"To Autumn" by John Keats

                                      1.

    SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
        Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
    Conspiring with him how to load and bless
        With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
    To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
        And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
            To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
    With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
        And still more, later flowers for the bees,
        Until they think warm days will never cease,
            For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

                                            2.

    Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
        Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
    Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
        Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
    Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
        Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
            Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
    And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
        Steady thy laden head across a brook;
        Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
            Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

                                            3.

    Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
        Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
    While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
        And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
    Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
        Among the river sallows, borne aloft
            Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
    And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
        Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
        The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
           And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw279.html

Link to "Respectability"

http://www.bartleby.com/156/13.html

"Respectability"

Sherwood Anderson's novel Winesburg, Ohio is a book that I probably talk about too much. That is because it is so complex. It can be read as either a series of short stories or a novel, seems to go out of chronological order, and leads up to two huge, overpowering questions: 1. What did I just read? And 2. Why? 

I would like to focus on just one of the stories in it right now (though might decide to come back two or three hours from now and attempt to analyze the other stories and tie them to a novel as a whole). The story I want to discuss is called “Respectability.”

Firstly, let’s examine the question of “What did I just read?”

The story centers on Wash Williams, a dirty telegraph operator who has a strong hatred for mankind, especially women.

This hatred for women is rooted in Wash’s love for one woman. He was once married to a woman who he loved dearly, however she cheated on him with multiple men. Though he is disgusted with the act she committed, she longs to forgive her and to just put the matter aside. However, when he visits her at her mother’s house, her mother undresses her and pushes her into the room where he is waiting. He finds it so revolting that he beats the girl’s mother with a chair.

And now for the “Why?”

This story is another of Anderson’s commentaries on the difference between sex and love. Wash Williams is so repulsed by the perversion of his love that it drives him to the hatred of the entire sex of women. The entire story is ironic: the girl’s mother attempts to resolve an issue that began with sex with more sex. The title, “Respectability,” connotes high class people that are worthy of reverence, however, the family of the girl prove to be the exact opposite of respectable. Even the main characters name is ironic: “Wash” carries the implication of being clean, well-kept, and unsoiled. However, the character we find is dirty on the inside and out. He was tainted by his relations with the girl: she defiled their marriage through adultery, which, in turn, defiled Wash (first emotionally, as he was filled with disgust, then mentally, as his mind was made dirty with hatred). The only indication that he was not always dirty and foul is his hands, which he takes very good care of.

The story has depth to it: it is more than a story about how adultery is bad and should be frowned upon, or how the people who are the highest up in society are capable of committing the lowest acts. It compares sex and true love, and emphasizes the difference between the two.

In this sense, it is similar to Anderson’s other stories. “Hands” and “Nobody Knows” both involve a confusion between sex and love (in the former case, a teacher is accused of molesting his students, in the latter a young lady loses her virginity to a young man, thinking that the sexual act is a step into adulthood). However, “Respectability” makes a deeper impact than the other stories, portraying the perversion of love as a horrific, downright vile act. 

 

Link to "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

In the Room The Women Come and Go, Talking of Michelangelo: An Analysis of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

There comes a rare moment while reading a fine work of literature when everything makes sense. The reader makes a connection with the piece and with the author, and experiences a moment of enlightenment. 

Anyone who has ever experienced this feeling can either empathize with me or laugh at me because that feeling is the exact inverse of what I felt while reading "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

In parts I struggled to understand who or what the speaker was talking about, and in other places I found myself wondering how this poem was a love song at all.

To me, it seems to be less about love and more about sex (or sexual frustration, rather). Right from the first stanza, it's all about sex. The mention of what the speaker calls "muttering retreats/ of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels/ and sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells" immediately emanates sexual desire. It is no coincidence that the shell should be that of an oyster, which is considered an aphrodisiac and is commonly associated with sex. Additionally, there are only so many reasons that a night in a cheap hotel would be restless. Perhaps the street lights seeping through the window curtains were keeping the speaker up all night, but it's doubtful. 

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the speaker is wondering through a brothel during the poem, but the lines do hold a sense of desire and frustration.  

Personally, I found the message of the poem to be an attempt to express a desire (in this case a carnal desire) and the inability to communicate that desire due to human scrutiny.

The speaker repeatedly implies that he feels exposed in the public sphere, as if he were “pinned and wriggling on the wall” like a prized insect being labeled and displayed by the “eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase.” These eyes that scrutinize and examine him are the eyes of women at parties, which indicates that he feels judged by women and does not feel able to make a connection with them. The scrutiny causes him to be nervous and to doubt himself, dwelling on unattractive details about himself such as how he is growing bald.

The scrutiny and nervousness causes him to lose all human connection that he has; he no longer has any comfort in expressing himself, so much that he feels that he is unable to express himself at all. His tie with mankind has entirely been severed.

This is my main take away for the poem, but so much more can be said! I hate focusing in on one angel and not mentioning anything else, so for brevity’s sake I will just touch on a few key aspects.

1.     The epigraph of the poem is from Dante’s Inferno, and the speaker of these lines is Guido I da Montefeltro, who was condemned to the 8^th circle of hell (home to the fraudulent) for giving false counsel. The literal translation implies that the person speaking the lines is a sinner and is only telling the story because it will never be able to be retold. The use of these lines at the beginning of the poem implies that Prufrock is a sinner and has a story to tell that he is ashamed of.

2.     In the first line “Let us go then, you and I,” the personal pronouns are ambiguous. It is never clearly stated if there is a literal story teller and listener or if both the “you” and “I” are two different halves of Prufrock’s consciousness (which, in my opinion, seems more likely due to the fact that a story can definitely never be retold if you’re telling it to yourself.)

3.     None of the women in the poem are literally said to be women. They are described by their arms, eyes, dresses, and perfume, which emphasizes the feeling of dehumanization that the poem is meant to express.

     4.     Each stanza is a separate image. The poem transitions between the image of a patient         laying on a table, to a dirty city setting,  to a self-conscious middle-aged man grooming himself, etc.

The Hairpin by Guy de Maupassant

I WILL NOT RECORD THE NAME EITHER OF THE COUNTRY OR OF the man concerned. It was far, very far from this part of the world, on a fertile and scorching sea-coast. All morning we had been following a coast clothed with crops and a blue sea clothed in sunlight. Flowers thrust up their heads quite close to the waves, rippling waves, so gentle, drowsing. It was hot--a relaxing heat, redolent of the rich soil, damp and fruitful: one almost heard the rising of the sap.

I had been told that, in the evening, I could obtain hospitality in the house of a Frenchman, who lived at the end of a headland, in an orange grove. Who was he? I did not yet know. He had arrived one morning, ten years ago; he had bought a piece of ground, planted vines, sown seed; he had worked, this man, passionately, furiously. l hen, month by month, year by year, increasing his demesne, continually fertilising the lusty and virgin soil, he had in this way amassed a fortune by his unsparing labour.

Yet he went on working, all the time, people said. Up at dawn, going over his fields until night, always on the watch, he seemed to be goaded by a fixed idea, tortured by an insatiable lust for money, which nothing lulls to sleep, and nothing can appease.

Now he seemed to be very rich.

The sun was just setting when I reached his dwelling. This was, indeed, built at the end of an out-thrust cliff, in the midst of orange-trees. It was a large plain-looking house, built four-square, and overlooking the sea.

As I approached, a man with a big beard appeared in the door way. Greeting him, I asked him to give me shelter for the night. He held out his hand to me, smiling.

"Come in, sir, and make yourself at home."

He led the way to a room, put a servant at my disposal, with the perfect assurance and easy good manners of a man of the world; then he left me, saying:

"We will dine as soon as you are quite ready to come down."

We did indeed dine alone, on a terrace facing the sea. At the beginning of the meal, I spoke to him of this country, so rich, so far from the world, so little known. He smiled, answering indifferently.

"Yes, it is a beautiful country. But no country is attractive that lies so far from the country of one's heart."

"You regret France?"

"I regret Paris."

"Why not go back to it?"

"Oh, I shall go back to it."

Then, quite naturally, we began to talk of French society, of the boulevards, and people, and things of Paris. He questioned me after the manner of a man who knew all about it, mentioning names, all the names familiar on the Vaudeville promenade.

"Who goes to Tortoni's now?"

"All the same people, except those who have died."

I looked at him closely, haunted by a vague memory. Assuredly I had seen this face somewhere. But where? but when? He seemed weary though active, melancholy though determined. His big fair beard fell to his chest, and now and then he took hold of it below the chin and, holding it in his closed hand, let the whole length of it run through his fingers. A little bald, he had heavy eyebrows and a thick moustache that merged into the hair covering his cheeks. Behind us the sun sank in the sea, flinging over the coast a fiery haze. The orange-trees in full blossom filled the air with their sweet, heady scent. He had eyes for nothing but me, and with his intent gaze he seemed to peer through my eyes, to see in the depths of my thoughts the far-off, familiar, and well-loved vision of the wide, shady pavement that runs from the Madeleine to the Rue Drouot.

"Do you know Boutrelle?"

"Yes, well."

"Is he much changed?"

"Yes, he has gone quite white."

"And La Ridamie?"

"Always the same."

"And the women? Tell me about the woman. Let me see, Do you know Suzanne Verner?"

"Yes, very stout. Done for."

"Ah! And Sophie Astier?"

"Dead."

"Poor girl! And is . . . do you know. . . ."

But he was abruptly silent. Then in a changed voice, his face grown suddenly pale, he went on:

"No, it would be better for me not to speak of it any more, it tortures me."

Then, as if to change the trend of his thoughts, he rose.

"Shall we go in?"

"I am quite ready."

And he preceded me into the house.

The rooms on the ground floor were enormous, bare, gloomy, apparently deserted. Napkins and glasses were scattered about the tables, left there by the swan-skinned servants who prowled about this vast dwelling all the time. Two guns were hanging from two nails on the wall, and in the corners I saw spades, fishing-lines, dried palm leaves, objects of all kinds, deposited there by people who happened to come into the house, and remaining there within easy reach until someone happened to go out or until they were wanted for a job of work.

My host smiled.

"It is the dwelling, or rather the hovel; of an exile," said he, "but my room is rather more decent. Let's go there."

My first thought, when I entered the room, was that I was penetrating into a second-hand dealer's, so full of things was it, all the incongruous, strange, and varied things that one feels must be mementoes. On the walls two excellent pictures by well-known artists, hangings, weapons, swords and pistols, and then, right in the middle of the most prominent panel, a square of white satin in a gold frame.

Surprised, I went closer to look at it and I saw a hairpin stuck in the centre of the gleaming material.

My host laid his hand on my shoulder.

"There," he said, with a smile, "is the only thing I ever look at in this place, and the only one I have seen for ten years. Monsieur Prudhomme declared: 'This sabre is the finest day of my life!' As for me, I can say: 'This pin is the whole of my life!'"

I sought for the conventional phrase; I ended by saying:

"Some woman has made you suffer?"

He went on harshly:

"I suffer yet, and frightfully. . . . But come on to my balcony. A name came to my lips just now, that I dared not utter, because if you had answered 'dead,' as you did for Sophie Astier, I should have blown out my brains, this very day."

We had gone out on to a wide balcony looking towards two deep valleys, one on the right and the other on the left, shut in by high sombre mountains. It was that twilight hour when the vanished sun lights the earth only by its reflection in the sky.

He continued:

"Is Jeanne de Limours still alive?"

His eye was fixed on mine, full of shuddering terror.

I smiled.

"Very much alive . . . and prettier than ever."

"You know her?"

"Yes."

He hesitated:

"Intimately?"

"No."

He took my hand:

"Talk to me about her."

"But there is nothing I can say: she is one of the women, or rather one of the most charming and expensive gay ladies in Paris. She leads a pleasant and sumptuous life, and that's all one can say."

He murmured: "I love her," as if he had said: "I am dying." Then abruptly:

"Ah, for three years, what a distracting and glorious life we lived! Five or six times I all but killed her; she tried to pierce my eyes with that pin at which you have been looking. There, look at this little white speck on my left eye. We loved each other! How can I explain such a passion? You would not understand it.

"There must be a gentle love, born of the swift mutual union of two hearts and two souls; but assuredly there exists a savage love, cruelly tormenting, born of the imperious force which binds together two discordant beings who adore while they hate.

"That girl ruined me in three years. I had four millions which she devoured quite placidly, in her indifferent fashion, crunching them up with a sweet smile that seemed to die from her eyes on to her lips.

"You know her? There is something irresistible about her. What is it? I don't know. Is it those grey eyes whose glance thrusts like a gimlet and remains in you like the barb of an arrow? It is rather that sweet smile, indifferent and infinitely charming, that dwells on her face like a mask. Little by little her slow grace invades one, rises from her like a perfume, from her tall, slender body, which sways a little as she moves, for she seems to glide rather than walk, from her lovely, drawling voice that seems the music of her smile, from the very motion of her body, too, a motion that is always restrained, always just right, taking the eye with rapture, so exquisitely proportioned it is. For three years I was conscious of no one but her. How I suffered! For she deceived me with every one. Why? For no reason, for the mere sake of deceiving. And when I discovered it, when I abused her as a light-o'-love and a loose woman, she admitted it calmly. 'We're not married, are we?' she said.

"Since I have been here, I have thought of her so much that I have ended by understanding her: that woman is Manon Lescaut come again. Manon could not love without betraying for Manon, love, pleasure, and money were all one."

He was silent. Then, some minutes later:

"When I had squandered my last sou for her, she said to me quite simply: 'You realise, my dear, that I cannot live on air and sunshine. I love you madly, I love you more than anyone in the world, but one must live. Poverty and I would never make good bedfellows.'

"And if I did but tell you what an agonising life I had lead with her! When I looked at her, I wanted to kill her as sharply as I wanted to embrace her. When I looked at her . . . I felt a mad impulse to open my arms, to take her to me and strangle her. There lurked in her, behind her eyes, something treacherous and for ever unattainable that made me execrate her; and it is perhaps because of that that I loved her so. In her, the Feminine, the detestable and distracting Feminine, was more puissant than in any other woman. She was charged with it, surcharged as with an intoxicating and venomous fluid. She was Woman, more essentially than any one woman has ever been.

"And look you, when I went out with her, she fixed her glance on every man, in such a way that she seemed to be giving each one of them her undivided interest. That maddened me and yet held me to her the closer. This woman, in the mere act of walking down the street, was owned by every man in it, in spite of me, in spite of herself, by virtue of her very nature, although she bore herself with a quiet and modest air. Do you understand?

"And what torture! At the theatre, in the restaurant, it seemed to me that men possessed her under my very eyes. And as soon as I left her company, other men did indeed possess her.

"It is ten years since I have seen her, and I love her more then ever."

Night had spread its wings upon the earth. The powerful scent of orange-trees hung in the air.

I said to him:

"You will see her again?"

He answered:

"By God, yes. I have here, in land and money, from seven to eight hundred thousand francs. When the million is complete, I shall sell all and depart. I shall have enough for one year with her--one entire marvellous year. And then goodbye, my life will be over."

I asked:

"But afterwards?"

"Afterwards, I don't know. It will be the end. Perhaps I shall ask her to keep me on as her body-servant." 

Duality by Tina Chang

Perhaps I hold people to impossible ideals,

I tell them, something is wrong with your

personality, (you’re a drinker, you’re

too dependent, or I think you have

a mother/son fixation). This is usually

followed by passionate lovemaking,

one good long and very well meaning

embrace, and then I’m out the door. 

In daylight, I’ll tip my sunglasses forward,

buy a cup of tea and think of the good

I’ve done for the world, how satisfying

it feels to give a man something to contemplate.

The heart is a whittled twig. No, that is not

the right image, so I drop the heart in a pile

of wood and light that massive text on fire.   

I walk the streets of Brooklyn looking

at this storefront and that, buy a pair of shoes

I can’t afford, pumps from London, pointed

at the tip and heartbreakingly high, hear

my new heels clicking, crushing the legs

of my shadow. The woman who wears

these shoes will be a warrior, will not think

about how wrong she is, how her calculations

look like the face of a clock with hands

ticking with each terrorizing minute.

She will for an instant feel so much

for the man, she left him lying in his bed

softly weeping. He whispers something

to himself  like bitch, witch, cold hearted

______,  but he’ll think back to the day

at the promenade when there was no one there

but the two of them, the entire city falling away

into a thin film of yellow and then black,

and how she squeezed his hand, kissed him

on his wrist which bore a beautifully healed

scar, he will love her between instances

of cursing her name. She will have long

fallen asleep in her own bed, a thin nude

with shoes like stilts, shoes squeezing

the blood out of her feet, and in her sleep

she rises above a disappearing city, her head

touching a remote heaven, though below her,

closer to the ground, she feels an ache at the bottom.

Link to "Tintern Abbey"

http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/tabbey.html

Thoughts on Wiliam Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"

I'll admit, I had a hard time while reading William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey". Not because it was long (which it is) or because the concept of a writer pondering the passage of time in a secluded place surrounded by the wonders of nature is something you read everywhere (which it is) or because the first time I was reading it, it was about 2 am and I was too tired to function (which I was). To be reasonable, I'm sure that all of these things did play a part in the difficulty, but what made reading this the most difficult was that this particular poem has so much more depth than many other poems written by poets as they ponder the passage of time in a secluded place. It has layers: internal versus external, past, present, and future, shifts in moods. It seems that the author has a genuine struggle, one that commercial poets can't convey with polite, meaningless words. There is so much to this poem that it would take days or weeks to sort it all out and organize it in a way where you can say "I know what this poem means."  The most striking part of "Tintern Abbey" to me was the ending. Within the last 50 or so lines, there is a clear shift; Wordsworth transitions from a very personal speech that was clearly between nature and himself to an equally personal speech that appears to be between him and his sister. The lines are as follows: For thou art with me, here, upon the banks

Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,

My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch

The language of my former heart, and read

My former pleasures in the shooting lights

Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while

May I behold in thee what I was once,

My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,

Knowing that Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,

Through all the years of this our life, to lead

From joy to joy: for she can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress

With quietness and beauty, and so feed

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb

Our chearful faith that all which we behold

Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon

Shine on thee in thy solitary walk  The use of capitalization to change common nouns into proper nouns helps emphasize that there is another entity that Wordworth is refering to, but who is? There are three words that are capitalized: Friend, Sister and Nature.  Because the word "Sister" was capitalized, my first assumption while reading the poem was that he was talking to his sister. It was natural. However, even though they were very close siblings, it seemed odd to me that anyone would give such a personal speech to his sister. These words are an expression of something that is obviously very close to his heart, so why would he be sharing them with his sister? After reading it once more, I developed a sort of theory about it, which is mostly based on the fact that the word "Friend" is also capitalized. Wordsworth capitalizes the word "Nature" after he capitalizes the word "Sister," which shows that he considers nature as a living being. This being said, since immediately before he gave such a personal speech about his connection to nature to his “Friend,” I interpreted those lines as him talking to nature. Nature is his friend and he feels her presence as he stands on the banks of the river. I also drew a connection between Nature and his sister. It seems that he considered them one entity; he praised his sister in the same way that he praised nature, and saw in them his former self. In nature, meaning his natural surroundings, he sees how he has changed. His settings remind him of the way he was and the things he did the last time he was in Tintern Abbey and emphasized how he has transitioned from boyhood into adulthood. In his sister, he sees what he calls his “former pleasures.” She is a reflection of him as he was in his youth, and he sees in her what he hopes will develop into a love of nature that equals his own. As I said before, there is so much to interpret in “Tintern Abbey” that I could keep typing for days or weeks, and there very well may be more to come (I often have wonderful epiphanies in the middle of the night, so whether or not I contribute more thoughts about this poem depends on whether or not I have one tonight and whether or not I feel like getting out of bed to actually get my laptop and type about it). Anyway, for now I will leave it at my big take away.