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I am wondering who it was that said, “I want to be a poet - not a Negro poet,” to Langston Hughes. Hughes take on what the statement really meant (“I want to write like a white poet,” and ultimately meaning “I want to be white,”) was well thought out, but I think he maybe should have talked longer with the young poet to see what lay behind his words. The young man may well have not been afraid to be himself (a point central to Hughes’s main point), but simply did not want race to be a part of his affect (or identity as a poet). Maybe the young poet’s identity did not conform with the (stereotypical?) black identity, and he simply wanted to be himself despite his color. These are all possibilities.

I really liked the readings for this week. Hughes and Rich are two of my favorite poets, but I haven't read much of their prose, so it was interesting to read their articles. I liked many things about the Hughes article, but especially how he connects poetry to other art forms. Within the article he weaves in music (and all kinds of music: jazz, blues, folk, and spiritual), theater, painting, and dance. I really like how he fits poetry into the African-American artistic culture in general.

While I found DuPlessis to be quite interesting, I'd have to say that I preferred the readings found in PIT, especially the Langston Hughes essay. While I have read some of his fiction and poetry I hadn't read any of his theory. From what I've read of him though he certainly remains consistent with his desire to accurately portray his culture, the black culture, through his works. His push for the evolution of the literary forms to more accurately portray his sub-culture within American Society intrigues me. I suppose I could still just have Eliot still resounding in my head, but while I do see the value of accurately depicting a culture through it's literature I'm not sure that a complete break from the literary cannon is always necessary. Acknowledging the works that came before by using their forms and language allows for a gradual evolution of a society. What Hughes proposes is a break from what came before in favor of something entirely new. In this way I can see why Hughes desires this new representation of black culture and their position within American society.

I also had that initial "what are you talking about?" reaction to the opening of Hughes' article. It wasn't until "for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself" (139-140)that I got where he was going with it. I had to stop and think for a moment about 1926, the date of the piece. We have a much different perspective and culture than he did. Now, white people are buying black art (think hip-hop and rap especially) by the truckload, and it's not unusual to hear "I want to be a rapper - not a white rapper." Times do change, although I feel his statement that if people like it, that's good, if they don't, it doesn't matter is still completely applicable.

I had the same initial reaction as Whitney, viewing Hughes' assumption as initially unfair, that the young man wanted to be a poet in some white sense because he did not want to be a "Negro poet." But Hughes then puts this in the context of black culture sacrificing too much if the goal is recognition or having a voice within the dominant, white culture of poetry and the arts. Everything Hughes expresses makes sense, and I agree completely. But in addition, while there needs to be African-American artists who recognize and celebrate the values of their culture, there needs to be African-Americans who creatively work with whatever culture they most identify with, as well as African-Americans working toward some universal ideal that transcends one culture. (I continued with African-Americans because of the essay but my comments apply to everyone.) I think you always need individuals working both outside and inside a dominant (or perceived as such) culture, and believe Hughes is focusing on the outside, particularly his stating, "If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter" as well as Hughes even going further by allowing the artist to be outside the very culture he or she represents with "If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either." Which is great.

In thinking about the Hughes essay, I was struck by how he envisions the black artist to be a Romantic artist. I say this because Hughes keeps going back to the idea in the essay that the black artist needs to find "himself". This reeks of Romanticism to me because it seems to imply that there is some essential self that one should be tapping in order to produce really great art. What this seems to be insinuating is that it is the individual poet that matters the most, as opposed to the culture that the poet comes from.

Reading Rich’s article, I am more convinced of what great role poetry can play when it comes to politics. Westerns and North Americans have always feared the fact that poets/critics of different blood, bread, or race could distort their image in the universe. But as we know, dominance is not only with military force but it could also be more powerful through words. This is a war planned for dominance and for cultural control.

The Politics of Poetry

DuPlessis

DuPlessis was an interesting read as it traced the idea that social and political constructs are evident within the very language of poetry and an author’s choices of the resources, textual arrangements and various forms of poetry. In addition, the idea of the “new”, emerging forms of modernity with women, African-Americans, and Jewish races, emerging in poetry is one that seems to continue even now. It is interesting to note the evolution that poetry has taken since the days of the romantics, where poetry is one that is transcendent of history to the poetry of today, the poetry of the modernists which incorporates or juxtaposes poetry within history. The poet/author writes with the influences of the social and political constructs of their time and it is so evident in the choices that they make as they are writing, such as line breaks, word usage and their various definitions, and multiple other textual arrangements, resources and forms of poetry...

I enjoyed the readings from PIT this week, especially the selection by Hughes. When I first read the comment, "'I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet,' meaning, I believe, 'I want to write like a white poet'" (139) I initially thought it was unfair of Hughes to interpret the poet's statement as such, and then furthering that to "I want to be white". However, the more I read the more I understood what he was referring to.

Poetry as a cultural narrative is addressed in DuPlessis’ article. This article gives voice to new and different kinds of discourse. For example, it shows how poetry can look at women, men, blacks, whites, etc. It can also explore social issues such as equality, politics, race, gender, as well as many others. The point of this text clearly fits into the same vein of thought as Hughes’ and Rich’s writing. Hughes focuses primarily on issues related to race, but this also could be the argument for the inclusion of a variety of cultures and social issues. Hughes fights against the white standard as well as the submissive attitudes of his own race. He feels that the black artist should embrace their culture and not deny who they are.

I liked this week’s reading better than any of the critical articles we have read thus far, and I think this is because both Hughes’ and Rich’s essay called for a social and cultural quality to be present in poetry. Hughes wanted to make poetry that exhibited and was true to the culture of black Americans, and so his poems do talk of many aspects of black culture. Hughes does not like the fact that young blacks are being taught to be ashamed of who they are and do not see themselves as having value. Therefore, he calls for black Americans to stand up and be individuals in the face of standardization and uses his work as an example.

Here is our poem for Thursday, by Billy Collins, followed by some initial discussion questions. Dj has put together some nice quotations by and about Mr. Collins at our wiki niche:
http://sherwoodweb.org/wiki/index.php/Billy_Collins

Apologies for posting after class, but when I tried before, I messed up and lost my whole post.

The very first part of McGann’s article got my attention, more specifically, when he was talking about how Yeats was comparing poetry (and maybe the poet) to a “foul rag and bone shop” (3). I knew not what such a thing was, but McGann digs up a description by a Henry Mayhew that such a place is piled with rags and bones in a (implied) disorderly fashion. A “sickening stench” is said to inhabit the area as well.

Hi all,

I forgot to blog last week so I'm doing a quick "combo-blog" if you will for this week. Since last week I've been thinking a lot about the music that was used in the "Digging" presentation. I read the poem before class that day and I liked it; but when the Irish music was used with it, I got a different feeling from it. I don't mean, necessarily, a strongly emotional feeling, but a stronger sense of "Irish-ness". Does that make sense? I don't know whether to think that this reaction is strange or natural. So my question for all of you is: how did the music affect your reaction to the poem?

“In Stein the system of language displays itself as a theater of verbal and literal figures. Because the emphasis upon immediacy is so strong, the texts seem nervous and alive. Stanzas in meditation indeed: thought as a process of thinking, thinking as a function of language, and language as the horizon within which human life goes on.

Mallarme's experience with the language of poetry is fascinating. It seems to me that throughout his experience in poetry, Blanchot tried to follow Mallarme's distinctions among the different languages of poetry. The most obvious distinction was the one between the ordinary language of poetry and the poetic language of it. Blanchots also stresses that in the language of poetry, throught Mallarme's experience, the last words are always the most important. I completely agree with this fact, for the ending of a poetic piece has to be strong, intriguing, or rather surprising.

I think the Apollinaire excerpt is an interesting cultural artifact (and I can't think of a more fitting term for it than that). Though I of course didn't agree with all of it, I was impressed by how forward-looking parts of Apollinaire's argument are given the essay's date (I could see how Derrida and Foucault could have been influenced by his work, as the introduction notes).

Reading the McGann intro really affirmed my interest in the effects of the physical appearance of poetry on the meaning of poetry. I would have to agree with McGann that the format does effect what is signified by the language of any work. I also agree that editing errors or revisions regarding spacing and line content certainly affect the message of the work. Actually this question came up for me when working on the poem for this week, but that's something Betsy and I will discuss in class tonight. I believe that the physical appearance of words, in such extreme cases as Blake's illuminated works or the stylistic choices made in editing Dickinson's poetry, have an effect on the signified due to our standard expectations for language written in a specific form. The words obviously don't change but because of the influence of societal conventions we expect or allow language to do specific things in specific formats.

I found McGann’s article to be really interesting. It got to be very long, but there were parts that I really enjoyed. I especially liked the first part of the essay which traces the revolutionary changes in the printing and book-making industry. My parents owned a printing company for a number of years and I often worked there, so it was neat to read about the changes that were happening then and compare them to some of the big changes that are happening now with the technology of presses.

I was also interested in the part about publication and how different authors went about publishing in different ways. Stein’s history of publication was really fascinating, especially in relation to Pound or Yeat’s publication histories. Stein’s work was so different in comparison to theirs, that it makes sense that there were differences in publication as well. Stein had to publish much of her work herself, or pay for its publication, and I suppose this publishing isolation reinforced her cultural isolation.

I was intrigued also by how different poets (and different poetry) navigated the publication world and how that affected them historically. It was also neat to read how changes in printing led to changes in poetry, especially with the incorporation of artwork and drawings alongside poetry in books and in the book’s design in general. The examples of Emily Dickinson and her work were also effective, and it was helpful to have the copies of her manuscripts to refer to. For me, they really helped to reinforce the point that, though she didn’t publish her work, she did take an interest in the visual aspects of her poems.

Dear Class,
Looking forward to talking later today. For those of you who may be reading this just before class, I wanted to let you know that I adjusted the main page settings ... so many of you were having your posts pushed off the front page.