This book makes me happy...

Sorry I am not in class today to be really excited about this book but I'm trapped in a smelly hockey arena for the afternoon.
I could write my blog post on how hysterical I find this book, but since I wrote my last one on that perhaps I should find another topic..
One of the greatest lines from this text that relates perfectly to the class is on page 138.."It is the kind of event that should have surfaced as the first chapter of an anguished autobiographical novel." Throughout the course we have discussed what we would put into our autobiographies; would the stories be sad, funny, enlightening? I think the way in which Ondaatje writes is beautiful. He writes his autobiography on a lighter note..his family does not seem to live the perfect life, but he is always able to find humor in not so fabulous situations. My favorite character in the text is obviously Lalla. She reminds me so much of my Grandmother in the way that neither of them care at all what anyone else thinks of them. It is also to think about all the references to flowers in the sections on Lalla....

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

..TAXI CAB DRIVER IN BOSTON...

...remind me to tell you about the Haitian taxi cab driver in Boston....

...or a kaleiodoscope?....

"No story is ever told just once. Whether a memory of funny hideous scandal, we will return to it later and retell the story with additions and this time a few judgements thrown in. In this way history is organized." (Ondaatje 26)

...fractal....

...could the fractal or scattergram be a way of describing Ondaatje's style in "Running in the Family."

Cheers for Ondaatje

In Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, I noticed the involvment of family and stories to tell his story. These are techniques we've seen already, including using family history to tell your own, and splicedness, or the use of other stories to represent the events unfolding in the authors life. Ondaatje also introduces us to humor in his memoir, which we've been slightly deprived of thus far in class. "'Sissy,' Francis' sister, "was always drowning herself because she was an exhibitionist.'" (51) He uses humorous anecdotes about his family and the people around him, and a lot of witty one-liners. We're once again seeing a foreign account of life, but Ondaatje brings his reader into his world. This is one of the more "easy" reads we've had so far, in terms of the enjoyability and fluidity of the memoir.

The Cinnamon Peeler

The poem in Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje entitled "The Cinnamon Peeler" really caught my attention. I can't really explain what it is about this poem that made me so fascinated, but I would like to say that I love the duality of sense and sensuality that occurs throughout. That, and the first lines
"If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow."
drew me in with such an unusual and bluntly put statement

The Photograph

I do believe that the chapter entitled "The Photograph," in Running in the Family, is a reminder of Geoffrey Douglas's "autobiography" The Classmates. Ondaatje looks at a photograph of his parents on their honeymoon and he describes it in full detail, how his parents are posed, what their faces look like, etc. We see the photograph on the following page, and we see that he has done a pretty good job of explaining what the picture looks like to him. His parents are making hysterical faces and his father has written, "What we think of married life," on the back of the photo. In this short chapter, we know exactly what that quotation means. The marriage was doomed.

"Everything is there of course, their good looks behind the tortured faces...The evidence I wanted that they were absolutely perfect for each other. My father's tanned skin, my mother's milk paleness, and this theatre of their own making. It is the only photograph I have found of the two of them together."
(Page 162)

We know right then that they did not take many photographs together, which indicates that the marriage certainly had more downs than it had ups, and I can't blame Doris for leaving Mervyn. He was completely off his rocker and was an alcoholic to boot. However, I am absolutely blown away by Ondaatje's ability to express something so heartbreaking in such a short amount of text. He is clearly still pained by the idea that his parents separated and that his father did not die anywhere near his mother. It seems wrong to him, and he sees in the photograph how right they were for each other. Yet, the last line of the chapter must have been particularly tough for him to write. His parents probably didn't take many photos together, because they were rarely happy with each other toward the end of the marriage. So sad!

Ondaatje's Anecdotes...Are they like scenes?

I think that Michael Ondaatje lays out exactly how is autobiography is going to be set up pretty early on in his book. It's sort of hidden within the text, but I think I figured out exactly why he has set up his autobiography in such a sporadic manner. His sporadicness may not be so sporadic.

"But I love the afternoon hours most. It is now almost a quarter to three. In half an hour the others will waken from their sleep and intricate conversations will begin again. In the heart of this 250-year-old fort we will trade anecdotes and faint memories, trying to swell them with the order of dates and asides, interlocking them all as if assembling the hull of a ship. No story is ever told once. Whether a memory or funny hideous scandal, we will return to it an hour later and retell the story with additions and this time a few judgments throw in. In this way history is organized..."
(Page 26).

Ondaatje's family likes to tell stories to each other, plain and simple. Ondaatje has learned about his family's history in anecdotes and from multiple sources. Why would he not construct his autobiography in a similar fashion? I think his style suits how he grew up and how he took in information as a child and adolescent. I also feel that these anecdotes, especially the vision that he constructs of his grandmother's death, apply directly to the idea of "performance," or a "performative piece." Though I don't think I grasped exactly what "performative" meant in terms of Ondaatje's work, I can clearly see the anecdotes as various scenes in a play or performance piece. Some of the anecdotes could be read on their own and little to no meaning would be lost. Perhaps that is what performative means here?

I think that the last two chapters of the autobiography are particularly representative of this anectdotal style and hearing stories from multiple sources. Ondaatje introduces information about his father's death from the perspective of his sister and his father's two friends, as well as detailing what he was up to the morning his father passed away, or at least that is what I see the last chapter of the text to be. Correct me if I'm wrong?

Final Paper

I just wanted to share my excitement via blog about our final paper. As a writer I've always been interested in finding a way to share my story for when I think my life is worth sharing. I know that some people in the class sort of had a hard time accepting the format of the paper, but I am looking forward to it. I plan to use three author's styles as well as including my own sort of style: collage. I want my memoir to be almost cut-and-paste with techniques from the other autobiographies we have read in class. This should be fun!

Odaatje and Danticat - Family and Self

The element of Ondaatje's work (or the strategy he uses) that most caught my attention when I began reading Running in the Family was his examination of his family rather than of himself. Much like Danticat, Odaatje uses his family to identify himself. He examines his family's history to explain the direction of his own life.
I find it interesting that both of these authors have done this, and I find it interesting that these are the two authors who have most engaged me and some others in the class. Maybe this is because they both use this strategy... Maybe we can better understand these authors for the same reason that these authors believe they can better understand themselves: because we understand their histories, there families' histories, their cultural histories.

I found Kazin fairly engaging, too, mostly because he so richly describes and explains his surroundings (and his relationships to those surroundings, like the synagogue, the block, the movie theater, his kitchen, etc.). I think this suggests that one of the most effective strategies in writing an autobiography is to write around yourself, rather than about yourself. Write about where you're from, both physically (as Kazin does) and - I don't have a real word for this - "familially" or historically (as Ondaatje and Danticat do); write about what led up to you; write about the things that were going on around you as you became you, as those things inevitably effected your development.

Perhaps this is a strategy I will employ in my own autobiography...

...post-colonial and performative and post-modern perspectives...

"Perhaps, then, it is more helpful to approach autobiographical telling as a performative act." (Smith & Watson 47)

"A performative view of life narrative theorizes autobiographical occasions as dynamic sites for the performance of identities constitutive of subjectivity. In this view

, identities are not fixed or essentialized attributes of autobiographical subjects, rather they are produced and reiterated through cultural norms, and remain provisional and unstable." (Smith & Watson 145)

why is it that cheese is being wrapped individually, slice by slice?

The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --
For -- put them side by side --
The one the other will contain
With ease -- and You -- beside --

The Brain is deeper than the sea --
For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue --
The one the other will absorb --
As Sponges -- Buckets -- do --

The Brain is just the weight of God --
For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound --
And they will differ -- if they do --
As Syllable from Sound --

-E.D.

though she's always been my favorite poet, i never appreciated the weight of her work until recent years. she's got hundreds and hundreds of poems to show for all her time spent in this physical state she seemed to be so weary of. and though i could list pick at least a few hundred as being extraordinary, 'the brain is wider than the sky' would definetly be among my top 5.

i find that there is an incredible level truth behind the simply formed letters of this poem. she's talking about infinity and divinity within our brains - what a beautiful truth we so rarely permit ourselves to acknowledge!

i believe the greatest strength and the greatest flaw of our human species, is our incessant instinct to divide things. not just anythings, but EVERYthings. we are constantly separating, labeling, categorizing, organizing, stereotyping, and so on and so on, until everything has its own everything. individuality has become the most important state of being for the world today, and not just for people, but for every aspect of existance, the physical and in the intangible. we are separated by towns, states, political parties, race, religion, the size of our income checks, our GPA's, and even our worth as humans - reflected in the value of life insurance policies. food isn't just food, its brand names! apples aren't apples, they're granny smith or macintosh. sex isn't just sex, its trojan or lifestyle. sleeping is no longer the time you spend mulling around in the unified consciousness of the world within the infinities of your brain. instead, it belongs to Ambien and Lunesta. its crazy what we're doing . . . putting sleep up against sleep!

but . . . . because of this class i've been noticing that in a lot of cases, the separation serves us as a means to better bring things together. the connection-through-division i've read in this course seems prevalent in every autobiography we've discussed this semester. every writer had to separate, in one way or another, in order to get back to that wholeness they were writing to convey.


so - in short!
this poem means a lot to me for many reasons, and i think everyone could benefit from reading it over more than a few times. understanding it is an even sweeter permission.

...attentiveness...

Kazin was attracted to the French philosopher Simone Weil's thought that modern rootlessness as attributable to "a lost contact with the world's recollection of divinity" and compared her definition of prayer - 'attentiveness without object' - to Emily Dickinson's attentiveness in beginning a poem 'without knowing what she was beginning."

Kazin for Jenna

American Reference
"I remember how the checkbones worked in his face and how the gray little Assyrian beard leaped into the air as he threw his arms out in entreaty. The crisp "American" eloquence of his speech bewildered me as I listened to him from the open window of that room, now mine, where our cousin had lived with us for so many years." (140-141)

Kazin makes yet another reference to American culture, as well as the characteristics of Americans.

Descriptive Memory
"There was still another, with a small growth of beard--they called him Ilyich, in honor of Lenin--a boy much older than the rest of us, a strange boy who lived by himself in a furnished room off Dumont Avenue, who had sworn never to shave until the boss class freed Tom Mooney. His long matted hair and beard gave him so archaic a look that I could never take it in that he was really there with me, talking in his gently condescending voice as I stared at the clotheslines."

Here, I can so vividly picture what Kazin is describing. Even as he is recalling this from deep in his memory, Kazin uses descriptive words and phrases that assist the reader to mentally visualize each and every detail he is describing. (147)

Ondaatje Makes Me Chuckle..

I am always a big fan of books that make me laugh, but it is not too often that I find a book I have to read for class that makes me laugh--so I'm pretty excited. The writing style in this text is so descriptive and beautiful I feel as thought I am next to Ondaatje as he is inserting images into his memory. I think it is this ability to be so incredibly descriptive that makes the novel so humorous. I also find this book so wonderful because it describes a dysfunctional family in a positive light.
Here are some of my favorite lines from the text--read and laugh : )
"It was two and a half years later, after several modest letters about his successful academic career, that his parents discovered he had not even passed the entrance exam and was living off their money in England." p. 31
"After a large meal and more drink my father announced that now he must shoot himself because Doris had broken off the engagement. Aelian, especially as he was quite drunk too, had a terrible time trying to hide every gun in the Ceylon Light Infantry building." p. 35
"And poor Wilfred Bartholomeuz who had large teeth was killed while out hunting when one of his companions mistook him for a wild boar." p.40

God & Kazin

"Yet it puzzled me that no one around me seemed to take God very seriously. We neither believed nor disbelieved. He was our oldest habit. For me, He was horribly the invisible head above the Board of Superintendents, the Almighty Judge Who watched you in every thought and deed, and to Whom I prayed for help in passing midterms and finals, His prophetess Deborah leading me safely through so long as I remembered to say under my breath as I walked in the street, 'Desolate were the open towns in Israel, they were desolate, until that I arose, Deborah.' He filled my world with unceasing dread; He had such power over me, watched me so unrelentingly, that it puzzled me to think He had to watch all the others with the same care; one night I dreamed of Him as a great engineer in some glass-walled control tower high in the sky glaring fixedly at a brake on which my name alone was written. In some ways he was simply a mad tyrant, someone I needed constantly to propitiate. Deborah alone would know how to intercede for me. Then He became a good-luck piece I carried around to get me the things I needed. I resented this God of Israel and the Board of Superintendents; He would never let me rest." page 46

"Yet I never really wanted to give him up. In some way it would have been hopeless to justify to myself-I had feared Him so long-He fascinated me, He seemed to hold the solitary place I most often went back to. There was a particular sensation connected with this-not of peace, not of certainty, not of goodness-but of depth; as if it were there I felt right to myself at last." page 47

Sorry those were so long. I felt that they encapsulated not only the essence of Kazin's spiritual and intellectual growth and fears, but many others as well. These passages are very relatable; it's hard for us humans to fully grasp the concept of an infinite and ubiquitous God. If He's listening to ME then how can He also be listening to another person, let alone billions? I also think there's a point in time where everyone questions either their particular faith or the existence of a higher power in general. In Kazin's instance, he was born into a Jewish family and culture and refers to God saying, "He was our oldest habit." Judaism becomes a part of their identity and daily lives and practices, but going through the motions is entirely different than actually having your own spiritual and personal relationship with God. I also like the imagery of his dream with God in a control tower. It's entirely believable yet portrays a scarier side of God, like he's Big Brother rather than a loving Father. Faith, whether strong, weak, absent, or questioning, always plays such a large role in the lives of humans and we've certainly seen that in the autobiographies we've read so far (Mary McCarthy comes to mind). It's just another human element that as a reader I am able to relate to and further understand the author (how many of us can say we've prayed to pass midterms and finals?), even if he's of a different faith.

Religion and movies in Kazin's city

We were asked what sorts of divisions we had noticed in Kazin's autobiography, and I keep returning to the same one over and over: Kazin's almost comparison of the movie theater and his synagogue. It seems as though the movie house holds more power, more influence, and more mystery for Kazin than does the synagogue.

"That poor worn synagogue could never in my affections compete with that movie house, whose very lounge looked and smelled to me like an Oriental temple. It had Persian rugs, and was marvelously half-lit at all hours of the day; there were great semi-arcs of colored glass above the entrance to the toilets, and out of the gents' game a vaguely foreign, deliciously stinging deodorant that prepared me, on the very threshold of the movie auditorium itself, for the magic within. There was never anything with such expectancy to it as that twilit lounge." - Pg. 40...

and

"Though there was little ritual that was ever explained to me, and even less in the atmosphere of the synagogue that in my heart i really liked, I assumed that my feelings in the matter were of no importance; I belonged there before the Ark, with the men, sitting next to an uncle. I felt a loveless intimacy with the place." - Pg. 44.

Clearly, the movie house is much more interesting and appealing to Kazin (and I assume also to the reader when we are exposed to Kazin's impressions of the two). He even goes on to say that in the theater he "knew a secret happiness, as if [his] mind had at last been encouraged to seek its proper concerns" (pg. 41). This sounds much more like something someone would say about a synagogue than a movie theater, but for Kazin religion appears to have been somewhat empty. Even after he discovers a "deepness" to prayer (pg. 101) that he had previously not been aware of, Kazin is still left feeling out of touch with God and with the practices of his synagogue. The prayer itself seems to "encourage Kazin's mind to seek its proper concerns," but religion itself (or at least the practice of religion) cannot do this for him.

This is an interesting parallel that Kazin draws, and I found that it somehow resonated with me; perhaps this is because I, too, have never felt inspired by organized religion, and I can much more easily relate to his experiences at the movies than I can with his experiences in the synagogue.

just something i liked . . . .

this is a passage tied a lot of things together in a way that i could relate to. it's the second paragraph on page 114.

"Under the quilt at night, I could dream even before I went to sleep. Yet even there I could never see Mrs. Solovey's face clearly, but still ran round and round the block looking for her after i had passed her kitchen window. It was an old trick, the surest way of getting to sleep: I put the quilt high over my head and lay there burrowing as deep into the darkness as I could get, thinking of her through the long black hair the women on the counter wore. Then i would make up dreams before going to sleep: a face behind the lattice of a summer house, half-hidden in thick green leaves; the hard dots sticking out of the black wallpaper below; the day my mother was ill and our cousin had taken me to school. The moment i felt myself drifting into sleep, my right knee jerked as if i had just caught myself from tripping over somtheing in the gutter."

while i think this passage is beautifully worded, i was also drawn to it's illustration of what is between real and what is made up. while kazin is imagining a fictional narrative within his dozing mind, they seem to slowly melt into memories which were real. i also really liked the idea of the darkness within the quilt being the form, which physically enabled him to create these non-physical memories/dreams. it is much like the autobiography itself. physically, the book holds the content - the written word of the authors past. but the intangible memories; the images and emotions evoked, always seem to be floating somewhere above the book itself.

this transition from wake to sleep reminded me of the boundary for authors of autobiographies, and how they have to go about recreating their memories. i think it will always be hard to draw the line between truth and lie, when your dealing with memory. since everyone's perceptions are always completley subjective, and relative to their ever-changing emotions, personality, morals & values, etc., there can never be a one, black and white truth. the truth is in vibrant colors! and no one's red is the same as the guy next to him.

A Walker in the City

Kazin's memoir is a very engaging read. I like how the reader has the feeling of being taken on a tour through his home (his actual home and the part of the city in which he lives) and also a tour through his family history. I really find the dynamic between the different nationalities of the authors we've seen so far to be incredibly interesting and important. In each autobiography, we've seen suffering, but it's interesting to see how the foreign writers all eventually make their way to America to acquire freedom, which was ironically where Douglass was literally enslaved. Douglass's memoir brings about shame, horror, and embarrassment in the country's history, but also shows a bit of hope and what was to come. Moving on to the rest of the memoirs, Danticat's is probably the most devastating with the family tragedies that occurred, but America was her family's beacon of light. With Kazin, we see his roots grab hold in Brownsville and create a new microcosm of his family's heritage.

"The light pouring through window after window in that great empty varnished assembly hall seemed to me the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. It was that thorough varnished cleanness that was of the new land, that light dancing off the glasses of Theordore Roosevelt..." (page 26)

Senses

While reading A Walker in the City I am struck by how many senses Kazin uses to describe his surroundings. The text is brought to life by the sights, smells, and textures of his environment. During the section "The Kitchen" Kazin describes the brilliant white of the recently white-washed walls. He describes the textures of his mother's dress fabrics. The smells of the table overflowing with Sabbath food.
When I read this I thought do we all think of home in terms of our senses? Or is home something we describe with emotion. When I think of my home the only smell that comes to mind is the scent of the wood stove. Home to me is thought of as simply happiness, but maybe this is because I had never thought to describe it in terms of my senses.

Maybe this is just my "I'm really excited to go home for Thanksgiving" post.

Kazin on Kazin

"...a key to my book is of course this constant sense of division, even of flagrant contradiction between wanting the enclosure of home and the open city, both moral certainty and intellectual independence. ...to rebel against the tradition was somehow to hold fast to it." (Alfred Kazin at a symposium at the New York Public Library in 1987).

The Pressing Question to Mrs. Solovey

"You have lived in many places."
"Oui. Nous avons habité des pays differénts. La Russie, la France, l'Italie, la Palestine. Yes, many places."
"Why did you come here?" I asked suddenly.
She looked at me for a moment. I could not tell what she felt, or how much I had betrayed. But in some way my question wearied her. She rose, made a strange stiff little bow, and went out.
~A Walker in the City p. 130

What stood out to me the most in this passage was that "moment" of not knowing what Mrs. Solovey felt. It's a foot-in-mouth moment that I'm sure we've all encountered at some point. Especially with immigration or even just small moves, there's always the question of why they went to where they did. Everyone has their reasons, and some people are proud to say exactly what it was that made them settle on a certain place. Others, however, may have no explanation or no desire to share so they can keep certain events in the past, avoid a sob story, stop any further questions, or many more reasons. It's interesting to get a glimpse of discomfort (as I'll call it) in a situation that may be different from the majority of what we see today, but in a way that it is a believable situation.

More on Freedom and "Slavery" in Kazin

"In every cry of every man,

In every infant's cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."

-William Blake: London

This is the epigram that appears at the beginning of Kazin's autobiography. I don't think literary critics pay close enough attention to authors' uses of epigrams. I know exactly what kind of mental journey I am going to go on in Kazin's autobiography just by reading the epigram above. I already know a theme: the opposition between being enslaved and being free. Of course, in Kazin's case, he is not literally enslaved like our dear friend, Frederick. Kazin is enslaved by the idea that he does not know who he really is, and he has lost connections with what it means to be Jewish. America has done what it does best, Americanized another family of immigrants. That is why Kazin describes his feelings of lonliness. He is wearing the "mind-forg'd manacles" of misidentity (yup, I think I made up another word).

The epigram also relates directly to Alfred's conversation with Mrs. Solovey that I dissected in full detail in my previous entry. The "mind forg'd manacles" that Mrs. Solovey hears are the English words spoken every day by every one around her. These words are often spoken by immigrants just like her, immigrants who should stay attached to their native languages and values.

I always loved speaking French...

First of all, it made me quite pleased that I could understand most of the French that was utilized by Kazin in the third chapter of A Walker in the City. It definitely brought me back to my high school days when I was struggling so hard to learn that darn language. I took five consecutive years of French, and I was willing to bet that I would not remember any of it come college. Apparently, I have been proven wrong. I thought that a particularly poignant passage in the text included Mrs. Solovey's feelings on speaking a second language:

"Do you not think it is tiresome to speak the same language all the time? Their language! To feel that you are in a kind of prison, where the words you speak every day are like the walls of your cell? To know with every word that you are the same, and no other, and that it is difficult to escape? But when I speak French to you I have the sensation that for a moment I have left, and I am happy" (Page 127).

Talk about deep! I really love the way this passage sounds, and I enjoy reading it out loud, because I feel like so much feeling can be conveyed in just a few short sentences. There are few conversations that take place in Kazin's autobiography, so this one between Alfred and Mrs. Solovey must mean something. Obviously, Mrs. Solovey, Alfred's "Anna," is making a statement on the English language. She feels as if she has assimilated too much into American culture. She has lost her sense of identity and feels lonely because of it. She literally believes that every times she opens her mouth to speak, she has lost a piece of herself, because English is not her native language. Speaking French frees her from "the prison," in a way, because not all Americans can speak that language. Not all Americans can understand it. She feels happy, because she has something in her possession (the ability to speak another language) that not all English-speaking Americans have.

I wonder if she feels this same sense of freedom when she speaks Hebrew...

Response to class & Abby

Adding to what Abby said, I think it really comes down to how well one can write their story. At the start of the semester, we discussed autobiography in terms of questions: What makes a story worth reading?; Why would anyone want to read your story? and so on...I think what can be partially concluded at this point is that anything can be interesting depending on the "hook" you use to entice your readers and reel them in with, and on the flip side, you can have the most compelling story in the world, but if you can't translate that story smoothly onto the page it just won't reach people the way you may want it to. Perhaps some stories are better told orally and some are just better written down. Does that mean the writer trades vivacity in person for animation on the page, and vice versa? Not always, but we've certainly seen this.



PS--I totally support a class trip to NYC.

Response: visitors to the class

I guess the thing that our visitors made most clear to me is that writing style, clarity, and ability (for lack of a better word) are really what makes a story worth reading. Maybe that doesn't sound like groundbreaking news... but we always talk about what makes a story (a life) worth telling... and I'm beginning to think that's not really an important question at all. Or perhaps the answer is simply "whether or not it gets a good writer to render it." I think the real question should be "what about this story inspired this author to tell it to us?" or "why did this author invest such effort in creating such a well-made piece?" I guess the question I'm most interested in is not what made the story worth telling, but what made the author want to share it? Arrogance? A need to purge the story from his or her life? Belief that it could help those who read it? There are many answers to this question.

memoir = diet autobiography..... i beg to differ!

just coming from class, there are a few ideas freshly floating around in my mind.

in the beginning, we dismissed "memoir" from our intangible class list of important-sometimes-not-real-words. i believe the reason was that 'memoir' is not a literary term, whereas autobiography is. in defense of memoir, i'd like to say that that type of black and white reasoning is not satisfactory enough for me to strike 'memoir' from our list of important terms/ideas to consider. not only do i believe the term 'memoir' evokes quite a different definition than 'autobiography' does, but i also think that almost all written works should be considered valid under some kind of appreciation for creation.

explaining these two points . . . . when i think of what a memoir is in comparison to what an autobiography encompasses, the great weight of difference is in the content, its translation, and the portrayal of all involved persons. for me, a memoir is like a written memory. it focuses on a specific time or event in someones life and is retold through a foggy lense of subjective perceptions and influencing emotions. i feel as though they are mostly concerned with repainting the experiences of the person writing them, by way of a natural embellishment that comes with the filter of memory. we scarcely remember moments from a strictly objective point of view, and so while we are recounting actions of a true event, 'ourselves' will always heavily influence those recreations, whether we know it or not. i also think memoirs focus more strongly on the main character, rather than those surrounding them. while sometimes it is necessary to include information about others in order to gain a better sense of context, i think memoirs stay closer to their owners.

autobiographies on the other hand, evoke a more factual foundation for me. i feel as though they are the moments and events of someones life, laid out on the page in form and analysis. though authors of autobio.'s also utilize that subjective filter of perception to relay their messages and meanings, i think the moments were first created to serve an objective purpose. i suppose i think that autobiographies are more limiting than a memoir. i also expect them to be longer and to provide a more 'complete' look at whats happened in the life of the writer. i'm not saying that one is better than the other, just that i think memoir is as valid a way to write about ones self as autobiography is. . . . .

Boland: Searching for an Identity

"My solitude was circumstantial. I had returned to Ireland in my teens; I had no knowledge of the Irish language. Therefore, I had to do the General Certificate of the British system. I was an erratic, hit-and-miss student, averse to discipline and hardly able to connect my intense reading of poetry with any other part of my studies." page 73

I found this passage interesting for a few reasons. The first is the fact that she had no knowledge of the Irish Language; was it because she had left, or was it because she grew up while Ireland was still struggling to escape the grasp of the British, however loose it may have been at that point? Also, I think it's worthy to note that she found no interest in any subject but poetry, as she became such a prominent female poet in a patriarchal society (especially in Irish literature). I also think it's strange that she couldn't connect poetry with anything else, considering many poets find their subject matter in everything, including the mundane.

It's a nice transition from the previous chapter, "In Search of a Nation" to this one, "In Search of a Language." Boland is constantly searching for an identity, which is reflected in this memoir as well as her poetry, and is a common thread we've seen through all of the autobiographies we've read so far.

i apologize for the disruption of chronology...

but there was something i wanted to point out in danticats "brother i'm dying" during a class , when we ran out of time to get around to the whole room. we were discussing the private v.s the public and finding specific examples of that in the text.

on page 171, danticat retells her uncles experience of waking up to gunfire and chaos; the day the government tried to eradicate the gangs from the city by force. though she herself was not a part of the experience, she gave great details about the day and the actions of her uncle. What struck me, was when she spoke about her uncle looking around at all the debris and destruction, and thought to himself how he was happy his wife was deceased so that should wouldn't have to witness such horrible conditions.

for me, to be greatful of someones death is quite a heavy thought. in my opinion, to have a sincere thought like that would require an incredible amount of love and concern for the deceased person and an unimaginable state of pain for whomever is having the thought. having considered how deep an emotion like that is, i would like to know why Danticat would write something like that.

i think the only way for that statement about her uncle to be true, would be if he had actually admitted this to her. i dont believe that's a kind of emotion you can assume about someone. for me this ties into the private v.s. public because it is exactly that. it is the incredibly personal idea of someone other than the writer, being made extremely public, in attempts to portray the private aspects of the author.

the fact that danticat was not even present during that moment in her uncles life is crucial to this story working for her autobiography. not physically being there allows her to become an omnipresent entity for the retelling, which grants her access to really private information. this personal aspect of her uncle in turn, shapes the image of herself. i think it's incredibly intriguing how she separates herself in order to get closer.

and thats all i have to say about that!
sorry its so outdated.....

Language

Apparently this is my semester to become obsessed with language in text. As I read all of the texts for this class I have been so struck by how each other uses language in their texts. While reading Danticat and Nabokov I noticed their uses of language because they used more than one language in their texts. After noticing this I began to look at how they used the English language to strengthen their works. Did they use short sentences? Periodic sentences? Poor grammar? Once I began to think about the seemingly simple aspects of language the texts became so much more than words in phrases.
While reading Kazin I began to think about my language theme again while reading pages 22-23. In these pages Kazin describes how difficult it was for him to speak. It is interesting for me to think about writing down the difficulties of speech...
I think I'll stop rambling now : )

A trip to NYC through Kazin

Similar to what Casey was saying about having these same memories, I can find myself in Kazin's novel but not as an immigrant. Every time I visit New York City, as a tourist, I am always completely fascinated in my surroundings. While reading A Walker in the City, I could picture exactly what he was talking about. Not by location, but rather by senses and his feelings towards it. Especially coming from a small state in a relatively small city, NYC has a different atmosphere and life of its own. Though I couldn't imagine living there, it is always a treat to regain the same sense of wonderment as I walk down each street.

As soon as I started reading Kazin's memoir, I felt like I was talking to a member of the family. It was weird, but I think it was because of the Eastern European background. I was raised in a Ukrainian family and everything that Kazin talks about in his childhood, the feelings for religion (I was raised Catholic), the fact that no one was ever allowed to go hungry and most poignantly, that his parents wanted him to be better than they were in their new country, could have been straight out of my first years. It can be strange when a memoir seems to tell you your own memories but it is fascinating at the same time. It definitely bridges time to hear these stories but also offers a way to connect.

Kazin's Use of Place as an Agent to Memory

Kazin is constantly conjuring memories through his observations of places he once knew. Geoffrey Douglass utilized props as his agent to memories, so perhaps that is what Kazin is doing in his autobiography. Kazin often describes a specific place, in which he spent time during his childhood or adolescence and then recalls exactly what occurred in those places. The places actually help Kazin introduce plotlines (mostly in the form of short anecdotal stories) and even some characters.

“In the darkness you could never se where the crane began. We liked to trap the enemy between the slabs and sometimes jumped them from great mounds of rock just in from the quarry. A boy once fell to his death that way, and they put a watchman there to keep us out. This made the slabs all the more impressive to me, and I always aimed first for that yard whenever we played follow-the-leader” (Page 87).

This is an instance in Kazin’s autobiography where he is able to take a place that he was familiar with and transform that place into a mirror that reflected his insides and what he was like as person, or what he is like in the present. A boy fell to his death in the quarry and yet, Kazin can’t help but still want to play there. From this little story in this particular place, we learn that Kazin was (and perhaps still is) a risk-taker of sorts and that he had a certain amount of respect for dangerous places. The quarry caused someone to die, and Kazin is enamored with that place’s natural power.

Kazin and I Agree that "Character" is Crap

"Character. I always felt anxious when I heard the word pronounced. Satisfactory as my ‘character’ was, on the whole, except when I stayed too long in the playground reading; outrageously satisfactory, as I can see now, the very sound of the word as out teachers coldly gave it out from the end of their teeth, with a solemn weight on each dark syllable, immediately struck my heart cold with fear—they could not believe I really had it. Character was never something you had; it had to be trained in you, like a technique. I was never very clear about it” (Page 20)

Me either, Alfred. Lack of “character” is the whole reason I was never inducted into my National Honor Society at my high school. It was a load of crap, let me tell you. I graduated fifth in my class, performed multitudes of community service work, especially with the community theatre troupe in town, and I served on Student Council. I had been the Foreign Language Student of the Year, and I had been named Social Studies Student of the Month three times. Yet, lack of character, that’s what killed me. I took that to heart for awhile, and I still don’t think I understand it completely. How can someone have a lack of character? How could Alfred’s teachers not believe he had character? What exactly is this ambiguous term, “character,” comprised of? Is it integrity? Is it enthusiasm? Is it a sense of self-value? Does it mean being an absolute brown-noser? I don’t think I’ll ever know. Alfred goes on to say that he believes character is related to (or maybe really is) the definition for unwavering obedience. I think I may agree with that, because though I participated in plenty of extracurricular activities and spoke up for the student body, I caused controversy. I was vocal. I didn’t let things die. I was a rebel-rouser, in some cases. I think that is something that my high school couldn’t take. Shame. Shame. Shame…

The Classmates

I found the chapter "Familiar Strangers" from The Classmates to be very engrossing. It is interesting to see how the reconnecting of old classmates helped the writer to reflect on not only his past at this school, but who he used to be and who he came to become. The emails of his old schoolmates helped to bring back memories of these years he had long since forgotten, and if it hadn't been for this compilation of stories and remembrances, he may never have been able to recall any of them. This is why some find it helpful to keep journals, or even just take pictures. You capture a moment of time as it happens so that you can look back on it later and piece together the snapshots of your life. His classmates were his photographs and journal entries and helped to bring back those times that had faded into the background over the years.

The Classmates..

It has been awhile since I have been as engrossed in a piece of literature as I was in The Classmates. I believe my interest in the text was due to the fact that it was so easy to relate to. Although I have only been away from high school for three years I can already look back and see the different groups that were created, and how people have changed since their graduation. I was struck by how memory is used throughout the reading. It is as though memory is a gift that allows us to reconnect and to remember the past. I don't believe that any of our other texts have been as explicit in discussing how memory has made an impact on their lives. I am sure that all of the authors have discussed this at one point or another, but perhaps this text stood out to me the most because I was able to relate to it the most. Anyway...I really enjoyed it!

Ann Page Stecker for Katharine Black

 katharine c black said...

Dear Autobiography Class,

Thank you for your interest and particularly for your generosity in class yesterday. Your questions were apt and interesting, and Dear Autobiography Class Members—
engaging for me to answer and continue to think about.

I did think of an additional comment to one question someone asked about process, about the way I learned to write dialogue, or some other "how to" question. In fact, I wrote letters for years and years, not just thank-you notes, and formal notes, but conversations to a willing reader, whom i called Letter Reader. I wrote out theories, conversations, and responses and reactions to the hate letters. I actually didn't know for years whether the Reader, read my letters, because there was never any overt response. Occasionally there would be some form of "check-in" but that regular, daily, self-analysis and checking out puzzles and problems in writing turned out to be the writing practice I'd not had in more formal settings. I articulated my responses and feelings in those letters, as though in a journal, but less self-consciously since i wrote them and sent them off immediately, and then they were gone. However, because there really was an active reader, I did work on increasing clarity and sharpness of presentation. Since it was in the format of letters, it turned out that I had been practicing dialogue all that time, and it turned out I was comfortable writing both narrative as well as conversations.

I'd thought that there was a day on which I began to write the pieces you all saw chunks of, but then it occurred to me that I'd been writing regularly for years. What was different for me, was choosing to write something I wanted to be read by others. I had actually already begun to build the tools by which to do that in regular, almost daily, writing of some kind.

I wish you each and all every success and joy in the projects and directions you choose. Thank you for your hospitality yesterday.

Peace to you each,

Katharine

A Reader in the Class

While reading, one moment struck me as odd, and that was a passage where Kazin talks about what God means to him.

"Yet it puzzled me that no one around me seemed to take God very seriously. We neither believed nor disbelieved. He was our oldest habit. For me, He was horribly the invisible head above the Board of Superintendents, the Almighty Judge Who watched you in every though and deed, and to Whom I prayed for help in passing midterms and finals, His prophetess Deborah leading me safely through so long as I remembered to say under my breath as I walked in the street, 'Desolate were the open towns in Israel, they were desolate, until that I arose, Deborah.' He filled my world with unceasing dread; He had such power over me, watched me so unrelentingly, that it puzzled me to think He had to watch all the others with the same care; one night I dreamed of Him as a great engineer in some glass-walled control tower high in the sky glaring fixedly at a brake on which my name alone was written. In some ways He was simply a mad tyrant, someone I needed constantly to propitiate. Deborah alone would know how to intercede for me. Then He became a good-luck piece I carried around to get me the things I needed. I resented this God of Israel and of the Board of Superintendents; He would never let me rest."
A Walker in the City p. 46-7

This (long) passage to me speaks to what God might mean to a lot of children raised in a religion tend to view God as someone who has been introduced so strongly that they don't really know any other way to view Him. I would also like to compare this quote to a passage in another autobiography by James Joyce called "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" in which he refers to himself as "he" rather than "I" and under the name Stephen Dedalus. The quote goes:

"It was very big to think about everything and everywhere. Only God could do that. He tried to think what a big thought that must be but he could think only of God. God was God’s name just as his name was Stephen. Dieu was the French for God and that was God’s name too; and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that it was a French person that was praying. But though there were different names for God in all the different languages in the world and God understood what all the people who prayed said in their different languages still God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God."
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man p. 28

I found the two quotes similar, and am interested if anyone else can see this strange comparison. What's interesting is that Kazin is writing as a Jew, and Joyce as a Catholic. Any thoughts?

APS for Jenna

"Object Lessons" (39)
"This was not ordinary nature loving. I was not really a nature lover anyway. I resisted walks in Hyde Park whenever I could, and I was restless when we went out at school, paired off in the dreaded "crocodile", to pick up polished chestnuts or gather acorns. This was different. Not a season but a place. Not an observant affection but a thwarted possessiveness: a rare and virulent homesickness."

"A Walker in the City" (7, 12)
"Everything seems so small here now, old, mashed-in, more rundown even than I remember it, but with a heartbreaking familiarity at each door that makes me wonder if I can take in anything new, so strongly do I feel in Brownsville that I am walking in my sleep."

"So that when poor Jews left, even Negroes, as we said, found it easy to settle on the margins of Brownsville, and with the coming of spring, bands of Gypsies, who would rent empty stores, hang their rugs around them like a desert tent, and bring a dusty and faintly sinister air of carnival into our neighborhood."

Eavan Boland Transitioning to Alfred Kazin

"There is a duality to place. There is the place which existed before you and will continue after you have gone...Both of them prove to me there is the place that happened and the place that happens to you. That there are moments in work, in perception, in experience when it's hard to distangle them from each other. And that, at such times, the inward adventure can become so emeshed with the outward continuum that we live, not in one of the other, but at the intersection"
(Boland 154-155).

Boland writes of a duality between places that expresses the difference between the actual, external place or environment, and the place as a means of transformation, or the way a place can have an effect on you. This, of course, reminds me of my Pathway class "Betwixt and Between." Boland believes that a person actually exists at the point of intersection between the outward and inward forms of place. Obviously, this is a liminal passage in her autobiography and a particularly deep and multi-faceted point. This point also relates to the title of her text Object Lessons, which tells the reader that the writer has learned something abstract from something tangible and concrete. The "objects" can literally be external environments that are observed and taken in with the senses, and the "lessons" refer to the inward adventures, or the effects a place can have on an individual.

Kazin expresses a different type of duality in terms of place in his autobiograhy A Walker in the City.

"The old drugstore on our corner has been replaced by a second-hand furniture store; the old candy store has been replaced by a second-hand furniture store...It looks as if our old life has been turned out into the street, suddenly reminds me of the nude shamed look furniture on the street always had those terrible first winters of the depression..."
(Kazin 78).

Here, there is a place that Kazin remembers living in and the place that exists now as he observes it many years later. His memory passes judgment on the place, which still has the ability to bring him back to how he felt during the days of the depression. This type of duality exists for any person who has moved away from a place and chosen to return to that place for a visit one day. It's always intriguing to see how much a place can change over the course of the years population-wise, technologically, visually, etc., etc. I remember Meridian as a farm town with a population of about 5,000 people. There were literally no chain restaurants in the town, one elementary school, and a lot of open space with multitudes of trees. Now, Meridian is a prosperous industrial center in Idaho and thriving suburb of Boise. It's nothing like how I remember. Yet, there is still an old gas station near my house that has not changed in the least. Its branding is still identical to how it was ten years ago and it still sells the same delicious frozen yogurt. That is the string that I hold on to to relive the past when I visit Meridian, similar to how the furniture on the streets reminds Kazin of his childhood and adolescence during the Depression.

Eavan Boland and the importance of the written word

"I had no words for it, no way of structuring perception and no one to structure it for me. Yet I was beginning to understand that the marks on the page were a fraction of an inch high but reached a hundred miles deep into a country's past; it's fears, superstitions, and memories." - Pg. 92-93

This short passage from Eavan Boland's Object Lessons points to the importance of, necessity of, words as history. This is an important concept to understand in any literature course, it seems to me, and particularly in an autobiography course because words become both public and private history, political and personal record keeping, much as we saw in Edwidge Danticat's work. Words can easily be considered insignificant, for they are only "a fraction of an inch high," but the meanings they hold, the ideas that live inside the printed letters and spaces, are vitally important in remembering, recording, proving, telling.

The Classmates

Colby-Sawyer College Hosts Geoffrey Douglas for Reading from 'The Classmates: Privilege, Chaos, and the End of an Era'
NEW LONDON, N.H., 10-28-2008 — Colby-Sawyer College will host author Geoffrey Douglas, who will read from his new memoir, The Classmates: Privilege, Chaos, and the End of an Era, about his and his classmates' experiences during and after St. Paul's School, a prestigious private school in Concord, N.H.
The reading, part of the Humanities Department's Word by Word Series, will be held on Monday, Nov. 10, at 4 p.m. at the Archives of the Susan Colgate Cleveland Library/Learning Center. The event is free and open to the public.
A member of the St. Paul's School class of 1962, Douglas reconnected with fellow alumni through an e-mail group when their classmate, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, ran for the U.S. presidency in 2004. His renewed contact with classmates led Douglas to explore what had happened to other alumni following their graduation and coming of age in the tumultuous 1960s, which became the inspiration for the book.
Tim Clark, in a book review for Yankee Magazine, describes the memoir as three books: a memoir of his Douglas's years at St. Paul's, from which he was expelled in 1961; a travelogue of the turbulent decades that followed; and a portrait of his former classmates, including Senator Kerry. Douglas is a long-time contributing write at Yankee Magazine and currently teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell.
Douglas's stories about his classmates--he follows the lives of six of them, including Kerry--all include what Clark describes as “the burden of expectations”: “Some of his classmates buckled under the load. Some, like Kerry, rose to the pinnacle of success -- yet even then, Kerry remained the outsider he had been at St. Paul's.” Clark concludes that Classmates “is a touching, troubling book that should be read by every commencement speaker before dropping the leaden mantle of expectations on another graduating class.”

ANOTHER WRITER/AUTOBIOGRAPHER!

Geoffrey Douglas, author of The Classmates: Privilege, Chaos, and the End of an Era, will read from his memoir Monday afternoon from 4 - 5:00 in the Archives in the Library and will attend our class on Tuesday. There is an excerpt of his memoir outside my office for you to persue, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.

The conversation in class today with Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black was eye opening for me, however it left me with two distinct things to think about...

First, how should one truly end an autobiography? If it is supposed to be the story of one's life, then when should someone write it? Should it be ended at a point to leave the reader thinking? Should it be ended at a point to leave the reader satisfied? I understand this is a bit rhetorical, however when Rev. Black was speaking about he "Hate Letters Narrative" she said that she may never get to finish it because the torture may never end. In my mind she should still publish what she has, however it wouldn't be a complete story without a conclusion.

Second, there was an inteserting conversation between Jackie, Ann Page, and Rev. Black about how being a well read individual makes it harder to write. Therefore, if one is to become a writer, would it be easier to write without being well read. Would one write better without being acquainted with Virginia Woolf, because to be honest, duplicating Woolf's brilliance is an adventure not worth pursuing, one would fall short. I guess the answer best came to me when Rev. Black said, "Other writers can't write my story." That is why we write for ourselves, because no one else, no matter how talented they are, can write what we have gone through. In my mind it can only benefit a writer to be well read, it will open their eyes to different styles. The only problem lies when the writer tries to "become" who they have read.

Ann Page, thank-you for bringing in Rev. Black. It was fascinating to see how much writing has changed the life of someone who is not a writer by trade. It goes to show that anyone can benefit from this form of art and that we are all better off being English Majors.

Feel free to respond because lord knows I might have completely missed the boat with this...

Katharine C. Black

In Katharine Black's story, she references a divine spirit (or lack thereof) at the end of the chapter.

"Odd that the sanctuary light had blown out. It was always burning showing that there was consecrated host present. It was always burning. That would be nearly a first for the fastidious altar guild of the church."

Though this happens literally, I believe Black means it to be a symbolic absense of God when the character needs Him the most, as something bad is about to happen. How often do we feel like that - a need to give up our control to a higher power when we feel helpless or beyond repair? The light that's always burning is a comfort for many; it is a tangible representation of an intangible power.

Katharine C. Black's "Dirty Secret"

"I thought that I should keep the letters as my dirty secret and not ever mention then. (It was several years before I told either my husband or any of my children about them.) I thought the letters would blow over. I thought they'd stop" (p. 6 of "The Beginning")

How difficult is it to keep secrets? Is secrecy a form of mental exile? What makes a person decide to keep something a secret? Do you think withholding information from a loved one is a form of deception or the right of a human being?

I wonder how hard it was for Katharine to not share this information with he husband or those who were the closest people to her heart. It seemed like she had a mental conversation with herself about letters, and she obviously spoke to her sponsor and the Bishop about the letters, but she really never got to vent her frustrations to anyone. Is that why she has chosen to share this memoir?

"The Box"- Katharine C. Black's Place for Memories

Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black's first entry in our packet details reasons for saving things, more specifically saving information and items that will help a person plan and prepare for a big event. In Katharine's case, this event was her ordination (def: to officially be made a priest by a church). Katharine proposes that an individual obtain two boxes, one for documents and another for small pieces of notation on topics such as possible clothing, hymns, dates, invitation information, etc. that may relate to her ordination.

Katharine also proposes gathering ideas from other individuals' ordinations. She tells her readers that they should observe what people wear, how they answer their GOE (General Ordination Exam) questions, and what types of music might suit her future sermons.

So, as Katharine states, "What will you want to keep track of? What will you collect?" What types of "things" do you hang on to? Are there items that you have kept to help you prepare for a future event?

I really think that Katharine's proposal of keeping boxes is a reminder of Edwidge Danticat's uncle in Brother, I'm Dying. He was constantly taking note of events that occurred around him, even the most gruesome deaths and the trauma that he went through in Krome. Uncle Joseph was an avid notetaker and was clearly preparing to write his own memoirs. What types of items and notes do you think Danticat would have kept in her boxes? What about Eavan Boland?

Descriptive words in Dr. Katharine C. Black

From the packet of works one certain aspect of Dr. Black's writing that stood out to me was her use of descriptive words or phrases. Some of the greatest examples are...
"I had the feeling at first og going out to my parked car and not finding it where I knew I have parked it and looking and looking in the same place." "Beginning"
"Grey, grizzled skies and leaking, soaking rain greeted her on this somber day..." Chapter 15 p.1
"Boats, patriotic colors promising Memorial Day eventually, summer reading books, rings for June weddings, and all the other sings of the season to come looked bright and cheerful." p.8

Issues of Identity

"In my case that mute backward-reaching distance was my own childhood. It had been lived out of my country, away from the signals and clues by which a self, almost without knowing it, finds its way to adulthood." pg. 76

I liked this short passage because in it, Boland deals with the 'issue of her identity. I found it interesting that Boland felt a need to have a physical place to ground herself, to say "Yes, this is where I come from and it is what shaped me". I believe that a place shouldn't define one but rather we should learn from wherever we may find ourselves at any point in time. Identity in terms of nationality is not much of an issue in the States, but I think that we have a monopoly on that because we are 'the melting pot'. Are there other ways that we might try to categorize ourselves in terms of our identity?

I can't figure out how to contact her!

So, I received a comment on my enormous post about Eavan Boland by an actual, real-life Boland scholar, Jody Allen Randolph. Ann Page suggested that I try to contact her... but my efforts at finding contact information have failed miserably. So... suggestions?

This is a page that has some info on her (but no contact info!!): http://www.westmont.edu/_academics/departments/english/dr-jody-allenrandolph.html

I can't find her in the directory, either. If you have any luck, please let me know. Otherwise, we may just have to live with our chance, one-time encounter.

Another work by Eavan Boland that I would like to share

"Anorexic"

Flesh is heretic.
My body is a witch.
I am burning it.

Yes I am torching
ber curves and paps and wiles.
They scorch in my self denials.

How she meshed my head
in the half-truths
of her fevers

till I renounced
milk and honey
and the taste of lunch.

I vomited
her hungers.
Now the bitch is burning.

I am starved and curveless.
I am skin and bone.
She has learned her lesson.

Thin as a rib
I turn in sleep.
My dreams probe

a claustrophobia
a sensuous enclosure.
How warm it was and wide

once by a warm drum,
once by the song of his breath
and in his sleeping side.

Only a little more,
only a few more days
sinless, foodless,

I will slip
back into him again
as if I had never been away.

Caged so
I will grow
angular and holy

past pain,
keeping his heart
such company

as will make me forget
in a small space
the fall

into forked dark,
into python needs
heaving to hips and breasts
and lips and heat
and sweat and fat and greed.


In class we talked about how many poems written by Boland were often criticized, or 
at least noted, to be written almost autobiographically.  My point was because of 
our preconceived notion of writing about "what we know" that we are more likely to
assume that any poetry or prose is written with at least some truth to the author.
Though Anorexia is a very real and serious condition, I do not believe that Boland
was one of the women who has struggled or is struggling with this disorder.  The 
imagery in this poem is striking, and though partially disturbing I think would
benefit readers.  We get a better sense of how Eavan Boland uses her creative mind to
fill in what she does not know.  This idea is also presented in Object Lessons as she
tries to piece together what information she has of her grandmother while at the same
time creating details of which she has no proof... such as the red hat.

Simplicity in Boland

"I wanted simplicity. I craved it. At school I would learn Thomas Hood's poem: 'I remember, I remember/The house where I was born.' But as time went on, I didn't. Such memory as I had was constantly being confused and disrupted by gossip and homily, by the brisk and contingent talk of adults. 'Stop that. Settle down. Go to sleep now.'" ~Object Lessons, p. 38

What I like about this passage is that as Boland talks of simplicity and her desire for it, she manages to keep her sentences from their usual complexities. She is speaking of her childhood at this time, and so the quick and short sentences are fitting to the situation. Where the one sentence expands itself, it is for the purpose (as I see it) of accentuating that her memories of childhood were "being confused and disrupted" by those around her.

Two Quick Side Notes:
-I don't remember the house where I was born because we moved months afterwards.
-Ann Page, I'm sure you were pleased to see "contingent" used in this passage

APS for Jenna

Eavan Boland
page #24 "Poetry"

"The mystique was sustained by prescriptions. Poetry, it was suggested, was something of power and resonance. It was also a good deal removed from that life which was deemed ordinary."

Language & Exile

It seems as though this year I have become incredibly interested in how language is used in text. Boland discusses language, and its incredible importance, on nearly every page. I have also noticed the link between Danticat and Boland in their feelings of isolation, or more specifically, exile. The following passage discusses both the exile, and the use of language...
"The inevitable happened. One day my tongue betrayed me out of dream and counterfeit into cold truth. I was in the cloakroom at school in the middle of the afternoon. A winter darkness was already gathering through one of the stubborn fogs of the time. A teacher was marshaling children here and there, dividing those who were taking buses from those who were being collected. "I amn't taking the bust," I said. I was six or seven then, still within earshot of another way of speaking. But the English do not use that particular construction. It was an older usage. If they contract the verb and the negative they say, "I'm not." Boland p. 46

More Splice-en-dipity in Danticat's "Auto"Biography

I apologize for completely forgetting to post this over the weekend. Here is my entry on Danticat's ability to splice stories into her autobiography, a technique that actually seems to remove Edwidge from the horrors of her own story.

One story that I think of off the top of my head is the folk tale that Edwidge shares with her readers in the final pages of her book. After Edwidge's father dies, one of Granme Melina's stories is included to serve as a parallel to what is going on in Edwidge's life. The story ends with the following passages:

"...The daughter took the false teeth in her hands and looked at them with great sadness, but also with a new sense of courage. 'As my father wishes, so it shall be,' she said. "We will have the wake to honor him, to rejoice and celebrate his life before his body is put in the ground. We will eat. We will sing. We will dance and tell stories. But most importantly, we will speak of my father. For it is not our way to let our grief silence us" (pg. 267).

This brief story allows readers to know exactly how Edwidge dealt with her father's death (and also her uncle's, I'm sure). Of course she wanted her father back at first. Of course she wanted to raise him from the dead. Grief is sometimes handled with this form of denial and not being able to recognize that the dead individual is gone forever. However, Edwidge eventually came to terms with her father's death and accepted what had occured. She decided that it was more important to honor her father by remembering him through stories, rather than remaining in a state of complete mourning.

The final portion of the passage actually reminds me of the character I am playing in "SNAFU: Unplugged." Jaimee is considered "the one who talks" in order to deal with her father's death. She loves to tell stories about him in order to remember. When I read the passage, especially the line about not allowing grief to silence you, I could not help but think of Jaimee!

The Autobiography of the English Major About to Graduate

...as told through the musical stylings of Jamie Cullum.

Because I bought -- AND READ -- the wrong book...

So, I bought the wrong book... mine was Object Lessons by Anna Quindlen. It's really good; I'd recommend it. Unfortunately, it is not the book we were assigned... So, because there is no way I can get a copy of the book and read it by tomorrow, I've been allowed instead to take a look at some of Eavan Boland's poetry... so here goes. I do hope you enjoy what follows.

The Pomegranate
by Eavan Boland

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing.

Clearly, this poem references the myth of Persephone, who is abducted by ... I thought it was Hades, but apparently not ... Ceres and taken to the underworld to live with him FOREVER. But, Persephone's mom, Demeter (goddess of the seasons!!), is not okay with this situation. She cancels all the good seasons of the year and makes it winter all the time, insisting that she will only bring back warmth and plant life and so forth if Persephone is returned to her... I forget some details, but the upshot is that Hades says Persephone can go back, but silly Persephone eats a pomegranate while she's in the Underworld, so she is doomed to have to return for half the year, every year. Hence the seasons.

So, Boland is discussing her relationship to this myth and how it has played a role in her life at various points. First, she tells us about her own childhood, when she imagined that the city she didn't like was really the Underworld, thus making herself Persephone.
Then, Boland tells us of a time when she was afraid her daughter was missing and felt the despair that Demeter must have felt. In this instance, her role becomes more that of Demeter, although she states that she has become Ceres. This is, perhaps, because she wants to take her daughter back with her and keep her, so as not to risk losing her again... so by removing her daughter from the world she is sort of Demeter and Ceres at once.

Boland then moves on to discuss the role of the pomegranate in the myth, and how it is the key to Persephone's ultimate fate. Boland says she could warn her daughter about the pomegranate, that she should not eat it, but she understands the hunger which Persephone must have felt, and she decides that it is best to let her daughter make her own mistakes, or so it seems to me.

So, I think that both the myth and this poem, in some ways, are stories of losing innocence. Perhaps the pomegranate symbolizes this most clearly, much the same way as the apple symbolizes falling from grace in the story of Adam and Eve (which I'm sure I don't need to outline for you...). Boland gives us three examples of losing some sort of innocence or falling from grace: her own, as a child, discovering the wide city around her is really a cage, a trap, a prison for her to live out her exile; her second loss of grace when she becomes a jealous figure bent on keeping her daughter to herself; and a third instance, of her daughter's eventual, future loss of innocence when she succumbs to some sort of temptation which binds her to a mortal life (or perhaps just binds her to a "normal" life that is within the bounds of "ordinary" rather than "extraordinary").



Aaaaand, number two:

Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet
by Eavan Boland

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?
I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —
white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is
this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of
where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

So, I felt drawn to this poem in part because the myth of Atlantis has stymied (really?) me for as long as I recall knowing it. I too have wondered how the heck a city could disappear without a trace.
Clearly, there is more to this poem than just a contemplation of a missing, ancient, perhaps made-up city. Boland relates Atlantis to a general sense of loss, both her own sense of losing a particular city and a less particular sense of loss in general. Boland suggests that perhaps the story of Atlantis is not based in any reality of a lost city of the ancient world, but perhaps that Atlantis just served as a symbol of loss to those who created it. Isn't that sort of what all myths are about? Not loss in particular, but aren't all myths symbols for something more?

Does anyone else notice that both of these poems revolve around ancient myths?? Tricky. Perhaps Boland is pointing to the fact that ancient myths serve a very real purpose even in the modern world; they provide answers, allegorical models, explanations, excuses, and perhaps even plots for our very own lives.

Object Lessons

"This is the way we make the past. This is the way I will make it here. Listening for hooves. Glimpsing the red hat which was never there in the first place. Giving eyesight and evidence to a woman we never knew and cannot now recover. And for all our violations, the past waits for us. The road from the train to the hosputal opens out over and over again, vacant and glittering, offering shadows and hats and hoops. Again and again I visit and reinvent it. But the woman who actually traveled it had no such license. Hers was a real journey. She did not come back. On October 10 she died in the National Maternity Hospital. She was thirty-one years of age. She was my grandmother."
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