American
Literature II ~ ENGL 3370—(REVISED for fall 2012)
Dr. Jonathan Alexander
609-894-9311
or 856-222-9311 (x1123)
E-mail: jalexand@bcc.edu (please use my
BCC e-mail)
Online syllabus URL: http://staff.bcc.edu/faculty_websites/jalexand/3370syl--2day.htm
_____________________________________________________________________
A. TEXTS: Custom Text ISBN#
0-390-15023-1 “American Lit. 1 & 2” (Available at BCC bookstore)
Some readings must be accessed online; please click on links and bring
readings with you for discussion.
B.
COURSE OVERVIEW: American
Literature II is a survey course which continues from the Civil War
period where American Lit I concluded, covering the periods of Realism,
Naturalism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. The course will assign primary
emphasis to the major literary trends found in early America and the major
literary figures who represent those trends.
C.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES ~ At the end of this course, you should be able to:
D.
COURSE EXPECTATIONS
Attendance: If the student
is to profit from any course, he or she must attend class on a consistent
basis.
Students must
attend all classes for the full duration of each session. Should you
need to miss a class for observance of religious holidays, jury duty, military
duty, bereavement, or illness, you must notify the instructor by telephone or
e-mail prior to or within 24 hours after the class. Without such communication,
students forfeit the right to make up missed work. If such communication is
made, students will be permitted to make up missed work at the beginning of the
following class meeting. It is, therefore, the student’s responsibility to read
the syllabus and be prepared for current as well as missed assignments.
Entering class
late or leaving class early (without prior authorization) is considered
disrespectful and will not be tolerated.
Academic
Etiquette:
Students will respect themselves, their peers and their instructors by
considering the following:
Cell phones must be kept on
silent. No calls are to be made or received during class. If you are expecting
an important call during the class meeting time, notify me prior to class and
quietly excuse yourself if the call is received. No text-messaging or
game-playing will be tolerated.
Students who wish to use the restrooms
may do so by quietly leaving and re-entering the room. If a student believes he
or she will require an absence of more than a few minutes, it is his
responsibility to notify me accordingly.
Communication: Many means of
communication are available to the student including telephone, e-mail and
mailbox.
If you leave a message on my office
voice-mail, please remember to speak clearly and provide your name, course
information, and phone number if you request a return call.
If you contact me via e-mail,
always include your FULL NAME AND CLASS SECTION in the subject line. Too often
students forget to sign e-mail or have e-mail addresses without obvious
identifiers. If you do not include your name and class in the subject line, I
will not open the message.
Students who send me e-mail and do
not receive a reply of any kind within 48 hours should assume it was never
received. Such e-mails should be resent. I do not mind receiving redundant
messages if you are unsure whether your message was transmitted (though I may
only reply to one). If your message doesn’t present itself as urgent, I may
reply quickly and briefly and ask to get back to you before long.
Students who send e-mails
containing attachments must save these documents with one of the
following extensions: DOC, DOCX, WPS, TXT, or RTF. If the previous extensions
are not available to you, copy and paste the text of your assignment into the
e-mail message itself.
Class
Assignments:
All work written and submitted
should utilize standard rules of grammar, sentence organization, paragraph organization,
and diction.
All formal papers are to be typed,
titled, double spaced, stapled, and carefully proofread.
All assignments are due on the
date specified on the syllabus without exception. Assignments which are not
submitted during the class session they are due will be penalized 15% for each
subsequent day they are late.
If a student presents reasonable
justification for an absence, such an absence does not allow for more time to
complete assignments. When a student is absent the day an assignment is due, he
or she must submit the assignment as an attachment via e-mail on or before
the date it is due.
Since students are provided with
all assignments and deadlines on the first day of the semester, excuses such as
“crashed computers,” “misplaced data,” “misplaced disks,” or “empty printer ink
cartridges” will not be accepted. All computer work should be saved twice (hard
drive and floppy/flash).
All Powerpoint presentations
should be saved as “1997-2003” versions (“ppt” extensions) to ensure that they
can be opened on the College’s laptops. Students are also encouraged to email
to me their PPT files prior to their scheduled presentation date to provide
another failsafe against document loss.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated
under any circumstances. Be aware that plagiarism includes (but is not limited
to) copying someone else’s words without crediting the source; paraphrasing
someone else’s words without crediting the source; using someone else’s ideas
without crediting the source (even if rephrased in your own words); using facts
not universally known which are obtained from a source without crediting the
source; asking someone else to write your paper, either in whole or in part; or
obtaining a paper or portion thereof by any means and submitting it as an
original document. The penalty for plagiarism is failure of the assignment
and potentially failure of the course (at the instructor’s discretion), and
it may result in suspension or expulsion from the College (at the discretion of
the Student Affairs Committee). Please refer to the BCC Student Handbook
for additional information regarding College regulations and the handling of
plagiarism.
E. ASSIGNMENTS: Visit the grading rubric (http://staff.bcc.edu/faculty_websites/jalexand/rubric.htm) to see how
writing is evaluated.
F.
MAKE-UP EXAM POLICY: Because
all assignment deadlines and scheduled exam dates are provided at the beginning
of the semester, little latitude is given to those students who are not
considerate of themselves or respectful of course expectations. The schedule of
assignments and activities is a contract and, therefore, not open to
negotiation. In the event that you must be absent the day an assignment is due
(though it is strongly discouraged if preventable), utilize a form of
electronic submission to turn in journal entries or other assignments the day
they are due
G.
GRADING POLICY: All
assignments have a specific point value. There are 200 total points worth of
assignments and examinations.
|
Total Course |
Final Percentages |
Letter Grade |
|
177-200 |
88.5 - 100 |
A |
|
175-176 |
87.5 - 88 |
B+ |
|
159-174 |
79.5 - 87 |
B |
|
155-158 |
77.5 - 79 |
C+ |
|
149-154 |
74.5 - 77 |
C |
|
139-148 |
69.5 - 74 |
D |
|
0-138 |
0 - 69 |
F |
|
ASSIGNMENT / ACTIVITY |
DUE DATE |
VALUE |
GRADE |
|
Journal
Response Questions and Handouts |
Daily |
40 pts |
|
|
Midterm
Exam |
Session 6 |
40 pts |
|
|
1500-word
Research Essay (Options listed above) |
Session 10 |
40 pts |
|
|
Final
Exam |
Session 10 |
40 pts |
|
|
Participation
and Attendance |
N/A |
40 pts |
|
|
TOTAL
|
|
200 pts |
|
I. PROJECTED
SCHEDULE OF ASSIGNMENTS:
All readings and journal responses must be completed before the date scheduled.
Date:
Thurs, Oct 25, 2012
Discussion of syllabus, general course
expectations, and literary history
Date:
Tuesday, Oct 30, 2012
WALT WHITMAN, ►I Hear America Singing, (at end of
syllabus)
What do these individuals seem to have
in common? What, if anything, distinguishes them one from the next? Do you
think the speaker wants these men and women to be seen as a homogenous group
with little distinction or a heterogeneous mixture of vastly different people?
How is the balance between work and play handled? Do you think the speaker
favors one over the other?
►Oh Captain, My Captain, (at end of
syllabus)
What makes the style of this poem
different from the previous? How has the speaker managed to capture both the
thrilling triumph of Lincoln’s abolitionist efforts and the tragic loss of his
recent assassination? Which image in the poem do you see as the most poignant
or resonant?
►Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in
Hand,
(at end of syllabus)
How can the speaker expect his readers
to have an appreciation of his work if he is constantly reminding them of the
futility of understanding it? Do you sense sincerity in the speaker’s claims
that the reader may never fully reconcile the work, or do you believe his tone
is more often playful or sarcastic?
Date:
Thursday, November 1, 2012—no class meeting
Date:
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
MARK TWAIN, ►How to Tell a Story
What does the author propose as the
difference between knowledge and action? Which seems to be favored more and
why? What makes humorous stories the “only one difficult kind”? How does he differentiate
among that which is “humorous, comic, and witty”? How does he distinguish
between the manner (or process) through which a story is told and the matter
(or substance) of the story itself? What makes the comic story and its teller a
“pathetic” thing to see? What value does the author place on the “pause”?
FRANK NORRIS, ►A Plea for Romantic Fiction
How does Norris distinguish between
Romance and Romantic? How does he effectively argue his point of literary
criticism while still asking so many questions? What arguments does Norris make
against Realism? How does he promote Romance as an equally effective “teacher”
as any style of expression?
Date:
Thursday, November 8, 2012—no class meeting (e-mail responses by Tuesday)
RED CLOUD, ►[All I Want
Is Peace and Justice]
How does the speaker handle the fact that
the white men seem to have an unfortunately incorrect view of the natives? How
might this speech be viewed as a desperate plea of a man who thinks he has
nothing more to lose?
ZITKALA-SA, ►The
School Days of an Indian Girl
How does this piece illustrate the
condition of being caught between two drastically different worlds? How does
she use the education of native children as a metaphor for the unfortunate
perceptions felt by the white race? What is the most striking passage of the
piece for you?
Date:
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
SARAH ORNE JEWETT, ►A White Heron
By refusing to betray the heron’s
secret, what is Sylvia rejecting (and in favor of what)? What is the hunter’s
goal (and is it achieved)? What role does the narrative voice play in our
understanding of Sylvia’s choices? Why do you believe Sylvia made the right or
wrong decision? What does the heron’s pine tree represent for Sylvia? What
makes this tale Romantic (according to Norris)? What makes it Realistic? What
makes it Naturalistic?
STEPHEN CRANE, ►A Man Said to the Universe
How does this very short poem represent
Crane’s view of a “universe essentially indifferent to man?” What
relationship is established between the “man” and the “universe”?
What does the story tell us about
perceptions and observations of people in a crisis? What is the effect of our being
told early in the story that the men are not near a rescue station? Why does
Crane deliberately place the dinghy’s crew in sight of land? How does
Crane’s view of the human community arise out of his view of the natural forces
surrounding and working upon humans?
Date:
Thursday, November 15, 2012—no class meeting (e-mail responses by Tuesday)
CARL SANDBURG, ►Chicago, (included at
end of syllabus)
How is the speaker able to enumerate
seemingly horrible truths about his hometown while remaining proud to call it
his? Which of the speaker’s descriptive examples do you think is the most
damning to the city of Chicago? If the speaker’s reference to “terrible burden
of destiny” can be associated loosely with Naturalism, how does he take it
beyond Crane’s view of a helpless human toward a more fulfilling message?
►I am the People, the Mob, (included at
end of syllabus)
What does this poem have in common with
George Santayana’s quote, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to
repeat it”? Is “not learning” (as Santayana claims) the same as “forgetting”
(as Sandburg claims)? How can the speaker remain hopeful for the future when
the present appears so bleak? How is this poem (and “Chicago”) fundamentally
similar to (and strikingly different from) the humanistic language of Whitman’s
“I Hear America Singing”?
►Government, (included at
end of syllabus)
What role does first-hand observation
play for the speaker? How are concepts of “criminality” and “corruption”
illustrated through this poem? Is it a good thing or bad thing that the
“government” is represented as something dynamic, alive, moving, changeable?
What is the effect of ritual, patterned behavior as expressed in the final
stanza?
SUSAN GLASPELL, ►Trifles
How are the “letter of the law”
and the “spirit of the law” interpreted differently by Mrs. Peters and Mrs.
Hale? Does one win out over the other? How are the two “characters” of Minnie
Foster and Minnie Wright characterized differently? What textual evidence
illustrates why the men are logical, arrogant, and stupid? How are Mrs. Peters
and Mrs. Hale each motivated for their own reasons to conspire against the men?
What do you learn of the character of John Wright that might mitigate the
charge against Minnie? Explain the significance of each of the following
symbols: the bird, the cage with the broken hinge, the cold house and broken
jelly jars, the unevenly sewn quilt block, the fresh bread on the counter, the
half-clean table top, the rope.
Date
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
ROBERT FROST, ►After Apple-Picking
What is the speaker looking forward to? What
does he seem to feel guilty about? How does he attempt (and perhaps fail) to
escape these responsibilities that he knows are his? How does the illustration
of fallen apples relate to the speaker himself? How does this relate to
Dunbar’s and Robinson’s suggestions about achieved or failed expectations?
What role does (in)decision play for the
speaker? How does the poem represent spaces both familiar and foreign? What
commentary does this poem make about the sense of incompleteness of tasks which
Frost represented in “After Apple-Picking”? What positive message can be
brought from this poem whose final word is “decay”?
How does this poem represent the
relationship between the real and the ideal? How does the speaker maintain this
balance? How is the boy “too far from town” represented as extremely
resourceful and self-sufficient? What does this contribute to the poem’s
message? How is the sense of being “alone” characterized differently in this
poem than in “Mr. Flood’s Party”? What message is proposed by the act of
filling a cup “even above the brim”? What does this have to do with swinging on
birches (literally) and life (figuratively)? How does the speaker eventually
remain true to his romantic side while maintaining a pragmatic view of life?
►The Need of Being Versed in Country
Things,
(included at end of syllabus)
How does this poem express equal amounts
of idyllic Romanticism while emphasizing the harshness of Modernity? What’s the
speaker’s attitude about feelings of regret? What role does Nature play in its
own preservation? How is the power of individual perspective given value?
Date
Thursday, November 22, 2012 (no class)
Date
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR, ►We Wear The Mask
How does the poem differentiate between
public and private personae? What is the speaker’s attitude toward his public?
From what inspiration do you think this may have arisen? What might this poem
have in common with John Lennon’s lyric about Eleanor Rigby, who is “wearing a
face that she keeps in a jar by the door”?
What does this poem say about missed
opportunities and failed expectations? How does the speaker feel about seeking
perfection or an ideal end? What role (if any) does regret play in our lives?
How does the speaker express his
familiarity with suffering? How are missed opportunities treated similarly or
differently than they are in “Life’s Tragedy”? What makes the bird an effective
or ineffective metaphor in this poem? How are freedom and salvation
represented?
E. A. ROBINSON, ►The Mill
What role does denial of truth play in
this poem? How are unconscious fears and concerns represented? How does memory
become an unwelcome liability? How might the miller and his wife have escaped from
similar burdens but through different gestures? How does this relate to
Dunbar’s suggestions about achieved or failed expectations?
►Variations of Greek Things: A Happy
Man,
(included at end of syllabus)
What is the power of memory and legacy
expressed in this poem? Do you sense sincerity in the speaker’s reminiscing, or
is there stylistic evidence of sarcasm? Is the speaker’s sentiment ideally Romantic
or plausibly Realistic?
How has Flood found a way to manage his
feelings of loneliness and isolation? Is he ultimately successful? What
elements of the poem make it Naturalistic in its moral? What does the road (and
Flood’s spatial orientation on it) represent within his life? How are Flood’s
past and future represented, and what does each seem to have to offer him now?
Date
Thursday, November 29, 2012—no class meeting (e-mail responses by Tuesday)
O. HENRY, ►The Gift of the Magi, (click here for
reading)
(Video)
What symbolic value does the number
three have in this story? How can Della and Jim possibly appreciate the gifts
from each other if they had to give up their most precious possession in order to
receive it? Can a story based on coincidence, irony and surprise still be
readable today? What makes this a timeless story?
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, ►A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, (click here for
reading)
(Video)
What are some of the contrasts present
in the story? What are the major differences between the young waiter and the
old waiter, particularly in terms of how they view the old man and working in
the café? What is the meaning of the old waiter’s “prayer”? Given the
view of human existence that is expressed, what is the role and significance of
the café? What do you consider to be the overall meaning of the story?
WILLIAM FAULKNER, ►A Rose For Emily, (click here for
reading)
Why is Miss Emily Grierson
described as “a fallen monument”? What does it mean that “Emily had been
a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the
town…”? How does the narrator describe Homer Barron? What does he come to
represent for Emily? What is the community’s attitude towards Homer and Emily’s
relationship? After Miss Emily’s death, what is discovered in the room
“which no one had seen in forty years”? What do you believe to be Miss Emily’s
motive for her actions?
Date
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
MIDTERM EXAM
T. S. ELIOT, ►The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock (IN-CLASS EXERCISE)
WALLACE STEVENS, ►The Snow Man
What does it mean to have a “mind of”
something, and how does that prove important to the speaker here? What elements
in this poem are loosely associated with a lingering Romanticism? On the other
hand, what makes this poem purely Modern in its approach?
JOHN CROWE RANSOM, ►Winter Remembered (included at
end of syllabus)
How does this speaker’s reference to
“absence” relate to Robinson’s “The Mill”? How does “feeling” and the
desire for painlessness relate to Prufrock? What message is the speaker
proposing about love and loss?
CLAUDE MCKAY, ►America
How does the speaker express a love for
something that doesn’t always seem to have his best interest in mind? What role
does loyalty play for the speaker? Does he seem more certain or uncertain about
the future?
What role does dignity and self-respect
play in this poem? Do you perceive the “fighting back” at the end as more
literal or figurative? How might it be both?
Is there a positive message within this
poem which seems laden with negative imagery (“dim,” “forgotten,” “alien,”
“ghost,” “apart”)?
CONTEE CULLEN, ►Yet Do I Marvel
How does this poem express the equal
concerns about God’s benevolence and the speaker’s futility of existence? What
role does temptation play? How do you interpret the act of “marveling” (as
opposed to “knowing,” “understanding,” or even “appreciating”)?
Date
Thursday, December 6, 2012—no class meeting (e-mail responses by Tuesday)
RICHARD WRIGHT
►From Black Boy, “A Five-Dollar
Fight,”
(click here for
reading)
How do you come to understand that the
narrator of the story has to think “double,” that is, think about himself as
himself and at the same time think about himself as the white men see him? Do
you get the impression that this is a no-win situation for the narrator (or can
something be gained by this experience)? Why or why not? What does this story
say about the corrupting influence of racism on the two young African American
men? What does the comparison to the fighting dogs or roosters say about the
white men’s attitudes? Richard Wright labels himself both a realist and a
naturalist writer who wrote stories to convey a message about social injustice.
Identify two elements of this story (one for realism and one for naturalism)
which illustrate both of these tendencies.
ALLEN GINSBERG
►America, (included at
end of syllabus)
Considering the other works discussed
this semester which illustrate positive and/or negative views of civic or
nationalistic pride (including Whitman, Sandburg, McKay, Dunbar, etc.), select
two other poems and identify how Ginsberg’s poem “America” is similar to or
different from each.
AMIRI BARAKA
Considering the other works discussed
this semester which illustrate positive and/or negative views of self worth or
identity (including Robinson, Frost, Eliot, Stevens, Hemingway, Wright, etc.),
select three works and identify how Baraka’s poem “An Agony, As Now” is similar
to or different from each.
LANGSTON HUGHES
►Theme for English B, included at
end of syllabus
Role-playing as the instructor on the
receiving end of Hughes’ “theme,” write a 100-word evaluative response to the
student from the instructor’s point-of-view. Consider what the “assignment”
was. Consider what your “expectations” were (taking into account your race,
your implied age, and any other demographics you think are relevant). Consider
whether the student delivered on your assignment. After the 100-word evaluative
response, provide a letter grade on a scale of A to F.
Date
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
BETTY FRIEDAN, ►
“The Problem That Has No Name,” (click
here for reading)
Why did “the problem lay buried,
unspoken” for so long? What seems to be the speaker’s greatest disappointment
regarding the treatment of women by men? Why is it significant that women
weren’t being defined as “inferior,” rather “simply different” from men? What
impact might it have had on women through the years if they knew others felt
the same way as they?
DENISE LEVERTOV, ►Wedding Ring
What does this poem express about the
opportunities that lie ahead and of the potential futility of hope? What
significance does each of the other “items” which lie in the basket have? How
does this relate to the ring itself and what it represents now for the speaker?
Does the speaker seem hopeful of being able to recover a lost past? Does she
think change is possible? Is it effective for her to end with questions she
doesn’t seem to answer? (Or does she?)
CAROLYN FORCHE, ►Taking Off My
Clothes, included at end of syllabus
What is the tone of voice of this poem?
How does the speaker illustrate what she thinks is pain and compromise that she
has undergone for the listener? How does the conversational tone at the end
display a very different tone than Levertov’s “questions”?
ADRIENNE RICH, ►Living in Sin,
included at end of syllabus
How does the speaker differentiate
(through examples) between what she “thought” and what she “knows”? Where in
the poem does she seem to hold herself in contempt for behaving the way she is?
If she seems to loathe her own behavior, why does she apparently continue it?
How do you think the speaker would define being “back in love again”(l. 23)?
What might the “sin” in the title be a reference to (if not conventional “pre-marital
intimacy”)?
MARGE PIERCY, ►Always Unsuitable,
included at end of syllabus
How does the speaker seem to express
both a concern for pleasing the “mothers” and a contempt for them at the same
time? How is Piercy’s compromising for a cause similar to or different from
Forche’s? Where does Piercy’s speaker present details to suggest she is neither
perfect nor always appropriate? On the other hand, (as opposed to Rich’s sense
of self-loathing) where does Piercy represent a speaker who has a greater sense
of self-respect?
►Barbie Doll, included at
end of syllabus
How does this “girlchild” attempt to
make herself something she is not? What motivates her? What is the outcome? How
is her portrayal in death ironically triumphant? What is the difference between
this girl’s efforts to be someone she wasn’t and those of the speaker in the
previous poem? Do you think the same “happy ending” could be applied to the
speaker of “Always Unsuitable”? How about to Forche’s speaker?
JANICE MIRIKITANI, ►Suicide Note,
included at end of syllabus
What roles do age, gender, intelligence,
and public opinion play in this poem? How might the concerns of this female
speaker be an updated representation of the sort of sentiments expressed years
earlier by Friedan? What do you think is the key difference between this
speaker’s inability to please (and her subsequent suicide) and the inability to
please expressed in “Always Unsuitable”?
Date
Thursday, December 13, 2012 no class meeting (e-mail responses by Tuesday)
ALICE WALKER, ►Everyday Use, 241
Date
Tuesday, December 15, 2012
1500-word Research Essay, FINAL EXAM
REALISM
AND THE LOCAL COLOR MOVEMENT (1865-1880)
The
second half of the 19th c. saw America becoming increasingly self-conscious at
the very time regional writers began to write about its various aspects.
American wanted to know what their country looked like, and how the varied
races which made up their growing population lived and talked.
The
East asked what kinds of people leading what kinds of life are at the
end of those bands of iron?
The
Western regionalists answered: Men and women like yourselves, but
dressed differently, speaking differently, with different social ways:
fantastic deserts, mile deep canyons, mountains high enough to bear snow the
year round, forests with trees as wide as man can stretch and wider, villages
where the only woman was the town whore, camps where the only currency was
gold-dust.
Writers
of the South told of swamps where cypress grew out the green-scummed
water and the moss grew down into it; of the cities where obsessive
blood-consciousness of its inhabitants told of the mingling of races.
Mid-western authors
narrated the tales of the plains where a man could be lost in the dust or
ruined by hailstorm; of cities where fortunes were made or lost in a day’s
trading on the beef or grain exchanges.
Principles
Of Realism
1. Insistence upon and defense of “the experienced
commonplace.”
2. Character more important than plot.
3. Attack upon romanticism and romantic writers.
4. Emphasis upon morality often self-realized and
upon an examination of idealism.
5. Concept of realism as a realization of democracy.
Identifying
Characteristics Of Realistic Writing
1. The philosophy of Realism is known as
“descendental” or non-transcendental (non-romantic). The purpose is to
instruct and to entertain. Realists were pragmatic, relativistic, democratic,
and experimental.
2. The subject matter of Realism is drawn from “our experience”;
it treated the common, the average, the non-extreme, the representative, the
probable.
3. The morality of Realism is intrinsic and
relativistic; relations between people and society are explored.
4. The style of Realism is the vehicle which carries
realistic philosophy, subject matter, and morality. Emphasis is placed upon
scenic presentation, de-emphasizing authorial comment and evaluation. There is
an objection towards the omniscient point of view.
5. There is the belief among the Realists that
humans control their destinies; characters act on their environment rather than
simply reacting to it. Character is superior to circumstance. (Naturalism
will later refocus on and refute this concept)
6. The Realists reject the kind of symbolism suggested
by Emerson (a Romantic) when he said “Every natural fact is a symbol of
some spiritual fact.” Their use of symbolism is controlled and limited,
depending more on the use of images.
Realistic
Techniques
1. Settings are thoroughly familiar to the writer.
2. Plots emphasize the norm of daily experience.
3. Ordinary characters are studied in depth.
4. Complete authorial objectivity
5. Responsible morality; a world truly reported.
NATURALISM:
Two Approaches (1880-1914)
1.
Naturalism is an extension or continuation of Realism with the addition of
pessimistic determinism.
2.
Naturalism is different from Realism.
Subject
Matter & Characterization in Naturalistic Fiction
1.
The subject matter:
a. The subject matter deals with those
raw and unpleasant experiences which reduce characters to “degrading” behavior
in their struggle to survive (including prostitution and seduction, exposure to
social conditions and social evils). These characters are mostly from the lower
middle or the lower classes; they are poor, uneducated, and unsophisticated.
b. The atmosphere is the commonplace and
the unheroic; life is usually the dull round of daily existence. The naturalist
tries to discover those qualities in such characters usually associated with
the heroic or adventurous—acts of violence and passion leading to desperate
moments and violent death. The suggestion is that life on its lowest levels is
not so simple as it seems to be.
c. There is discussion of fate and
“hubris” (excessive pride, arrogance) that affect a character; generally the
controlling force is society and the surrounding environment.
2.
The concept of a naturalistic character:
a. In Naturalism, characters do not have free will. External
and internal forces, environment, or heredity control their behaviors:
Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species,
1859, concept of natural selection (biological determinism), “survival of the
fittest” threatened establish religious beliefs;
Karl Marx’s Communiest Manifesto,
1867, concept of economic determinism, civilization thrives on the struggle of
the social classes;
Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of
Dreams, 1899, concept of “pleasure principle” (psychological
determinism); human actions guided by repressed fears and desires
(wish-fulfiillment).
All determinists believe in the existence of the
will, but the will is often enslaved on account of different reasons.
characters are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, chance, or
instinct; but they have compensating humanistic values which affirm their
individuality and life—their struggle for life becomes heroic and they maintain
human dignity.
b. the Naturalists attempt to represent
the intermingling in life of the controlling forces and individual worth. They
do not dehumanize their characters.
AMERICAN
MODERNISM (1914-1945)
The
Centers of Modernism
1. Stylistic
innovations—disruption of traditional syntax and form.
2. Artist’s
self-consciousness about questions of form and structure.
3. Obsession
with primitive material and attitudes.
4. International
perspective on cultural matters.
Modern
Attitudes
1. The artist is
generally less appreciated but more sensitive, even more heroic, than the
average person.
2. The artist challenges
tradition and reinvigorates it.
3. A breaking
away from patterned responses and predictable forms.
Contradictory
Elements
1. Democratic
and elitist.
2.
Traditionalism and anti-tradition.
3. National
provinciality versus the celebration of international culture.
4. Puritanical
and repressive elements versus freer expression in sexual and political
matters.
Literary
Achievements
1. Dramatization
of the plight of women.
2. Creation of a
literature of the urban experience.
3. Continuation
of the pastoral or rural spirit.
4. Continuation
of regionalism and local color.
Modern
Themes
1. Collectivism
versus the authority of the individual.
2. The impact of
the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
3. The Jazz Age.
4. The Harlem
Renaissance
5. The passage
of 19th Amendment in 1920 giving women the right to vote.
6. Prohibition
of the production, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages, 1920-33.
7. The
stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression of the 1930s and their impact.
Modernism
and the Self
1.
In this period, the chief characteristic of the self is one of alienation. The
character belongs to a “lost generation” (Gertrude Stein), suffers from a
“dissociation of sensibility” (T. S. Eliot), and who has “a Dream deferred”
(Langston Hughes).
2.
Alienation led to an awareness about one’s inner life.
HARLEM
RENAISSANCE (1919-1939)
1.
Harlem Renaissance (HR) is the name given to the period from the end of World War
I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of
talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in the
four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and essay.
2.
The notion of “twoness,” a divided awareness of one’s identity, was introduced
by W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the author of the influential book The
Souls of Black Folks (1903): “One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a
Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals
in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn
asunder.”
3.
Common themes: alienation, marginality, the use of folk material, the use of
the blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite audience.
4.
HR was more than just a literary movement: it included racial consciousness,
“the back to Africa” movement led by Marcus Garvey, racial integration, the
explosion of music (particularly jazz), spirituals and blues, painting,
dramatic revues, and others.
LATE-TWENTIETH
CENTURY (1945- )
Significant
Events
The
Decades
The
1950s,
referred by poet Robert Lowell as “the tranquilized fifties,” has been
ridiculed as a smug, irresponsible, and materialistic decade.
The 1960s, in literary terms, is marked by
the loosening of censorship and the discussion of “taboo” topics. Sexual
fantasies, extremes of adventure, and “black humor” (humorous satire using
shock or cruelty) are commonly used as subjects of literary works. The journalistic
essay becomes a popular style of writing. A vigorous anti-establishment, and
anti-traditional literary movement emerged called the Beat Movement (or
Counterculture Movement). This decade is also marked by freedom movements such
as Black power, women’s liberation, and gay rights.
The
1970s mark the emergence of the women’s movement and the “sexual
revolution.”
The
1980s and 1990s are too recent and contemporary for evaluations
of literary trends. Appearing on the literary scene are the so-called multicultural
writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, James Welch, Bharati Mukherjee, and
Sandra Cisneros.
Walt
Whitman
I Hear America Singing
I
hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those
of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The
carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The
mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The
boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
singing
on the steamboat deck,
The
shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The
wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or
at
noon intermission or at sundown,
The
delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of
the
girl sewing or washing,
Each
singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The
day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust,
friendly
Singing
with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
Walt
Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
O
CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain
lies,
Fallen cold and
dead.
O
Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the
deck,
You’ve fallen cold
and dead.
My
Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and
dead.
Walt
Whitman
Whoever
You Are Holding Me Now In Your Hand
Whoever
you are, holding me now in hand,
Without one thing, all will be useless,
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
Who
is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
The way is suspicious—the result uncertain, perhaps destructive;
You would have to give up all else—I alone would expect to be your God, sole
and exclusive,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you,
would have to be abandon’d;
Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further—Let go your
hand from my shoulders,
Put me down, and depart on your way.
Or else, by stealth, in some wood, for trial,
Or back of a rock, in the open air,
(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not—nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill—first watching lest any person, for
miles around, approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some quiet
island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband’s kiss,
For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade.
Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus, merely touching you, is enough—is best,
And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
But
these leaves conning, you con at peril,
For these leaves, and me, you will not understand,
They will elude you at first, and still more afterward—I will certainly elude
you,
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.
For
it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for my love, (unless at most a very few,) prove
victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only—they will do just as much evil, perhaps more;
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not
hit—that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me, and depart on your way.
E.A. Robinson
Variations of Greek Themes: A Happy Man (1902)
When these graven lines you see,
Traveler, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.
Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind;
Near to them and to my wife,
I was happy all my life.
My three sons I married right,
And their sons I rocked at night;
Death nor sorrow ever brought
Cause for one unhappy thought.
Now, and with no need of tears,
Here they leave me, full of years,--
Leave me to my quiet rest
In the region of the blest.
Robert
Frost
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things (1920)
The
house had gone to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.
The
barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.
No
more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.
The
birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.
Yet
for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.
For
them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.
Carl Sandburg
Chicago (1916)
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight
Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for
I
have seen
your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the
farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes,
it
is true I
have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On
the
faces of women and
children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my
city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head
singing
so proud to be
alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job
on
job, here is a
tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action,
cunning
as a savage pitted
against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building,
breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth,
laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a
young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the
pulse,
and under his ribs the heart
of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating,
proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker
of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler
to the Nation.
Carl Sandburg
I am the People, the Mob (1916)
I am the people -- the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The
Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few
red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: “The People,” with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.
Carl Sandburg
Government (1916)
The Government--I heard about the Government and
I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at
it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to
the callaboose. It was the Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one
morning
and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge
dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a
live ward worker for the alderman. Again I saw
this was the Government, doing things.
I saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of
work-
ingmen who were trying to get other workingmen
to stay away from a shop where there was a strike
on. Government in action.
Everywhere I saw that Government is a thing made of
men, that Government has blood and bones, it is
many mouths whispering into many ears, sending
telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying
“yes” and “no.”
Government dies as the men who form it die and
are laid
away in their graves and the new Government that
comes after is human, made of heartbeats of blood,
ambitions, lusts, and money running through it all,
money paid and money taken, and money covered
up and spoken of with hushed voices.
A Government is just as secret and mysterious
and sensi-
tive as any human sinner carrying a load of germs,
traditions and corpuscles handed down from
fathers and mothers away back.
John Crowe Ransom
Winter Remembered
Two evils,
monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of
Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood
the furious winter blowing.
Think not, when
fire was bright upon my bricks,
And past the
tight boards hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like
them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my
cause, my proper heat and center.
Better to walk
forth in the frozen air
And wash my
wound in the snows; that would be healing;
Because my heart
would throb less painful there,
Being caked with
cold, and past the smart of feeling.
And where I
walked, the murderous winter blast
Would have this
body bowed, these eyeballs streaming,
And though I
think this heart’s blood froze not fast
It ran too small
to spare one drop for dreaming.
Dear love, these
fingers that had known your touch,
And tied our
separate forces first together,
Were ten poor
idiot fingers not worth much,
Ten frozen
parsnips hanging in the weather.
Allen
Ginsberg
America
America
I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I’m
addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia
is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America
how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they’re all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don’re really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Langston
Hughes
Theme for English B (1951)
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you--
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me--who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--
although you're older--and white--
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
Carolyn
Forché
Taking Off My Clothes (1976)
I take off my shirt, I show you.
I shaved the hair out under my arms.
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair
on my legs with a knife, getting white.
My hair is the color of chopped maples
My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.
(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)
Skin polished as a Ming bowl
showing its blood-cracks, its age, I have hundreds
of names for the snow, for this, all of them quiet.
In the night I come to you and it seems
a shame
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.
You recognize strangers,
think you lived through destruction.
You can’t explain this night, my face, your memory.
You want to know what I know?
Your own hands are lying.
Adrienne
Rich
Living In Sin
She had thought the studio would
keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of
love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps
less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A
plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a
cat
stalking the picturesque amusing
mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate
stair would writhe
under the milkman's tramp; that
morning light
so coldly would delineate the
scraps
of last night's cheese and three
sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf among
the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix
her own--
envoy from some village in the
moldings...
Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
sounded a dozen notes upon the
keyboard,
declared it out of tune, shrugged
at the mirror,
rubbed at his beard, went out for
cigarettes;
while she, jeered by the minor
demons,
pulled back the sheets and made
the bed and found
a towel to dust the table-top,
and let the coffee-pot boil over
on the stove.
By evening she was back in love
again,
though not so wholly but
throughout the night
she woke sometimes to feel the
daylight coming
like a relentless milkman up the
stairs.
Marge
Piercy
Always Unsuitable (1969)
She wore little
teeth of pearls around her neck.
They were
grinning politely and evenly at me.
Unsuitable they
smirked. It is true
I look a stuffed
turkey in a suit. Breasts
too big for the
silhouette. She knew
at once that we
had sex, lots of it
as if I had
strolled into her dining-room
in a dirty
negligee smelling gamy
smelling fishy
and sporting a strawberry
on my neck. I
could never charm
the mothers,
although the fathers ogled
me. I was
exactly what mothers had warned
their sons
against. I was quicksand
I was trouble in
the afternoon. I was
the alley cat
you don't bring home.
I was the dirty
book you don't leave out
for your mother
to see. I was the center-
fold you
masturbate with then discard.
Where I came
from, the nights I had wandered
and survived,
scared them, and where
I would go they
never imagined.
Ah, what you
wanted for your sons
were little
ladies hatched from the eggs
of pearls like
pink and silver lizards
cool, well
behaved and impervious
to desire and
weather alike. Mostly
that's who they
married and left.
Oh, mamas, I
would have been your friend.
I would have
cooked for you and held you.
I might have
rattled the windows
of your sorry
marriages, but I would
have loved you
better than you know
how to love
yourselves, bitter sisters.
Marge
Piercy
Barbie Doll
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn’t she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.
Suicide Note
Janice Mirikitani
How many notes written . . .
ink smeared like birdprints in snow.
not good enough not pretty enough not smart enough
dear mother and father.
I apologize
for disappointing you.
I've worked very hard,
not good enough
harder, perhaps to please you.
If only I were a son, shoulders broad
as the sunset threading through pine,
I would see the light in my mother's
eyes, or the golden pride reflected
in my father's dream
of my wide, male hands worthy of work
and comfort.
I would swagger through life
muscled and bold and assured,
drawing praises to me
like currents in the bed of wind, virile
with confidence.
not good enough not strong enough not good enough
I apologize.
Tasks do not come easily.
Each failure, a glacier.
Each disapproval, a bootprint.
Each disappointment,
ice above my river.
So I have worked hard.
not good enough.
My sacrifice I will drop
bone by bone, perched
on the ledge of my womanhood,
fragile as wings.
not strong enough
It is snowing steadily
surely not good weather
for flying - this sparrow
sillied and dizzied by the wind
on the edge.
not smart enough.
I make this ledge my altar
to offer penance.
This air will not hold me,
the snow burdens my crippled wings,
my tears drop like bitter cloth
softly into the gutter below.
not good enough not strong enough not smart enough
Choices thin as shaved
ice. Notes shredded
drift like snow
on my broken body,
covers me like whispers
of sorries.
Perhaps when they find me
they will bury
my bird bones beneath
a sturdy pine
and scatter my feathers like
unspoken song
over this white and cold and silent
breast of earth.