant thousands of years later in a class at MSU, in which we try to understand their meaning in literature....all will be revealed.