09-10-2013, 01:09 AM
I am sorry if what I have written is unclear, Bill, but I don't think you have understood it at all. Perhaps take some time to reread my comments.
Let me take just a single example from Milton's Paradise Lost - two incredibly famous words, wonderfully powerful: "darkness visible". This makes no literal sense. Darkness is not visible. This is a powerful paradox. This is not stream of consciousness. This is not psychedelic. We are confronted with an image that we have no idea how to form - how can we imagine darkness visible? The effect is sublime and terrifying.
Please reread my previous post and think about how metaphor, apostrophe, paradox, oxymoron (all great poetic devices) are reliant on things not making literal sense, and how we as poets can use these devices to achieve certain effects.
I thought this would be painfully evident by now:
Your final lines
of white and red,
set in the chalk
at Beachy Head.
SO: the blood becomes ink. And when we put ink down on a white surface, that surface effectively becomes the page. SO: white chalk = the surface on which the lines are written, which becomes the blank space surrounding the lines, and together form the text. This text will be washed away, so I'm really playing on a sense of transience (this relates to your later question about what Gray has to do with this poem). I'm not sure if I can simplify this any further.
No. You need to do some reading and thinking, as is painfully evident from your comments. If you did you might realise that the wind is culturally regarded as capricious and fickle; then you might think about the term 'a biting wind'. Now what do rottweilers do? And if you misplaced your trust in a dog which turned around and bit you, would you not be betrayed?
A very good exercise for you would be to try and connect dots before you challenge a writer to connect them for you. Gosh, at least I'm alive to give you hints and suggestions! I shudder to think what your response to Keats must be - he can't tell you what "Beauty is truth, truth beauty". He's dead. Try and work it out for yourself. Now why don't you try the same approach here: work out whether the unities are there for you. I'm not going to hold your hand any longer - I can assure you they're there for me, or else I would not have written this.
And you seemingly haven't read a single thing I've written. It's all there.
Read the poem and work it out. You seem to be misunderstanding what it is to read poetry. What am I saying about traces? About the sea? About memory? What does the so far unnoticed reference to The Tempest suggest?
Yes, she is indeed. But Judas is an archetype of betrayal, an archetype of suicide.
There is a far more obvious figure I could have used - Dido. I didn't. Now it is for YOU to question why I chose Judas. What is it about Judas that might be useful here - betrayal? the presence of the Christian faith? an association with dirty money? misplaced trust?
Quote:Show me all the spots where all those writers don't make literal sense particularly with their images. And if you find a spot, explain to me why they didn't.
Let me take just a single example from Milton's Paradise Lost - two incredibly famous words, wonderfully powerful: "darkness visible". This makes no literal sense. Darkness is not visible. This is a powerful paradox. This is not stream of consciousness. This is not psychedelic. We are confronted with an image that we have no idea how to form - how can we imagine darkness visible? The effect is sublime and terrifying.
Please reread my previous post and think about how metaphor, apostrophe, paradox, oxymoron (all great poetic devices) are reliant on things not making literal sense, and how we as poets can use these devices to achieve certain effects.
Quote:Point 2...what in your poem, would lead the reader to make the leap from white to white space? You're the one who mentioned that's why you used it.
I thought this would be painfully evident by now:
Your final lines
of white and red,
set in the chalk
at Beachy Head.
SO: the blood becomes ink. And when we put ink down on a white surface, that surface effectively becomes the page. SO: white chalk = the surface on which the lines are written, which becomes the blank space surrounding the lines, and together form the text. This text will be washed away, so I'm really playing on a sense of transience (this relates to your later question about what Gray has to do with this poem). I'm not sure if I can simplify this any further.
Quote:But you need to know if you want to have the best chance at successfully editing your work.
As for the rottweilers, now explain to me how the wind being a Rottweiler plays out in the larger themes of betrayal, white space, etc.
No. You need to do some reading and thinking, as is painfully evident from your comments. If you did you might realise that the wind is culturally regarded as capricious and fickle; then you might think about the term 'a biting wind'. Now what do rottweilers do? And if you misplaced your trust in a dog which turned around and bit you, would you not be betrayed?
A very good exercise for you would be to try and connect dots before you challenge a writer to connect them for you. Gosh, at least I'm alive to give you hints and suggestions! I shudder to think what your response to Keats must be - he can't tell you what "Beauty is truth, truth beauty". He's dead. Try and work it out for yourself. Now why don't you try the same approach here: work out whether the unities are there for you. I'm not going to hold your hand any longer - I can assure you they're there for me, or else I would not have written this.
Quote:And you've said nothing about your choice of white.
And you seemingly haven't read a single thing I've written. It's all there.
Quote:Actually when I wrote the word "elegy", I was thinking of Thomas Gray's manuscript. Yes, his work is deeply concerned about the uncelebrated, the forgotten. So how is that illustrated in this poem?
Read the poem and work it out. You seem to be misunderstanding what it is to read poetry. What am I saying about traces? About the sea? About memory? What does the so far unnoticed reference to The Tempest suggest?
Quote:Sylvia is noted for her suicide.
Yes, she is indeed. But Judas is an archetype of betrayal, an archetype of suicide.
There is a far more obvious figure I could have used - Dido. I didn't. Now it is for YOU to question why I chose Judas. What is it about Judas that might be useful here - betrayal? the presence of the Christian faith? an association with dirty money? misplaced trust?