Philip Larkin

Though I enjoy the witty cynicism in poems like "This be the Verse" and "Talking in Bed," I ultimately prefer the dark, transcendent, almost romantic Larkin in poems like "Church Going," "Here," and "High Windows." I think his other poems are humorous and I actually like his cynical attitude (most of the time) but I think the "anti-romantic" Larkin has a much more complex voice that allows the poems to be a little more rewarding.  Not only are his "major" poems more rewarding (for me), but they also embody some of the same cynicism we see in other poems.  If Larkin was being strictly romantic in his descriptions of churches and nature...then maybe I'd prefer the witty Larkin...but it's not like "Church Going" and "Here" are completely void of cynicism..it's definitely there along with other factors that make the poems more. 
"Church Going," especially, is a poem I connect with on a pretty personal level and I think it is a good example of a poem that shows two different sides of Larkin. It's pretty clear that Larkin is not particularly religious as he dismisses religion multiple times in the poem and describes believers as "Christmas-addicts"...but still, there is amongst all of this cynicism a longing for something more, maybe not a search for God but a search for something to replace God with.  This tension between feeling disconnected and cynical of religion while still feeling the need to respect the church ("...I take off / My cycle-clips in awkward reverence") is what draws me to this poem. This "awkward reverence" complicates the poem and shows a different side of Larkin that we don't see in "This be the Verse."  I also enjoy the poem because it shows a different side of non-believers in general by challenging the idea that it's "easy" to be an atheist...it's not.

"Steps" by Frank O'Hara

 After we discussed it in class, I began reflecting on Frank O’Hara’s style/voice and whether or not his poetry is successful. I think it would be easy for readers to dismiss his style (especially in the “I do this/I do that” poems) just based on their (mis)conceptions that poetry always has to be this complicated, over the top, excessively meaningful thing... but I don’t really agree with that. I think his poetry is successful and enjoyable to read because it manages to be meaningful and honest while simply describing things as how they are, allowing readers to find enjoyment in the simple pleasures in life.  That it makes me feel something and look at the world a little differently without excessive language or use of symbolism, for me, makes it successful.  Compared to the other poets we have encountered this semester, the subject matter and voice of Frank O’Hara’s poetry is a lot simpler to understand and follow.  That’s not to say his more straightforward and simplistic language is not poetic, though, for he definitely offers fresh images and interesting ways to describe the spontaneous world around him.  

One of my favorite poems in Lunch Poems is “Steps” because I think it exemplifies exactly what I admire about O’Hara’s poetry...a clever, honest and light hearted view of the world.  Right away O’Hara exudes happiness in the second stanza with the lines “all I want is a room up there / and you in it / and even the traffic halt so thick is a way / for people to rub up against each other.”  Here, he takes something we normally look at as an annoyance (traffic) and somehow makes it into something positive with the claim that crowded city life, at least, forces contact with others.  O’Hara continues to describe the people around him in the park with the lines “why not / the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won / and in a sense we’re all winning / we’re alive.”  These lines really stood out as lines I really love with their “it could always be worse...we could be dead” type of philosophy...one that I think we all could benefit from from time to time.  O’Hara’s persistent positivity continues in the next stanza with “even the stabbings are helping the population explosion / though in the wrong country” (though I personally find these lines a little less believable than others.) The last line of this stanza “not that we need liquor (we just like it)” is admittedly a favorite...wouldn’t we all love to believe this is true? Finally, the last two stanzas cement this poem into one of my favorite O’Hara poems, first with the simplistic description of an old man and his wife...the man drinking beer and the wife knocking him off the box he’s sitting on.  The whole scene has a feel good “love can last” type message that reminds me of when my grandparents would bicker with each other and admit their love in the same breath. Finally, the last stanza “oh god it’s wonderful / to get out of bed / and drink too much coffee / and smoke too many cigarettes / and love you so much” just makes me smile, honestly. I’m usually resistant to anything inherently sweet because maybe it seems put on or not really genuine, but I think these lines are really successful at capturing a feeling without being cheesy or sentimental. This persistent happiness (that would usually annoy me...even though that maybe sounds a little more cynical than I mean for it to) is what makes me really enjoy O’hara. A lot of these poems just make you feel good, which is a nice change from some of the other poets we've encountered. 

Plath's "The Arrival of the Bee Box"

After a few close readings of “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” I began thinking about the poem in two different ways. First I interpreted it on a literal level, that it’s a snapshot of the arrival of a bee box. Since Sylvia’s father was a beekeeper this scene was probably more or less familiar to her. I then interpreted the poem on a more metaphorical level, with the bee box as a metaphor for Sylvia herself and the bees as a representation of her thoughts/declining mental state.  The description of the box, for me, supports this reading, “The box is locked, it is dangerous / I have to live with it overnight / And I can’t keep away from it” (lines 6-8).  Here, the box represents her mind, something she literally must live with without any chance of escape.  Since it is likely that she was suffering from depression at the time, we can see how her mind could be described as a dangerous place.  She continues to describe the inside of the box “It is dark, dark.../ Black on black, angrily clambering” (lines 12, 15).  We can read these lines on a merely descriptive level, but they can also be used to support the other reading of the poem. Her mind is a dark place that breeds thoughts that she cannot control and the bees represent these negative thoughts “It is the noise that appalls me most of all, / The unintelligible syllables. / It is like a Roman mob, / Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!” (lines 17-20).   Here she describes the swarm of bees and how they are only really dangerous when they come in multitudes.  Likewise it is only when the “unintelligible syllables” of her thoughts reach a level she can no longer ignore that they become truly dangerous for her.  A sort of tension develops in the poem as we consider how her thoughts and feelings grow into this unignorable swarm.
 In the next stanza she attempts to convince herself that she can control them “I have simply ordered a box of maniacs / They can be sent back. / They can die, I need not feed them nothing, I am the owner” (lines 23-25). Her decision to call the bees “maniacs” seems important and may allude to her own feelings toward herself, that these thoughts/feelings are making her insane. She asserts, though, that she is the one in control but the thought of overcoming them scares her.  I think the last stanza in which she states “I am no source of honey / So why should they turn on me? / Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.” (lines 33-34) represents not only her decision to set herself free but also to do it by the act of creation.  Through poetry she can become “sweet God” and create an external space for her thoughts so they will not overwhelm her. Through her poetry, her thoughts can also live on forever, which I felt was exemplified in the last line “The box is only temporary” (line 36).  Here, she states that the box is only a temporary place for her feelings and she wants to set them free but I think it can also be interpreted as a greater statement about life and death in general. I think perhaps she is saying her mind and body are only temporary and she can find a way to live forever through poetry. 

Howl

The final two sections of “Howl” help to resolve/clear up many of the issues brought forth in the first section by showing the reader why the best minds of Ginsberg’s generation were “destroyed by madness.” The first section paints a portrait of a group of people longing for some sort of transcendence, “angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection”-and goes into great detail about the experiences they had while trying to reach this higher plane. Section one is a sprawling account of drug use, [promiscuous] sex, hallucinations, religious experimentation and overall less than acceptable behavior for the society of the 1950’s.  The situations in section one definitely place the Beats on the outside and also show what they longed to achieve by this rejection:  “to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head”

I see section one as a sort of result of what we see in section two. Whereas section one presents us with the outcome, section two answers the question “why?”
 It begins with the question “What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?” The answer is Moloch, society’s pressure to conform to an industrial, capitalist society. Moloch is the material world “Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! Invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible mad houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!”  This language in section two sets up this urban, industrial world with Moloch as its monstrous leader. In mythology, Moloch is the ancient god who received children as sacrifices...which for me ties back to section one in that Ginsberg and the Beats seemed to have sacrificed their bodies/minds in an attempt to escape Moloch. The ending of this section shows this choice to escape “...They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!”

We also see this idea of sacrifice in part III as well, where Carl Soloman is characterized as this sort of Christ-like figure- “I’m with you in Rockland where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb”
Part III mingles all of the themes we encountered previously in the poem. We see Ginsberg's political message...the desire to escape a hungry, materialistic society as well as his own personal connection with people he has known (such as Carl Solomon) who have also attempted this.

These ideas of sacrifice, of the need to transcend, to escape a society that rejects and attempts to “fix” outsiders are all stressed in part III and by the end bring the poem full circle. 

Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn

Keats presents a paradoxical view of art in “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” On the one hand, the urn (and therefore art) is the perfect representation of the life he longs for-one free of consciousness and the constraints of time, an unchanging moment of beauty that simply exists forever. This is exemplified throughout the poem with such lines as  “Fair youth, beneath the trees, though canst not leave/ thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare” (15-16) and “She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss/ For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!” (19-20).  Here in the second stanza, Keats is telling one of the stories depicted on the side of the urn – two lovers forever frozen in time.  While the idea of this seems perfect, Keats also introduces some of the problems with this, both for the lovers and for the urn as symbol for art. First, since the lovers are frozen in time they can never kiss or know their bliss. Therefore, while the moment depicted on the urn seems perfect, it lacks experience.  Additionally, I thought that Keats was basically saying that art can’t be static or free from time because in a way it would become meaningless. The lovers create a pretty portrait of love but it lacks any real consciousness or human experience and I think Keats is saying the same about art to an extent- that without time art is just another pretty thing to look at.  The speaker attempts to engage with the urn in each stanza but of course it is silent and cannot answer because first, it is literally an urn, and secondly because art that is removed from time cannot speak for itself either because it lacks context and therefore loses some of it’s meaning.
As for the last two lines of the poem, I’m a bit stumped on their meaning. Going back to the two lovers, I began to think that maybe because they are locked in a moment that is entirely about beauty and not human experience that this becomes their only truth. Maybe all art is supposed to do is be aesthetically pleasing and beautiful so it’s “meaning” or lack of doesn’t really matter. What does that mean for the rest of us who are not separate from time?  I think that what he’s saying is that truthfully, life doesn’t exist in this vacuum free from time…that this ideal is unreachable… but the things we find beautiful are ultimate truths that can.