Anton Chekhov

On Friday, I was lucky enough to take my high school juniors and seniors to see "Three Sisters," a play by Anton Chekhov. The set, storyline, and actors were amazing. For me, and maybe this is more evident to me because I've been avidly reading American Lit. all year, but there is a strong connection between the yearnings of the characters for a better life, one that could be achieved if only they could get to Moscow, and Of Mice and Men. I would characterize Chekhov as a Realist, although a book I picked off of my shelf at school, Ward 6 and Other Stories, a collection of Chekhov's short stories, categorizes him as a Modernist writer. Hmmmm. Not sure I agree there, but okay. The deeply psychological exploration of his characters' motives and the fact that the play as well as most of his fiction deals with the grim realities of life make him a Realist to me. I think Steinbeck shares some of these same traits too. Consider the ending of Of Mice and Men and the minute fidelity to detail in The Grapes of Wrath. Both Steinbeck and Chekhov do not pull punches when it comes to the raw inner or outer landscapes of humanity. Maybe that is why I am drawn to both writers.

In the introduction to Ward 6, David Plante, the editor, provides this excerpt from a letter Chekhov wrote to a woman who had sent him one of her stories to read and critique: "When you depict sad or unlucky people, and want to touch the reader's heart, try to be cold--it gives their grief as it were a background against which it stands out in greater relief. As it is, your heroes weep and you sigh. Yes, you must be cold." This gives some insight into Chekhov's motives as a writer: to present the human condition in all its raw coldness so that the grief and troubles of the audience are more clearly brought into the light for them to recognize and, hopefully, to deal with.

One of my favorite Chekhov stories, "The Student," ends with this realization by the main character: "And joy suddenly stirred in his soul, and he even stopped for a minute to take breath. 'The past,' he thought, 'is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.' And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered." The story begins with a cold chill that permeates the landscape as a student walks home alone from a hunting expedition in the forest. He is reminded of Peter's denial of Jesus three times by something he sees and, as he passes two women, he tells them about this biblical connection. They weep. He then realizes that something in that biblical story still resonates with these women so many years later (talk about the power of text-to-self connections!), that there is some personal connection, some personal pain that causes them to weep. This is what lifts him out of his own depressed state: the realization that personal experiences are universally connected throughout time, that the experiences of these two women are connected to the experiences of Peter and Jesus. This makes his heart fill with joy.

In the story, there is mention that Easter will be the day after tomorrow...ah, religious allusions...this story is ripe with religious symbolism...in this case, the resurrection...the main character, the student, who feels so forlorn at the beginning of the story, ends the story with his soul resurrected: "and the feeling of youth, health, vigour--he was only twenty-two--and the inexpressible sweet expectation of happiness, of unknown mysterious happiness, took possession of him little by little, and life seemed to him enchanting, marvelous, and full of lofty meaning."

I remember the first time I read this story. I was twenty-two and reading it two floors below the main library while I was working as a shelver downtown. When I read the end, I too was uplifted. I felt that Chekhov was writing to me across the century...that I also was part of an unbroken chain of events between a Russian writer in 1894 and myself, a student in 2002. I could feel the connection between myself and the "student" Chekhov was writing about 108 years earlier.

CAP 2

[come home from the movies]
By Lucille Clifton

come home from the movies,
black girls and boys,
the picture be over and the screen
be cold as our neighborhood.
come home from the show,
don’t be the show.
take off some flowers and plant them,
pick us some papers and read them,
stop making some babies and raise them.
come home from the movies
black girls and boys,
show our fathers how to walk like men,
they already know how to dance.

Notes:
1.“come home from the movies” = come back to reality.
2.“the picture be over and the screen / be cold as our neighborhood.” This simile creates the sense that the neighborhood is cold, emotionless.
3.“don’t be the show” = don’t get caught up in being seen by people, be real.
4.Things to do:
*Plant flowers
*Read the papers
*“stop making babies and raise them” – What does it mean to raise the babies? Raise: to breed and bring (an animal) to maturity. Anyone can “make” a baby, but it takes effort and energy to really “raise” a baby.
*“show our fathers how to walk like men” – Show the fathers to be RESPONSIBLE, real men. “they already know how to dance” – They already know how to have fun, to “be the show.”

Contemporary American Poetry (CAP) 1

Since I'm teaching 11th grade American Lit. this year, I've decided to start compiling poems from Contemporary American Poets. Although my posting to this blog has been anything but consistent, my goal is to post each poem with my notes I'll use in class. Today, I have two poems:

In Rainy September
By Robert Bly

In rainy September, when leaves grow down to the dark,
I put my forehead down to the damp, seaweed-smelling sand.
What can we do but choose? The only way for human beings
is to choose. The fern has no choice but to live;
for this crime it receives earth, water, and night.

We close the door. “I have no claim on you.”
Dusk comes. “The love I have had with you is enough.”
We know we could live apart from one another.

The sheldrake floats apart from the flock.
The oaktree puts out leaves alone on the lonely hillside.

Men and women before us have accomplished this.
I would see you, and you me, once a year.
We would be two kernels and not be planted.
We stay in the room, door closed, lights out.
I weep with you without shame and without honor.

Notes:
1. Repetition of “down” in first two lines—with the use of the diction “rainy” and “dark,” this creates a sad, depressed mood.
2. Alliteration: “seaweed-smelling sand.”
3. First stanza sets up the difference between humans and nature. Human beings must choose, but nature has no choice “but to live.” Does this mean the speaker is considering suicide?
4. “The fern has no choice to live; for this crime it receives earth, water, and night.” Choosing to live = a crime.
5. Third stanza uses natural settings and elements to reinforce the sadness, loneliness of the second stanza. Diction: “apart,” “alone,” “lonely.”
6. In the fourth stanza: What is “this”? Divorce?
7. Again, the use of nature. Metaphor: “We would be two kernels and not be planted.” We = two kernels. “Not be planted”? Reference to them not having kids?
8. “I weep with you without shame and without honor.” Shame: a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or improper act or remark. Honor: a keen sense of ethical conduct.

American Literature

I have not updated this blog in a long time for various reasons...the end of the school year, exams, teaching at Cincinnati State, having a life, having two children, trying to squeeze in some time to read. Now, I am beginning to read books for next year...11th grade American Lit. I have already read a lot of the books on the curriculum list, but I decided to read the other books on the list I have not read, such as: Intruder in the Dust by William Faulkner, The Crucible by Arthur Miller (I have read Death of a Salesman), The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (I have read a lot of other novels by Steinbeck...my favorites: The Winter of Our Discontent and Cannery Row). I also want to reread To Kill a Mockingbird because I'll be teaching 10th grade next year and I haven't taught that in a while. Whew! Currently, I have finished Intruder in the Dust, I'm 1/3 of the way through The Grapes of Wrath, and I'm 30 pages into The Crucible. I'm also reading (for enjoyment) Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud, edited by Robert Pinsky. I'm considering trying to commit some poems to memory over the summer...we'll see how that goes. I'm also teaching high school summer school and teaching an online college composition class.

The Crucible: Abigail and Proctor...quite an interesting pair so far!

One Hundred Poems from the Chinese

I came across a book of translations by Kenneth Rexroth: One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. It's a New Directions paperback from what I guess to be the 1950's. There is actually no copyright date provided inside the cover where it should be. The book cost $1.55 when it came out. Now, decades later, it is in my possession. As soon as I opened the pages, I knew I needed to purchase the book...and it was only $.83 after tax. Here is one of the poems I came across that sealed the deal for me:

Snow Storm by Tu Fu

Tumult, weeping, many new ghosts.
Heartbroken, aging, alone, I sing
To myself. Ragged mist settles
In the spreading dusk. Snow skurries
In the coiling wind. The wineglass
Is spilled. The bottle is empty.
The fire has gone out in the stove.
Everywhere men speak in whispers.
I brood on the uselessness of letters.

Charles Simic

I am reading Charles Simic Selected Early Poems right now and I am honestly in awe of his writing, especially the way he is able to pare down a poem into the most essential elements.

The Inner Man

It isn't the body
That's a stranger.
It's someone else.

We poke the same mug
At the world.
When I scratch,
He scratches too.

There are women
Who claim to have held him.
A dog follows me about.
It might be his.

If I'm quiet, he's quieter.
So I forget him.
Yet, as I bend down
To tie my shoelaces,
He's standing up.

We cast a single shadow.
Whose shadow?

I'd like to say:
"He was in the beginning
And he'll be in the end,"
But one can't be sure.

At night
As I sit
Shuffling the cards of our silence,
I say to him:

"Though you utter
Every one of my words,
You are a stranger.
It's time you spoke."

Mary Oliver

All afternoon it rained, then
such power came down from the clouds
on a yellow thread,
as authoritative as God is supposed to be.
When it hit the tree, her body
opened forever.

So begins "Rain," a poem by Mary Oliver, which is a poem that reminded me of how painful, yet essential and needed, transformation is in life...my life. The snake at the end of the poem is a symbol of us, of humanity...the snake who knows "life has no purpose / and is neither civil nor intelligent," but regardless, the snake survives, carries on, and seeks transformation:

Where life has no purpose,
and is neither civil nor intelligent,
it begins
to rain,
it begins
to smell like the bodies
of flowers.
At the back of the neck
the old skin splits.
The snake shivers
but does not hesitate.
He inches forward.
He bleeds through
like satin.

This is the perfect season for this poem. Spring is coming and I can feel the old skin itching...it is time to reflect on my life and consider changes, ways to be more honest with myself...and as Mary Oliver makes it clear in her poem, this endeavor hurts, but is necessary and transformative.

Breaking Loose

I have come to the recent realization that I don't like anthologies of poems. I figured that the poems included in the anthologies must be the "best" poems by the poets who were included. That is not the case. I don't know how many times I've read poems by Robert Lowell in anthologies and decided I was not a fan. Well, I decided on a whim to start checking books of poetry out of the library, especially collected and complete poems of poets I had only encountered in anthologies. Recently I checked out Robert Lowell's Collected Poems and I have come across some great poetry; poetry that I feel is better written and more meaningful than the poems included in the anthologies I've read. Oh well. Here are two snippets from "Waking Early Sunday Morning":

snippet #1:
O to break loose. All life's grandeur
is something with a girl in summer. . .

snippet #2:
No weekends for the gods now. Wars
flicker, earth licks its open sores,
fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chance
assassinations, no advance.
Only man thinning out his kind
sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind
swipe of the pruner and his knife
busy about the tree of life. . .

Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war--until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime.

My thoughts: I agree that life's grandeur involves a girl in the summer. For me, this brings up vivid memories of high school and college summers when all my thoughts revolved around a girl and the upcoming events of that day or night with her. The fact that this passage is in a poem that ends with the dark and depressing mood of snippet #2 means that Lowell was probably being ironic. Especially since he uses the word "something," which is so ambiguous and maybe meant to suggest that all men care about are superficial things and would rather think about "something" with a girl in summer, so general and abstract, than the real pressing issues of life. As for the second snippet, I can read this as if it was written about our current war in Iraq. Lowell was commenting about Vietnam...and people obviously did not listen in 1967 when Near the Ocean, which includes "Waking Early Sunday Morning," was published...because he we are again thinning out mankind and our children are falling in a small war which, yes, did happen on the heels of another small war (Operation Desert Storm or even Vietnam)...the image of the pruner blindly swiping his knife on the tree of life is powerful. I really enjoyed reading this poem...I might have more to say about it later as well.

I've been reading a lot of poetry lately...by Robert Pinsky, Donald Hall, Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, C.K. Williams, W.B. Yeats, Galway Kinnell, Robert Hass...and I have been just enjoying the quality of certain poems, the use of language, and the way some poems make me feel...I guess just enjoying the aesthetic quality and not so much concerning myself with interpretation. The poem I'm posted today is one that I enjoy for the reasons I posted above. The feeling of loss that it communicates and the use of language, such as the street being described as "glamorous and lost" and the "delicate ankles" of the woman...the sense of hopelessness and futility at the end when the sun is just "ordinary and final" and the sentences are "too flat for any poem"...maybe it's the stab of recognition when seeing someone you haven't seen in a long time and then the pain of the passing feeling as you realize the distance is too great between you and you are no longer friends, not even close enough to say hello on the street....

The Sentences by Robert Pinsky

Reading the sentences, November sun
Touching the avenues, offices, the station,
I saw you pass me on a street, your face
Was pink with cold, cold windows flashed, the stores
And cars were like--mythology--, the street
Itself was glamorous and lost, it was
As though I never knew you yet somehow knew
That this was you, a sentence interdicted
The present, it said, you never knew, you passed,
Leaves coppery and quick as lizards moved
Around your delicate ankles; November sun
Lay on the sidewalk, ordinary and final
As the sentences too flat for any poem.

A Rough Draft

This Morning

Bare branches
outside the window
make a picture
more tragic
than imagined.
The fog highlights
dark lines, erasing
the rest.
The wavering heat
sits in the window
and I wonder
about my life,
my children.

A pedestrian
was hit by a car
at 4:45
this morning—
forty-four years old.
Did he see himself,
sixty-five, grandkids
at his knees,
reading stories,
sagacious and revered,
reciting poetry,
stirring curiosity?

Religion is needed
this morning
just to help
fit pieces together
and pray

that maybe
there are reasons
behind circumstance,
behind coincidence,
and not just science,
primitive desires
and rude chance
running the show.

W.B. Yeats

I recently found a hardback edition of Yeats's collected poems at Half Price Books. Inside the front cover in pink handwriting (maybe it once was red?) it says:

Miriam Borenstein
University of Wisconsin
Madison
Sept 1969
Mr. Barton Freidman

Stratford House
H33 W Gilman
Madison 53703
255-0367

The book must have been brand new when Miriam purchased it, because the copyright is 1969 for the 16th printing (the first edition having been published in 1933). In 1969, the book cost a whopping $6.95. Miriam obviously had to purchase this for a class, maybe taught by Mr. Barton Friedman? The book does have a few poems that are annotated in pencil and I assume those are classroom notes she has taken. It's interesting to think about how a book can travel (in great condition actually) through almost forty years of time. I wonder how Miriam is holding up? This leads me to a section of a powerful poem of Yeats's, "The Tower":

Now shall I make my soul,
Compelling it to study
In a learned school
Till the wreck of the body,
Slow decay of blood,
Testy delirium
Or dull decrepitude,
Or what worse evil come--
The death of friends, or death
Of every brilliant eye
That made a catch in the breath--
Seem but clouds of the sky
When the horizon fades,
Or a bird's sleepy cry
Among the deepening shades.

It is interesting that the speaker is compelling his soul to study, as if he is resigning himself to his fate at the end of this poem--all things must die...well, except the soul, which the speaker is going to work on educating "in a learned school." So, while death creeps up, it might be best to stop obsessing over your body's health and start worrying about your soul. I like that. I also like how Yeats ties death and the death of friends and those brilliant eyes "That made a catch in the breath" to nature. The "worse evil" will be that death will eventually become so commonplace it is like "clouds of the sky" or "a bird's sleepy cry" so natural and uneventful. The mood at the end of this poem is foreboding: "Among the deepening shades"...the "deepening" means the darkness is descending and death is approaching like a shadow moving towards the speaker.

Well, Miriam, I hope you are still out there somewhere and the deepening shade has not fully descended on you yet. I have the book you once had for a class in college and I know I'm better for it. Hopefully you got something out of your reading of Yeats as well.