Plath's "Wintering"

As was true with Ariel, the same is true for Plath's poem "Wintering", it can be read two ways. It can be read figuratively as well as literally. Literally it is about bees. About the winter when times are the hardest for them. About how they need food and that it would be detrimental to their lives if the beekeeper takes too much honey away from them at this critical time. But all these things can also mean something entirely different and Plath was simply playing upon this picture of wintering bees. This honey that she has could also be her poetry that she is creating or that is being created by her mind. It is unclear sometimes when she writes of her poetry as to who is actually doing the creating. Like in the fourth stanza she says "It is they who own me." It reminds me of what she says in Ariel, that "Something else/Hauls me through the air." These two lines from these poems make it seem like she is being controlled by some outside force that she very may well see as coming from with in her mind.
In the first stanza she uses the word "midwife" who is someone who would help deliver the baby. Here it seems to be someone who helps deliver or harvest the honey OR harvest the poetry that she has stored up with in her and she describes it as "cat's eye". The highest grade of a cat's eye stone is said to have the color of milk and honey which is what Plath classifies her store of honey or poetry. In the sixth stanza she says "To make up for the honey I've taken" the bees are filing up to fill up the syrup tin. I read on a bee website that at this time of the year (winter) the bees are in most danger, especially if their keepers take too much honey from them. In Plath's poem she could be alluding to the idea here that if she harvests too much from her self she will be in danger. The weeks prior to her death are then quickly remembered as a time where she seemed to be the most productive writing so many poems in so little time. Maybe she simply sucked herself dry? Like the bees there was nothing left to live off of after all their stores were taken.

HOWL

MOLOCH. The unnatural desires that have been forced upon man in order to receive the transcendent and heavenly state that he wants so badly. "They broke their backs lifting MOLOCH to heaven!" A state of heavenly transcendence is the goal of Ginsberg's poem. The people "Howl" or yearn for a state of perfection that can not be found around them. In Part one it is the artists and hipsters and poets, Jazz musicians, philosophers and dreamers who search for the same perfection in a counter cultural way. And part three is the story of Carl. The Journey he personally makes and how the world and culture and society reacts to him after they have been brainwashed and marinated in the doctrine of MOLOCH. Part one and three leave the reader feeling Ginsberg has just fought a tough battle and all tense muscles are beginning to relax into the realization that he hasn't made it but he has found assurance and comfort in the company with whom he has fought. MOLOCH, in part two, wins out in the end. Those being sacrificed go together with flowers and trance like smiles and laughter to the river and fall onto the streets, in solitude. In this they are alone.
I remember in the interview that we watched of Ginsberg talking of when he and peter made their commitment with each other that he felt that he had found the transcendence he was looking for. That the holy place was here with someone who would love him and accept him for who he was no matter what. To me it seems that acceptance is what Ginsberg had been looking for. In "Howl" that is what these people are howling for. If that can be understood than maybe there is also an understanding that they desire the way they feel things actually should be. I think they would all agree that these are broken relationships that they are trying to overcome. But if these are broken were they once whole?
The Bible talks of creation and how it groans. "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now" (Romans 8:22). Childbirth being the representation of a broken world where pain is felt; it is a result of the fall. "Howl" seems like Ginsberg's groan from the midst of childbirth. In verse 23 of romans, Paul writes that "... not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies." The world, believers and non-believers, groan and howl from the pain of this world and the brokenness seen around them. They all long for acceptance. Christians have found an acceptance and hope in salvation through Christ Jesus. The end of Ginsberg's poem , part 1, 2 and 3, has no satisfactory ending or answer, the howling continues.

Follow up Literacy Narrative

“So what do you want to do with that?”
This is the all too common response I receive every time I answer the what’s your major question. I would bet a Chick-Fil-A Ice dream cone (I know, I go all out) that teaching is all they think can be done with an English Major. I myself thought for quite some time that my future was in teaching, and it still may be, but now I feel there are a world of possibilities that can be looked into. The idea of helping to mold young English minds, and to try to instill in high school students the love of poetry (as impossible as that may sound) still appeals to me, but before I re-enter the realm of classrooms and white boards I would love to try my hand at writing. This past semester has been the first time that I have every really started to think more seriously about what careers I could choose and those that are writing based have been particularly attractive. Some other careers that I have been thinking about are publishing and editing, mainly publishing. I think it would be incredibly interesting to work in a publishing company and get to work with lots of up and coming authors

As for my own writing I have been very interested in poetry and feel that if I ever want to produce something that I actually like I would need to read much more of it. My reading lately has been geared more towards trying to find my own writing style. I still read all the same types of literature I would have before but as I am reading I keep asking myself how I could do something similar. Poets that I have greatly learned from this semester and appreciated are Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Haney and I am sure quite a few more. This was my first semester as an English major taking classes and I haven’t regretted it at all. I do have tendencies when I am faced with huge daunting papers but then I think about the possibility that I could be doing Chemistry Labs and then praise Jesus for the paper that I have the privilege of writing.

Geography III

From what I have read so far of Bishop is that she is trying to explore the relation between the conscious and subconscious in the way she writes. Her topics seem to be more on the level on a persons relation to themselves versus the world around them. How much they actually participate in the life that goes on right out side their own personal bubbles. Relating this to a book on Geography then makes sense. Not geography in the physical sense with islands and mountain ranges, but in the metaphysical sense where we try to deal and understand the landscape and contours of a persons consciousness and how we relate consciously to the world around us. When I read her poetry I feel she is one soul feeling out whether she can safely connect with the souls in her vicinity. Or she is just realizing that all of us are all connected and we are all one big land mass while at the same time individual islands. I know it may seem like I am taking the analogy of actual land a bit too far. I suppose it can seem a bit cheesy. But when she talks about actually understanding that how we connect in the first poem "In the Waiting Room" that is what it feels like to me. That she has realized that she is not the only country in the world. That there are other nations out there with other individuals and groups of people. She has gone out and discovered this, understood more about the world around and is not really sure how she feels about that. She is no longer the center of the universe. The sun doesn't revolve around the earth, the world is not flat. And with this new knowledge she goes on cautiously to apply it to everything else she encounters.

The Women in these Men's lives...

At first women do not seem to have a very important role. They seem to be almost an after thought. Just the other part to these important men. But even though they don't seem to have significant roles they do hold a lot of leverage in their hands. Deals are made or broken because of them and husbands appear to not be able to make decisions without them. Their apparent need or association with control contrasts incredibly with the business men's lack of control. Men give the impression that they are very manly. Being a man is a very important characteristic that they are all trying to attain or believe they have. And one of the most dominant traits of being a man is control. They seem like in control kind of guys at first but as you go through the story time after time they are shown to have little to no control over the situations around them. At the beginning when Levene talks about having closed the deal and then had an un-lucky break because the deal went down because the guy was married (again result because of a woman). And when Levene and Roma feel like they are on top of the world because of the incredible closings they made that then end up failing because for Levene the Nyborgs are crazy, and for Roma, Lingk's wife doesn't agree with it. Then only way they feel they can get control back into their hands is by cheating. Playing the customer, bending the rules, stealing the GlenGarry leads...etc. It is the women who seek and find control by actually doing the right thing or just playing the men. Perhaps this is the purpose of the women. To just have characters who contrast completely with the men that Mamet is writing about. They helped to really point out their already exaggerated traits. Roma who thinks he is always in control loses to a wife who is never introduced. Levene loses to a crazy lady who never intends to make good of the contract she has signed, and also the daughter who is depending on him for medical bills, which he can't seem to pay unless he steals.

Lear's Maternal Instincts

The need to be loved that Lear shows is not something that would be expected from a King in a male dominated patriarchal society. Respect and admiration, but not necessarily love. That would seem to be more of the mother's forte. They would be the ones who need their children to love and cherish them. But Lear seems to need both. At the beginning when he wants his daughters to shower him in songs of deepest love and cherishing he is only pleased with the grotesque showings of affection. While Cordelia gives a most respectable and honorable answer that would be good enough for any other king. She shows her loyalty and appreciation for him with out going overboard on describing her love. This does not please Lear, and I believe Kahn is very right in saying that this is because he is making up for the lack of a mother figure. The mother-like characteristics seem to be predominate. He does balance it out with the need to be respected and the need for his wish for his soldiers to be with him honored. As he realizes what Goneril and Regan truly think about him he begins to understand what is important. Not the overblown description of that love that they gave, but the simple and honest love and respect that Cordelia voiced.
Even though he does show these feminine emotions he has them closely intertwined with his masculine mindset. He wants to be loved, but can't weep or breakdown as Kahn says. It is only till the end when he is with Cordelia that realizes what an old fool he has been the entire time, and he allows himself to feel and exhibit these sad sentiments. You really see the transformation that Lear goes through, throughout the play. He begins with "childish" requests of "how much do you love me" and ends with realizing that there is much more to peoples relations then how they answer that question. It seems at first that as the play goes on that Lear is getting older and more senile, but I believe it shows him maturing. He understands fully now and is not so naive. He doesn't need the fool any longer to point out his folly, he is wise to the ways of the world, and realizes how truly foolish he had been before. His relation to the motherly characteristics are also much more straightforward, and not as muddled. He now recognizes true love and respect and shows emotion the way he deems fit.

“In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.”

The book and the movie both refuted the idea that "politics and sentiment do not mix". It could even be a premise for the entire novel actually. For events after events were shown where their lives were so deeply and emotionally changed and at times uprooted because of some terrible tragedy caused by politics. It is a nice ideal that politics and sentiment do not mix; at times it is probably best that they don't. However, it is foolish to think that they don't, no matter how much you wish they didn't. As long as there are humans involved, so there will also be emotions. Now if it is more of a question of whether or not they do well together, then that is a little more complicated. Sentiment was the driving force behind the Iranians who wanted a drastic change in their government. For not only did they realize politically it was not suitable, but also they saw the affects it had on their family, which were 98% if not all of the time negative. I believe Marji and her mother and grandmother realize this. They probably wish it was not so for the affects were again negative, but it put in Marji the fire that made her speak out against it and be true to herself and her people, as her grandmother always told her to be.

Her family also becomes a safe haven for her to help her cope with the government and all that happens around her. With out them, she would be much more broken then she already had become. I suppose that if there was a way to separate all emotion from any political dealings then that would be the best, but then what kind of politician would you be? How do you decide what to fight for and what is truly right and wrong? It would simply be the best way to not get hurt, which is what her father might have been trying to protect her from. Keeping her from getting emotionally involved, he might have thought, would keep her further from danger. Marji knew the cost of becoming involved with her countries politics, involving herself in the revolutions and speaking out against what she knew to be wrong and so did her mother and grandmother. But ignoring it all would be to turn her back on her family and her country that were very much apart of her.


p.s. quote is by Winston Churchill. I thought it fit since in the book it seemed that by fighting their government and living with that regime the people seemed to be constantly hurt, seeing more than one of their relatives and friends die and having to relive it all. Feeling the emotional pain can certainly be worse than any physical injury. An death to some could even seem like a relief, an escape from their invisible wounds.