Minutes of the Last Meeting

I used to give an assignment -- eavesdrop on conversations, and write down anything that you hear someone say in iambic pentameter. The purpose was to get poetry students away from the idea that metrical poetry has to be forced, or singsongy. I would tell them, at first this will seem impossible, but once you start hearing them, you'll hear them everywhere, and the real problem will become how to turn it off. Your girlfriend tells you, "I slept with your best friend the other night," and your response is, "That's great!" "It is?" "Yes, it's iambic pentameter!"

Anyway, one of the first times I gave this assignment, I decided to do it myself during a faculty meeting. I mean, you have to do something during a faculty meeting, don't you, to avoid going bonkers with boredom? So I started writing down lines, and pretty soon I had two pages of a notebook filled, and...I realized...a poem about academic life.

So here it is.

MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

It wouldn't interfere with what we do;

I couldn't really poll the entire group.

Very, very briefly, here's the plan--

Elect the chairs of two committees first

(Able to run for these positions first)

Who'll want to lead the faculty towards greatness.

Within the AAC or SAC,

At least two people -- one is not enough –

The faculty at large will vote for chairs,

The AAC, I find, now having done it.

The AAC, last Monday, voted no

—Selected by the faculty at large—

And they pick someone who they think can lead.

Maybe the better thing would be to keep…

We have to somehow pull it all together.

Did everyone get a chance to sign the sheet?

There are seven searches underway

From a variety of different fields --

I know I’m getting questions all the time.

It’s not as academic a position,

The college writing program and the core.

There is the dean search, which is underway

A lot of applications were dismissed

This selection didn’t represent --

I don’t know anything about the search --

Is uppermost in everybody’s mind --

And in the end, of course, it’s Artine’s choice.

How a poem comes together (sometimes)

I just found these old notes on my hard drive while looking for something else. They must have been something I started doing for a class at some time. I seem to have been following the genesis and development of a particularly slippery poem. The notes were apparently originally handwritten, and then transcribed over.  I have no idea how much time went by between one and the next. I'm guessing that the lines of poetry and the metrical notations were the handwritten notes, and the exigeses came when I typed them all up.

FIRST PAGE OF NOTES

I was thinking of writing a ghazal, and since I’ve been thinking a lot about a possible  connection between ghazal and blues, I began with

                the blues

and then tried to fit a couple of lines to it

The first crack of light in the morning was the blues

When all shadows were shadow, that was the blues

and at the same time, I written a phrase I liked the sound of

striped like snakes

and I started thinking of light – morning light, maybe morning light across a bed, striped like a snake, and the next line I tried was this:

She woke up in the morning with her arms around the blues

The morning light lay like a striped

SECOND PAGE

that seems to be as far as I got with that thought. I was in the process of deciding I didn’t want to use “blues” as the monorhyme end word in a ghazal. The next couplet I tried was (brackets around works that were crossed out):

Morning [began] started like a [striped] snake across her bed;

When all shadows were shadow, the dark was her bed.

So I’d gotten rid of two things I really thought I wanted to work with, the blues and “striped snake.”

The next thing I was going to get rid of was the ghazal. It wasn’t working for me; I didn’t feel it. But I still liked the formal regularity of the line, and I knew that the lines and rhythms I was hearing were formal. I decided to try a villanelle.

Day slipped like a snake across her bed.

When the shadows clustered into shadow

She pulled the darkness up around her head.

Then, on the back of the page, a bunch of scattered notes. I was trying to find rhythms that I liked.

  -     /     -        /    -    /      -   /       -    /

day slithered like a snake across her bed

   /        -         /  -    /       -   /      -     /

Day slipped like a snake across her bed.

    /     -       /      -     /   -    /    -

Shadows clustered into shadow

and a bunch of possible rhyme words for the B rhyme:

shadow

meadow

arrow

tallow

and under the list of rhyme words, another line:

hair like snakeskin stretched across her bed

which seems to mean I was moving away from the snake-as-sunbeam image, and this is maybe an example of letting a fine isolated verisimilitude go by.  I think snake-as-sunbeam may well be a pretty good image. But I was allowing myself not to be locked into it, to look around for other possibilities.

So here’s what fills up the rest of this page:

Like a snake she’d let into her bed

which I guess I hated. I hate it now, looking at it. The metric pattern forces the line to sound stilted and awkward – “LIKE a SNAKE she’d LET inTO her BED” -  which puts that horrible, ugly stress on TO. So under it, I have a note for the stress I want:

/    -   into bed  (DA – duh INto BED)

and under that, a line that fits the meter:

Like a snake she’d followed into bed

which I also liked better as a plot line, but I seem to have abandoned it. I go on to try a couple of other lines, using one of the “B” rhyme words. I didn’t have the whole lines, just this much:

-    /     -    /   pretended she was dead

/  -    /    -   , made her skin like tallow

and then filling out the lines (indicating words crossed out, words stuck in, and in the third line, a stressed syllable that had to go in, but I didn’t have yet):

For two days, she pretended she was dead,

                         felt

[made] her arms ^  like clay, [her] breasts like tallow,

Hair [hung] like snakeskin   /   across her bed.

Then, on the back of the page, a couple of lines that don’t seem to be going anywhere, and I think I knew they weren’t going anywhere:

When she was seventeen and newly wed,

 What men were   /    -    pierced her like an arrow

PAGE THREE

By now, I had the beginnings of a poem:

The day slipped like a snake across her bed,

And when the shadows clustered into shadow,

She pulled the darkness up around her head.

They challenged her to prove she wasn’t dead.

She showed her arms like clay, her breasts like tallow,

Her skin shed like a snake’s across her bed.

And it was working pretty well. Except I didn’t like it. I liked the image of breasts like tallow, but “arms like clay” didn’t do much for me. It seemed to be just there for the meter, to fill out the line. “They challenged her to prove she wasn’t dead” seemed like a nice line. It was metrically regular. It said something interesting. Why didn’t I like it?

Looking at it again now, I do kinda like it, and I like the formal poem that’s starting to take shape. But at that point – and I hope my instincts were right – I didn’t like it at all. I didn’t like the form, and I really didn’t like the meter. I wanted to break free of it...into free verse, as a matter of fact. I guess that’s why they call it free verse.

PAGE FOUR

So I changed “wasn’t dead” to “was alive,” and I broke it into two lines, to shake myself loose from the metric regularity:

To show them she was

alive, she wriggled free from

her skin, like a snake, and now

her new breasts were soft, like tallow,

So I’d completely and finally abandoned the snake-as-sunlight image. Too bad, maybe. Or OK, maybe. Anyway, I needed to start stripping things down. I knew I liked the image of breasts like tallow to suggest a new, moist, not-quite-formed body emerging from the shed outer layer of skin. Here’s the next start:

To prove to all three of them she was

alive, she shrugged free from

her skin, like a snake, and when

she turned around, her new breasts

were soft, like tallow,

[and her hands]

[and] her hair was downy, and white like milkweed,

and she blinked in the light.

But she was fast, she had

pads of air under her feet.

[and] She could move in any direction,

she could spin and dance like a leaf.

I tried out the “three of them” to see if they’d open up an interesting plot line, but they didn’t, so I let them go. This was pretty much the last hand-written draft.

That's the end of the notes I have in this file. If there were more intermediate steps, I don't remember them. But here's the finished poem.

PROOF

They asked her to prove she was real,

so she shrugged out of

her skin like a snake, and when she

turned around, her new breasts

were soft, like tallow,

her hair was white like milkweed,

and she blinked in the light.

But she was sudden, she had

pads of air under her feet.

She could move in any direction.

She could flip and scoot like a leaf.

She turned into shadow with the shadows.

  

Groupthink

Some advice I offered to a friend who's teaching her first creative writing class:

The one thing I'd emphasize -- workshopping student work is an important part of the course. You're expected to do it, and the students sort of expect it. But once you give it to them, they don't know what to do. Because critiquing the work of others isn't something that comes naturally. It has to be learned, and it's not always easy to learn. So -- you'll find you own way to teach this, but it has to be taught.

One way is to offer discussion questions. I can't really do this -- it's not natural to me. But it's one way.

Another -- and this works better for me -- is to set up forums on Blackboard. Divide the class into smaller discussion groups -- say, for to six in each group. Everyone in the group is to post his or her assignment, and everyone is to critique the work of the other members of the group. Then you start a dialogue, critiquing their critiques, suggesting things they might have thought of, encouraging perceptive critiques. Most of the first ones will be awful. I loved this -- it reminded me of my own grandmother. This had a really good flow to it. That sort of thing. As I said, they won't know what to say -- they won't have any sort of critical vocabulary. You encourage them to do the same things you encourage them to do in writing about literature -- go to the text, focus on specifics. What more could the author do to make this the poem it wants to be?

Don't do in-class workshopping right away. Start giving them that vocabulary first, and the encouragement that it's all right to be critical, and how to constructively bring out the things that are good about the piece -- not all criticism has to be negative.

Do some workshopping in small groups, and some in the whole class. But this will be one of the most important skills you'll teach them all semester.

You MUST read the article I just read today in the New Yorker -- Groupthink, by Jonah Lehrer. It's absolutely fascinating about the ways people make progress in groups, and the ways that they don't.

And some more thoughts on Lehrer's article. He discusses the history of brainstorming. It was a technique invented and promoted by advertising genius Alex Osborn in the 1940s -- its most important tenet, encouraging a free flow of ideas by absolutely forbidding any negative feedback at all. Negative feedback discourages creativity by inhibiting the participants. In this stage, Osborn says, you're looking for quantity, not quality. "You're loosening up an unfettered imagination -- making your mind deliver." Lehrer gives a little more history -- the idea was an instant smash, and has been used by businesses and other organizations ever since, He also gives a history of research on the technique. Research emphatically shows that id doesn't work. Blind studies of one control group who brainstormed an idea, and another who split up so that each member worked on the problem individually, invariably showed the same results. You got more ideas, and more good ideas, from people working individually. And working in groups? It has value too, but much more value if people are allowed to criticize and argue. I have been in writers' groups, and I have friends who have been in other writers' groups -- the kind which are about sharing and mutual support, and don't allow any criticism. Well, any writers group is good for one thing -- it makes you write. If you meet a bunch of folks every week to talk about your writing, you're going to want to write something every week. But outside of the fact that it would drive me crazy, I never believed the sweetness and light approach would do anyone much good. Now I stand validated.

Revision in a workshop setting

there's no guarantee that any suggestion I make will actually make the poem better. Sometimes a suggestion can be perfectly good, and it'll end up making the poem worse. There's a movie called Rio Bravo, made by director Howard Hawks, starring John Wayne, and co-starring Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, who were both better known as popular singers than dramatic actors -- this was Ricky Nelson's only dramatic role. Hawks liked the story, and he made almost the exact same story into another movie, called El Dorado, also starring John Wayne, this time with Robert Mitchum and James Caan in the two supporting roles. Mitchum and Caan were both extremely gifted actors (Caan still is--he's still around). But for some inexplicable reason, Rio Bravo is the better movie. But you learn by trying different things, even if they don't always make the poem better.

The Bat Test

Bats in your poem, now a more or less complete essay on my website.

Meaningless

My first assignment for Creative Writing 1 -- write a poem that's 3 stanzas long, 5 lines per stanza, 8-12 syllables per line, each stanza featuring assonance and governed by a different vowel sound.

And it can't mean anything.

The idea -- start thinking about process, rather than message.

The first problem -- students confused assonance with rhyme, or mostly thought that they had to use rhyme. My fault for not making that clear. So I'm having them do it again.

Second problem -- how do you write a poem that doesn't mean anything? Of course, you can't. So all too many of them ignored that part of the assignment. But it's possible to try to write a poem that doesn't mean anything.

Then what do we do with a poem that doesn't mean anything? We make it mean something. That's what we do. Our minds are meaning-generating, connection-making machines.

Stanley Fish has an interesting essay on this, although that's not really his point.

Anyway, for my next class, I'm going to bring in a famous example of a poem that was deliberately written not to mean anything, and split up my class into groups, and have them come up with meanings for it.

Notes on persona and revision

When I write a poem, no matter how personal it is, when I get it down on paper (or computer screen) and start to revise it, I depersonalize it. The poem may say "I" on the page, but I think "he." I'm aware that the person in that poem is a character I've created, a fictional character--a persona. So when I'm critiquing a poem, I'll always refer to "the speaker," or "the character," or "he" or "she" -- never "you." It's not you any more, no matter how much it may be based on you. It's a character you've created. And as you revise, your responsibility is not to keep that character true to you, but to make that character true to his/her own self.

Fucking your sister

Since I haven't taught a section of creative writing in a while, and perhaps I've lost some of my edge, I decided not to start out the semester with the fucking-your-sister exercise (well, I don't actually call it that when I give it), although former student Ian Brent tells me on Facebook that it was one he really liked – “I appreciated it as a great way to knock us off our horses right out of the gate, so to speak. It was a great way to look at our writing habits and thought processes without a whole lot of time for us to think about it.”

I'm sure I've blogged about this before, but since I haven't blogged about anything in a long time, I'll start off with this again, since it's on my mind. Here it is:

Write a letter to someone -- you choose who, real or imaginary -- but it's someone you, for purposes of the exercise, you haven't talked to in a few years. You're filling this person in on what's been happening to you, and what's been happening to you is not so good. You have a twin sibling -- probably, though not necessarily, of the opposite sex, and your twin committed suicide a year ago by jumping off a cliff.

It was a terrible tragedy, but you know you need to put it behind you and move on with it. But your mother can't move on -- she keeps taking you back to the cliff, and asking why it had to happen. And the worst part of that is, you know something that might possibly explain it, but you can't tell her: just a couple of days before the suicide, your twin came into your room and had sex with you.

You were maybe half awake -- it was like a dream, but you know it really happened. But you're not sure of anything more than that. You're not even quite sure whether you were forced or willing.

That, I tell them, is your assignment. You can turn it in and leave when you finish it, and we'll talk about it next time.

This only works as an in-class assignment given verbally – written out, as it is here, the information is too concrete. I don't repeat any of it. And I do it on the first day of class, when they don't know me at all, or what to expect of me. Heh heh.

What we talk about next time is not what they've written, but the experience or writing it. How did they feel about the assignment -- what, if anything, was difficult about it, what -- if anything -- was fun or interesting or challenging about it?

I get a range of answers, but generally they're something like this. Difficult -- the subject matter; deciding what tone to take; imagining it happening – and just the organization. Fun – the challenge to the imagination, the chance to write something taboo.

Anyway, what it all adds up to, and this is the reason I give the exercise, outside of a natural tendency toward sadism, is that basically, this is what poets do. We deal with emotionally dangerous or unexplored areas, we imagine ourselves in situations that challenge us – and there's a thrill in doing it.

Opus 40 in AALS Newsletter

What kind of inspiration can Opus 40 be to law professors? Louis J. Sirico writes about it in the newsletter of Association of American Law Schools -- a lovely appreciation, worth the reading.

The story of Opus 40 is a metaphor for what we do as
law professors. Just as Harvey Fite used his hands to build
his amazing sculpture rock-by-rock, we work day-by-day,
paper-by-paper, class-by-class, and student-by-student to
shape our legacy—capable, ethical lawyers and a forwardlooking
profession. Although we sometimes forget our
ultimate goals, the days when we remember them are often
good days.

Persona Workshop

I guess it's OK to blow one's own horn sometimes, and I do feel good about this. I taught a workshop in persona at the Solstice Creative Writing program at Pine Manor College in Boston.

I try make sure, when I'm asked to do something like this, that I actually bring something new to the table, and I guess I succeeded here. A note from Meg Kearney, the wonderful director of the program:

I have NEVER seen students RAVE about a guest's
class as they raved about yours. Not only did the students rave, two of
the students whom I really respect told me (separately), "You have to
have him back." This came from one student, Richard, who just graduated!
He said not only should I have you back, but I should encourage all
students to attend, as the class speaks to all genres, AND that I should
schedule you for earlier in the week so people have time to absorb and
start applying what you taught them while they are still here. Richard
-- who attended virtually every class offered at each residency for the
last two years -- also said that what he learned from you he hadn't
learned from anyone else OR even contemplated before.
 

Singapore, Jazz and me

From the syllabus of a course in the American Studies program at the National University of Singapore:

Lecture 10
Popular Music



Reading:
Michael Baers, "Rock and Roll," in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture Volume 3 (Detroit: St. James Press, 1999): 235-238. NUS Library Holdings
Geoffrey O'Brien, "Rock of Ages," New York Review of Books (December 16, 1999): 40-46.
Tad Richards, "Jazz," in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture Volume 2 (Detroit: St. James Press, 1999): 529-531. NUS Library Holdings

From Kim Shannon -- and Kim, in this paper, has done exactly what one would hope for in teaching Freshman Comp students to look at literature from specific critical points of view: she has used her historical/biographical perspective to illuminate "Shelter from the Storm" both for herself and for the reader.

In “Shelter from the Storm," the narrator first describes himself as “a creature void of form.” Dylan has always felt a need to reject his natural identity and form his own. He then rejects this new identity in search of another one, and the cycle goes on. Ellen Willis, in Cheetah magazine, described him as “obsessed with escaping identity” (qtd. in Shelton 374). When he was a child, he rejected his Jewish heritage and his family, lying to people that he was an orphan who went around America with nothing more than a harmonica and a guitar and fended for himself. He told so many of these lies that the boundary between fact and fiction became blurred even in his own mind (Mellers 111). Perhaps the 2007 biographical film I’m Not There describes this identity crisis best, proposing that there were six “versions” of Bob Dylan, the young wannabe Woody Guthrie, the teen rebel aspiring to be the anarchist rebel Arthur Rimbaud, the protest singer, the rock star, the celebrity trying to balance fame and domestic life, and the born-again Christian, chronologically.


The transition from Woody Guthrie to Arthur Rimbaud happened after he legally changed him name from his birth name, Robert Allen Zimmerman, to Bob Dylan, and was acknowledged by new reporters while playing as the opening act for John Lee Hooker in New York (George-Warren). The evolution from Rimbaud to protest singer came with the release of the 1964 album The Times They Are A-Changin’ (Salas 130). After this phase, he began to reject each version of himself as soon as the world began to accept it. He threw off his protesting adherents with the album Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964 which rejected his protest writer reputation for a more self-centered theme (Marqusee). In addition to this, at the height of his folk career, when he was considered the “young poet-king of American folk music,” he played the ever-famous concert at the Newport Folk Festival in which he went electric at the “sacred annual congress of acoustic purists” (Cave). This completed the transition from protest singer to rock star, but after being renounced, accepted, and finally exalted for his bold decision, he retreated from the mass of followers who he had created. The legendary motorcycle accident of 1966 is said to be not an accident at all, but an excuse to escapxe the worries of the working musician (Shelton 374). It was Dylan’s way of getting away from the stress of the celebrity life and trying to deal with issues at home. This is when Dylan wrote Blood on the Tracks, when he was in his troubled celebrity phase. At this point, there was no creature more “void of form” than Dylan. He had tried all different selves and was satisfied with none of them. This was his constant “storm” that he struggled with throughout his life, and that he was finally coming to acknowledge in “Shelter from the Storm.”

The Kids Are Alright: Dylan and Lowell

From Alison Gratto:

For example, in the lyric, “Now everything's a little upside down, as a matter of fact the wheels have stopped, / What's good is bad, what's bad is good, you'll find out when you reach the top/ You're on the bottom,” he most likely means that the wheels of his marriage have stopped and now he and Sara are stuck at a standstill unwilling to be together yet bound not to be apart; this dilemma explains why he spent an entire summer away from her. By singing that, “Everything’s a little upside down,” he is also saying that things are not how they should be, for the past seven to eight years he and Sara had been happy, and now they weren’t. The lines, “I waited for you on the running boards, near the Cyprus trees, while the springtime/ turned Slowly into autumn,” is a direct reference to the fact that he spent all summer away from his wife and she never came to visit. Another indicator of trouble are the lines, “I been double-crossed now for the very last time and now I'm finally free, /I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline which separated you from me” implying that he’s had enough of their marriage and wants to be done with it. He’s comparing the tension between them to that of a “Howling beast,” which is not of positive image at all, showing that their marriage was not positive either. A further example of the tension in Dylan’s marriage are the lines, “She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me/ I can’t help it if I’m lucky.” In 1973 Dylan and Sara began building a mansion in California and it became so extravagant and over the top that it became a cause of friction in their marriage. Jonathan Taplin (a road manager for both Dylan and Dylan’s band’s manager, Albert Grossman) said, “That [house] was kind of Sara’s folly. Bob went along with it, but it just got out of control in terms of the cost of building it. I think from Bob’s point of view it was like, when is this gonna end? When are these people gonna get out of my house?” (Sounes 278). By singing about “a million bucks,” Dylan seems to be venting his frustration with the housing project and he may also be sarcastically switching places with his wife in this line, because she certainly would never have been able to afford to build a house like that if it weren’t for Dylan’s success. This theme of marital breakups is also extremely prevalent in the poetry of Robert Lowell; in fact one of his collections of poetry, For Lizzie and Harriet is completely about his failed marriage to Elizabeth Hardwick. In “Man and Wife” from Life Studies, Lowell writes about failed relationships. Similar to Dylan’s talk of tension, Lowell writes, “Now twelve years later, you turn your back. / Sleepless, you hold/ your pillow to your hollows like a child,” implying that though the marriage may have started off well (the first half of the poem deals with happier times) after twelve years neither can stand the other and nothing is working out—they cannot even lie in bed next to each other. Dylan also sings, “Every time I crawl past your door, I been wishin' I was somebody else instead,” which is very similar to Lowell’s disparagement of not being able to be in the same bed as his wife. Lowell was married three times throughout the course of his life, and according to author Richard Tillinghast, his work shows a preoccupation with, “Eros, marriage, and the family.” This preoccupation is prevalent throughout the hundreds of poems he wrote and stretched over many years; Life Studies was written in 1959 but he was still covering the same themes in Dolphin and For Lizzie and Harriet in 1973. For Dylan in the 1970’s and for Lowell throughout his career, the theme of relationships ruled, but it was not the only subject they breached upon.
In 1940 at the age of twenty-three, Lowell converted to Roman Catholicism and a few years later began using Christian imagery in his poems (Liukkonen). For example, in, “Mexico 2,” from For Lizzie and Harriet, Lowell writes, “Wishing to raise the cross of the Crucified King/ in the monastery of Emmaus at Cuernavaca—/ the monks, world-names for futurist crucifixes, / and avant-garde Virgins;” all blatant religious imagery. He also used religious language in, “Man and Wife,” stating, “Oh my Petite, / clearest of all God’s creatures, still all air and nerve.” In addition, Dylan used a significant amount of Christian imagery in, Blood on the Tracks. In, “Idiot Wind,” he says, “The priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone-faced while the building burned,” and continues with this trend in the later song, “Shelter from the Storm,” with the words, “She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns. / ‘Come in,’ she said, / ‘I'll give you shelter from the storm’.” All the religious symbolism, particularly in Dylan’s case, implies that both artists were searching for something in their lives that they believed might possibly be found in religion. It appears though that neither found what they were looking for; Lowell did not stay Roman Catholic (Hunter), and Dylan was Jewish to begin with (although he celebrated Christmas) (Sounes 283). It is far more likely that both attempted to use drugs and/ or alcohol to find some meaning in their lives.
Political activism is an activity that both Dylan and Lowell participated in and used their art to get their point across. With the biographical aspect of, “Idiot Wind” discounted, the song could easily be a political statement. The line, “You hurt the ones that I love best and cover up the truth with lies,” suggests distrust in the government that could pertain to the Watergate scandal which was happening during the time Dylan was writing Blood on the Tracks (Marcus 441-442). Many of Dylan’s other songs also have overt political overtones, such as the 1962 song, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Much of Lowell’s work, especially in History and Notebook contains political views and opinions. The poem, “West Side Sabbath,” from History for instance, relates his fear of things ranging from communism to the neo-conservatives (Richards). The Cold War was talking place during the time of writing, and most of the remarks in the poem can be traced back to it in some way. The line, “monochrome Socialism,” depicts an American political environment that believed anything that was not democracy was the enemy. He also mentions the, “Student-Left,” which was a new movement of peacefully protesting students such as members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Lowell calls it, “anarchists’ faith,” probably alluding to the fact that much of their belief system was based on philosophy and the influence of current artists including Dylan (Newfield). In 1967 Lowell participated in the March on Washington to protest the Vietnam War and his poem, “For the Union Dead” (1964) was written at the height of the Civil Rights movement about an all-black regiment in the Civil War and their leader, Colonel Shaw. In Notebook, Lowell carried around a notebook in which to write his thoughts (although he asserts it was not his diary or his confession) for a year. Being the highly politicized and controversial year of 1967 to 1968, the poetry has political overtones (Tillinghast 88-89). American poetry and music up to this point had focused on social issues, but by viewing the issues from a personal rather than outside perspective, Dylan and Lowell created something new.
Lowell and Dylan had similar life experiences and it therefore follows that their work is equally as similar. Both were obviously influenced by marital relationships, but they were also influenced by outside sources. For example, Dylan was heavily influenced by art teacher Norman Raeben. Dylan decided to take a drawing class in 1974 at a studio in Carnegie Hall, and instructor Raeben soon came to be a mentor of sorts to Dylan. He learned that he might have been looking but not really seeing things, both in art and life, and described Raeben as, “more powerful than any magician.” Consequently however, Dylan began to look at his marriage in a new light, stating, “I went home after that and my wife never did understand me ever since that day, that’s when our marriage started breaking up. She never knew what I was talking about, what I was thinking about. And I couldn’t possibly explain it” (Sounes 278). It was after that drawing class that Dylan took off to Minnesota to write, Blood on the Tracks. Not surprisingly, “Idiot Wind” reflects Dylan’s annoyance: “Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at, / I couldn’t believe after all these years, you didn’t know me better than that/ Sweet lady.” Lowell was similarly influenced by an artist around him: poet William Carlos Williams. Williams was born in 1883, and began his career as a poet of the Imagist movement. Later he began to disagree with the values of other Imagists and sought to create an, “entirely fresh—and singularly American—poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people” (William). Lowell became friends with Williams in the 1950’s, and in 1959 he published Life Studies, his personal break with all strict forms of poetry (Hunter). Williams said he was, “A tiger behind bars,” and it was Life Studies that released him (Ellman). Lowell’s disinterest in the typical poetic mold in Life Studies is very similar to Dylan’s in, Blood on the Tracks. Dylan and Lowell were both influenced by those whose art and thinking was already outside the normal realm, and that influence in turn drove them to completely redefine their art. The public response was, of course, incredible after the release of, “Blood on the Tracks” and Life Studies. Lowell won a National Book Award (Hunter) and Dylan’s album was called his, “Best…work in seven or nine years, or even his best work ever” (Marcus 440).
It is important to note the influence that Lowell and Dylan had on other artists, both during and after their era. Sylvia Plath is probably the most famous poet influenced by Lowell but she was not the only one. Anne Sexton, a confessional poet during the same general time period of Robert Lowell, struggled with post partum depression and was hospitalized more than once at the same hospital that Lowell and Plath were during their mental breakdowns. Much like Lowell, her time in mental hospitals and attempted suicide contributed to her poetry (Anne). For instance, her poem, “Her Kind,” is clearly about suffering from post partum depression and reads, “A woman like that is not a woman, quite. / I have been her kind” (Sexton). Dylan’s influence on the music industry is beyond comprehension and some artists such as James Taylor even owe their careers to his influence. For example, Taylor’s song, “Fire and Rain” is about the time he spent in a mental hospital and the suicide of a friend (Richards). He sings, “I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend /But I always thought that I’d see you again” (Taylor). Had Dylan not opened the door to this type of music, Taylor may never have written that song.

The Kids Are Alright: More Dylan Papers

Just as a reminder, these are Freshman Comp papers from students at a state college -- a very good state college, but they aren't English majors at an Ivy League university. So keep that in mind as you consider the question of whether today's kids are capable of writing and of thinking analytically. This is from Pam Ousley:

Rotolo herself expressed in her novel A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties that Bob Dylan had “something about him that broadcast an intensity that was not to be taken lightly.” This intensity is characteristic of both the famous and the music-making, but probably more the latter. Musicians – unlike actors, for example – are obligated to create a persona that is reflected in their lyrics, sound, appearance (Rotolo recounts that “Bob chose his rumpled clothes carefully” on the day the pair was photographed for the cover of Freewheelin’), and actions. Any movement away from the established persona is evaluated by the musician’s fans and may cause rejection by existing followers. This pressure is enough to create paranoia of any external force – such as a lover, family member or band member – that has the power to repress or overshadow the musician’s persona. There is also proof of Dylan’s need to stand alone in the very fact that very little has historically been known about Dylan’s lovers as individuals, rather than as Dylan’s carry-ons.
All of this biographical data is relatively meaningless without reference to Bob Dylan’s songs, where he presents it with more truth – in terms of his own feelings, not necessarily in terms of accuracy – than can be found in the media. There, in the lyrics, lies the psychology of Dylan as affected by his life and fame. First, let us look at “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again,” a song on the 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. Without even researching the song’s intended meaning, it is obvious to the listener that it is about feeling immobile in a small town environment. The characters and setting, though seemingly familiar to the songwriter, are dream-like in their phantasmic vagueness. In the song, Dylan states that he has “no sense of time,” a characteristic of a dream state, whether induced by drugs or sleep. But the dreaminess of the song is no indicator that the content of the song is irrelevant to Dylan’s life. In fact, it is indicative of the true meaning – Dylan got in trouble with the law for marijuana in Mobile, but if he had been in Memphis, there would have been no disagreement because it was friendlier to the music culture. Throughout the song, Dylan travels through numerous stages to reach a final resting point, when he succumbs to his environment and his illusional perspective. He has given into the dream, foregoing any introspection into his personal problems. Freudian analysis of this state of mind becomes particularly necessary at the very end, when the conscious mind of the songwriter has chosen to shroud the latent meaning of the dream even more opaquely.

More Dylan Papers

From Jeremy Strahan:

This brings us to the song “Simple Twist of Fate”. With the knowledge of Dylan’s breakup in mind, the lyrics seem easy enough to understand, as the song immediately opens with two people together in a relationship where love would be quickly found and lost. The persistent use of “wish he gone straight” is Dylan’s own acknowledgement of his faults, placing some of the blame of the breakup on his own shoulders, and perhaps revealing drug use as one of the reasons for the breakup. This, coupled with phrases like “emptiness inside”, “born too late”, and “lost the ring” reveal just how devastated Dylan was over his disintegrating relationship with Sara. However, that much can be gleamed simply from Dylan’s own voice throughout the piece, as he speaks line after line in a mournfully melancholy tone. The theme of regret is further emphasized by the quiet pacing of the guitar and added effect of the harmonica. However, there is something else, more hidden, that the song portrays. Dylan’s conversion to Christianity was far from spontaneous.

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Dylan himself called John Wesley Harding (1968) “the first biblical rock album”, and with good reason (Mark 193). Two of the songs contain direct scriptural references; “The Wicked Messenger” comes from Proverbs 13:16-17, and “All Along the Watchtower” is a condensation of Isaiah 21, 6-9, and 11-12, dealing with the fall of Babylon and coming of the apocalypse. This album is stuffed with critiques of American materialism and lack of true spirituality, showing that Dylan’s eventual conversion is not as radical a change as some make it out to be (Mark 109).

A significant portion of the lyrics can be stretched and turn the song into a journey of faith and not of a relationship. The diction is particularly revealing, using the words “sin”, “emptiness”, and the intriguing phrase “born too late”. If we assume the male character to be Dylan himself, it becomes clearer. The women’s gaze that makes him “wish he’d gone straight” can be seen as the savior or an angel of some sort. He is enthralled and filled with a sense of wonder and awe, almost enough to make him confess right on the spot. But he cannot turn away yet; Dylan’s vices still overwhelm him. When he is left alone in the room, we get a sense of Dylan's separation from society, and how he tried so hard to ignore it. He is pondering the state of his life in that room, wondering if there was still a chance to be saved from it all. He wants to fill what is missing from his life. He wants to belong. He was “born too late”, but wants to be born again. His lust for another chance borders on sinfulness, but the ending “maybe she’ll pick him out again”, implies that there is still hope for salvation. Next time, he would be ready to accept the divine calling.

Good stuff from my students: Bob Dylan paper

The research paper assignment was to write about Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks album from one of four critical points of view: political, psychoanalytic, historical/biographical, or New Criticism. I've gotten some wonderful papers, and I'll be posting a few excerpts here.

These are from Hannah Ward:

Independently, “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts,” offers a great deal of insight into the politics of relationships. As a linear story, it is revealed that all the characters have repressed emotions or motives symbolically presented in the song. The Jack of Hearts is a commanding character, earning attention from all walks of life as soon as he arrives in town. Clearly, he presents a façade in order to appear trustworthy; Lily likens him to a saint and the lyrics also state “There was no actor anywhere better than/ the Jack of Hearts.¹” He is blatantly referred to as an actor, not only because he is actually an outlaw, but because his multilayered intentions are masked. It is also stated that “He moved across the mirrored room.” The mention of the mirrors suggests the theme of truth; because the mirrors act as reflecting agents, they show both the surface appearance and the masked truth that the characters can no longer hide from. Though his lifestyle is immoral and he’s a typical western bank robber, his position of villain is actually quite questionable; Big Jim and the Judge seem far more threatening and the Jack of Hearts is actually willing to risk being recognized to meet up with Lily, a possible lover. Rather than evil, he seems clever, capable of disguising his intentions, and incapable of settling down. This is further emphasized through the fact that he looks like the Jack of Hearts and looks like a saint; his true motive is never on the surface.


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Rosemary deeply conceals her contempt for her lifestyle. She too desires escape, reflecting female oppression. She seems well off, yet she cannot even earn the attention of her husband. Several symbols surrounding her reflect her rejection of reality; she wears false eyelashes, drinks a great deal of alcohol, and also deals with the confrontation of her own reflection. Yet her reflection is viewed within a knife, most likely the one used to murder Big Jim. The fact that she killed him with this knife shows a very personal connection because she was viewing herself within it. Therefore, she commits murder to obtain truth, or an actual sense of justice.

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The other prominent motifs of the song, which often overlap, are playing cards and royalty. The Jack of Hearts is obviously representational of deceptive love. The young man equated with the heart suite displays a more tender side. Yet the fact that he is always a playing card adds the element of risk and bluffing. Big Jim and Rosemary are king and queen, cards of a higher position in most games. However, Rosemary is described as “a queen without a crown.” The lack of such a symbol makes her position questionable. She is technically of a high social position, yet her royalty has been taken away through her husband’s affection for another. Even Lily is described as a princess, youthful and fair in comparison to Rosemary. The allegory of royal figures within the Midwestern United States suggests further social tension as the roles of the wealthy are portrayed in a negative light. The fact that they’re cards also emphasizes luck of the draw situation, as if they are undeserving of such positions.

Simile and Metaphor: Walking Around

I talk a lot in my comp classes about language as a tool for drawing distinctions, and one of the units I use for this lesson is two translations of Pablo Neruda’s “Walking Around” – the first by Ben Belitt, the second by Robert Bly. My questions are – what, in general terms, is the poem about? What do both of these translations have in common?

The answer I generally get, and it’s an acceptable answer, is some version or other of “Life sucks.”

Now what about the differences? When do the two versions of Neruda really start diverging from each other?

If I’m lucky, I’ll get an answer like “Stanza four.” It’s a good answer – the level of violence is escalated in the Bly version beyond what it is in the Belitt version. In each case, the narrator is talking about a violent fantasy which he will never enact, but which gives him a tiny measure of satisfaction, a small connection to a life that’s worth living. But Bly won’t be satisfied with finishing a nun; he wants to kill her. My students often go straight there – “kill” is a word that wakes them up.

I say this happens if I’m lucky, because if we start there, I can start directing them backwards…”I can name that tune in three notes!” Does the divergence happen earlier?

Well, yes. Someone will point out Belitt’s desire for a little vacation from things as opposed to Bly’s desire for nothing, or for nothingness – only to lie still like stones or wool. And that’s a good one too, but…earlier?

They’ll take me back another step – what about the Belitt character, relatively involved with life, actually going to a movie and dropping in at the tailor's, vs. the Bly character who walks into tailorshops and movie houses, but with no indication that he actually interacts with the tailor or sees the movie.

But finally…I can name that tune in one note. By the end of the first line, you are looking at two different poems.

And they always get it – the Belitt guy leaves himself an out. He’s tired of being just a man. He can conceivably transcend himself, become something more. The Bly guy is a total nihilist. From there, the rest of the divergences really start to fall in line. Belitt can maybe pull himself together, make something of his life, if he just gets a little vacation from things. Bly doesn’t have a chance. His only ambition is to lie still like stones or wool.

So all of this is my regular schtick with this particular unit, but this time around, we started to look at another place where the two personae diverge – Belitt’s “I won't live like this--like a root in a shadow” vs. Bly’s “I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,”and here you have, in a nutshell, as good an object lesson as I’ve found in the difference between a simile and a metaphor – and one that my freshman comp students were able to pick up and absorb. Belitt is taking a stand – he has the choice of living like a root in a shadow, or breaking out of that shadow. Bly may not want to go on being a root in the dark, but he’s never going to break out of that darkness – which, in any case, doesn’t have the border that a shadow does. If you are a root in the dark, there’s no hope.

Then we went back up to Bly’s earlier simile – “The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool” – and they could see the difference there, too. The simile tells us he’ll never have that perfect stillness of stones or wool,