 Alfred Sisley's 'Orchard in Spring' If the persona in "This Is Just to Say" was somewhat emotionally restrained, we see an effusion of desire in this next poem. " O Western Wind," a 16th century anonymous lyric, provides us a speaker who longs for spring and the intimate company of a beloved. Early lyrics (derived from the Greek word for the lyre) were poems usually sung to musical accompaniment and exhibited intense emotions. Modern lyric poems are no longer sung or accompanied by music, but they still display the feelings and thoughts of poets. Lyric poems come in different forms: songs, hymns, chants, odes, elegies, sonnets, villanelles, rondeaus, rondels, and so many more. Most of the poems we come across nowadays are lyrics in the sense that they express the individual and personal emotions of the speaker or poet. And what better example than this 16th century song. The "modern" version is closer to the original Tudor manuscript, and recreates for contemporary readers the intensity of the Renaissance speaker's ardor. But is the poem really saying what we think it says? The quatrain (four-line stanza) mimics an individual's cry, uttered in two sentences: first, for spring to come and, second, for the company of a loved one. We got caught up in that second statement, particularly for its sensual connotations, and immediately assumed that the first statement is subordinate to the latter. When we look closely, however, we realize that while the two sentences are structurally parallel they are not necessarily connected. The first line calls out to a natural force, "O Western wind"; and the third line implores a supernatural being, "Christ." The former wishes for rain to thaw winter's frost, and the latter for an embrace to soothe one's longing for a loved one. Read this way, the two sentences speak of a desire for different kinds of solace -- the relief from an external discomfort, and the alleviation of an internal desolation. Which reading do you like? Next: more lyric poems
William Carlos William's poem, "This Is Just to Say," has generated quite a lot of intertextual responses on YouTube. Check out the more professional dramatized reading by the British actor Matthew Macfadyen and the animation children's project from Uncommon Films. The latter even features a recording of Williams reading his own poem. I chose the video made by Nicole LaJeunesse for its interpretation of the poem's form -- it may actually be a note stuck to the refrigerator door by a magnet. What if we didn't know it was a poem written by Williams? Would we even think the words written in 12 lines make a poem? Perhaps not. We imagine that the one who wrote it was in a rush and didn't particularly care for punctuation. And if the note was for us, we definitely would not think it a poem! But here we are trying to interpret what may be just a note. We imagine somebody writing to someone. And if we go by LaJeunesse's and Macfadyen's interpretations, that somebody could be a husband writing a note to his wife. That husband is perhaps feeling guilty and tries to make it up to her by writing an apology. And because it is written down and not something we overhear, we begin to really look at the words on the page. We begin to see that it may actually be a poem, after all. We may even learn that there's a tradition of this sort dating back to Ovid's romantic epistles as well as among ancient Chinese poets (for example, Ezra Pound's translation of Li Po's " The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter").  Photo by Erin Silversmith So what is the persona (the "I" speaking in the text) trying to say in this note, er, poem? Well, we assume the persona is really saying "sorry" for having eaten the plums. We also assume that the persona knew that the other person (the "you" mentioned in the second stanza) was saving the plums for breakfast, and had placed it in the fridge to keep it fresh and deliciously cold.
But how does the persona say "sorry"?
The note begins with an admission "This is just to say // I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox" (the title serves as the first line; also, that last word dates the poem). That admission is soon followed by the tone of guilt in the second stanza, especially because the persona knew the "you were probably / saving" the fruit for breakfast. The use of "probably" rather than the more direct "you were / saving" allows us to imagine the scene this way: the persona finds the plums in the icebox, is tempted, eats them, and only as an afterthought realizes the mistake. And so the third stanza (made up of four lines like the previous stanzas) begins with an entreaty for forgiveness, followed by a rationalization for the act committed.
But the last three lines of the poem don't seem much of a justification, with the persona trying to lay the blame on the plums being so tempting -- indeed, "they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold." And yet, those three lines somehow imply the persona will really be forgiven. Perhaps because the lines don't really refer just to the plums but also to the shared intimacy between the "I" and "you." I can imagine the "you" reading the note with a half-smile, vicariously enjoying the pleasure of eating the plums as described by the persona.
It's funny how we devoted several paragraphs trying to explain the 12 lines of this poem. But then, that's how poetry really is like -- it condenses into so few lines an emotion or an idea through the use of suggestion or implication. We can choose, of course, to just look at the literal situation offered us -- someone writing a note -- or we can delve into what may be hidden between or beneath the lines, or as someone puts it, "what is not said by saying."
Next installment: Lyric poetry
 'Woman Reading' by Kuroda Seiki Close reading has recently gotten a bad rap. Apparently, it turned off students from literature because its quasi-scientific approach to literary analysis has sapped the joy and pleasure out of reading.
This is bad news for literature teachers as close reading has been the pedagogical tool of choice. I found it useful, especially in literature classes for English and Creative Writing majors, but not necessarily for other classes with students coming from a mix of disciplines.
Good thing I came across the idea of intertextuality as a concept that could be employed in literature classrooms. With some colleagues in Silliman University, we came up with a syllabus that we finetuned and later on shared with other teachers in neighboring schools. I was tasked to talk about my experience and to explain how intertextuality can work. Following is an excerpt of what I presented in several seminars and training workshops:
After a brief hiatus from teaching, I came back to the classroom to find it transformed over such a short period. I found my students in introductory courses to Philippine and world literatures more into texting on their cellphones, or into chatting and blogging on the Net, and less into the literary texts they were supposed to read. I came face-to-face with what teachers of literature most dread: students who couldn’t care less.
 Photo by Alton Short of texting them my lecture, I opted for a less costly way of connecting with this alien batch of juveniles. But trying to connect with them can prove to be a most difficult and often frustrating exercise. I only had one thing going for me -- a passion to teach them literature.
I soon found out that while my students had passion, theirs was a different kind. They were willing enough to sit in class for an hour (or an hour and a half) so they could earn a passing grade. But given an opportunity, I knew they wouldn’t have spent a minute more inside the classroom. They would rather pass the time pursuing a “life.” (I often hear them call out to each other, “Get a life!” I know reading literature isn’t part of what they mean by that.)
But I connected with their passion for life. After all, it wasn’t too long ago when I was in their shoes (okay, it has been quite a while). However, I remember that my passion for life -- yes, the same thing they refer to -- was mainly fed by my reading. The narratives of Salinger, Camus, Sartre, Miller, Plath, Lessing, Eman Lacaba, to name only a few, fed my desire for such “intensity” and “fullness” in my life.
And, probably just like my students -- though theirs may have been illuminated more by movies than books -- I too sought the real thing. I more than wanted the real thing, I wanted to write about it too. And that is where I found the clue -- the glue that would connect me to them, that would connect literature to texting (and to chatting and blogging on the Net). I would make artists out of them.
After all, just like that yarn about monkeys and typewriters, the time they spend punching buttons on their cellphones would sooner or later result in something. I’m just pushing them along one possible path their texting habit can lead to.
 Of course, I didn’t expect them to become Shakespeares. I was just thinking -- how best to make them appreciate literature than to make them write literature. Some would say, ’susmaryosep, how can students be expected to write poems when they have a hard enough time writing book reports.
But isn’t a poem or a story or a play a more exciting piece to write? And isn’t it exhilarating precisely because it is a piece of one’s self, a piece of one’s life?
Still others would ask, where did I get this crazy idea? How sure am I it will work in the classroom?
This crazy idea is not original. Literature teachers have given their students a creative writing assignment at one time or another. My literature teacher in college, a writer in her spare time, gave us that option for our final paper. Spurred by her encouraging comments on the haiku I submitted in her class, I pursued writing as a life. I would like to think that I am repaying some karmic debts by advocating the integration of creative writing in the teaching of literature.
How do I propose to accomplish this? When I decided to try this out a few years back, to energize my somnambular students, I didn’t know where to start. At first, I encouraged my students to try writing poems, stories, and plays. That didn’t get me far. What could I expect from them, after all? But I knew I had a good idea in my hands; I just didn’t know how to go about it.
The lessons I had learned from the Silliman and UP Writers Workshop weren’t much help either -- probably because the participants there already had an inkling of, and had that interest to learn, how good writing should be done.
The critical concept I found useful for my literature classes can be summed up in one word -- intertextuality. How I came upon this critical concept is an intertextual tale in itself. I was telling a colleague how I wanted to integrate creative writing techniques into my literature classes. I told her about how more often than not my “experiments” would fail to achieve the results I wanted.
 She got quite excited about my story, saying that she had just the right book for me (one that she was using in her own literature classes). John E. Schwiebert’s Reading and Writing from Literature (2004) was where I came across the concept of intertextuality as applied in the literature classroom.
Intertextuality, in Schwiebert’s terms, follows a “conversation” model for reading and writing. He says that when we read a literary text, we actually bring into our reading other “texts” (like other literary pieces, movies, comics, experiences, etc.) that we recall in the process of reading. These other “texts” are always already “written” into our position as readers, and when reading we are really engaging in some form of dialogue with the text at hand.
Intertextuality also assumes that authors bring into the text other “texts” always already “written” into their lives. Schwiebert points to how scholars have shown that Shakespeare actually used other “texts” in writing Hamlet -- older versions of the Hamlet story, his own theater company’s earlier productions of Hamlet written by other playwrights, his own boyhood, etc. And in the movie Shakespeare in Love, we saw how the Shakespeare character liberally borrowed from the conversations and events around him while writing Romeo and Juliet.
 Movie poster from Wikipedia Seen in this manner, Schwiebert says, a work by Shakespeare (as well as those of Rizal, etc.) seem less a Holy Relic and “more a part of the complicated, ever-expanding web of human discourse.” This approach liberates us from a rather restricting way of looking at literary texts, especially those that belong to the canon.
In using this approach, to quote Schwiebert again, “Hamlet appears as just another turn -- a brilliant and memorable turn, to be sure -- in an ongoing conversation.” We can write critical and scholarly papers on Shakespeare and his plays, or we can be playful as Tom Stoppard’s appropriation of two minor characters in Hamlet in writing his own play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Will it work? Will students, especially those in other disciplines, suddenly find the passion to respond to literature?
Apparently, it does. I would like to believe that students sort of prefer this approach to the usual close reading and critical analysis of literary texts. I see them enthusiastically respond to the text at hand perhaps because they aren't limited to the standard paper common in most literature classroom.
Schwiebert suggests at least 10 ideas for intertextually responding to texts:
- Converse with specific points in the text that strike you.
- Write about any personal connections you have with the readings.
- Write a letter to the author and/or a return letter from the author to yourself.
- Write an imaginary interview with the author or with a character in a story, novel, or play.
- Compose a prequel or a sequel to a story.
- Rewrite a text from a point of view different from that presented in the original text.
- Rewrite a work into a different genre.
- Borrow an incident or theme from a work to write a piece of your own based on a similar incident or theme.
- Borrow the genre or form of a work to create a piece of your own cast in the same genre or form.
- Draft a fictional biography or autobiography of a character in a story, poem, or play.
We can come up with more ways of responding to the texts we read. We can draw, paint, take photos, make music, perform, etc. Recently, I came across an illustrated review of Miguel Syjuco's novel Ilustrado in Salon. Apparently, intertextuality has gone mainstream too.
 Photo by Sandstein We create patterns or connect things in writing a narrative (like in our previous exercise). But how do we identify patterns when reading a literary piece?
Literary critics usually employ what's referred to as close reading. It's called that because it involves looking closely at a text, particularly at how words are used in a passage, how sentences and ideas are arranged in the text, how images and figurative language is used, how the whole text is structured, etc. (Here's a link to help us some more, some useful tips from the Writing Center at Harvard University.)
What we'll realize reading this guide is that close reading will lead us to identifying patterns in a text. Close reading also leads us to connecting the words, sentences, images, and ideas together to an understanding (our interpretation) of the text.
Let's do a group activity using close reading. Here's what we'll do with a text:
- We'll annotate, that is highlight and make notes, about certain words or passages or images and ideas we think are important or confusing or we have questions about.
- Then we'll look for patterns (repetitions, contradictions, similarities) and try to explain what these may mean.
- We'll also ask questions (how and why) about what these patterns mean in relation to the text as a whole. Our answers to these questions will eventually lead us to an interpretation of what the text means to us.
Here's a text we can practice on. Just Another Freckle-Face asks what Louis Jenkin's prose poem "Fish Out of Water" means? (Btw, I mentioned in class that this was a sudden fiction or flash fiction piece. I was wrong. After some online crosschecking, it really is a prose poem piece given that Jenkins published it in his poetry book. Other anthologies, however, classify this text as flash fic.)
And once we're done doing a close reading of "Fish Out of Water," we'll put together all the groups' interpretations and see if we can come up with an interpretation from the whole class.
This group activity will also prepare you to do an individual close reading of another text: Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl."
 The connections we discern from the text, and how these patterns become the basis of our readings and interpretations, are possible because of certain elements we as readers share with the creators of the texts we read.
The literary theorist M. H. Abrams provides the following diagram, which he developed to categorize different theories about literature, that may help explain how interpretation works (Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2001).
Abrams shows that creative works are (1) based on the universe (or the actual world we live in), (2) created by artists, and (3) are apprehended by an audience. Because writers create something based on the world they share with their audience, and because they create these works using a language they share with the audience, readers are able to understand the world created in the text written in a language they also use.
One group from the class, for example, pointed out that Jenkins's work uses an idiomatic phrase for a title. Because we are familiar with the expression "fish out of water," meaning finding oneself in unfamiliar ground, we can apply this understanding to our interpretation of the text.
Tying up this understanding of the title with other parts of the text -- for example, how the man seems to always be caught offguard with the changes in his life -- we can put together an interpretation of the whole text by accounting for all the connections of the different parts.
This interpretation we can always write in a critical analysis of the literary piece. And if we are English majors, we'll be doing much of this task throughout our college life and even beyond.
But what if we aren't, and are just taking this course for the credit? Are there other ways of showing our appreciation and understanding of literary texts?
Next week: responding intertextually to literature.
 "What got people out of the trees was something beside thumbs and gadgets. What did it, I am convinced, was a warp in the simian brain that made us insatiable for patterns – patterns of sequence, of behavior, of feeling – connections, reasons, causes: stories."
That's what Kathryn Morton contends in her essay "The Story-telling Species" (reprinted in The Philippines Free Press in 1994; originally published as "The Storytelling Animal" in The New York Times Book Review in 1985).
And Morton says that it's not just writers but also scientists that use this method of connecting one thing with another, of creating stories. She argues that this ability to see patterns in natural phenomena and social behavior allows scientists to explain, for example, planetary movements or food gathering skills. And sometimes, scientists "create stories" in the form of mathematical formulas that we take for the Truth (with a capital letter T).
Morton argues that:
"It is by narrative that we experience our lives. I would propose that so far from being nonutilitarian, as is often charged, imaginative narrative, which in its refined and printed form we call fiction, was decisive in the creation of our species, and is still essential in the development of each human individual and necessary to the maintenance of his health and pursuit of his purposes."
Morton is right to point out that while narrative is common in all disciplines, imaginative narrative or fiction (or the literary arts in general) has taken the bad rap. We don't trust as Truth the experiences and realizations characters go through in a novel. While these characters may seem as familiar as the flesh-and-blood people around us, ultimately we consider them as made-up figures when we finish the book we've been reading. And we don't really think of the "truth" we read in the novel applicable in our lives.
And so we come up with degrees of Truthfulness. We consider the disciplines under the natural sciences domain to yield Truths that are empirically observable and verifiable. To a lesser extent we look at the disciplines under the social sciences domain to provide us relative Truths. But definitely we don't consider as Truth the truths we find in the arts and humanities domain.
What we forget sometimes are the different assumptions about what we can know and how we gain knowledge about certain things. To put it simplistically, we realize that the various domains focus on what can be considered as knowable: the natural sciences examines natural phenomena, the social sciences investigates social behavior, and the arts and humanities explores human experiences. These different domains employ diverse methods to determine what is true, and discrete criteria to validate what is considered true in that domain. (And while we specialize in a specific discipline, we eventually dismiss as irrelevant and, yes, nonutilitarian things that the discipline considers outside its field of knowledge. Needless to say, the arts and humanities disciplines are always in the losing end of this practice.)
Let's try this out through an exercise:
- Identify an issue or topic in a discipline other than your own. For example, if you're pursuing a Biology degree you may consider "love" as something outside your discipline.
- Try to determine how your discipline (Biology, for instance) would go about proving or disproving this concept.
- Write down your thoughts in a five-paragraph essay you'll call, "My Search for Truth or Truths." And submit it through email or by posting it as a comment to this blog entry.
Hopefully, we'll be able to see the bias of specific disciplines or the different knowledge domains. In the process, too, we'll be able to practice coming up with narratives about our experiences in producing knowledge.
This will be our Arts & Humanities 4 (AH 4) or "Adventures in Fiction, Poetry, and Drama" class blog.
AH 4 is a three-unit course that explores "recurrent themes in fiction, poetry, and drama as reflections of individual and universal concerns" (UP Mindanao Catalog). We'll meet twice a week, for one and half hours per session, over a 16-week period.
By the end of the semester, we would be able to appreciate how literary works function as a form of knowledge production in the arts and humanities domain. Specifically, we are expected to have:
- Differentiated various forms of knowledge production in the domains of arts and humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences
- Conveyed during class discussions and writing exercises an understanding of the processes involved in literary production
- Distinguished literary pieces according to genre, and the literary elements and devices used in their production
- Identified recurrent themes in literary texts
- Analyzed the dialogic relation between the thematic concerns of literary texts and the individual or society
- Articulated during class discussions and writing exercises the approaches and techniques used in reading or responding to literary texts
- Exhibited skills in reading or responding to various literary texts
- Displayed creativity in responding to various literary texts
- Demonstrated an understanding of other cultures in the light of Philippine culture and realities
To help us achieve these objectives, reading materials will be provided for individual reproduction. We can also refer to other literature textbooks and other references found at the University Library or we can access other sources on the Internet.
We'll start each class session with a short quiz based on assigned readings from these sources. That will facilitate our class discussions and activities, and will be one basis for your final grade. (No make-up test will be given for short quizzes since topics covered will be discussed during class sessions.)
Aside from active participation in class discussions, we'll also do quizzes and weekly intertextual responses to selected literary pieces. Cumulative scores from quizzes and weekly intertextual activities will make up 30% and 40%, respectively, of our final grade.
Grades for short quizzes and class participation as well as intertextual responses will be computed using the following formula: Student’s score (50) / highest possible score + 50 = Grade
To arrive at a particular rating, you may get your individual raw score and multiply it by 50 (the transmutation base). You then divide the product by the highest possible score, and add 50 to the quotient. The grade arrived at is equivalent to the University’s rating scale as shown below:
- 98-100 → 1.0 (Excellent)
- 95-97 → 1.25
- 92-94 → 1.50 (Very Good)
- 89-91 → 1.75
- 86-88 → 2.0 (Good)
- 83-85 → 2.25
- 80-82 → 2.50 (Satisfactory)
- 77-79 → 2.75
- 74-76 → 3.0 (Passing)
- 71-73 → 4.0 (Conditional Failure)
- 00-70 → 5.0 (Failure)
Your rating will then be computed according to its corresponding percentage of the final grade: class participation (30%), quizzes (30%), and intertextual responses (40%).
We'll use a rubric for evaluating intertextual responses. The rubric will be based on the following criteria:
- Original insight, incisive and comprehensive understanding, and detailed analysis of text (40 pts.)
- Creative use of literary genre, literary elements and devices (30 pts.)
- Creative and correct use of language (30 pts.)
Rubrics may vary from one writing exercise to the next depending on the nature and requirements for particular literary pieces or intertextual response.
However, grades of papers submitted beyond the deadline may be deducted points for each calendar day the paper is late.
You are also encouraged to work on your writing exercises ahead of time so you won't be tempted to plagiarize in a rush to meet due dates.
Students commit plagiarism when they present as their own someone else’s work or ideas. Such action may result, depending on the gravity of the offense, in a failing mark for the particular activity or course. In serious or repeated offenses, students may face possible expulsion from the university (please refer to the Student Manual for your guidance).
Your rating for class participation and writing exercises will be for nothing though if you miss a certain percentage of class sessions. You may refer to the university’s Student Manual regarding policies on absences and their corresponding penalties. However, attendance also means active participation in classroom discussions and activities. As such, you are expected to take responsibility in examining, exploring, critiquing, and challenging ideas, concepts, and methods and techniques. You are also expected to have completed reading assignments before the scheduled discussion.
And for our next discussion topic, we'll take up Kathryn Morton's "The Story-telling Species" and discuss how writing and literature can broaden our understanding of the world.
Here's to an exciting semester ahead of us!
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