Baby Villon

In Philip Levine’s “Baby Villon”, the title is presumably a reference to Francos Villon, a man born in poverty that becomes a poet, thief, and vagabond. The speaker sees himself in Villon and views him as a brother united in struggle. However the character of Villon is not merely one person, but is instead a symbolic figure representing many oppressed peoples who encompass Villon’s anarchic spirit.

The person that the speaker interacts with has several aspects, the first of those being historical figure of Francos Villon. All of the other aspects of this character follow the archetype that Villon sets as an impoverished and oppressed figure with a rebellious nature. Secondly we see him as representing all oppressed peoples who share Villon’s spirit. The first four lines describe “Villon” as being a variety of contrasting minorities who are being robbed. These include a white person in Bangkok, a black person in London, a Jew in Paris, and an Arab in Paris. Still “Everywhere and at all times… he fights back”.

Thirdly we see “Villon’s” Jewish nature. Phillip Levine, who I would consider to be the speaker, is of Jewish descent that lived in America during World War II. One of the aspects of the “Villon’s” character is a Jew who presumably lived in Germany or a German occupied country during WWII. By doing this Levine is connecting himself to “Villon”. We first see this aspect in line eleven when he refers to the war in North Africa and states that during this time he lost his father and his brother. Lines 13-16 are possibly a reference to how Jewish homes and businesses were vandalized and destroyed in the time leading up to the Holocaust. The windows of the bakery were smashed in, but in defiance “Villon” still ate the glass-filled bread until his mouth bled. It also describes both the speaker and “Villon” as sharing the same black hair.

                His fourth aspect is very connected to his third, which is “Villon” as family member to the. In line ten the speaker calls his father “Villon’s” uncle, and later in the second to last line calls him his imaginary brother and cousin. I don’t believe that he is saying that he is literally his cousin, but is referring to the bond that the two of them share.  We see this symbolically with their black hair. In line lines 19-20 Villon touches his hair and tells him that he should never despair and calls his hair “the stiff bristles that guard the head of the fighter”. Their kiss symbolizes the speaker coming to understand “Villon”.

The poem ends with the line: “Myself made otherwise by all his pain”.   This line explains the importance of “Villon” to the speaker and to us. The pain and oppression that “Villon” went through had a significant influence on who the speaker is as a person. We also can draw strength from his rebellious attitude in the face of oppression. Villon calls us to stand up and fight, especially when it is the hardest to do so.        


Works Cited
Levine, Phillip. "Baby Villon".

In Time of Plauge

         The famous textbook Understanding Poetry promoted the idea of new criticism which restricted students from considering historical and personal significance while analizing a poem. However in most works including Thom Gunn’s In Time of Plague, knowing the time period of the poem is crucial to understand its meaning .

To get at the poem’s emotional center you have you put yourself as a gay man during the late 80’s/early 90’s whose community is suddenly infected with this new deadly disease. The speaker tells us the psychological impact the AIDS epidemic had on his social life. He explains how sexual desire and the fear of death have become strangely intertwined. In line 7 he describes potential sexual partners as men who “want to stick their needle in my arm.” This is a both a metaphor for sex and a reference to the heavy drug use of 1980's gay nightlife. These bars would allow an opportunity for drug abuse and unprotected sex. The two men, Jon and Brad, are given very cliché and generic names to give the feeling that they are just typical bar types who he would normally have sex with without deep consideration.

These men “thirst heroically together for euphoria”.  The language used in lines 21-26 describes search for sex as and grand and important quest. In this “quest” he is able to “enter their minds” as they “lose their differences” together. Then he abruptly goes back to the fear of death. This relates to how AIDS brought a somber halt to their free spirited and promiscuous attitudes. He starts talking about how he fears for my own health and of their evident health”, “health” referring to rather or not they were infected. In the last line he describes the bar patrons as “boisterous and bright carrying in their faces and throughout their bodies the news of life and death.”  In their faces the speaker can see both thier bright human nature and signs of sickness and death.


Works Cited:
    Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10thth ed. New York, London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2011. 478-479. Print.

Anne Sexton and The Furry Overshoes

First of all I suggest listening to Anne Sexton read The Fury of Overshoes herself in the video directly below. Her voice and attitude go along perfectly with the poem's tone.

            The Fury of Overshoes describes the lack of control children feel growing up.  Sexton uses these childhood images as an analogy to the disarrayed emotions Sexton felt herself. Sexton’s writing often deals with death, suicide, and depression. Having some knowledge of Sexton really helps understand the mood she is trying to convey.  These two candid videos to your right really shed light onto essence of Anne Sexton.

There is a lack of traditional order in  the language and rhythm used in this poem. Most lines are very short and abrupt yet have no punctuation. Much like Paston’s Love Poem,  there is a feeling that the author has no control over the overall movement of the poem. But unlike Love Poem, this is not an enjoyable loss of control. She uses words that are  non-traditionally poetic, or even sinister, to end many of these lines. For Example:

Meat, tears, mud, big fish, wolf, shadow, night, give up, thumb, overshoes, drink...

Most of these words sounded even more usual because the lines ended before a phrase was completed. “Under your bed sat the wolf” sounds more natural than “Under your bed” pause “sat the wolf”.  It gives the poem a eerie and unnatural feeling. Also in lines 28-30 and 38 Sexton slipped in reference to nightlife and drinking. This shows that Sexton wanted us to connect this childlike lack of control with a loss of sanity in adulthood.

Works Cited:

     Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10thth ed. New York, London:  W. W. Norton and Company, 2011. 448-449. Print.

Recitatif

    "Recitatif" starts off with the narrator Twyla saying  “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” (130) Beginning the story by telling us about these women is one way in which Morrison keys us in on the symbolic importance of the two mothers. Recitatif's plot has a circular flow that allows Morrison to convey how racial tension is cycled from one generation to the next despite the two girls coming from similar backgrounds. Instead of explicitly showing us the connection Morrison uses symbolisms, language, and imagery in order to connect the conflict between Twyla and Roberta to the original conflict between their mothers.

     The story can be divided into five different sections, each having a similar structure and flow and each leading up to an interaction that causes tension and division between the characters. The first of these conlficts was the confrontation between the two mothers, and the last four between Twyla and Roberta. After the chapel incident the two girls appeared to disagree with the actions that their mothers had taken earlier on. Twyla went as far as to say she believed her mother "really needed to be killed."(134)  However after the incident the girls experience for the first time how they are inherently different or at least according to their mothers. Despite the fact that Morrison never explicitly states that the two girl's strained relationship later in life originally stems from this encounter at the chapel; she does intentionally shows similarities between the girls and their mothers in order to convey this message.

Toni Morrison

   I read Beloved in high school and now reading a second work of hers have realized that Morrison often uses odd language that really sticks out when she really wants you to pay attention to something. Examples of this would be phrases like “women with legs like parenthesis” (131) or “beautiful dead parents in the sky”. (132)  In Mary’s case we see her described as always dancing (in describing her supposed mental illness) and Roberta’s mother is described as being big and having the biggest cross and the biggest bible.(133) So when Twyla later says “What do you want? Me dancing in that orchard?” (139) or when Roberta is described as being "bigger than her mother’s cross" it connects the the girl encounters the the original encounter in the chapel. These connections are also in the interactions themselves, all having somewhat similar structures and other subtle imagery such as the organ music playing in the chapel and the classical music playing at the grocery store.(136)

   In their last interaction Twyla said “My mother, she never did stop dancing.” Roberta responded “Yes. You told me. And mine, she never got well.”(145) Just as her mother never stopped dancing,

the racial tension never ended either. Through the flow of the story we saw Roberta and Twyla's mothers come into play symbolically throughout their lives. From what seemed to be a small incident that happened years earlier began the racial tension that would continue for years to come.

Works Cited:


     Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10thth ed. New York, London:  W. W. Norton and Company, 2011. 130-145. Print.

Cathedral

A Cathedral

Often in works of fiction the title of the piece can have symbolic significance to the meaning of the plot. When looking at the title of "Cathedral" I immediately wondered if choosing the word Cathedral for the title could possibly allude to some sort of religious meaning. So while reading through the story I decided to pay special attention to anything that could be religiously significant and found both religious imagery and religous discussion throughout the short story. At the end the narrator has some sort of deeply profound experience while drawing the cathedral with the blind man, and because they a drawing a Cathedral, a religious house of worship that seemed to be symbolically tied to the two men’s discussion of religion earlier, it would be safe to assume that this experience for the narrator is also religiously tied.(43-44) However it could still be debated rather or not this experience should be seen a symbolic of some sort of religious or spiritual enlightenment for the narrator (or both men) or should be seen as an experience that can be metaphorically compared to religious enlightenment but is not actually meant to be seen as a religious experience.

Looking at the religious symbolism  it makes me think that there is a religious message behind the story. When the two men were complacently watching TV the first thing on the television were men dressed as devils and skeletons for some unspecified pagant.(40) This is the opposite of what would be considered good and holy in Christianity, just like the actions and beliefs of the narrator so far in the story would be separated from what would be religiously holy.  Just as the author couldn't explain the Cathedral and denied religious beliefs, at the end the two men are able to see the cathedral together, concluding that they were symbolically having a religious experience together. But I’m still not completely convinced that the author intended the message to religious or if religious symbolism is just a metaphor for a not necessarily religious experience and in the end I still see it as being open ended. 

The Day if the dead is a holiday in which people sometimes dress like skeletons in Hispanic countries.  It was never stated  in the story what pageant was taking place.

Works Cited:

     Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10thth ed. New York, London:  W. W. Norton and Company, 2011. 32-44. Print.