On the way to Iowa...

I'm on the way to Iowa for a friend's wedding before I return for my last days of Denver.  My dad is driving the Plymouth Voyager and I'm sitting on the side where the sun glares through the window, a slow roast to my death like an ant underneath the microscope.  But morale is high.  My dad's window keeps inching down its post despite his inventive use of a doorstopper, wedged just so, so the breeze feels nice, however loud it howls.  We got to talking about Romanticism, so now in the silent aftermath, I've taken some time to reflect:

Today has been a good day to get back into romanticism.  On the drive to Iowa, the conversation between my dad and I eventually shifted to my summer class.  There's nothing like being forced to articulate the importance of a literary period to familiarize a person with her areas of weakness.  But it felt good to try to verbally flesh out the social, political, and economic climate of the period.

A few questions or thoughts:

Great art seems to either be reactionary or anticipatory to the zeitgeist of the time.  It must also, however, have a sense of timelessness.  It must be connected to universal concerns across time and space.  There must be some sort of push or pull against society.  It must be sensory.  How can an artist move an audience? What does it mean to be moved?  It means there is an engagement of the senses.  Voluntarily or more often involuntary, the observer experiences a shift in feeling/awareness/perception due to the experience of something sensory.  There is an interaction, then.  The piece of art is created as a sensory object and triggers a sensory experience for the viewer.  So, experiencing great art, then, is both an interaction and a look in the mirror, a paralleling of emotion even if the emotions experienced or evoked are disparate.

I read this last part to my dad to get a sense of how it sounded and he said it gave him a headache.  How fitting!

Coffee table Blake...

 

Oops...

Oops I almost forgot to register for this class!!

But I've done it.

There's no turning back now.

Distraction...

Today's Romanticism distraction.  Not too shabby.

University of Iowa's Massive Open Online Course...

Speaking of poetry, I signed up and must remember June 28th-August 9th.

University of Iowa Launches Creative Writing MOOC Series

To Login 

Brain storm rant nonsense...

I've been trying to find connections between myself and my time and that of the Romantics, but this is more just a rant about the now:

I'm a little bit sad at the moment because I'm worried about great art.  People seem to care less and less about poetry because they aren't taught to value such a thing.  Whereas poetry in the Romantics' time seemed to be cherished.  Those poets were writing for people aside from the elite and the impact of their writing seemed to be explosive.  When a poet today publishes, there is nary a whimper.  When was the last time I heard about a poet making waves?  Never in my life, that's when.  Poetry's reputation is just bad.  Poetry is the nerdy kid at school.  Poetry has no cool factor, no swagger.  Poetry is aligned with that which is difficult.  A strain.  Too much thinking.  "I don't get it."  "It's too hard."  OR, my favorite, "I could easily write that myself, how simplistic."  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?

And while some of my writer buds say that it doesn't matter: "we're not writing for that audience anyway"...I just look at them and shake me head.  That kind of thinking makes no sense at all.  Who else would we be writing for?  Do I really want to write for some pretentious asshole who thinks Joyce is God in heaven?  Absolutely never in my life will I write for that guy because heaven forbid, I am a part of that audience.  However many books I read, however many degrees I accumulate, I will never align myself with the elitist academia freaks who purportedly value all that is truth but dismiss the audience right in front of their faces who scream the truth every day, all day.

I guess I just want to know if it is even possible to change the world with poetry anymore.  Does a poet just have to be good enough?  Does he just have to write about the right thing?  Strike the right chord?  And how does one get poetry to the masses when NO ONE is reading that stuff anymore?  Will poetry ever be valued again?  How can poetry evolve to appeal to an audience other than the people whom I hate with all of me? 
ALL OF ME ALL OF ME ALL OF ME.

Tidbits from Wu...

Duncan Wu and I had a thunderous falling out the past couple days, but we're back in cahoots since this morning.  He's not so bad when there's coffee, pillows, and sunshine involved.

--"International conflict, the threat of invasion by Napoleon, social and political discontent--the writers in this book lived with these things, and were shaped by them" (xxxiv).
--"important development: the rise of the media" (xxxiv).
--"bulletins were now available to the poor and illiterate...Groups of men would club together and buy a single copy, which would be read aloud" (xxxv).
--"Not only were these writers shaped by their historical moment--they shaped it" (xxxvii).
--Rise of media also meant a "new-found appetite for scandal" and the rise of celebrity (Byron being the most notable.)  (xxxvii)
--Importance of theater
--Extreme poverty and lack of education
--Instability of the monarchy
--George III deemed banana-boat crazy in 1811 and had a lot more control than the monarch today.  (Without his consent, laws could not be passed)
--Power hungry son, go figure.
--"They were products of their time in believing in a more just world than that in which they lived" (xxxviii).
--The belief was, "if philosophy could generate revolution, so too could poetry" (xxxviii). POETRY!
--"It is not just their capacity for optimism that distinguished them, but the kind of belief to which they clung.  Where earlier generations looked to an afterlife, the Romantics tended to reject formalized religion" (xxxix).
--Church of England had a great deal of political power.
--"Instead, they thought they could create, through their writing, a promised land in which property was of no consequence and people would live in harmony.  It lay neither in the distant future nor in the abstract; to them it was attainable, imminently, in the here and now" (xxxix).  They would love my yoga classes.
--Redemption through self-realization.  --"Redemptive potential of the mind" (xxxix).
--"Frustration with the restrictions of our earthly state permeates [Byron's] poetry, compelling him to aspire to a level of existence beyond the merely human" (xli).  So, like Eliot's graph?
--Byronic hero archetype--something I should know.  Hmm.  I might like Byron based on pg. xli: "He seeks to understand the random and the everyday in all its meaningless variety.  He studies human behavior, marvels at the follies and foibles of his characters, and addresses his reader in disarmingly familiar style, as if he were speaking from an armchair holding a glass of hock."  Hock is booze?  Hock a loogie?  Glass of loogie?
--Revolution as apocalypse=Blake 
--And then he goes into the obligatory section on Women.  Congratulations, Wu.  Gender equality, good job.

Class syllabus...

My class syllabus, so it won't have to be uncrumpled the next time I have a boogey:

Old school documentary...

I kind of love the intensity of this guy's ten minute introduction to Romanticism.  He reminds me of an old school Simon Schama with the close-ups and his lofty air.  We also get a peak into Keats' house which I could very well visit on my trip to Europe!

Flower video...

Okay, so I can't really handle the title of this youtube video nor can I deal with how sentimental the music gets at the end, but I had to share because James Wright's breaking into blossom bit has been permeating my everything lately--and, hey, I'm sure the Romantic poets would lose their collective shit over this much nature in under four minutes, too.  Who needs nature when you can just watch nature on the nature channel on youtube?  I better go take a walk and mull it over.

Devices to remember...

I always forget or get mixed up, so here too will be a place to refresh my memory on all the old, crusty literary devices I've stuffed in my back pocket and forgotten about.

per·son·i·fi·ca·tion

/pərˌsɒnəfɪˈkeɪʃən/ Show Spelled [per-son-uh-fi-key-shuh] 

noun

1. the attribution of human nature or character to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure.

2. the representation of a thing or abstraction in the form of a person, as in art.

3. the person or thing embodying a quality or the like; an embodiment or incarnation: He is the personification of tact. 

4. an imaginary person or creature conceived or figured to represent a thing or abstraction.

5. the act of attributing human qualities to an animal, object, or abstraction; the act of personifying: The author's personification of the farm animals made for an enchanting children's book.

 

From dictionary.com

What is literary Romanticism?

I've already taken this class and should know more about the period, poets, and poems--this I know for sure.  At the very least, I should have a better sound bite prepared for random encounters where I'm quizzed on my summer activities. 

From Wikipedia:

"Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, it was also a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education and the natural sciences. Its effect on politics was considerable and complex; while for much of the peak Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, its long-term effect on the growth of nationalism was probably more significant."

From Duncan Wu's anthology:

"Having originated in disagreement, and largely in the academe, the concept has remained fluid...and although many definitions are suggested, none command universal agreement.  In that respect Romanticism is distinct from movements formed by artists, which tend to be more coherent, at least to begin with" (Wu, xxxii).

This is only the beginning...

"...by the winnowing wind"

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
      Sometime whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
      Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
      Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
      And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
      Or by a cidar-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

--"To Autumn" by John Keats