Writing Again

It has been a year of change for my little family of two.  After years of being a barista I let my Starbucks career go and moved into a new job.  This was actually a very hard decision for me to make.  As strange as it might sound there was a time in my life that my place of work was the only real home I had.  Life moves on though and I now have a home with a wonderful man that I love.  My old home was keeping me from being fully invested in our life.  Starbucks had taken over and it was time to refocus and find myself again. I've been able to begin to find balance once again; I've been able to start focusing on the things I love again.  I was so exhausted at my old job that I wasn't really pursuing my passions anymore- I was stagnant.  Now I'm reading again, I'm analyzing again, I'm talking my husband's ear off about song lyrics again, and most importantly I'm engaged with the things that should matter again.  There is more change on the horizon but at the moment I feel more content than I have in years.  I am able to focus on a Sunday School bulletin board now; six months ago that would have never happened. I can decide that a Saturday morning in the mountains sounds like fun without planning it out a month and a half in advance.  I can leave work at work and be myself at home.  Sure I still get stressed out- that's life.  However, I am no longer paralyzed. God used a series of workplace injuries to wake me up and get me out an unhealthy cycle.  I'm happy, I'm changing, and I'm writing again.

Discovering Poetry: "Siren's Song"

I first discovered Margret Atwood my second year of college. It was in a class taught by my favorite college professor.  For our final we had to chose a poem to memorize and explicate.  My previous post on Shakespeare was the result of the last class I took from the same professor.  She was the teacher to truly fostered my love of literature and who taught me how to write.

I was immensely nervous about this assignment. During my sophomore year of high school I had a similar assignment which I failed miserably at.  It was a horrendous failure- a truly mortifying experience.  I was not sure that I could do this assignment.  I respected my teacher a great deal and she said it was just about putting in the time so I started trying to chose a poem.

If I was going to memorize a poem I decided I had better enjoy the one I chose.  I had never truly enjoyed poetry which might have been part of my issue during that botched assignment back in high school.  Throughout the semester my professor opened my eyes to poetry and I slowly began to enjoy and then love poetry.   My favorite was Atwood's "Siren Song" which focused on Greek Mythology.

Siren Song

1 This is the one song everyone
2 would like to learn: the song
3 that is irresistible:

4 the song that forces men
5 to leap overboard in squadrons
6 even though they see beached skulls

7 the song nobody knows
8 because anyone who had heard it
9 is dead, and the others can’t remember.

10 Shall I tell you the secret
11 and if I do, will you get me
12 out of this bird suit?

13 I don’t enjoy it here
14 squatting on this island
15 looking picturesque and mythical

16 with these two feathery maniacs,
17 I don’t enjoy singing
18 this trio, fatal and valuable.

19 I will tell the secret to you,
20 to you, only to you.
21 Come closer. This song

22 is a cry for help: Help me!
23 Only you, only you can,
24 you are unique

25 at last. Alas
26 it is a boring song
27 but it works every time.

In Greek mythology there are three Sirens who sing men to their deaths.  These women were partially covered in feathers and lived on an island laying in wait for unsuspecting sailors.   The speaker in "Siren Song" is one of the three Sirens and the audience is the victim of the Siren.  The poem is made up of nine stanzas that are three lines long. The format makes the poem flow smoothly as though it truly could lull it's audience to an untimely death.  There is a great deal of enjambment which makes this poem smooth.  There are two differned readings that I can take away from this peom.  The first is that people's desires can be there down fall.  I can easily read this in "Siren Song" but that seems to simplistic.

The second reading is that this entire poem is an allusion to the Greek myth which Atwood uses to comment on the dynamics of men and women.  The men in this poem view women as week and in need of saving.  There is a duplicity to the song in the poem.  The colon at the end of line three shows that the song has already stated while the Siren is telling the man that she will tell him about her song.  Her plea for help is how she traps him.  His need to save her is his doom.  In the end she finds herself bored with the outcome as it is always the same.  The Siren may indeed want to shed her "bird suit" and be rescued but she is trapped in her role.

The tone of "Siren's Song" helps with this second reading as well.  There is an ironic tone that can be seductive, melancholy, and eve bored at times.  There is a push and pull to male and female dynamics and I think this shows how woman are not as week as men think they are but women can still feel trapped in their roles.  While the Siren might like to be free of her role she does not know how to change who she is anymore than the man knows how to resist her call for aid.  I do not think this poem is saying that women destroy men; I think this poem is showing the inescapable differences of men and women.  There are many layers to this poem and many different readings that can be taken away from it.  This is the beauty of a well written poem- there is always more to lean.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 24

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Sonnet 24

By William Shakespeare

1   Mine eye hath play’d the painter, and hath stell’d  (A)

2   Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart;  (B)

3   My body is the frame wherein ‘tis held,  (A)

4   And perspective it is best painter’s art.  (B)

5   For through the painter must you see his skill,  (C)

6   To find where you true image picture’d lies,  (D)

7   Which in my bosom’s shop is hanging still,  (C)

8   That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.  (D)

9    Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done:  (E)

10  Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me  (F)

11  Are windows to my breast, where-through the sun  (E)

12  Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee;  (F)

13  Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art;  (G)

14  They draw but what they see, know not the heart.  (G)

Shakespeare's 24th Sonnet is one of my favorite poems by the Bard of Avon.  Sonnet 24 was first published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe.  As was typical for Shakespeare, Sonnet 24 is written in iambic pentameter with three quatrains and one couplet.

I have explicated this poem to analyses what Shakespeare was saying.  I quite enjoy taking a poem apart and putting it back together again.  I think when it comes to poetry written at the level of Shakespeare that explicating the poem is the best way for someone to gain a real understanding of what the poem is truly about.

 

Punctuation: There are three sentences throughout this Sonnet- the first quatrain, the second quatrain, and the third quatrain and the couplet. Most of the lines in Sonnet 24 are end-stopped, however, there is enjambment in lines 1, 10, and 11.

Speaker: First Person Artist

Audience: The Artist’s Lover

Theme: Love

Motif: Eyes appear multiple times.

Moral: Beauty is more than skin deep.

Literary Devices:

-Alliteration- Lines 1, 4, and 5

-Rhyme: Sonnet 24 follows the typical rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean Sonnet.

-Metaphor- The whole poem is a metaphor for the poet being an artist who records their lover’s external and internal beauty on the canvas of their heart and mind.

-Line 3 is a metaphor for the body of the speaker being the frame that holds this image of their lover.

-Line 7 is a metaphor for the heart being an art gallery that the image of the poet’s lover hangs in.

-Personification- Line 10

-Repetition: Eyes

Blindeside: Listening to Lyics

Blindside- When I Remember 

I have always been obsessed with lyrics.  I think what a song is saying is more important than the music or lyrics; not that I am not picky about those aspects too.  During my Junior year of high school when life was pretty tough I discovered a song by Blindside which quickly became my favorite song.  When I Remember remains my favorite song to this day and I continue to enjoy Blindside's lyrics. These are the lyrics to When I Remember.

That boy is gone
Sometimes i miss the way he wept at night
To be still and not run
To be rocked to sleep in Your light
These days there is not much that will bring tears to my eyes
But when i remember who i am and who You are
When i remember
A cloud moves in, rain falls, thunder strikes
And sunshine breaks through the clouds

I am walking blind
So distracted that i don't even feel when You hold me
When did i grow such thick skin
You are my sunshine and rain
My joy and sweet pain
I'm a spotless stain
That boy is gone
But nobody moves me like you do
When i remember

A cloud moves in, rain falls, thunder strikes
And sunshine breaks through the clouds
I can cry out of sorrow and joy
Every drop of rain turns into a crystal in the sun
So wash my eyes, my clothes, my skin, my bones, my soul
My feet, my love
I'm not forgotten
I'm in your thoughts cause i feel sunshine in the rain

To this day nobody moves
Nobody
Nobody moves me like You

Blindside's lyrics in this song are beautifully arranged.  This band has a true gift for poetry.  The first verse introduces the idea that as a grown man Christian Lindskog, the lead singer, no longer feels as though he can be held as he was when he was a child.  Lindskog misses being rocked to sleep in God's light.  The bands choice to capitalize all pronouns referring to God shows a great amount of respect for the God they are singing about.  Lindskog says not much can make him cry but then he remembers God and what he feels standing before a perfect, loving father God.

The chorus of the song describes what is felt when Lindskog remembers his relationship with God that he has let slip away.  It is this chorus that can bring tears to my eyes with the beautiful words Blindside has strung together to describe the way a person can feel when surrounded by our awesome father God.  "A cloud moves in, rain falls, thunder strikes, and sunshine breaks through the clouds."  God is that sunshine breaking through the storms that rage around us in this sin filled world.  "I can cry out of sorrow and joy."  This line describes the complete desperation we can sometimes feel and the exhaustion that a world weary person can feel in conjunction with the joy of God loving us despite it all.  "Every drop of rain turns into a crystal in the sun."  God takes the hard times in life and builds something beautiful from them.  I think this line is lovely.  The image that is conjured in your mind is peaceful and beautiful. 

The second verse describes how distracted Lindskog is.  He is blind to God's presence in his life.  He says, "When did I grow such a thick skin?"  He is no longer comforted as he was as a child because he has hardened himself.  He did not even realize he was ignoring God.  God is his "sunshine and rain" his "joy and sweet pain."  Here rain seems more of a cleansing, refreshing rain than the storm from earlier.  Sweet pain might refer to the pain a person can feel while they strive to change; it is good to try to change but hard to accomplish.  The next line might be my favorite in the whole song.  "I'm a spotless stain."  So often Christians talk about how God will make us spotless; He will wash us as white as snow.  I think this line is truer to how most of us actually feel.  We are so dirty that there is not one bit that is worthy.  Without Christ that is pretty much true as well.  We need that cleansing rain.  We are all spot and no white. Then he says, "nobody moves me like you do when I remember."  God covers him; He makes him clean.  Nothing is more moving than that.

The chorse plays again but with a bridge after it.  The bridge goes into a list of parts of himself that Lindskog wants God to wash- eyes, clothes, skin, bones, soul, feet, and love.  There is so much emotion in Lindskoq's voice as he sings this list that you can hear his desperation for God to make him clean.  This alludes to baptism and God washing someone and making them new.  Then Lindskog says, "I'm not forgotten, I'm in your thoughts cause I feel sunshine in the rain."  I think the fact that this great God remembers us and loves us no matter how flawed we are is the point here.  Through all the troubles we experience God is with us; He loves us no matter how dirty we are.  Through the storm we can feel the sunshine- God's perfect love.  No one else can love us like Him; what could ever be more moving?

Lost In Austen: Annihilating Artwork

About a year and a half ago I discovered the movie Lost In Austen. In theory it sounded like the a movie I would love; getting pulled into your favorite novel and interacting with the characters that you love seems like such a fun idea.  I excitedly sat down one afternoon to devour what I was sure would be a few hours of watching a new heroin help Darcy and Elizabeth along.  I was so, very wrong.  It seems the creators of Lost In Austen set out to completely undermine every character in Pride and Prejudice.

The movie starts out all right the main character Amanda Price goes on and on about how much she loves Pride and Prejudice.  She seems to do little but work, put up with a dull boyfriend, and read Pride and Prejudice over and over again.  There’s nothing wrong with reading a superb novel multiple times but to have it become your life?  No wonder Jemima Rooper’s Amanda makes for a rather obnoxious leading lady.  By the time I was 15 minutes into this film I was shocked by the vulgar and tasteless humor present in it.  Austen certainly had her fair share of suggestive humor within her novels but part of what makes it so funny is that it is not spelled out.  A comment about “girl on girl action” in Austen is like nails on a chalkboard. 

Austen’s works are satirical looks at the different kinds of people she observed.  She exaggerated attributes to create rather comedic and thought provoking situations.  In Lost In Austen those characters are exaggerated even more making them more ridiculous than ever.  Mrs. Bennet’s wailing fills the whole home and Darcy does little but glare.  Who would not despise him?  Amanda herself seems to be the creator’s idea of an exaggerated modern woman.  It is as though they wish to show the differences that have developed over a couple hundred years by making Amanda stick out as much as possible.  She chews with her mouth open, says her clothes are for otter hunting, gets drunk at the first ball, and seems to be unable to stop talking about the plot line of the book she has found herself in.  If that is what people truly think the average woman today is like then I think society is doomed.

All the characters seem to have had a change in personality in this mixed up version.  Kitty is the first that I noticed.  She is not as silly as she is in the books.  Kitty seems friendly and fun and is oddly with Marry more than Lydia throughout the movie.  Bingley is besotted with Amanda at first not Jane.  Which is shocking since she is drunk the second time he sees her.  Darcy seems to be flirting with Amanda before being his typical rude self at the assembly ball.  Caroline Bingley flirts with Amanda later on as well.  As a viewer who is finding Amanda rather irritating this is hard to believe. The changes keep coming, as Georgiana Darcy is the attempted seducer rather than Wickham.  Additionally, Mr. Bennet is an even more complacent father than he is in the books; it takes Amanda’s anger for him to go look for the missing Lydia.  The one of the most shocking changes is Jane ending up married to the most disturbing Collins I have ever seen before a convenient annulment is arranged by Lady Catherine.  Lady Catherine doing something to harm Collins?  This just does not seem to fit.  

Perhaps the most irritating character change is in the main character herself.  Elizabeth has abandoned her family, which is so strikingly against the character of Elizabeth Bennet that I find in infuriating.  Elizabeth values her family greatly; she would not just leave them for an adventure.  Elizabeth briefly returns to her family but it takes the near death of her father for Amanda to convince her.  By the end of the novel she chooses to stay in the future and never see her family again.  While Elizabeth returns to the future, Amanda heads for Pemberly where she will end up with Darcy.  Considering Amanda herself has been going on and on about Elizabeth and Darcy being the greatest love story of all time the ending misses the mark. Amanda completely replaces Elizabeth in both Darcy and Jane’s lives.  The writers should have chosen not to pursue a relationship between Amanda and Darcy and aloud Elizabeth to be herself; Lost In Austen would have been more appealing.

In conclusion, Lost In Austen loses all the power of the original by replacing one female lead with another.  Amanda Price is no Elizabeth Bennet and therefore the story unfolding around her is lacking greatly.  Nearly every beloved or detested character in Austen’s novel is twisted into something unrecognizable.  Georgiana and Bingley become perverse, Wickham becomes heroic, and Elizabeth becomes self-serving.  The created character of Amanda is not nearly as engaging or endearing as the original Elizabeth, which cuts the heart right out of the story.  Darcy and Elizabeth become nothing without each other and the rest of the story fails with them.  After a very trying second viewing of this movie, in order to write this critique, all I can really say is that in this case it is truly best to stick with the original.    

Engaging Emma

I have decided to start with one of my foremost loves in literature: Jane Austen.  Exactly one year ago I took a month long class called Austen and Film with a fantastic teacher at CU.  I have always found it interesting to see how a beloved book is translated to film, however; I am very rarely satisfied.  The book is nearly always far, far superior to the film.  My love of Austen started when I saw the 1996 Emma as a young girl.  I then read Pride and Prejudice, which has earned the distinction of being my favorite book.  Over the years I have devoured Austen's works and every film based on them that I could get my hands on, both the very good and the horrifically bad.  Therefore, I was understandably thrilled at the prospect of an entire class devoted to Austen and the movies she inspired.

 

We covered three of Austen's novels in my class: Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Pride and Prejudice.  These are without a doubt my three favorites, which added to my excitement.  I had spent quite a bit of time invested in both Sense and Sensibility [S&S] and Pride and Prejudice [P&P].  I had not, however; read Emma more than once and had not really delved into the material.  This lead to surprised delight when I realized that Emma has more to discover and engage that I could have ever imagined.  

Emma differs from the heroines in S&S and P&P in that she is a single woman of fortune.  The Bennet sisters and the Dashwood sisters are in real danger because of their financial situation, they need to marry men with money in order to survive.  After publishing several novels where she is commenting on the danger of being a poor woman Emma is quite the contrast.  Emma says she does not wish to marry.  She runs her father's household and spends time with her friends.  There is no need for Emma to take a husband, and her father does not wish to part with her, so Emma spends her time playing matchmaker for those in her small community.  Austen’s writings are very satirical.  Throughout Emma our heroin’s prejudices and misconceived notions are used to show the audience what Austen thinks of different aspects of society.  In one instance Emma tells her friend Harriet, “I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else (55-56).  In this declaration Emma is telling Harriet what is the obvious truth to her.  To the reader this sounds horrible when one knows the difficult situation that Miss Bates lives in. 

Austen uses different narrators in all of her novels, they are omniscient narrators who know all, however; her narrators always have an opinion.  Depending on the novel Austen will give this opinion in different ways.  In S&S for instance the narrator prefers Elinor to Marianne and the reader must keep that in mind when deciding his or her own opinion.  In Emma the narrator often gives the reader Emma’s opinion on matters and it is only through ironic choices in the words that the reader is able to get the narrator’s true opinion of the events taking place.  For instance, by subtle choices in the first sentence of the novel Austen is able to imply much; “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her” (1).  The narrator never says that Emma is actually happy with her life; she is handsome, clever, rich, has a happy disposition, and has very little to distress her or vex her.  While all of these things are nice they are not happiness in ones life.  Additionally, the comment that Emma has had little to distress her or vex her must foreshadow that she will eventually have plenty to distress and vex her throughout the novel.

While there is an abundance of material to absorb from what is considered Austen’s most complex novel, one thing that stood out the most to me is the relationship between Emma and her neighbor Mr. Knightly.  When I saw the 1996 Emma I loved the romance that develops between Emma and Knightly, while I still enjoy it I believe that Austen hints at some strange interaction between the two.  My favorite film version of Emma is the new BBC mini series that came out in 2009.  In this version the director chose to have the actor who plays Knightly also act as the narrator in the form of voice over.  While I love this version and think it captures the spirit of Emma much better than the 1996 film, I found the choice of narrator very strange.  This curiosity about Knightly and Emma lead to me spending a great deal of my time reading the novel analyzing the interaction between the heroin and her eventual husband.  Emma is born when Knightly is 16 years old.  Even for Austen’s time this is a surprising age gap.  This leads of Knightly having a position of power over Emma, they cannot be equals because she is a child and her is a grown man.  At the beginning of the novel we meet a 21-year-old Emma who is now a grown woman but who has lived a very sheltered life, which has not prepared her for the eventuality of marriage and leaving her father’s home.  Knightly scolds Emma and disapproves of her choices throughout most of the novel.  This is not the typically way an audience would expect to see the central couple of a love story interact; however, Emma and Knightly do not have any other way of interacting.  He is a friend of her father’s and has been in a position more paternal than equal for all of her life.  The more of their interactions I analyze the more troubling I find this relationship.  In his declaration of love Knightly tells Emma, “I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it” (282).  Emma has taken Knightly’s criticisms better than any other woman because he has molded her to do so.  Emma has very few men in her acquaintance and most of them are questionable at best, of course Knightly, who she knows well and has taught her so much, seems vastly superior.  I suggest that Knightly, unconsciously or not, has raised his perfect partner in Emma Woodhouse. 

In Emma Austen puts forth a great deal of information for the reader to absorb and interoperate.  I am fairly certain that I could read Emma over and over and always find something new to absorb.  Emma is one of the most thought provoking and engaging novels I have had the enjoyment of reading.  I take a great deal of joy in analyzing Austen’s work and comparing the many different films that have been based on her works.

Austen, Jane. Emma. New York: Norton, 2000. Print.

Literary Fixation

I am starting this blog as a creative outlet.  One of the only things I truly miss from being in school is writing long papers where I analyze a piece of writing.  I miss having a reason to compare and contrast.  In an effort to save my fiancé and friends from my random vocal analysis of the written word, and subsequent film adaptations, I think it is best I get my thoughts out onto metaphorical paper.  I am sure there will be no regular time that I write, which is one of the upsides of not writing for others, but I just want to write again.