The God Particle

Sitting with my cousin majoring in Chemical Engineering, he mentions that he is studying Shrodinger. I, an avid Big Bang fan, was happy to say, "oh yea, like the cat?" My cousin, impressed with with my vast knowledge of physics, launched into a lengthy oration of his study and how the God Particle has been proven to exist. Apparently, as he explained to me, it allows things to have mass and for particles to bond together. So I asked him, "Does that mean it's essentially a part of everything?" he responded, "Yea, essentially" My recently acquired Stevensian mind, had a minor giggle, and thought back to my friend Bizz becoming a pencil sharpener. Because of the God particle, apparently she and the pencil sharpener have more in common than we had first realized. That at her death she will become an inanimate object no longer seems so far fetched, perhaps her "destiny" has long been in the making and has yet to be realized. Lucrecius ever the innovator knew long before our modern scientists, that we are all connected and that where we are headed is in fact inconsequential as it has already been determined through previous connections innate in our system, just like the God Particle.

Solaris

As we finish up Solaris and head towards our Thanksgiving break, I try to think of connections and how Solaris could possibly be Stevensian/Lucretian....and I find that the answer is not long in coming. One of the key elements in Solaris is the idea of understanding one's self, and how that can affect our lives. Kelvin through the power of the ocean was forced to come to terms with one of the darkest parts of his innermost self, his darkest secret which for him holds the most guilt. It would be easier if he had been allowed to tuck that dark secret away for the rest of his life, slowly removing himself from the pain he associates with the woman he once loved. However, in doing this he would not be able to understand that this pain is an essential part of who he is, and that it is not worth running from. Lucrecius seemed to feel the same way about death, that we have to embrace it, its going to happen, and until you understand that you cannot continue to live a real life. I imagine that Stevens would be of a similar mind, he talks about facing reality, embracing it, and fully understanding life for what it is, rather than the niceties with which we like to surround ourselves. In reading about Kelvin we can understand the pain of continually facing your worst nightmare, and the agony of being unable to shake the guilt. However, it stands to reason, that acceptance, and understanding are perhaps the best medicine one can prescribe.

The Breath

Often times when people are speaking we as the listeners focus on the words being said, the articulation, the phrasing, grammar usage, etc. However, I am curious to know how many of us take the time to listen to the breaths taken in between words. The sharp inhalation, disrupting an individuals flow of words, so that we might take in the moment to continue or explication. Often times this noise seems to be a sharp wheezing which once noticed, is difficult to separate from the information presented by the speaker.

"He breathed in its oxygen" (435).

With these small breaks for sustenance, do we realize how Lucretian and Stevensian we are?  By taking that moment, no matter how briefly, or aggressively, we are paying attention to things, the words, and living the imagination by allowing it to function through our words. This breath is perhaps what we will become after we pass on, no longer something so tangible as a table, but perhaps a subtle as a breath, gone in a moment, without notice, but with inherent importance, even if no one remembers that they are using it.

I challenge the class to pay attention to their breaths, how they function, their importance, and if perhaps we can take a moment of enjoyment from these breaths, some form of inspiration. Pay attention to the empty space, to the silence. In my mind it doesn't actually exist, we are continually filling it, just as Professor Sexson fills the margins of his Bible (and as I suppose we all should) we are continually filling the empty spaces around us.

The Happy Prince

We were asked to make our next post about Notes Toward A Supreme Fiction and to pick a particular stanza that stood out to us and then blog about it. As I sat in class absentmindedly looking across words and pages my mind clasped onto VI in It Must Change. It reads as follows:

Bethou me, said sparrow, to he cracked blade,
And you, and you, bethou me as you blow,
When in my coppice you behold me be.

Ah, ke`! the bloody wren, he felon jay,
Ke`-ke`, the jug-throated robin pouring out,
Bethou, bethou, bethou me in my glade.

There was such idiot minstrelsy in rain,
So many clappers going without bells,
That these bethous compose a heavenly gong.

One voice repeating, one tireless chorister,
The phrases of a single phrase, ke`-ke`,
A single text, granite monotony,

One sole face, like a photograph of fate,
Glass-blower's destiny, bloodless episcopus,
Eye without lid, mind without any dream--

These are of minstrels lacking minstrelsy,
Of an earth in which the first leaf is the tale
Of leaves, in which the sparrow is a bird

Of stone, that never changes. Bethou him, you
And you, bethou him and betou. It is
A sound like any other. It will end (340).

This verse made me think of my grandmother, a former English teacher, whose constant questions keep me interested and motivated. When my siblings and I were little, we would stay at her house while my father ranched and my other worked at the local Extension Office. We would often plea with her to "please tell us a story" and without fail the very first story she would tell us was of the Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. In which a beautiful golden statue of a prince, bejeweled and the pride of the city enlists the aid of a swallow to give away every piece of precious metal on the statue to the poor throughout the city. Each request from the prince begins with "Swallow, swallow, little swallow..." and time and time again the swallow delays his trip and does as the prince asks until he dies at the foot of the statue, and the statue is thrown away because it is no longer beautiful.

As a child I found this to be a tragic story, and each time my grandmother would answer our plea with "Once there was a swallow" we would moan and make her stop instantly, which would always maker her laugh. As an adult I laugh at how she taught us life lessons through this beautiful piece and smile as I try to connect it to class.

The line "Bethou, bethou, bethou me in my glade" reminds me so much of the "swallow, swallow, little swallow" my grandmother would croon to our eager ears as we waited for our story. I do not pretend to know exactly what this stanza by Stevens means exactly, but I can't help but to make the connection between the assistance from a once beautiful thing that was the Happy Prince, to the lines in this poem.

Elementary

In many ways it feels as though we have exhausted the subject of Music as it relates to the poetry of Wallace Stevens, and yet for me, I feel as though I am unable to loosen the grasp that this concept has on me. I am hoping to write my final paper comparing the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and his musicality and lyricality with the Music of Igor Stravinsky (and possibly Eric Whitacre, though Stravinsky seems to be a better fit). I was looking through the Swerve searching for information that would lend itself to my research topic, and stumbled once again upon "The Way Things Are" in which we learn much about Lucretius philosophy on particles and the way in which they make up the world. In many ways this list reminds me of the Adagia, in which we learn how one must think of poetry. To me, this particular list makes me think not only of how we should think of poetry, but also music.

"The elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size" (187). If we think of the particles as being notes then this piece absolutely makes sense. There are many many many notes, more than are played on the piano, and the combinations of these notes is also infinite. The only thing that limits them is the duration of the notes, and their shape upon the score. Igor Stravinsky understood this concept in all of its complexity, and is demonstrated in his use piece "Rite of Spring" (or really any of his for that matter). In this particular piece, Stravinsky broke away from convention, opening up his imagination, and that of his audience to the infinite number of combinations that are found within a musical piece.

Wallace Stevens can very easily be added to this notation, especially when we look at many of his poems. As Dr. Sexson spoke last week, there are things that are not poetry. What Wallace Stevens has created is poetry because it makes one think, as does the Music of Igor Stravinsky. If we are not forced to step outside our "box" then why are we partaking in the music and poetry? In order to appreciate what we are given, we must work for it, even if it is within our mind.

That "Spark"

The spark that started the flame. I often times think this is what Professor Sexson would like us to accomplish and affect in our presentations to the class. It was not until today that I felt this, and only moments ago connected it to Stevens.

I am a student of English, but I am also a student who wants to teach English, and more than anything I want to teach in a rural setting. Growing up in a rural setting is such a unique experience, and a part of me is a little embarrassed to realize I am beginning to sound like a broken record, as this is my third (?) post on its importance. In a few weeks I will be presenting in my teaching capstone, a lesson on the importance of understanding your role as a teacher in a working/ranching community. I keep asking myself what do I want my fellow prospective teachers to learn from this lesson, and I just keep hoping that for a moment they understand their importance as a teacher, as a facilitator of imagination and things in a rural setting.

A few weeks ago Dr. Sexson assigned to me "The Poem that took the Place of a Mountain" I sat there reading it, trying to glean some sort of understanding with this piece wrestling with its contents so that it might reveal its secrets unto me.
To me this piece speaks of an idea, or a spark that takes hold of you and as you shape it, take meaning from it, it works and it changes you. Creates a new space in which you exist as the person who has been changed by this experience. We don't know exactly why we are changed, and what has moved us towards this piece, but rather we are aware of this change no matter how subtly it may occur. Regardless of its magnitude its effect is intense and to which one must pay attention.

So perhaps this next week when I must present my beliefs to my class, I will whip out this poem, and tell them of the importance of the spark, or the poem that took the place of a mountain.

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home. 

Adagia

When we began class we first looked at the poem "How to Live, What to Do" and we pondered why it was not a list of instructions. I feel as though we have finally found that list in Wallace Steven's "Adagia" Line after line is a list of things to keep in mind as we go about our day, thinking about poetry, living poetry, being poetry. All of our questions, and all of the answers are contained within the lines of this particular work. 

"The poet makes silk dresses out of worms" (900). Sure we can understand that this means that poets and poetry have the ability to spin the most mundane and ugly thing into something beautiful and precious. But perhaps he is saying more. Silk comes from the silk worm, from their very cocoon, from that which they use to change. Perhaps we should be looking at this less as a metaphor for making poetry and should instead consider this line in a more literal sense. Maybe we should be like the worms, willing to change and literally transform so as to become something other, not necessarily more beautiful, but rather something other than what we have always been....sacrificing all that is familiar, because to you it is now unimportant, and perhaps for someone else it can become their silk dress

"Poetry is a search for the inexplicable" (911). Just as Tanner proved to us last week, we use poetry in a variety of ways. It can work as a healing process, or perhaps as the way to express an emotion. What seems most about this is that poetry is produced out of the desire to explain some idea with which we are grappling.  I find it fascinating to think of poetry as a way for us to express something that we may not have the actual words for. Additionally, poetry very rarely tells you exactly what you need to assume. Even with words on the page, we do not receive an exact explanation for how we are to interpret the information in front of us. 

If we can look at Adagia once a day, I firmly believe we can learn something new everyday. Though it seems so simple on the surface, there is so much more going on, that it has quite become my favorite part of Steven's work so far. How fascinating that we can learn something from a piece every time we look at it anew.