Learning--the Everlasting Journey

I found "The Idea" by Mark Strand to be about one attempting to get out of where they were and getting to another place, obtaining knowledge and experience he/she didn't have. The poem starts with these lines: "For us, too, there was a wish to possess / Something beyond the world we knew, beyond ourselves, / Beyond our power to imagine..." (Strand 1-3). The "us" in the poem wanted to go beyond the world they know to possess something out there--to obtain more than what they have. The poem continues: "...something nevertheless / In which we might see ourselves; and this desire / Came always in passing, in waning light..." (Strand 3-5). By attaining another perspective, they would be able to look at themselves from that other perspective, being able to see what they haven't seen before, another side of them. Also, that desire they had came in vagueness. They may not have been sure about the emerging desire, being so dismal; and/or they may have been trying to hold it back--knowingly or incautiously. Although they finally find another place, they didn't step out of the liminal place and step in there:

And there appeared, with its windows glowing, small,
In the distance, in the frozen reaches, a cabin;
And we stood before it, amazed at its being there,
And would have gone forward and opened the door,
And stepped into the glow and warmed ourselves there,
But that it was ours by not being ours,
And should remain empty. That was the idea. (Strand 14-20)

Although the place looked much comforting and warm compared to the coldness they had came through, they decided not to go in there. They say that the "cabin" was theirs by not being theirs. Even though they don't own the place, they know it from their perspective. It was something in their perspective at that point since they are looking at it from the outside. However, if they enter the cabin, they have a whole new perspective, and even if they settle down after the bewilderment and come up with another stable perspective, it will be different from what they had before, and that perspective would not have been the one of the past them. What was the purpose of the idea? By stating that it shall remain empty by not going in there, however, they are saying that they had come all the way through the liminal space to not go where they had planned to. Are they afraid of going in there--afraid at what may be in there? They could find something completely different and new...but they could find the things that they know of. Are they afraid of finding out that the suffering they went through to get here was meaningless? Or, have they attained what they wanted from the traveling and therefore seek no more? Was the step in solving the one that was the most meaningful and not the results?

The Building of Power

In “Power” by Adrienne Rich, the fact that the present is made up of the past is described. How our “now” is built by the events in the past. For an example, Marie Curie died from getting exposed to radiation. I thought it was also interesting how the poem expressed, “she suffered from radiation sickness / her body bombarded for years by the element / she had purified” (Rich 7-9). Curie cleansed the element by becoming the container of the plague. She was the scapegoat of the terrible affects of radiation. At the end of the poem, it is written, “her wounds came from the same source as her power” (Rich 17). Power is something obtained by building confidence, the building of past events, which also creates wounds.

The title of the poem is “Power.” The lines in this poem sometimes have unusual breaks, with more than one space between words. In her first stanza, the first word broke off unusually, is the word “in.” In the second stanza, it’s “out”; in the third stanza, it’s “from”; in the last stanza, it’s “a.” I interpreted this as a transition of the speaker consisting of power: one goes in and out of the state containing power, one obtains something from power, and one becomes a power. Therefore, one becomes power after playing with it and practicing it through time.

The Seeds of Tears

In "Sestina" by Elizabeth Bishop, the terms such as rain, tears, stove and almanac are repeteadly applied. Since I could go on and on about the terms, I will focus on the rain and the tears. The grandmother's tears are equinoctial--pertaining to a state of equal day and night (Oxford English Dictionary). The tears she tries to hide are balanced, probably meaning to have both happy and sad purposes for them. Although they are balanced in a sense, it is the inbetween liminal state. She is stuck in liminality. Since she hides the tears, the sky is crying, as the "September rain falls on the house" (Bishop 1). Even "the teakettle's small hard tears dance like mad on the hot black stove, the way the rain must dance on the house" (Bishop 14-6). The tears dancing like mad gives me a vision of someone dancing a "Waltz of Sorrow" if there was such thing, or even kind of acting or overaction of madness. It reminds me of Hamlet when he appears in front of Ophelia like a ghost, and of Ophelia when she is driven mad after finding out about her father's death in Hamlet. There is a theatric-like nuance to this line. I could envision the grandmother's sorrow dancing furiously inside her. The balance may be applied to the dance in a very interesting way. The dance, is sort of controlled because of the balance. Since there is the day and the night part to her tears, she can't go on about one, and has to balance them out, which turns out to balance the dance, giving it a kind of a control. Therefore, the dance is not simply of madness but is of a controlled madness--something far more dangerous than just a madness since now the person has time to think, to use the intelligence to create something horrible out of it. Another important aspect of this part is that the "rain must dance on the house" (Bishop 16). It does say that the tears and the rain "were both foretold by the almanac" (Bishop 9). But does the rain "must dance" or "must dance on the house"? Does it have to dance on the house, or can it be anywhere else? The house is a very important property of people. It gives them shelter and security, and is a device to express themselves. Since it is raining on the house, the house may be in a danger in a way. Even if they are small drops of water, if it keeps on pecking the same place over and over, they make a hole. If so, the shelter now has a small fault--a small hole--in the roof which makes it imperfect and less secure. But also, since it is raining outside, the people in the house probably would not go out unless it is necessary. The rain keeps the people in the house, giving more security to them: making them more safe but less active. Maybe the grandmother is afraid to go out and experience the world where, although good things occur, bad things may occur as well. The rain must dance--why? Dancing is an art form. She may be trying to express her tears beautifully. However, dancing is also a kind of ritual as well. It may be implying that she has to let her tears come out in order for her to move on--to escape the liminal status she is in. Then her teacup is "full of dark brown tears" (Bishop 22). Since the teacup has tea in it, it should be hot. Either she doesn't drink it or it doesn't help, "she shivers and says she thinks the house feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove" (Bishop 23-4). That happens right after the teacup is introduced. Have the tea cooled down by the time it was referred to in the poem? Is it because of the "tears" that fills the cup and not "tea"? The house also fails to give her shelter as she shivers. Is this because she doesn't let go of her tears and keep them in? As I have mentioned before, she probably has to let her feelings rule her for a moment and let things go out in order to escape the instability. Then the buttons of the man the child draws are tears as well. Usually children's pictures are heart-warming and makes people smile. Now the grandmother can't help but see the buttons as her tears. But this doesn't make her feel better because the picture is not really crying for her: they are buttons drawn by the child. Buttons hold the clothes together and usually helps straighten oneself. The grandmother is straigtening herself up by containing her tears. Although it is orderly, people sometimes need to let him/herself out. She won't be able to escape her status forever if she keeps hiding her tears. Now the "little moons fall down like tears" (Bishop 29). She is also "in the failing light" (Bishop 2). The light--clarity, hope, warmth--is failing and falling, and if she doesn't stop that, she would slip into darkness, with much difficulties to find the way out. At the end, the almanac says, "Time to plant tears" (Bishop 37). In order to plant them, she has to let them out of her. What grows from the seed of tears? Is it a refreshing happiness or an outraging sorrow? Is it the path out of liminality?

Ancient Yet Still Powerful

In "The Colossus," Sylvia Plath refers her father to the large, powerful, artifact of the past. For an example, she refers to his lips as "great lips" (line 4). She also speaks about something similar to wanting to kill him, even after he had died: "Thirty years now I have labored / To dredge the silt from your throat" (lines 8-9). Although, his physical presence in her world had ceased, he still exists in her, taking a large part of her, since she refers to an object--the Colossus of Rhodes, which I have assumed from her mentioning of the sun--which is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was actually destroyed by an earthquake after 54 years of standing, which is the age her father was at when he passed away. Even after it's wreckage, the Colossus is still alive, intriguing people with wonders. In a sense, one doesn't die out until he/she is completely forgotten. Since not only can't she forget her father, but she is still struggling with the memories of him inside her, he is not completely dead. This poem extravagantly portrays his strong existence in her.
What is interesting in her poem is the fact that she includes a lot of Greek elements but not only so, mentioning the Roman Forums. She actually directly relates him to the Roman Forum in line 18. While Greek mythology acknowledges lying as a source of winning, Roman mythology doesn't. I am not sure yet why she included a mixture of the two ancient societies, but I think there is something to it. I think it is interesting to do more research on this topic and get more insights about this poem.