Andy-isms

I wrote down things that Andy said in class that tickled my fancy and thought I'd put them here for further enjoyment. I can't always give context, but I think they're funny nonetheless!

9/11
(Discussing Tambien la Lluvia, but mostly James Bond)
 "It's hard to concentrate on 'is it water or oil' when it's Daniel Craig driving around cool-ass cars shooting shit."

9/13
(Discussing Bradford and Tommy Granger)
Andy: "It's like they said, 'This writing is really dry and awful, so we'll throw them a...'"
Someone else in the class: "Bone?"
The rest of us: *burst out laughing*

9/16
"Ben Percy's voice has its own beard."

9/23
"Waverly, not the home of WartSuck."

9/25
"The one day you wear your cool sweatshirt to work, the President of the college sits next to you at the Paideia lecture."

11/8
"Take these two sonnets and call me in the morning."

11/11
"Imagine Scoes Hoes til you're dead!"

11/13
(On how long "The Great Lawsuit" takes to get to the point)
"[Margaret Fuller] needed Paideia in her life."

11/18
"I write best when there's a lot of heavy machine noise."

11/25
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitant."
"The American economy isn't family-friendly. It doesn't get into Macklemore concert."

12/2
(Trying to pronounce Dupin)
"Dupe. Dupe-man. Doop-lion. Doop-dog."

12/4
(On Whitman)
"Tongues on breastbones and beards and things. Well, one beard."

12/11 (probably)
Andy: "Well, I figured we'd have the final exam at my house because there's a larger collection of My Little Ponies for use in dramatic readings."
Me: "LargER?"
Andy: "Well I don't know what you guys have in your backpacks!"

Dickinson

I think there is much more to Dickinson’s poetry than meets the eye, so I suppose that would be “simply deceptive.” I once wrote a paper comparing her to Robert Frost, and how even though on the surface, his poems seem light and hers dark, reading into subtext actually shows that the reverse is often true. I’ve thrown a bit of that paper into here now to prove that Dickinson’s poetry isn’t always as dark as it seems, meaning that there is something deceptive about it:

Her poetry seems dark and brooding on the surface, especially when one looks at the suggested titles. Her poem “260 (288)” initially does not seem optimistic. It begins, “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” At first, one would think that the poet is demeaning herself, perhaps dejected with life and feeling unimportant. However, the full poem proves that she is happy with this fact:

How dreary – to be –Somebody!

How public- like a Frog-

To tell one’s name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!

When one is nobody, one can be anybody. A person can change identities as one changes clothes, and this idea can be appealing. An identity can trap an individual, and the lack of identity leaves one free.

            Another of Dickinson’s lighter poems is “314 (254).” In this poem, she discusses hope:

            “Hope” is the thing with feathers –

            That perches in the soul-

            And sings the tune without the words –

            And never stops – at all-

She goes on to say that hope is heard in all situations, and says that “Yet – never – in Extremity, / It asked a crumb – of me.” This is to say that hope does not always take effort. Hope lives even if a person does not devote him or herself specifically to developing it. It will always be there, guiding a person through the most difficult times. These two poems show that Dickinson has a more optimistic side to her poetry.

Whitman

Walt Whitman

1.

Ok, nerd alert, but all of this atom talk make me think of the series 1 finale of Doctor Who, when Rose turns into the Bad Wolf and tells the Dalek Emperor, “I can see the whole of time and space, every single atom of your existence, and I divide them.” Maybe it’s just because every time I see “atom” in this sense I hear it in Bad Wolf Rose’s voice. There’s actually something sort of Whitman-esque in the whole Bad Wolf speech, because it talks a lot about the whole of creation and power over that, but I digress.

This is really an introduction to what “Song of Myself” will be about. It reminds me of the first introductory sonnet of Astrophil and Stella. The most poetic thing to me in this is the repetition. It gives the poem a lilting rhythm, sort of a swinging back and forth.

5.

This is a pastoral strophe, and it’s also very holistic and natural, with the lovers loafing in the grass, and the only man-made image is the fence (and even that seems pretty natural). The repetition present in the first strophe is also really prevalent here; the whole last stanza has each line starting with “and”, which gives it sort of a rambling, stream-of-consciousness feeling. We also get the idea of sex and bodies leading to ideas, as his tryst and “loafe in the grass” leads him to contemplate nature and God.

8.

Even though it is free verse, there is a rhythm to Whitman’s poetry that’s especially noticeable in this strophe. Even if it’s not necessarily iambic pentameter, there’s a lilting rhythm to “The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill” (150). The repetition adds to the sense of the mundane brought by the everyday images, because many of these are not big things; they’re the drone of the everyday that no one really notices.