Relating to the Poetry

"Mad Song"

My madness is dear to me.

I who was almost always the sanest among my friends,

one to whom others came for comfort,

now at my breasts (that look timid and ignorant,

                that don’t look as if milk had flowed from them,

                years gone by)

cherish a viper.

                       Hail, little serpent of useless longing

that may destroy me,

that bites me with such idle

needle teeth.

I who am loved by those who love me

for honesty,

to whom life was an honest breath

                           taken in good faith,

I’ve forgotten how to tell joy from bitterness.

Dear to me, dear to me,

blue poison, green pain in the mind’s veins.

How am I to be cured against my will?

I read this poem once and then again and again and again. I find it inspiring and for me, relatable. In "Mad Song" Levertov writes in the first person about a narrator who feels she has gone mad (she because it speaks of milk flowing from breasts). There is an obvious struggle in the poem of her trying to come to terms with feeling not as sane as she used to be. Everyone gets to a point in their life where they become someone different than they were, and Levertov captures a picture of someone becoming used to their mental illness. 

The first sentence of the poem already shows the coming to terms with her madness as it is "dear to [her]" (1). It then goes on to talk about her past.  She claims she was "the sanest among [her] friends" (2). That is to imply her other friends were not very sane at all. Old age becomes obvious as well when she states her "breasts", they "look timid and ignorant" and "that don't look as if milk had flowed from them/ [for] years gone by" (3-5). This references that a woman in old age goes mad, especially without kids to care for. Her breasts "cherish a viper", which means  that she is holding a trick close to her (6). Vipers are sly creatures. She talks more about serpents to illustrate that old age has made her "idle" (9). That could be another cause for madness. 


The second half of the poem shows how someone with mental illness can still be loved. She's loved despite the madness that is dear to her. She is loved for "honesty" (12). She is still good and gives "honest breaths" (13). Finally, Levertov repeats the line "dear to me"  twice (17).  It sounds like a sort of  a crazy person's babble. It's very deliberate.  She then goes on to say "blue poison" and " green pain on the mind's veins"  (18). The pain in the mind is the true indicator of mental illness. And the blue poison could be blood (as blood is blue inside the body). Last, Levertov asks "how can [she] be cured against [her] will?" (19). Because she has come to terms with her madness, she does not want to be cured, which for all she knows could be unorthodox methods.

Levertov writes a poem that captures the very real struggle of having the feeling of being not as sane as as one once was. It feels likes one's whole body is working against he or she, as Levertov points out with her statement about blood (blue poison). Her poem demonstrates a deep understanding of what she might have been through. The main message, however, is that her friends still love her for the qualities she does have. 

Menstruating Isn't Shameful. Period.

         The Menstrual Hut

How can I listen to the moon?

Your blood will listen, like a charm. 

I knew a way to feel the sun

as if a statue felt warm eyes.

Even with ruins on the moon, 

your blood will listen, every time. 

Now I am the one with eyes.

Your blood can listen, every time

     I struggled for a little while to understand this poem, but I finally think I have an understanding of it. The lines in a normal font are the words of a young girl who is likely just beginning to menstruate, and the italicized lines are the words of an older, experienced woman telling the younger woman what to expect and how to deal with this new segregation. 

     Menstrual huts are very small buildings away from the home where a menstruating woman is sent because she is viewed as "unclean". The practice is rooted in Hindu traditions and is practiced in many countries all over the world. However, the poor ventilation in the huts and the open conditions can be dangerous and even fatal. The poem never explicitly mentions menstruation except in the title, the only reference is to "blood". Blood is a very powerful image. Blood is a life force, and it connects us to our family. The repeated reference to blood creates a powerful connotation. 

     The first stanza of the poem first deals with the young woman's loneliness and wishing to see the moon. She asks how she can "listen to the moon," which shows how segregated she feels from the natural world. In this hut, she cannot even see the moon or feel the night. The second voice responds, saying that her "blood will listen," which probably refers to the way that periods can be related to the moon phases. It also relates to the sisterhood that is felt by the women sharing these huts. They are all exiled from their homes and shunned by their male relatives while they are menstruating, so they really only have each other. 

     The second stanza goes on and the young speaker says that she "knew a way to feel the sun". This implies that she was once free to do as she pleased before she entered her menstruating years. In the next line, she uses a metaphor to refer to herself as a "statue". This refers to the way that men would view her as a woman. The other voice responds that "even with the ruins on the moon," her "blood will listen". Even while the women are considered unclean and ruined, the other women, their "blood," will be there for them.

     Finch uses the two voices in this poem to demonstrate the sisterhood felt between the women as well as the segregation from others. 

Reading Poetry and Chill?

Sir, I am not a bird of prey:

a Lady does not seize the day.

I trust that brief Time will unfold

our youth, before he makes us old.

How could we two write lines of rhyme

were we not fond of numbered Time

and grateful to the vast and sweet

trials his days will make us meet?

The Grave's not just the body's curse;

no skeleton can pen a verse!

So while this numbered World we see,

let's sweeten Time with poetry,

and Time, in turn, may sweeten Love

and give us time our love to prove.

You've praised my eyes, forehead, breast:

you've all our lives to praise the rest.

          Annie Finch writes her poem "Coy Mistress" as the incredibly sassy response of an empowered female to Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress". Finch's poem gives a voice to the mistress, who responds to Marvell's narrator confidently and humorously. While Marvell's poem argues to seize the moment by having sex, Finch argues to enjoy the time it takes to get somewhere. "Coy Mistress" is incredibly clever and Finch borrows images from Marvell's poem to turn his point around and enforce her own.

          Finch constructs this poem in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter while frequently referencing Marvell's poem. This gives the poem an almost conversational feel. Her opening line where she reminds the man that she is "not a bird of prey" basically begins her whole argument debunking the dramatic narrative of Marvell's narrator. This is also fairly ironic since while she writes this, she is basically preying on his entire poem. Her tone is extremely powerful and she thoroughly manages to get her point across with her irony and turning his own arguments against him. She refers to him as "sir," which adds to the irony of her completely disagreeing with him and insulting him.

         Finch writes about how time is not a thing to be feared in this poem. She agrees that "brief time will unfold", but not so quickly that they are pressed to have sex immediately. She also argues that death does not just effect the body, but the real tragedy of death is that creativity is put to an end. The line "no skeleton can pen a verse!" makes this point clear. 

         The end of the poem is very clear. The mistress basically just wants to hang out and read poetry. Finch claims that poetry will "sweeten time" and give them time to prove their love. This is very different from Marvell's assertion that the couple should have sex in order to forget about their impending dooms. As romantic as that sounds, I think I like Annie Finch's idea better....

         The irony and borrowing of Andrew Marvell's own phrases adds to the power that the mistress has. She proves herself to be very clever and pretty much completely turn's Marvell's narrator's argument on its head. 

Blindly in Love

Fucked Up Ode
By Dean Young

We all know that moment when the woman              1
lays her hand on the mans scar. We have all              2
heard water pouring in Brahms, wrens twitter           3
in the flowering bush. Still we don't                           4
understand each other? What a lot                             5
of practice it takes making the howling                     6
face blank. We manage the couch up the stairs'         7
right angle, we've touched each other                        8
exactly right, both touching and being touched         9
but then we miss each other by seconds                    10
which is all the chaos needs. It's not just mis-           11
hearing that makes us shout what we don't mean,     12
throw money on the table and leave. Always            13
too much and not enough, all those workbooks        14
full of calculations worthless. We swore                   15
each day we'd check the tadpoles, threw                   16
the knife so far into the air, we forgot                        17
to keep watch for it coming back down.                    18
How many letters are being crumpled up                  19
right now? I find myself saying I love you                20
to almost nothing, to fog. Can't we                            21
go back to being children with keys                          22
looped on string around our necks?                           23


   Dean Young has created a somber poem that follows the rocky relationship between two people through the conflicts they face and ultimately destroy them. His message within this poem is that love can change and disappear without warning and consequently, he wishes he could be a child again when life was much simpler. He utilizes imagery, a confused and upset tone, and unique diction to convey his emotions through this poem.
   At the beginning of Young's poem, he suggests a typical scenario in a relationship or an image his reader can picture of a woman placing her hand on her significant others scars, signifying that she accepts him and loves him with all of his imperfections. Using first-person point of view, Young continues to state "We" when discussing things so he can create a sort of bond and connection with his readers and so the readers can do the same to his words that follow. The next piece to his poem is referencing Brahms, a german composer and pianist of the romantic period, and states "we have all heard water pouring in Brahms" (2-3). Young follows this by mentioning wrens, a type of small bird know for being near homes, and implies that we have all heard these as well. Both of these references suggest and romantic, comfortable feeling to both Young and his readers. In addition, Young provides his readers with clear imagery of the bird and its "twitter" (3), and of how the music sounds which allows the reader to connect and understand his references better. The matter-of-fact tone in these first few lines suggests that there should be no problems between people if they all hear and see the same things, however, this quickly changes.
   In the following line, Young presents a question to his readers. "Still we don't understand each other?"(4-5); suddenly, the mood and tone of the poem shifts completely. Young begins to reference all that his significant other and himself have done together, from moving furniture to "touching and being touched" (9). These examples provide great imagery and insight into the relationship between these two individuals. Young makes the reader see that everything may seem great from the outside, but that happiness is not always present. He states, "we miss each other by seconds which is all the chaos needs" (10-11), alluding to the idea that it does not take much for a relationship to crumble. From here, Young lists off a handful of the broken promises and issues that arise between the couple that lead them to fall apart. He writes, "It's not just mis-hearing that makes us shout what we don't mean, throw money on the table and leave"(11-13), implying that their issues are deeper than misunderstanding each other. The meaningless things such as "workbooks full of calculations" (14-15) or "check[ing] the tadpoles" (16) are made out to be the biggest issues, however, Young is acknowledging that they simply are not. What is a great issue, metaphorically and literally speaking, is that the couple "threw the knife so far into the air, we forgot to keep watch for it coming back down" (16-18), implying that they knew their was danger in their relationship yet they tried to avoid it even when it was very obvious something was wrong. These references all create great imagery in the poem, however, they also allude to the issues present in the relationship.
   The final lines of this poem revolve around Young reviewing the end of the relationship in his head and trying to make sense of and simplify the situation he's in. His tone in these final lines turns to one of sadness and desperation, he seems to have lost all his ambition to work through the troubles his relationship faced and has come to terms with it's failure. He states that he "find[s] [him]self saying I love you to almost nothing, to fog" (20-21), alluding to the fact that his relationship has diminished and he is trying to find solitude in that. Young finishes the poem with a final plea, "Can't we go back to being children with keys looped on string around our necks?" (21-23), as if begging for simpler days again in his life.
   Young's poem is a canvas for many emotions to explode on and he uses a constantly changing tone, great imagery, and unique wording to make this happen. This poem does a fantastic job conveying the issues a relationship can face and how blind people in relationships can be to the sour feelings present.

Life is Different

"Many Lives"
by Alicia Suskin Ostriker
from The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

Many lives said the old woman
the grains of sand add up
I have been a housefly and a queen

The grains of sand add up
to nothing said the lovely tulip
unless love waters them

Do you even know what love is
said the dog and are you sure
the grains of sand add up



All of the poems share the same points of view: from an old woman, a tulip, and a dog.  Therefore, the name of this book is quite fitting.  Ostriker stretches the bonds of each narrator, and has the three interact in ways a single narrator would not allow.  This poem is a perfect example of this conversation; each narrator takes what has been said and adds their own light to the address.  The sequential order- always old woman, tulip, then dog- also contributes a cyclical manner to reading the poems one after another, affording the reader a sense of connection highly prevalent in this collection; tying the pieces together, intertwining their meanings and morals.


The old woman in "Many Lives" reflects upon the full life she's lead, recounting in her mind all the roles she has played.  Her station in any situation has ranged from "a housefly" to "a queen" (line 3), illustrating that her life was varied and long.  Every small instance "[adding] up" to become as numerous as "grains of sand" (line 2).  For the tulip, these moments in life mean "nothing" (line 5) except if "love waters them" (line 6).  The dog presents the viewpoint that questions the other two, repeating the woman's and tulip's assertions as questions.

The dog ties all three speakers together by presenting a contrasting viewpoint from the old woman and the tulip.  While the old woman and tulip mostly agree- with the tulip only modifying the woman's statement- the dog does not.  He challenges both of the others, asking if they "even know" (line 7) what they are talking about and "are you sure" (line 8) your life was so full. 

What draws me into this poem is how much Ostriker changes the meaning of a phrase within such a condensed piece.  Also, her ability to have subjects interact that would never talk together on a deep level in real life redefines how one thinks about fiction writing.  This poem proves that length does not mean quality or level of thought-provoking.

Jeffers' Death Plan

The Bed by the Window

I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed

When we built the house, it is ready waiting,

Unused unless by some guest in a twelvemonth, who hardly suspects

Its latter purpose. I often regard it,

With neither dislike nor desire; rather with both, so equalled

That they kill each other and a crystalline interest

Remains alone. We are safe to finish what we have to finish;

And then it will sound rather like music

When the patient daemon behind the screen of sea-rock and sky

Thumps with his staff, and calls thrice: 'Come, Jeffers.'

A majority of Jeffers’ poetry is based on his view, both belief wise and visually. However, this poem stretches that as it is uniquely autobiographical. It takes place in the house he built and describes both the way he lives and his mindset on his own death. Interestingly he was not very old at the time this poem was written, nor doing poorly economically to reinforce thoughts of death. “The Bed by the Window” serves as insight to Jeffers view of his mortality and does so through specific connections to his life, poetic structure, and powerful imagery.

The room created in Jeffers’ poem does exist, showing that this is not only a dramatic view on the short lifespan of people but also personal aspect. It is well known that Robinson built his stone house “Tor House” where he and his family lived for the rest of their lives, making the part of “When we built the house” in line two connected to reality. The house was also located on the Californian coast, connecting to “the screen of sea-rock and sky” where the daemon calls from. Most significantly, instead of ending the poem with the daemon calling thrice to any person, he specifically calls himself to his death bed. It is common for Jeffers to discuss the extinction of humans in his poems and refer to them more as a temporary species inhabiting Earth, but putting his name in creates a personal connection to death. By placing his poem in his spare room and based around his life, he creates almost more of a confession about his ideas of death than a description.

The structure and word-choice throughout the poem also convey Jeffers’ feelings on his own death. Until the last line of the poem, Jeffers never finishes a sentence at the end of a line. This creates a steady flow through the poem the mimics the flow of life, ended with Jeffers’ call to his deathbed. Also, in line three he uses “twelvemonth” instead of year that reinforces the flow of time not limited to larger units of years but separated into smaller units. In line two he switches tenses, from the past with “When we built the house” to the present “it is ready waiting.” This gives the room the feeling as though it was always meant to exist (as death will always occur) and it has been ready to accept Jeffers even before it was built.

Jeffers also uses subtle yet impactful imagery to show the imminence of death. Though the poem is specific to his life, he does not spend much time describing what the room looks like. All that is known of it is it having a bed that looks out a window into the sea. He also personifies his thoughts in the middle of the poem, and his coming to terms with the idea of his own death. Also, he does not paint death as something evil. His daemon is “patient” and will call only when everything he was meant to complete in his life has been accomplished. Though the call to death is still commanding and if not ominous with the staff thumping, it is not portrayed as entirely evil.

People often spend time considering their own death, will it occur too soon? Or possibly will it be long after they know who they are? Jeffers seems to have designated a room in his house both to try to predict and become comfortable with the idea of his own death. By placing the setting in his house and himself as the narrator, he has made the poem a strong possibility (upon further research I have found that he did actually pass away in this bed as well as his wife some years prior). Through the structure of his poem, Jeffers has mirrored the finality of death through the rhythm of a sentence. Also, the imagery creates death as something not to be feared, and also shows that though the poem is specific to him, the occasion is not. Altogether it creates an interesting perspective on how to imagine your own death without sadness.

Bitter Woman

The Edge

Time and again, time and again I tie
My heart to that headboard
While my quilted cries
Harden against his hand. He's bored --
I see it. Don't I lick his bribes, set his bouquets
In water? Over Mother's lace I watch him drive into the gored
Roasts, deal slivers in his mercy. . . I can feel his thighs
Against me for the children's sakes. Reward?
Mornings, crippled with this house,
I see him toast his toast and test
His coffee, hedgingly. The waste's my breakfast.


This poem is the written equivalent of condensed and packaged bitterness. It shows a marriage between two people, a woman and a man, in which the man has all of the power and the woman feels trapped and abused. Like many of Glück's poems, this piece shows the bitterness and desolation of life as a woman and wife in a patriarchal society and marriage.

Glück's imagery is very precise and calculated, showing very specific thoughts and actions in order to convey the speaker's feeling of frustration and resentment. She says that she "tie[s] / [her] heart to that headboard" while the two have sex (1-2). This implies that she must separate herself from the situation, meaning that the relations are unwanted on her part. The image, however, shows quite literally that her heart is not in her marriage, and she feels that she must set her feelings aside to fulfill the duties that society and her husband impose on her. The images of sex, particularly of unwanted or violent sex, continue throughout the poem. "Don't I lick his bribes," "I watch him drive into the gored / Roasts," and "I can feel his thighs / Against me for the children's sakes" all are sexual images (5,6-7,7-8). The first is submissive, the second is violent, and the third quite clearly says that either one or both of the couple do not feel compelled by love or desire. They all show that the feelings of entrapment and the frustration at the relationship carry over from the bedroom into the everyday things that the speaker does or watches her husband do.

The tone of this poem is purely bitter. The speaker is angry, and there is a feeling that the anger has been building for quite a while. Her use of rhetorical questions and of several short phrases show her outbursts of frustration and her bitterness. She asks, "Don't I lick his bribes, set his bouquets / In water?" (5-6). She later asks, "Reward?" (8). These two questions convey how wits-end frustrated the speaker is. Short statements such as "He's bored" and "The waste's my breakfast" show the situation itself and the bitterness of the speaker (4, 11). She is so angry that she cannot use long, descriptive sentences. She has to express herself only with short statements filled with feeling and vitriol.

This poem shows the anger and emptiness that fills the life of a housewife. Glück was married in the 60s and 70s before getting a divorce, and you can see the influence of the times on her life and work. She was married with children and no job to occupy her, and, coupled with depression that is clear in her work and several disorders that were addressed in her childhood, she probably had a very hard time feeling content with the nothingness of housewifery, especially since her marriage never seems to have worked. This is all expressed in the poem, which shows the bitterness that she feels and the resentment, both at her husband and at her life.

A Contemporary Myth (In Which I Write About Greek Mythology and Sylvia Plath Again)

Aftermath - Sylvia Plath

Compelled by calamity’s magnet

They loiter and stare as if the house

Burnt-out were theirs, or as if they thought

Some scandal might any minute ooze

From a smoke-choked closet into light;

No deaths, no prodigious injuries

Glut these hunters after an old meat,

Blood-spoor of the austere tragedies.

Mother Medea in a green smock

Moves humbly as any housewife through

Her ruined apartments, taking stock

Of charred shoes, the sodden upholstery:

Cheated of the pyre and the rack,

The crowd sucks her last tear and turns away.

In this poem, once again, Sylvia Plath combines themes of both women’s issues and Greek mythology. This time, she uses a Greek epic to discuss the concept of the 1950s housewife. In addition, she also shows her disdain for people who clamor to see a tragedy that has taken place, rather than taking the time to offer respect and condolences to those affected. To showcase this, as well as the housewives she saw in many of the women around her, she uses the story of Medea.

In mythology, Medea is the wife of Jason, of Jason and the Argonauts. She is often portrayed as a priestess or an enchantress, and she is the granddaughter of Helios, the god of the sun. The most famous story involving Medea is one in which her husband abandons her when the king of Corinth offers him his daughter’s hand in marriage. As revenge, Medea murders their children.

The murders are a horrific tragedy, and if the story took place in modern times, it is what Medea’s neighbors would “loiter and stare at the house” to see. Words like “ooze”, “smoke-choked”, “glut”, and “blood-spoor” are chilling and slimy, just the adjectives that Plath would likely use to describe these people. In the end, when each person “sucks her last tear and turns away”, they physically remove the grief from the situation and replace it with tabloid greed. They come looking for a “scandal”, and when they are “cheated of the pyre and the rack”, they leave. All they care about is the thrill of a tragedy, and Plath cannot stand it.

Another thing Plath could never stand was the idea of staying idle and mindless as a typical housewife. She paints Medea as such a housewife, and a broken one at that. In Medea’s home, we see familiar objects such as “shoes”, “upholstery”, and “apartments”, but they are now “charred”, “sodden”, and “ruined”, revealing the physical and emotional upset that has occurred. She still “moves humbly”, though, and shows no emotion as to what has just happened. In portrayals of women in the 1950s, we often see them silent and puttering as they go about completing the work that must be done, all while the true action of the piece occurs. Here, Medea is just as silent, with no grief or anger or remorse, and it is just as frightening as the concept of complacency was to Plath.

Sylvia Plath has painted a fearful picture of suburban scandal in the 1950s. The neighbors are nosy, the perpetrator is blissfully unaware, and yet the story is much more familiar. In fact, the story has existed for thousands of years. Still, the only way to make the present resonate with both itself and with the future is sometimes to correlate it with the past. By using elements of Greek mythology to highlight problems with society, Plath created a poem that transcends time to tell a heart-wrenching story.

As If It Had Granted Its Permission

"Candlelight"

Tony Hoagland

Crossing the porch in the hazy dusk

to worship the moon rising

like a yellow filling-station sign

on the black horizon,

you feel the faint grit

of ants beneath your shoes,

but keep on walking

because in this world

you have to decide what

you're willing to kill.

Saving your marriage might mean

dinner for two

by candlelight on steak

raised on pasture

chopped out of rain forest

whose absence might mean

an atmospheric thinness

fifty years from now

above the vulnerable head

of your bald grandson on vacation

as the cells of his scalp

sautéed by solar radiation

break down like suspects

under questioning.

Still you slice

the sirloin into pieces

and feed each other

on silver forks

under the approving gaze

of a waiter

whose purchased attention

and French name

are a kind of candlelight themselves,

while in the background

the fingertips of the pianist

float over the tusks

of the slaughtered elephant

without a care,

as if the elephant

had granted its permission.

    This poem is filled with images of death. Not, however, the images one would presume to find in your classic poem about death. Here, Hoagland points out the death that is happening constantly and all around us. The death many choose to ignore, and that many don't even notice in the first place. It's more than just death that this poem grapples with though, it's also about the act of killing. Hoagland assesses the way in which we prioritize ethically some things over others, specifically in the context of middle class consumerist society. While doing this, he slips in the subtle assertion that you can't save everything, and that entirely ethical consumption isn’t possible in the world we live in. There's a hint of remorse because of it too.
When one eats a steak or unknowingly crushes an ant, she may not view these actions as the act of killing. Hoagland argues that it is just that. His tone isn't accusatory, however, and at times it's almost matter-of-fact. His assertion that "in this world/you have to decide what/you're willing to kill" makes it seem unavoidable. The "faint grit of ants beneath your shoes" isn't fazing because of its perceived insignificance. His use of "faint" is intentional, as the feeling is almost imperceptible. Eating a steak is equivalent to killing a cow, which in turn has killed rainforest, which then hurts the atmosphere. Even going out in the sun kills skin cells on your body. All this killing seems unavoidable, and it is. Hoagland does seem to feel some guilt despite this, however. When he speaks of playing on an ivory piano "as if the elephant/had granted its permission," there seems to be some criticism. His tone at the end of the poem is almost sad, as if the fact that this killing is unavoidable doesn't make it right, that it still leaves one uneasy.
Hoagland's poetry focuses largely on the culture of middle-class America, and consumerism is a key aspect of that culture. While many examples of killing in this poem aren't related to consumption, the central image is. Candlelight, the title of the poem, falls on the steak that is being used to save a marriage. This encompasses the death of a cow, the death of a section of rainforest, and the thinning of the atmosphere, which will inevitably affect generations to come. In Hoagland's example, it will affect "your grandson on vacation" and burn the cells of his scalp. Here, we see in a somewhat ridiculous illustration the impossibility of consumption under capitalism being harmless. Hoagland uses this image to assert that even mainstream activities such as going out to dinner with your spouse are harmful to something in some way. "Still you slice/the sirloin into pieces/and feed each other/on silver forks."
"Candlelight" is a poem that analyzes the flaws of the world that we live in. Many of these flaws are impossible to change. Hoagland writes what could be a coming-to-terms with that, with the constant and unavoidable killing happening all around us, happening because of us. He leaves with a somewhat disappointing image, that of the pianist playing on the tusks of a slain elephant. The pianist doesn't care at all for the elephant, and plays on as if the elephant had told him it could do so. He is trapped in the willful ignorance Hoagland believes we all must participate in to get through life.

Cracks in the Sidewalks

Beneath the Sidewalk
Stephen Dunn

Whispers collect there, the bad news
from our subconscious,
tears that have dripped down
the insides of faces,
apologies that have gotten lost
in all of our throats.

So much has been held in,
so much has seeped through
the soles of our shoes,
that half our lives are beneath the sidewalk.
We sense the deep riot
that is always going on.

In spring there are small explosions.
Signs.  This why
the sidewalk must be repaved.
We hire someone to do it for us,
our tight bodies watching from windows

If the walls could talk.  If the walls could talk they would share memories of family dinners, heated arguments, and passionate nights.  Sidewalks are like walls.  Day after day countless people with countless stories travel across them leaving their stories beneath the pavement.  The little moments of joy and anger and sadness are what come together to weave the fabric of lives.  Stephen Dunn approaches poetry with honesty, capturing the raw beauty of the everyday human experience.  Dunn's poem Beneath the Sidewalk utilizes imagery and metaphors to convey a widely relatable idea in the context of a deeply personal experience.

From breakups to makeups to joyful reunions, the sidewalk experiences a wide range of emotional events.  Conversations that occur on sidewalks are merely "whispers" (line 1) and fragments of a deeper conversation. Dunn captures the image of "tears that have dripped down the insides of faces" (lines 3-4) creating a knot in the stomach of anyone who has ever felt sadness.  The word 'dripped' is important in this image as it conveys a certain emotion.  The tears are not pouring or streaming as in the case of intense momentous emotion.  Dripping implies that the feelings have been pent up for a while and slowly are making their way to the surface.  Following the image of tears is that of "apologies that have gotten lost in all of our throats" (lines 5-6).  More so than a visual image, this is a powerful emotional image.  By using the pronoun 'our', Dunn pulls the reader into the narrative and stirs up memories and images of those times in everyone's lives when apologies were left unsaid. The first stanza is relatively general forcing readers to look into their own sidewalk conversations but the next two stanzas are different in nature.

As Dunn was writing this poem, it seems as though he had a particular person in mind.  Perhaps it was a lost love or someone who was slipping away from him sidewalk conversation after sidewalk conversation.  This sidewalk is a seemly critical place in the context of Dunn's life.  He says that "half our lives are beneath the sidewalk" (line 10).  This phrase indicates that perhaps the sidewalk is located outside of Dunn's longtime home.  Dunn then introduces the negative image of a "deep riot" (line 11) and "small explosions" (line 13).  The words 'riot' and 'explosions' indicate an argument or an upheaval of the pattern of everyday life.  Due to the fact that these upheavals occur, "the sidewalk must be repaved" (line 15).  The word 'repaved' feels temporary.  Pavement, not matter how many times it is redone, always cracks.  In this, Dunn offers an image of the fragility of life and relationships.  He looks into the fragility of his own relationship.

Dunn works with the personal.  He talks about the perfectly imperfect and seemingly insignificant events that shape and create life.  Beneath the Sidewalks invites readers to explore the conversations they have lost beneath the sidewalks while simultaneously providing Dunn a place to look at his own sidewalk stories that make up his life.

Okonkwo's Journey

Okonkwo very much fits the ideal of a heroic character. He holds the strength and sense of duty to protect his people, but also has humbling flaws of insecurity and fear. His journey is also very close to that of Aristotle’s tragic hero, a noble man who falls from greatness but recovers and learns something new. Okonkwo is introduced to the reader first as a character who has to overcome his father's reputation, and then someone who has to battle his own insecurities. At the end of the book, he takes what he has gained from his past two experiences and uses it to defend his village from the outside force of the missionaries.

Okonkwo’s beginnings fill the first two criteria for a tragic hero, noble status with a humble past. His social position is shown by his having three wives and a title. Also, though not discussed among the people, he wears a mask and helps make the decisions of the people through acting as a speaker for a spirit. To gain this position, he had to deal with his father’s debt, poor soil, and lack of yams to grow their own wealth. He also had to prove his strength and loyalty by wrestling the Cat. His lower initial status allow the reader to relate more to Okonkwo. From his elevation, Okonkwo is able to gain the power and mindset of having to protect Umuofia.

Book two of Things Fall Apart gives the other portion of the characterization of a tragic hero. After Okonkwo commits a “female” murder and is banished for six years, he has reached his downfall. Like most tragic heroes, he is not fully to blame because the gun exploded without his intention to injure anyone. In Mbanta, Okonkwo first hears of and begins to resist the missionaries. In this, he begins to learn how to approach offenses as well as let others take charge in certain instances. One example of this is his return to Umuofia, when he realises that he will not be able to give his voice completely in making decisions that impact the entire tribe (though in his head he still thinks they should use more aggressive in getting rid of Christianity).

At the end of the novel, though it does finish with Okonkwo’s suicide, there is a feeling of seriousness but not complete despair. Though he showed growth, Okonkwo still kept the impulsive, insecure side he showed in Ikemefuna’s death and killed again in the same fashion. He showed a journey and gaining notoriety, falling in an accident, and then rebuilding himself to protect others in the style of a tragic hero, but he did not develop enough to save himself.

A Succession of Downfalls

The concept of the tragic hero has permeated literature for thousands of years, and Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart is a perfect example. A tragic hero is marked by a downfall that the protagonist suffers, usually as a result of that character’s flaws. Okonkwo is a tragic hero because he experiences not one, but three downfalls, right in succession.

The first downfall that Okonkwo faces is smaller than the rest, and it does little to affect his life as a whole, but it is still worth noting as part of his tragic hero’s journey. It comes when Okonkwo shoots one of his wives during the Week of Piece. This raises a scandal in his village, and he is punished with a fine of several goods and a large sum of money. Of course, this downfall is a result of a flaw of his: his raging temper. If not for his inability to remain calm when things do not go his way, he would have avoided the whole event, thus avoiding a harbinger for even worse things to come.

The second downfall comes when Okonkwo’s gun misfires at the funeral of a prominent community member. It causes the death of an innocent young man, and Okonkwo is thus exiled from the village for seven years. The punishment is obviously more extreme, in this case, but it is still a downfall and still a result of one of his flaws. This time, that flaw is his antiquated nature. He is obsessed with the great men of his age, always striving to be like the heroes around him when he was mentally and physically in his prime, and thus is clumsy with modern concepts and inventions, like the gun. If he had been more accepting of the changing times, he may have been able to handle the gun competently and avoid killing a fellow citizen.

Finally, the third and final downfall comes when Okonkwo takes his own life. Rather than live with the punishment of killing a white man, or even living under white rule at all, he chooses death, and the loss of his life is the greatest downfall of all. The suicide was caused by multiple factors, including the threat of execution by the new order, but they can all be traced back to one thing: his fear of failure. Mentioned from the beginning of the book, his fear forces him to always be the best, the strongest, the most violent and intimidating. He cannot be seen as weak, he cannot be seen as unsuccessful, and he cannot be seen as succumbing to a new god and a new government. If he had been able to work through this fear, things may have turned out differently.

Of course, there is no telling how the book would have been different if Okonkwo’s flaws disappeared. It may no longer even be a story worth telling. As it is, the story of Okonkwo is very sad, frustrating, and horrible to bear, and it is so because of his status as a tragic hero. He has a great many flaws, and when he falls, these flaws are to blame, every time.

Not tragic, not a hero

Aristotle believed in tragic heroes. These people are not saviors who help all and do no harm, living happily ever after; in fact, to Aristotle tragic heroes are imperfect beings who come to a deadly end. Okonwko, in Things Fall Apart, fits some of Aristotle's requirements, but not all. Even with all of Aristotle's ideas, Okonkwo does not seem remotely like a hero at all, not even a tragic one.

Aristotle's first three ideas on being a tragic hero in theory fit Okonkwo, however one should look at how he got to where he was. A tragic hero needs to be a character of noble stature and greatness. Yes, Okonkwo is revered in his village, but is because he is the best at brutally fighting people to prove his strength. Secondly, the hero is pre-eminently great, but not  perfect. I would not even go as far to say that Okonkwo is great. He beats his wife and children and cannot control his nasty temper. He even tries to shoot one wife! I do not see myself to be anything like Okonkwo at all and cannot identify with him. Okonwo's downfall is his fault. He kills himself, that is entirely his choice. Although this fits the requirement, in this case I believe it was a coward's way out.

The last three basic ideas of being a tragic hero do not apply to Okonkwo. He killed many people and went against village advice, not to mention he killed himself before he was caught so we'll never know if the punishment exceeds the crime. I do believe that his suicide was pure loss. If he had stayed alive to explain why he did what he did, then there would have been some gain and discovery, but he did not. After reading about Okonkwo's fate, I was a bit shocked and very upset with the outcome. Suicide is a very touchy subject and it hurt me to realize that none of the villagers could touch Okonkwo's body because he committed such a sin. It's arguable that the suicide was prideful because he would not be killed by anyone, but himself, however, I think he would have had the villager's support and would not have even been killed.

Though it may seem harsh, Okonwko was not a hero of any kind. His actions override any sensible things he ever did. I simply could not get over his awful temper that drove him to do unthinkable things. And if a hero has confidence, constantly doubting one's strength and killing a boy due to being afraid of what other's think, is not it. Okonkwo was just another character that tried to help himself and made very bad choices.

Checking All the Boxes

Dating as far back as the Greek greats, the idea of a tragic hero, someone for whom the audience can root for that some adverse event befalls the person, has permeated literature as a whole.  The basic story-line usually follows a well-respected, revered person (predominantly male... but I digress) to whom some type of tragedy then strips this person of their prestige.  We can see such people in novels, epics, and now movies.  Certain characteristics are prevalent in Things Fall Apart that lead many to believe that the story is one of the tragic hero Okonkwo.

Okonkwo builds a great presence for himself in the Ibo community by becoming the best wrestler, having three wives, and farming a great quantity of yams.  These qualities Okonkwo establishes of his own accord, with no help from his father, like most men have in Umuofia.  He quickly climbs to the rank of one of the presiding elders of the tribe.  This earns him deep respect and reverence from other members of the tribe.

It is clear, especially at the end of the book, that Okonkwo is not perfect.  He struggles with anger and aggression throughout his life, and is often hard-pressed to contain himself.  When he does the wrong thing, he takes it really hard; if someone else does something that he perceives as wrong, he lets them know, either verbally or physically.  Time and again, Okonkwo's faults shine through his actions.

Okonkwo's initial downfall is unintentional; his gun misfired and he unwittingly killed the boy.   This is incongruous with the definition of a tragic hero, as the hero's downfall is not the result of an accident.  However, it can be argued that his ultimate downfall comes when he hangs himself, which is an entirely personal decision.  The Umuofia see suicide as the lowest of the low, only for the weakest of the weak.  Their previous perceptions of Okonkwo as this great warrior are now shattered because he committed such a heinous act due to his smarting pride.

There was absolutely no reason for Okonkwo to go so far as to kill himself.  Yes, if he lived, he would likely have been ostracized by his tribe or killed by the Commissioner.  However, this in no way justifies his disregard for his own life.  He does not deserve to die is such a way so taboo in his culture.

Even though he decided upon the drastic measure, he most likely learned to not murder someone that he simply disagrees with.  With this realization, he could see that his reaction was too harsh, too quick, and too permanent.  And so, instead of facing the consequences, he escapes the potential wrath by leaving this world forever.

Upon arriving at the scene, Obierika seems resigned rather than depressed.  He instead becomes angry at the Commissioner, saying that the white man "drove [Okonkwo] to kill himself" (p. 208), although he does nothing about this internal rage.  The rest of the tribe seems almost complacent, taking this loss in stride.

Okonkwo most definitely meets all the criteria for a tragic hero.  The fine line is, however, that he is only self-serving; he does not help or aid anyone else, just his own lusts and ambitions.  Most heroes, even the tragic, serve some greater purpose for their immediate community or world.  Stuck in his ways, Okonkwo says only what he wants to say, acts how he wants to act, and believes what he wants to believe.  Such are not traits of someone who is truly great, who deserves a position of stature.

Tragic is a Strong Word

     Aristotle's outline of a tragic hero is very specific and outlines different qualities a tragic hero should have. The character Okonkwo from Achebe's Things Fall Apart certainly shows some of these qualities and characteristics, but I'm not sure he can completely be described as a tragic hero.

     Okonkwo is highly regarded in Umuofia. He is viewed as a great warrior who has gained the respect of those around him. He is a wealthy, successful man who seems to have a lot of say in the village's politics. However, despite his high stature, Okonkwo is far from perfect. His violent tendencies and explosive temper frighten those who are close to him, and his fear of being perceived as weak causes him to be incredibly misogynistic. The downfall of Okonkwo is completely his fault. He just straight up murders a guard in the middle of the village. I mean, I understand that this guy was from a group of people who were trying to force their beliefs and way of life onto Okonkwo, but there was really no reason for him to just chop this guy's head off. Not only that, but this wasn't the first time Okonkwo has been super eager to commit homicide. He murdered Ikmefuna with absolutely no provocation. The village elders even told him not to do it, but he did it anyway. 

     I mean, in my opinion, Okonkwo does deserve a little misfortune. Straight up murdering two people, trying to shoot your wife, and beating your children and wives definitely warrants some serious punishments in my book. Maybe he didn't really deserve to die, but then again, he did commit suicide. By killing himself, he basically chose his own punishment. Okonkwo also doesn't seem to gain any sort of awareness or even feel sorry for his actions. The book ends on an ironic note that reminds the audience of the viewpoint of the Christians. 

     Okonkwo fits some of the characteristics of a tragic hero and although he can be viewed as such, I feel as though some of his punishment is deserved.