Persona and tone. You worked in groups to develop a short presentation on how persona and tone worked in the poems from Chapter 13. Presentations included:
- a one or two sentence of the "literal" meaning (what the poem was about)
- a more in-depth statement of what the poem did and how/what kinds of meanings it evoked in the reader
- the importance of tone/persona in both meanings.
Maddie, Alycia, Melissa & Sarah: My Papa's Waltz
You noted the distressing, confused, almost dangerous (not described matter of factly) content in the "literal" meaning - the smell of the father's drinking, the mother's frowning face, the beating of the belt buckle on the child clinging to the shirt = and how it contrasted to the steady, predictable rhythm in line after line=> the waltz presented by the child narrator. As it was in the child's voice, we might take this crazy juxtaposition as one way of representing the kind of double-seeing required of children in homes with alcoholism or other difficulties. They can see literally what is happening, and it is scary and even dangerous = but they "normalize" it (because they have to) into the regular mundane rhythms of life.
Julia, Zulema, Stephanie, and Chante: the Rose poems
This group pointed out, correctly, that this is a courtship (seduction?) poem where the speaker asks the rose to point out to his reluctant (resisting?) mistress that he things she is "sweet and fair" ; that unless she let's herself be seen that she will be "uncommended"; she needs to get out there (make herself available to the speaker); and that if she doesn't do it soon, it will all be over (she will die).
The persona in the poem is the impatient lover. He is condescendng (tell her that's young) and even rude (tell her that wastes her time and me). Do we imagine that he loves this woman? How do we receive this poem in light of this bullying tone, a tone which sounds like thinly veiled anger? Do we perhaps receive him differently than the audience in the 17th century?
After directing our attention to the male-centered interests and the speaker's authoritative tone in this poem (as if he is speaking to a child who doesn't know better),we raised the question of how a 20th century woman might respond to a poem with this tone, and wondered whether the real audience for this poem was other men (who might be similarly vexed by women who wouldn't do what they wanted?) and not the recipient of the rose?
We noted the ironic tone in Dorothy Parker's "One Perfect Rose" - and how it played off the expectations set up by the rose poem genre.
Jayshawn, Jeen, Sha'nae and Melanie (Sins of the Father) and Cynthia, Krysten, and Rute (The Ruined Maid) also made excellent (if rushed) presentations on how persona and tone shaped the "effect" of the poem (the reader's experience of it).
For sins of the father, we noted that the first person voice of the father contributed to our sympathy (unreflective forgiveness?) at his sudden realization of the consequences of his past behavior - and maybe even a failure to question the last sentence that "there was nothing I could do" (which I said I felt might be read as glib and a cop-out => yah, that is a little harsh, just raising the idea and reflecting how persona can sucker us in, get us to agree with things that in real life we might not buy in to).
For "The Ruined Maid" which we really did not take fair time for, we noted the ironic tone => presenting prostitution as superior to country labor, and, if we had spent more time analyzing it, might have discussed how this allowed Hardy to comment on the circumstances of women's lives in rural communities (even if he did clearly distort what it was like to be a prostitute).
Great class! That was fun.
For next class:
Read: Chapter 14, Writing about Poetic Language. Pay special attention to Mary Oliver's poem, Shakespeare's sonnet, and Donald Hall's "My Son the Executioner".
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