When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly
By Oliver Goldsmith When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her tears away? The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from ev’ry eye, To give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom is—to die. This poem was written by a poet of the 1700s which, as we all now, was not the height of women’s rights or respect. This poem was initially published in a novel called “The Vicar of Wakefield”, in this scene, the man, Squire Thornhill, has seduced a woman named Olivia, and conned her into running away with him where he will eventually leave her as he has done to numerous women previously. This poem is about Olivia’s regret and remorse after ruining her reputation and betraying her family for this man. Though Olivia’s only crime was falling in love with a bad man, she still feels intense guilt over this act. She sees herself as stooping to “folly”, as she has made a major error in judgement in the first line of the poem. This line is followed by a simple explanation, to the source of her troubles: “men betray”. Olivia is looking for solace in this trying time. She feels she has nothing anymore as she has abandoned her family for him and is now seen as a used woman. In her search for peace, she wonders what can ease “her melancholy” and what “can wash her tears away”. The second stanza of this poem shifts to a dark side of Olivia’s thought progression. Under the guilt that covers her, she is looking for a solution to ease her suffering. Olivia was once a respected member of society and was always highly focused on her appearance and social position. Now, the whole town knows she has been left like the other women the Squire has abandoned, who have all ended up as prostitutes. Olivia deals with the “shame from ev’ry eye” which only adds to her melancholy state. These feelings eventually drive Olivia to contemplate suicide, as seen in the final two lines. For her, it seems the only solution to put her on top of this situation. It’s interesting to reflect on this woman’s problem that seems so dated and of an entirely different time period (with squires and such), but put in a contemporary mold, this situation is actually a common occurrence. I think there are many situations of women being used by their respective partners and preceding to blame themselves for the relationship going sour. Goldsmith’s poem highlights an interesting time period with an unfortunate turn in a relationship that is very telling to male-female interactions of the 1700s.
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Balaenoptera
When we are old Hair the color of tombstones. Bones, That sound like wet windshield wipers whenever we slow dance through the living room. I imagine, That I will look you in the eye as if there is something small and precious imprisoned there. And say to you Darling...Did you know? that a blue whale has a heart the size of a car? When you reply correctly as you always seem to do when I ask you difficult questions about oceanography, I'll probably just laugh, rejoicing over the fact that every time you smile it makes the wrinkles at the corner of your eyes look like six willow branches all lifting their heads from prayer in unison Wind, humming a somber hymn beneath it's breath. Just as our anthem jogs to a close, And I whisper in your ear, "How did you know that I was the one?" When all those well-dressed jackals came galloping to your door, begging for the rights to your ring finger. What made you lock the deadbolt on your ribs? Looking them squarely in the face, and saying with joy "I am saving all of this beauty for a man I've never even met." Did you ever doubt? Ever sit in your dorm room and think that, maybe, your soul mate, had chosen someone a lot more boring, but a lot less picky than you, and opted for the easy way out of a life filled with love. When I was Twenty-two years old. Beard freshly grown, An ocean away from my family with the kind of pain that drives men to do selfish barely forgivable things. I dreamt of you nightly, hunted for your smile in every audience that I broke for. Hoping that I could literally steal a glance, Download it onto my retinas and replay the moment our eyes first played freeze tag. And neither one of us wanted to stop being 'it'. So we just kept on touching, hoping that father time would give us a hall pass, and allow us to orbit one another forever. And speaking of orbits, did you know? That there are more stars in the sky, than grains of sand on the entire planet. And That I would give you either one if you merely asked, Peel the night from the sky's skin like the rind of an orange, Or ask God, If I could borrow the breeze for just a moment, and blow the shoreline of every beach into a giant hourglass made just for us, and say THIS, is how long I will adore the things about you that no one else even notices. Like your laugh, and how it sounds like a mix of Jimmy Hendrix at Woodstock, and two rainstorms singing perfectly in tune. Those orthopedic shoes, and how they always match your cardigans perfectly. Those crooked glasses, and how they dangle at the edge of your nose like the legs of two lovers on a tire swing, the last summer they will ever see each other's face. The first time I saw your face, I thought "WOW"... If there were a Gorgeous Olympics you would be a lock, And maybe I would be your key. And maybe love is a club, that we both got into for free. And we just haven't stopped dancing for all these decades because we really like the music in here. And maybe, if you asked me to, I would crawl through the veins of a blue whale on my hands and knees, photograph that Volkswagen sized heart of hers, and place the picture on your pillow before you went to sleep. When you ask me about, I'll probably just laugh, giggling, like I've got a handful of diamonds in my throat and say see, I told you. The biggest heartbeat God ever made and now it's all yours. audio: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9TWj3kb4cA POEM ANALYSIS: Balaenoptera is the genus name for several species of blue whales. Joshua Bennett incorporates the heart of a whale into his poem to tell the story and progression of his love for his significant other. In writing on their love, Bennett details the passion he holds and the lengths he would go to make this woman smile He compares their passion to natural phenomena, namely the power and movement of the ocean. Bennett mentions his significant other’s interest in oceanography, which explains all the allusions to the natural world and ocean life. He says he was “an ocean away” from his family when they met in college. Feelings of isolation and separation can drive people to crave bonds with others and intimate relationships. Bennett fulfills this desire with the woman he meets that makes him want to do “selfish, barely forgivable things”. In effect, he says this woman is a force of nature. Their meetings in the hall allow them to “orbit one another”. This presents the idea of the woman being an anchor for Bennett, someone he gravitates toward and finds comfort in their company. Bennett proclaims his love in impassioned declarations; “That there are more stars in the sky, than grains of sand on the entire planet. And That I would give you either one if you merely asked”, “Peel the night from the sky's skin like the rind of an orange”, “ask God, If I could borrow the breeze for just a moment, and blow the shoreline of every beach into a giant hourglass made just for us”. The way Bennett describes the acts he would commit to simply make her smile or laugh show his deep affection and dedication to their relationship. In the last few lines of the poem, he brings back the whale and says if she asked him to, he would “crawl through the veins of a blue whale on my hands and knees, photograph that Volkswagen sized heart of hers” just so he could give her the “biggest heartbeat God ever made”. This poem details a full history of a significant relationship, from meeting to hope in their future. Bennett describes all aspects of the woman, from school major to appearance to her sense of humor. He crafts an image of a perfect woman who pushes him to do great things. As much as this poem is about what Bennett would do for another, it is a testament to the man he has become because of their presence in his life. In Defense of Passing
by Joshua Bennett Most of us call it cloaking, though the academic term for the practice slides just as smoothly off a teenager’s tongue: holographic deracination. Within days of wide-scale release, the Times will hail this device, its attendant social phenomena, as triumphs of modern technology, inevitable advance given the speed of post-racial desire, how expensive it is to purge the murk from an infant’s skin by most other means. The machine’s inventor will make no such claims. A plainspoken woman, she was. Stanford grad, white as a lab coat. Cited her time overseas as primary inspiration; all the suffering she’d seen caste cause. The device came to her in a lucid dream, this silver ellipse small enough to wear on the wrist or lapel, just one touch and any future you choose could be yours. Soft, false flesh, draped like a new lover over your body and just as clumsily until you work out the rhythm of it, the slang, how to maneuver this cold glass suit, light as it is. Believe it or not, protest didn’t last long. Sky-high pricing kept the cloaks an upper-class concern for months, years before poor folks got a hold of any prototype worth the worry. Once they did, you would think they had stolen something worth more than a date with the quarterback, or a job interview. You would think they had killed someone important, or blown up the moon, the way cops flooded the slums, clubs in hand, beating the color off of them. Much like in the plot of any science fiction film, this poem is about a future where scientists have created new technology that they hope will change the world. I’ve been reading and analyzing Joshua Bennett’s poetry for a couple months now and I’ve always found it interesting how he makes connections with time, how our past affects our future and how we repeat our past. In this poem, Bennett tells a story of the future. He describes the discover and implementation of “holographic deracination” in a future society and what it means to be ourselves. To start off, I’d like to look at Bennett’s word choice. I’ve always enjoyed Bennett’s simple way of incorporating fun vocabulary into his poetry without appearing awkward or contrived. He begins the poem, “most of us call it cloaking”. Cloaking is not a word I often use but the connotation of the word is important to setting the mood of the poem. Hiding, covering, secrecy, and deception go along with the idea of “cloaking” yourself. Bennett then introduces “holographic deracination” which describes the new technology he will explain. “Deracination” meaning “to isolate or alienate from a native or customary culture or environment” and “Holographic” meaning simply, a hologram image. It's a very sci-fi thought to give humans this ability to digitally change themselves in this way. It's also a very important phrase that should leave an impact on the reader. The subject matter of this poem is race and how we interpret someone’s race into our definition of them as a person. The discovery of this new technology is made by a “plainspoken woman” who is “white as a lab coat”. It’s significant to the meaning of the poem that she creates this device out of sympathy for what she sees “overseas” (I’m assuming she is part of a Doctors Without Borders-type organization). Her motivation is this misplaced sympathy for the people she finds that makes her believe she is helping them. The result is the creation of a device that will give anyone the ability to change themselves. Bennett delves into the idea that people of color are automatically assumed to be of less worth and undesired. This idea translates the message of the poem by explaining the pity the woman feels and the cops’ reaction at the end of the poem. The main message of this poem is the way minority groups are viewed. I think the best word for these feelings is pity. I think to pity a person or a specific group is often very insulting and completely ignorant. As Americans, we tend to look at “third world countries” a certain way or countries that follow stricter religious or moral codes than we do. With people, we've had about 400+ years since the colonization of the United States to develop opinions on groups of people that have grown into deep-rooted hatred and institutionalized racism. After this poem, I find myself reflecting on the value of an individual’s opinion in an unfamiliar area and the privileges many of us hold. Bennett’s poem to me read as a call-out for the tendencies of privileged people to look at the less-fortunate (in cases of wealth) and the behavior of those who still maintain dated and racist views about the worth of a skin color. http://www.wavecomposition.com/article/issue-10/three-poems/
On Extinction by Joshua Bennett Dear Reader, Please, pardon my obsession with the end of things. I was born of two Baptists: one backslidden though no less fervent when it came to the law, the cross, the grain of me & my sister’s hair. I was born nonwhite in the 1980s, arrived in the wake of four girls slumped against a project wall resembling a long ellipsis, heron (my father’s preferred pronunciation) having coaxed their heads into solemn agreement. Mama knew three of the dying personally, but this isn’t about her, so much as how this scene became a part of our extended family, its argument clear as a bullet’s signature: son, to live in this flesh is to worship agility, to call death by its government name. The woman across the table is scared to raise her son, fears he will be killed by police, says this outright, over soup, expecting nothing. My first thought is of the landscape. For a moment, all I can see is flat green oblivion, unchecked flora where fourth-graders once sped across the open. In 1896, Frederick Hoffman claimed every Negro in the U.S. would be dead by the end of the year of my younger brother’s birth. To his credit, Hoffman dreamt of neither badge nor bullet, but dysentery, tuberculosis, killers we could not touch or beg for clemency. Hence, when I consider extinction, I do not think of sad men with guns, or Hoffman standing by the chalkboard in his office, discerning algorithms for the dead, but the sheer breadth of our refusal, how my mother, without stopping even to write a poem about it, woke up yesterday, and this morning again. One of the most interesting topics to discuss, or debate, is life after death. Coming from different backgrounds, cultures, and religions, you’ll find people have opinions and/or strong convictions on this matter. In Joshua Bennett’s poem, “On Extinction”, he delves into his upbringing and draws comparisons with the current social climate and what he sees in the future for African Americans. This poem is about recognizing the influence a racist history has on the modern and forthcoming generations of African Americans and Bennett’s definition of resilience. Bennett combines even amounts of personal testimony with historical evidence in this poem. I appreciate that he can make these strong, emotional statements in his poems and provide information from the past, allowing the reader to gain insight into his perspective on these matters. He gives the reader information into his life and his parents; “I was born of two baptists”, “I was born nonwhite in the 1980s”, “...my younger brother’s birth”. He sets up a childhood influence (the baptist church), states his non-preferred race of the time (nonwhite), and shares a personal relation to a prediction (“Frederick Hoffman claimed every Negro in the U.S. would be dead by the end of the year of my younger brother’s birth”). Bennett’s poem includes themes of hope, resilience, and reflection on the future. It’s very easy to find quotes about the past: “learn from the past or be doomed to repeat it”, “don’t let your past define your future”, “owning our past allows us to own our future”. I find myself thinking about the past while considering the thoughts about the future that Bennett presents. My favorite aspect of this poem is the timeline Bennett gives it. “Extinction” is an ultimate decision. It’s a conclusion, a final resolution, a definite outcome. For all the things it is, it does not come with an exact time. In this poem, extinction is a hostile feeling that looms around people. To live as though you are to be eradicated in time or can only survive so long as you can hold on are the impressions I get from Bennett’s words. I found references to time in Bennett’s lines; “four girls slumped against a project wall resembling a long ellipsis”, “for a moment, all I can see is flat green oblivion”, “every Negro in the U.S. would be dead by the end of the year”, “how my mother… woke up yesterday, and this morning again”. Some, final and limited like a death sentence for African Americans. Some, limitless like an ellipsis or endless mornings. For a title that seems so definitive, Bennett provides the reader opportunity to reflect on life’s boundless moments. Bennett’s references to time in this poem are not without cause, he is making a statement on the present day situation in our world regarding race. I think a lot of people find comfort in internet quotes that tell us that “life is about moving on” or “living in the past is a choice”. For some, that’s not an option as in many ways, this country has not changed at all. What somebody said in 1896 can affect lives in the 21st century. The most impacting message I drew from “On Extinction” is that the past cannot be written off as simply “the past” as the U.S. still exhibits some “historical” viewpoints and tendencies in modern times. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/90664
Owed to Pedagogy BY JOSHUA BENNETT For 1995 It was the dead center of summer, & anyone but us would’ve been outside hours ago, flailing like a system of larks against the hydrant’s icy spray. But a girl had her orders, & to disobey our mother was, in a sense, to invite one’s own destruction, cause to pray that a god of mercy might strike first. So we lay, still as stars on the living room floor, poring over algorithms: divisors & dividends, quotient the first synonym for resolution I ever learned, & would later come to love for its sound alone, how it reminded me, even then, of words like quantum & quotation mark, both ways of saying nothing means what you think it means all the time. The observable universe hides behind its smooth obsidian dress, & all we can do is grasp at it in myths & figures, see what sticks, give all our best language to the void. What dark irony, these coy, child philosophers, theorizing how things break from the floor of a house where everything is more or less in flux, indeterminate as the color of the blood in a body. Or the speed at which I learned to obliterate the distance between myself & any given boy on the block, the optimal angle of the swing most likely to drop another kid cold in front of his crew, to square up, square off, & this too was a kind of education, the way my sister held both fists semi-adjacent, each an inch or so from her switchblade eyes, showed me the stance you take when the math doesn’t quite shake out, so it’s just you & the unknowns & the unknowns never win. POEM ANALYSIS: Dedicated to “1995”, Bennett writes on his childhood experiences, growing up with an austere mother, and what life is like when you realize nothing is everlasting and the world is full of “unknowns”. He includes examples of events from when he was young that make him realize how he faced childhood can relate to how he confronts adulthood. A major component of the poem is when Bennett ties his emotions to the word “quotient”. He works through the meaning of the word as a synonym for resolution and as a descriptor for things in the university that are unknown. This is a significant contrast to the beginnings of the poem where he describes his mother and her strict ruling. Things for him when he was young were more permanent, more controlled. He also contrasts the math he does as a child to real-world problems. Math has concrete answers and steps through which they can be solved. Bennett is saying what we face in the real world are transient situations and we have no rule book. Bennett uses kinesthetic imagery to tell the story of his poem. It's his descriptions of a child flying off a swing, his sister in a fighting stance, and how he can “obliterate the distance” between people that drive the action of the poem forward. The movement that Bennett is able to generate in the poem pushes the reader right up till the end, where he drops the reader off with a simple “never win”. Pedagogy is “the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept”. Bennett has a little play-on-words here as he titles the poem “Owed to Pedagogy” as opposed to “Ode”. This is symbolic to the dedication he gives to the poem to represent how his experiences in childhood led to his view of the world as an adult. The author is making the statement that constrictive teaching when he was younger gave way to a free-thinking, less in conformity view of the world as initially indeterminate and “in flux”. Tamara’s Opus by Joshua Bennett
*asterisks indicate hand-signed lines Tamara has never listened to hip hop. Never danced to the rhythm of raindrops or fallen asleep to a chorus of chirping crickets. She has been Deaf for as long as I’ve been alive. And ever since the day I first turned five my father has said: “Joshua. Nothing is wrong with Tamara. **God just makes some people different.**” And at that moment those nine letters felt like hammers swung gracefully by unholy hands to shatter my stained glass innocence into shards that can never be pieced back together or do anything more than sever the ties between my sister and I. I waited, was patient numberless years anticipating the second her ears would open like lotuses and allow my sunlight senses to seep into her insides make her remember all of those conversations we must have had in heaven back when God handpicked us to be sibling souls centuries ago. I still remember her 20th birthday. Readily recall my awe-struck 11 year old eyes as I watched Deaf men and women of all ages dance in unison to the vibration of speakers booming so loud that I imagined angels chastising us for disturbing their worship with such beautiful blasphemy. Until you have seen **a Deaf girl dance, you know nothing of passion.** There was a barricade between us that I never took the time to destroy never even for a moment thought to look up the sign for **sister**, for **family**, for **goodbye. I will see you again someday.** remember the face of your little brother. It is only now I see that I was never willing to put in the extra effort to love her properly. So as the only person in my family who is not fluent in sign language I’ve decided to take this time to apologize. Tamara **I am sorry for my silence.** For true love knows no frequency, and so I will use these hands to speak volumes that can never be contained within the boundaries of sound waves I will shout at the top of my fingertips until digits dance and relay these mental messages directly to your soul. I know that there is no poem that can make up for all the time we have lost so please, if you can, **just listen.** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVvzw7d11Q8 Opus: “any artistic work, especially one on a large scale”. Joshua Bennett’s opus on his sister details his progression of understanding his older sister being deaf and his exploration into life experiences for deaf people. An important aspect of this poem is that Bennett includes several hand signs in his spoken performance of his poem. As a younger brother, Bennett describes his initial understanding of his sister through his father’s explanation: “God just makes some people different”. From this explanation, he describes the shattering of his innocence as he realizes he will always see him and his sister as “different”. The emotion of this part of the poem is significant because it builds the arc of the story he is telling. Bennett will proceed to relate his current relation to his sister, but his description of himself as a child is telling to the ignorance he held on the matter before he grew up. This change in his character delivers the moral of the poem to the reader and builds a strong emotion of familial love and understanding that a reader can relate to. Indicated by the asterisks, Bennett speaks while signing certain lines of the poem. The hand signs appear during lines Bennett wants to emphasize. Since the poem is a declaration to his sister about the barrier between them, he signs “I am sorry for my silence”, “family”, and “goodbye. I will see you again someday”. His use of the ASL hand signs shows important character development, as he goes from confusion to attempts at communication. By the end of the poem Bennett comes to the realization of what he has learned in life. He has an apology for his sister, which is signed, because he now knows that a language barrier cannot keep them apart, “For true love knows no frequency”. The message I find in the poem is that we can always change our views on what we think we know. Our interpretation of our world and what is “different” may come as a new realization later in life. Through Bennett’s poem, a connection and new-found appreciation of deaf culture is seen as he urges us all to “just listen”. https://soundcloud.com/worldlittoday/still-life-with-toy-gun
Still Life with Toy Gun for Tamir Rice and John Crawford III after the after-party empties both of its fists the seven of us gather like a murder of crows to loose bread around the last table the dining hall has left. It’s late, and vegetarian pizza is the best thing the joint has going but we stay, mostly to partake in what we would never call gossip in front of our uncles but most certainly is: who left with how many numbers, top ten worst life choices made that weekend, how Lauryn’s cobalt dress lassoed every human breath in the room. Night unspools. Our attention plants its feet in late Clinton-era Everywhere and we sing of what we yearned for back then, back home, what mocked our small, stupefied hands like a white stove or the promise of beauty. Consensus lands on Super Soakers. B.B. guns. All manner of false weaponry we were barred from as boys because of a mother’s fear, her suspicion that the rules of a given game might shift and gunfire would be our only warning, the policeman’s voice an aftershock, his first mouth having already made its claim. Even now, no one among us calls this a kind of theft, which is to say, the term never launches like a hex from our tongues, but even if it did, somehow, rise and alight the air, if everything we missed during the years we grew tired trying not to die found its own body right then, right there in the dead center of campus, what difference could it make now that we have already mastered the rule book, the protocol we learned before we learned to slow dance, or smooth talk, or scream the lyrics of a favorite song in a group of two or more and not feel ashamed of all the noise a black body can make while it is still living Joshua Bennett, author of the poem “Still Life with Toy Gun," writes 13 stanzas on his and his friends discussion on police shootings of black males. Bennett dedicates the poem “for Tamir Rice and John Crawford III," two men (12 and 22) who were shot by police officers while holding toy guns (B.B. guns in both cases). Bennett discusses his thoughts and reflects on the changes in society that have led to where we are today. For Bennett, the subject matter of this poem and the ideas expressed are very significant to his life and add to the emotion he is describing. As a black man himself, Bennett is able to draw from his personal experience with the matter by speaking from his own childhood, (“All manner of false weaponry we were barred from as boys”). He is able to relate his own life to Rice and Crawford III and connect to how the fear of a mother of a black boy is now universal within that community. The style this poem was written in is important to how the poem was intended to be read. Joshua Bennett has done most of his work in slam-poem format where the performance of the poem often times contributes just as much to the poem as the words do. I’ve included a link at the bottom to a recording from Bennett. The stanzas end mid sentence because in this format, Bennett can continue to speak and pause as he wishes. For a reader however, the effect is a interesting, fast-paced reading that builds the emotion right up to the end of the poem. This poem reads as a flash of thoughts running through Bennett’s mind, uninhibited and uncensored. Bennett’s word choice in this poem create some lines that stand out as harsh and violent; “gunfire would be our only warning,” “the policeman’s voice an aftershock,” “we grew tired trying not to die,” and “right there in the dead center of campus”. The impact of these lines and Bennett’s use of words that relate to death and chaos add to his message and point of view as a man who has recognized this as his new reality. I particularly like how he states “the dead center of campus” to bring the poem back to present day, to where he is still at college with his friends talking about these issues, while placing himself “dead center” as if he sees who he is as a target. |
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