Poems by Ai, Dickey and Bidart/ Analysis of Ai's James Dean

The Sheep Child - JAMES L. DICKEY

Young boys curious to explore and discover anything (even couple with!) , elements of nature; museum in Atlanta with this half creature that isn't quite a sheep. creepy turn in the poem where the boys themselves might be sheeps; relics of memories, like the sheep. Are they safe, are the sheep? The sheep is anthropomorphized and starts talking: about his mother who carries him inspired from another world, she experiences love. The sheep's eyes are more than human, he is like a portal between the natural world and the world of men;he is half sheep half man. He eats milk and dies. Though he is now dead and preserved in his dusty father's house, his presence and memory lives on in boys' memories; is he incarnation of wisdom, of suffering of life until they marry.

"In Dickey’s case, examining the dirty side of sexuality reveals that the deep root of all such encounters is the urge to connect and create, and that earthly immortality will always have a necessary hitch in its inexorable gait."

Almost Human reading: This is a poem in woodcuts, American Sign language loosely based on James Dickey's "Sheep Child". The half-human/half-sheep speaks of its conception,birth, ecstatic vision and death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB1-JOBcxF4

Ellen West - Frank Bidart

Ellen loves sweets, but wants to be the typical thin elegant woman. The docs tell her it's impossible but she doesn't care. Her husband married her " as meat". Scornful tone in that. She says that being a girl is torture because of the beauty implications. Now she's 32 and anorexic, using laxatives, looks like a skeleton. Different scene to where the woman is at a restaurant alone (she's alienated herself from other people because of the food). She sees a man and woman; the woman is very pretty, the image she wants to be, and the man is also very handsome. She feels disgust as she realizes they're a couple; probably from jealousy of the relationship and also from their physique. Also horror at the fact that they're feeding each other. Another scene where she wants to "defeat" Nature; aging, weight. In the hospital where she gets treated she writes poems to forget, but eve that fails. She becomes friend with thin female patient (longing to be what she isn't). Then we skip to Callas, a singer who had  a loud strong voice and big body; how she deteriorated, lost weight and lost her voice. (tapeworm of her soul). Narrator muses on why Callas decided to lose weight and changer her voice;to better her art? To avoid society's demands? Patient is discharged from hospital. She knows her fear of food os childish but she is a prisoner of her hunger. Odd scene on the train where the man sees her looking down at the orange peel but not taking it. Embodiment of temptation? She scorns how everyone on the train is hiding their flaws despite "normal" bodies. Mentions how she disappointed husband by not killing an ideal in her suicide letter. She's like the example of people at the height of their prime before dying. She kills herself.

Herbert White

 crazy man who killed a little girl and regularly goes out into the woods to piss and masturbate on her. When he killed her, he remembers how funny it was, hitting her. Yet in retrospect, just like the pissing and jacking off, he thinks somebody else must have done it. Flashback to when he visited father at a motel; insight into separation/divorce of parents; then Herbert describes seeing the little girl, picking her up in his truck and killing her, then raping her dead body. He buried her in the motel garden. He explains how he wants to feel things, he believes in fate. Believes that the motel was there for him. Then there is a flash of lucidity as he refers to "the bastard that hurt a little girl". Childhood reminiscence of intercourse with a goat, as he orgasms the goat dies, and the next day, he comes back again to masturbate on the corpse. Very bitter resentment towards father as he hangs around with young wife's kids, and it inspires crazy Herbert to drive away and pick up a girl he sees walking out of the movies. The end of the poem drives in the narrator's realization that HE is the one who really did kill and rape the girl. He hopes he goes to hell, for he can't stand seeing who he is anymore.....

The Abjection of James Dean: Mixed Race/Mixed Media Performances in Ai’s “James Dean” - Catherine Irwin

Ai bio: she constructed an identity out of herself; was considered black yet wasn't and she rejected/was rejected by/in that group. She constructed herself a Japanese ID, hence the name. In monologue about James Dean she toys with media identity about this dead white hetero man; how different portrayals of the identity can abjectify a person. Critical mimesis: where other cultures imitate deliberately the white hetero-normative culture. "In other words, technology’s role in the development of an identity can be revealed by exposing through art what has been made abject by a systematic or mediated mode of enframing." In her monologue about James Dean she uses vivid cinematic language to describe his body, his death and how the media keep on wanting to film him after death. Allegoric body in ruins: description of James Dean as a lover, yet is decapitated; castration symbolism, perhaps of the white hetero-normative identity? Different identities explored here: straight James Dean, a bisexual James Dean, and a mixed race James Dean." She abjectifies image of white male as being desirable and by extension the white female as being sexually desirable as well. Disidentification in order to discover herself and avoid the 1990s media blitz of hiding mixed race. "reversed ventriloquism".  Ai's method is like “the stage” to be “a laboratory in which to construct new, nongendered identities." BUT Ai seems aware that because of the nature of the stage (must always keep up the act), and the nature of people, this disidentification she attirubtes to James Dean won't make people more open-minded overnight.

Ai poems

Nothing But Color: slicing open Etsuko ; memories of loving someone, and eating a bit of flesh (masochism?). Failed suicide attempt. Nothing really mattered; false but consuming passion of love and death. Yukio Mishima killed himself; Ai immortalized the moment.

Lesson Lesson: about this little boy who is more perceptive than he should be (sun isn't green in drawings). Very blatant allusion to wood and erection; out in the field like his daddy, with wood in his pants and wanting to drive it home.

Jericho: Girl is pregnant. Lover puts on black mask. She starts eating peppermint he brings; obviously a sexual side to it. SHe adresses her lover like he is afraid of something, apologetic of something and that's why he brings the sweets. SHe tells him to dare to make it to the top.

The Mortician's Twelve Year old son: twelve year old fantasizing about this woman in a long green dress whose breasts were covered. When she dies, he sees her corpse under the sheets and he executes his fantasy --> touching/kissing her nipples. Necrophilia in a way.

The German Army Russia, 1943: peasant talks about the hunger that no one can feed; about drilling his way to a goal, although he knows he probably won't make it. He talks about the Russians burning their crops instead of feeding their army. Hitler beckons him but he is gone.

Talking to his reflection in a Shallow Pond: Narrator lives on chrysanthemum and nightshade; envies the other that can breathe. He wanted himself to die, then he wanted himself to suffer. He drops a rock into his reflection and wishes he would sink. He starts to rescue himself, then pulls back. Then he realizes that they're the same and he likes it, likes that he can die without dying. Sadomasochism.

Go: Narrator talks about lover/killer (Ted Kennedy). he survived as she drowned and bears no trace of her.Everyone wants to defend him, and the narrator wants recognition of her role in the scheme. He dove for a woman the media misinterpreted and didn't recognize freedom when it stared him in the face. Narrator talks about lover realizing he's wasted his life, sometimes recognizing it, sometimes not. She taunts him in the end of poem: if he'd died, he'd have garnered fame along with other 2 brothers. She puts him on stage with a strip-tease with his "jelly rolls". 


The Resurrection of Elvis Presley: Elvis talks about how he used to practice dance movies, lube his hair like a Black, and aspire to be Tony Curtis . He describes how he goes through life and goes through everyone's hands until the Colonel grabs him and he follows like a dog. He lets him win because he promised resurrection. Conflict between what the Colonel wants and Papa wants. Colonel wants him to be quiet and Papa wants him to enjoy life while it's there. Elvis wants to listen to the Colonel but he remembers that in the end he is a country boy who likes singing, and dancing in the dark.

Last Seen: Alfred Hitcock doesn't die. He is locked out of Paradise. Narrator talks irreverentially about him ; how he was boring and all that mattered to him was the next scene, the next film and publicity. Creation likened to depiction of necrophilia.  Ends on questioning note.

Blackface

Black Face






Huck Finn: Black Face Minstrelsy started in 1843 in new York City; was a caricature of the Southern slaves, was considered the best sort of show . White people put on blakckfaces and imitated colored people. During Mark Twain's time, the show was accurate. Since Civil Rights time, it became fake. In Huckelberry Finn it's hard to tell whether the source of the minstrelsy is prejudiced or simply original.




John Berryman/ Maber, Peter “So-called black”: Reassessing John Berryman’s Blackface Minstrelsy” : Dreamsongs had main character Henry play blackface; for the innovative intellectual he was, this disoriented more than completely offended the audience. Some justified his using dialect as a way to be authentic . "filter of white performance". Authenticity is questionable.

Berryman felt old before his time; alcohol influence seeped into his writing. In Dreamsongs, Berryman purposefully created a disjointed illusory scene, shifting characters, making fractured dialogue in order to keep the reader guessing what's happening, who's talking to whom etc. : Huffy Henry; Big Buttons Cornet the Advance minstrelsy dialogue is used; A Stimulant for an Old Beast slightly erotic undertones, Henry reappears again and speaks with 'blackface' dialect ; A Capital at Wells; The Prisoner of Shark Island with Paul Muni - Henry is getting old and some kind of totrture is done to him depriving him of teeth, crotch, dreams - his mother comes and goes- flashback to a young love he had Charlotte Coquet; Sabbath, a creepy allusion to death and hell Henry comes back again - he lived like a rat but was not a coward. Henry seems to bore a certain mr. Bones who gets bored with people like him who experience aches, pains. Mr. Bones is bored with life, great literature, people.

The poems talk about freedom and slavery; either as the minstrelsy who is impersonating a black man; or racial oppression, racial relations.

"Browning up" was an expression that meant groveling.

Bert Williams

PBS documentary: Minstrelsy was catapulted in 1830 by Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who was called "Daddy" Rice. During an entracte of a play he did this impromptu dance to Jim Crow wearing shabby attire from an African American he met previously. During that time the issue of slavery and rise of abolition was coming to a head. Minstrelsy: "It presented the black character as being stupid, as being comical, as being basically a frivolous character. Now, how that impacted upon society itself was that they embraced it. They loved it. This was what people had thought about blacks all along. So Rice's characterization of blacks then reaffirmed what mainstream America had been thinking all along." The audience was allowed to be rowdy: "The audience for minstrelsy, especially after the 1830s and into the 1840s was a quite localized and specific working class, lower middle-class, mostly male audience that responded very vocally to the kinds of syncopated, pre-rock-and-roll sounds that were put forward on the minstrel stage. " Minstrelsy meant many things to different people: it was at the same time a caricature, a way of addressing problems through humor, a way for white people to 'inhabit' blacks, a way to be free and uninhibted. Some of the minstrelsy distorted the true view of plantation life (ex: Uncle Tom's cabin) . Minstrelsy allowed black people to be on stage afterwards.  Minstrelsy seeped into rock and roll (ex: Mick Jagger and Elvis); some of the words were emphasized the way blacks would say them and dance moves were atypical of white people. Which is why Elvis would make people uncomfortable from being in the middle class and doing "nigger music." Minstrelsy helped to bring political issues about black to the forefront in the stage and even through films like Bullworth. Controversy about Stephen Foster and his songs; are racist yet they can be put in a historical perspective...

Sylvia Plath

Plath - excerpts from Ariel

Lady Lazarus


Like Lazarus she emerges from death and from the grave yet it seems she is bound by it at the same time. Interesting oxymorons when she implores Herr Lucifer, Herr God.
She challenges the reader to look at her, at every facet of her.
Unwrapping her like  mummy, like she is a relic that can die 9 times. She seems to describe her different attempts to kill herself. The first time was an accident. The second time she couldn't pull through and she turned in on herself. Compares dying to an art and she is a pro at it- maybe like writing? The angst of not pulling off a masterpiece? She actually uses the image of herself as an opus. She seems to consider dying as easier than living. Dying can be done anytime anywhere, it is the living part, confronting other people that is so taxing. At the end she seems to disintegrate into a puddle of goop, with only a few things that identify her: soap, ring and a gold filling. She seems to taunt even death by rising up, resuscitating and eating men voraciously "like air".


Tulips


Snow covered world, like she is in emotionally; the tulips are a jarring element. She considers herself to be nobody and she leaves her body to the nurses and surgeons. They treat her body like a pebble, she is like a baby rocked in a silent world. Anything exterior to that world jar: her family photo, patent leather overnight case. Yet her ties to those things have been erased as she clung to them. She is a nun now, forsaking all ties for a greater good. Communion tablet - religious imagery used again.


All she wants is silence and peace and those tulips nag her and taunt her. The tulips are personified like awful babies; they mirror her wound, their color is an echo of what she holds. They are insidious and weigh her down despite their apparent lightness; they suck her oxygen and force her to look at herself; she is eyed. All she wants is anonymity. Happiness was well as long as it didn't commit itself. Now the tulips are invading that space with their sound. The tulips are like dangerous animals and should be barred; they're like an African cat ready to devour her, yet, they make her aware of her heartbeat. Her heart loves her, wants her to live and the water she tastes comes from the country of health. It's like life is using the tulips to make her want to live whether she wants to or not.


Cut


She compares cutting her thumb instead of an onion much better and fulfilling. Imagery of skin like a lifeless hat, like a scalped pilgrim (because of the blood). The blood trickling out she compares to Redcoats and she celebrates the event with a bottle of pink fizz. She doesn't know whose side the Redcoats are on. She takes painkillers and compares them to kamikazes, saboteurs perhaps of the exhilarating feeling of the pain? Uses imagery of dried blood, "small mill of silence" as if somehow, the open wound is important because it's not stifled, whereas the bandage kills the 'heart' of the wound. Seems like the wound is trying to escape its trappings; "how you jump - Trepanned veteran"


Elm


The narrator is addressed to by the elm? The elm tells her that she has known the bottom, the worst of things and thus doesn't fear it anymore. Is the sound of the sea  madness or discontent? Love is personified as a horse and the more she chases after it the faster it goes away. Maybe the galloping horse is a nightmare as well? with the imagery of the pillow being a turf and head being a stone? Sound of poisons, like the rain and the product is arsenic: maybe contemplation of suicide? Narrator and/or speaker speaks of sunsets and sunburn, and the cumulating climax of the shriek (stripped to pieces because of the heat) The barrenness of the moon also hurts her, yet its light as well. Seems she is imbued by the moon's essence " Or perhaps I have caught her". Yet she releases the moon diminished and flat and it gives her nightmares. Maybe it was a miscarriage? She wants to scream nightly, looking for something to love; maybe the lost child. Dark feeling inside of her that sleeps; the dead child? Or on the contrary a healthy fetus and it scares her with its imperceptible movements "soft feathery turnings"? The clouds are the faces of those she loves. Yet they are ghostly "pale irretrievables"....A face haunts her in the strangles of branches. One memory, one memory of a person, "it petrifies the will". The "isolate slow faults" kill kill kill. Maybe the memory, the regret of the said haunting person allows her to be killed emotionally by that person?


You're


"A clean slate with your own face on" yet it is very ironical seeing as the person has been compared to a great many things in  the poem!!! The person seems to be happiest on his/her hands, mute, is a "high riser", enjoys snugness yet is always sought after like mail; is as jumpy as a Mexican bean. It seems all these traits the narrator observes in that person, for all her comparisons, she considers very unique traits.


Fever 103


"The tongues of hell are dull" she uses imagery of Cerberus guardian of the underworld, yet its powers are not scary or creepy, it is ineffective; incapable of licking clean sin. Smoke "rolls away from her", like love. The smoke will not rise but sluggishly travel the globe and choking the weak in all their forms. Strange imagery of the baby, with the orchid hanging ghastly over it, yet it is dead from radiation. Radiation theme is continued with Hiroshima, "adulterers" bathing in sin and which the radiation eats in. The imagery becomes more concrete as she describes how she is physically feeling ; the sheets grow heavy on her; she's been having the fever for 3 days and the water  makes her ill; ironically as water is one of the purest forms. She is too pure for the speaker and anyone, even water! Her skin and face is like a Japanese lantern, too expensive and delicate. Because the fever is rendering her like  this or something more.... The fever gives her heat and she is a big camellia pulsing; but she seems to be talking about her personality, different from the norm. The temperature is going up, she is going up.... to Paradise attended by all things pink but not by anyone else, not even god it seems?! "My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats" interesting imagery; like all of her, her past sins are gone now she is going to heaven.


Daddy


He died before his time, yet she had to kill him...she used to pray to recover him, which are two absolute contrary actions. Sense of alienation with him; she could never sense where he was, could never talk with him. She compares herself to a Jew and every German is her father. She's been shipped from concentration camp to another. Her tongue was stuck in a barb wire snare.She sets up contrast between what makes her different "strange luck, Taroc pack" and what makes him an Aryan and thus her enemy "Luftwaffe and mustache". He scares her. Every woman is a fascist is a slur against her mother? Mother who fell in love with a brutish heart, a swastika so black nothing comes through? Image of him at the blackboard scares her, yet after his death when she's ten she tries to come back to him in any way.... But she always stopped in her attempts and so she tries to create similar man to him, who she wants to marry. This ghost man, this vampire has abused her for seven years but it seems she's killed him. Her father as a vampire now can rest in peace for her actions have staked him and people dislike him now. It seems they knew who he was all along and it takes her time to actually see it.




The Bee Meeting


All the people seem prepared for something but she is not ready with her "sleeveless summery dress". The secretary of bees robes her so the bees can't get her, but she is afraid. All the people seem to be dressed the same way; as knights. Hawthorn etherizing its children like when she is dressed to resemble the people? She cannot run away and she has to see the hive which pure and waiting. Maybe like the narrator is trying to be herself if only she was left alone? They are hunting the queen but she is old and crafty, yet the new virgins lie in wait. Maybe the narrator wishes she were the queen? Clever and uncatchable? The virgins are moved but not killed; the queen doesn't appear to save them. The narrator is tired and wonders whose white casket is lying there in the grove. Maybe it is hers as she allowed herself to be changed by the village people.


The Bee Box


The box is compared to the casket of a baby. It is locked and she can't see what's inside, yet she wants to know what is inside. There is no darkness, but a small grid, a grid that swarms with blackness. A whole crowd of sounds in that darkness she fears to release.She has the power to feed them or not, the power to release them or not. She is afraid of the because she is no Caesar.She wonders if they would ignore her if she turned into a tree, as she is no source of honey. Yet, she will herself become God when she sets them free. It seems like this was the final decision all along as the box was temporary. Maybe it was the fear of herself?


Stings


She and the bee handler handle the combs bare handed their wrists brave lilies, vulnerable. Yet she isn't afraid of the comb of being stung. She loves the hive, it is like a teacup; it is sweet and clean. yet she is afraid of greyness; of an old queen, of honey drudgers.She wonders if they will hate her, if their mediocrity will turn them against her. She is in control and tries not to care, even as another person watches them both and leaves. He comes back though and he is sweet, but the bees seem to kill him, lying on lips like lies; maybe like the sweet lies he said? For the narrator talks about having herself to recover; a queen. She wonders if she was dead or sleeping; but the queen has risen again , more terrible than before from her prison; the mausoleum where she was kept inert. Maybe it is the narrator speaking of herself and her realization of the freedom she attained from her efforts, her "bees".....


Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - Anne Sexton

Depiction of Snow White as a virgin, as a doll, as some fragile creature. Thrust of unicorn could be interpreted as penile but unicorn is a symbol of purity.... The stepmother refers to her mirror like a weather forecast (implies uncertainty of forecast) interesting foreshadowing reference to how the queen will die. Eerie reference to the Queen as a cannibalism ; she actually wants to eat Snow White's heart in contrast to the original story. She also notices the physical manifestations of her age also in contrast to the original story. The forest is like a labyrinth with the animals actually directly threatening her virginity. The dwarves immediately recognize Snow White's "virgin" value. plucked daisy, soda pop are some of the modern images that are comic relief despite the dire situation with the Queen.  "She lay as still as a gold piece"; interesting imagery when the dwarves find her. Like they only value her because of her virginity. Even the author describes her as a "dumb bunny". Interesting twist from original story where the prince himself ages from waiting for Snow White to wake up.  Intriguing diversion from original story as well: the Queen is warned of what will her befall her if she puts on the shoes but she puts them on anyways. Creepy allusion to Snow White at the end, with the mirror as if she will keep on the Queen's tradition.

Bosswell " 'Black Phones': Postmodern Poetics in the Holocaust Poetry of Sylvia Plath":

references to Holocaust scandalous because it was confessional and/or she dared relate to such an intense tragedy of the Jews' suffering? controversy lies in it can't be related to: bad daddy vs. holocaust doesn't compare: emotional plagiarism; theatrical act elevated to art form. In her defense she says things like "it feels like", distinction between art and reality; regeneration to perform for audience via her art. Lady Lazarus is a pastiche of past and modern femme fatales.... also her poems are pastiches of her favorite works. Prostitute/poet and echo that Holocaust was mostly perpetuated by men....Art can distort or commodify public memory. Telephone form used in most of her poems; allusions, call and response... Deafness of memory and distortion through language; she shows absent history through symbolic imagery; poem is a black phone that is useless and conveys incommunicability of vocabulary, ideas...."Lending structure to the unsaid through its form"summarizes the heart of the effectiveness/controversy of Plath's poetry.

Greenberg & Klaver  "Mad Girls’ Love Songs"

Plath as idol for teenage girls; an interesting poet but with stigma of depression, bad marriage and suicide. Some of her poetry is stereotyped. Sylvia Plath cult is there for different reasons: drama, or depression, or strength of poetry..... Plath helped girls understand themselves better. emotional relatibility or linguistic complexity? confessional poetry. Desire to idol either the "sane" poet or the "crazy" poet. emergence in pop culture of women writers; appealed to some but was some gross caricatures to others. Love and shame mirror: beauty ideals and destruction/angst. Suspended adolescence in her poems. "outlaw" mystique. controversy about confessional poems; claims Plath's characters were generalized. Themes that appeal to teens: Insider/outsider rhetoric, marriage, defective applicant, physical vulnerability. Did not being a housewife imply suspended adolescence? Girl poet, mom poet and artist. Plath's poetry doesn't necessarily offer closure; transformation. Is Plath's poetry self-pitying? Does poetry need to highlight culture not the girl? Cultural poem vs. imaginative poem. Olds mirrored Plath in the frankness of the confessions, like sexuality. "...very different one than Olds and Rosemurgy chose: that sense of mystery, of blanks left open in the poem, of prizing slipperiness and symbol- ogy over sense." Female poets imitate now Plath's rhyme, sound. "So contemporary poets can be “Plathy” in any number of ways: through a dark, witty, mythic approach to experiences of womanhood; through powerful and self-possessed narrative; through a nursery-rhyme- inflected attention to creepy and powerful sonics; or any combination there-"