An Experiment With Form: Disclamor - "Battery Mendell"

Hey folks,

My English class has moved on from poetry of witness in Against Forgetting, to post-modern poetry with Disclamor by G.C. Waldrep.  I am going to post some of my initial analysis and reflection on his poem "
Battery - Mendell".  Waldrep's nine battery poems are written about a series of military forts (batteries) built along California's coast in the early 20th century. 

The first element of "Battery - Mendell" that caught my attention was the form.  The poem isn't grouped into stanzas; the lines are short and spaced unevenly along the page.  When I come across poems with forms so different from the norm, I usually think about why the author felt the poem couldn't be conveyed with a typical form of quatrains or something similar.  As an experiment to see how the poem was affected by form, I decided to type up Waldrep's "Battery - Mendell" and alter the form into a more traditional design.  I understand that the author's message may be warped by changing the form, but that is what I hope to accomplish.  I expect my interpretation of the poem to change after altering the form, but would be delightedly surprised if I feel the poem doesn't read differently after its form is changed.


When I read the poem as it was formatted by Waldrep, I find myself adding pauses in places I wouldn't normally.  This is a result of the lines being shifted left and right, but I wonder whether the same effect couldn't be achieved through typical enjambment and punctuation.

Waldrep uses an ornamental symbol every ten lines or so as a sort of separator.  I have used as similar symbol as I could produce.  I'm also sorry for the squiggly green and red lines.  I hope you'll understand.

The act itself of rewriting the poem shed some light on the importance of form.  I found myself having to decide how best to break up the stanzas and lines, and I made those decisions based on what I thought the poet was trying to convey in those lines.  For example, in the fifth stanza I joined "Let us imagine" and "these shrines" onto one line.  In the original they are split by a line, and "these shrines" is moved to the right of the page.  I feel Waldrep used the spacing of words to convey a disjointedness between the shrines in their present state, the shrines as they were initially used, and the shrines as they have been changed by visitors' graffiti.  The next lines, "superalter, amphitheater, ERIC + STACY. GINA L/S WADE." are spaced out vertically and horizontally in the original poem, possibly to highlight the multiple ways the battery is used today.
  While I initially felt perturbed by the form of the poem (I too quickly judge poetic devices that appear odd to me), the process of reformatting it helped me understand the importance of the author's stylistic choice.  Oftentimes when I read poetry with odd forms, I feel the form is odd for the sake of being odd.  In the case of this poem though, I feel the odd alignment of text mimicked the winding paths through the batteries.  The poem can be read in typical stanza form, but it loses the feeling of wandering that Waldrep initially conveyed through structure.

Paul Muldoon and Mules: A Brief Biography in Context

Paul Muldoon and Mules: A Brief Biography in Context

            Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in Northern Ireland in 1951.  His mother was a schoolteacher, and his father held various farming jobs.  His family wasn’t particularly well off, but were able to provide for Muldoon to have elocution lessons, and buy a piano for him and his siblings.  He wrote poetry from an early age, and was initially only influenced by American poets such as T. S. Eliot, and Robert Frost.  In an interview with the Guardian, Muldoon said he had a love for reading as an early child, but his family barely had any books in the house (Potts 1).  Muldoon secondary school education at St. Patrick’s College, Armagh included education in Gaelic as well as a background in Irish folk tales (Potts 2).  As a teenager Muldoon became exposed to Northern Irish poets such as Seamus Heaney, and his style changed to acknowledge his rural Irish upbringing.  In 1969 Muldoon went to Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland and studied under Heaney.  Heaney recognized Muldoon’s talent and arranged for his first full collection of poems, New Weather, to be published through the acclaimed British press Faber and Faber in 1973.

            Even though it was just his first work, New Weather features Muldoon’s unique, sly style of writing.  Critics of the collection felt the work was effective in shining new light on the world, while writing with multiple meanings and layers (Kendall, McDonald 1).  In a review for Eire-Ireland, Roger Conover proclaims that Muldoon’s poetry “sees into things, and speaks of the world in terms of its own internal designs and patterns.” (Conover 127).  As has become common with most of Muldoon’s work, New Weather was mostly well received, but some described its many intricacies and complex allusions as off-putting.  With his first publication, Muldoon was held in the same regard by his European readers as his mentor Seamus Heaney, and other Northern Irish poets including Michael Longley, and Derek Mahon (Kendall, McDonald 1).  Muldoon followed up New Weather with a second collection of poems in 1977 entitled Mules.

            Mules is also very characteristically Muldoon in that the poems have many layers of meanings, and many of the poems discuss the dual nature of different creations.  The title poem is a fine example of his exploration with dualities.  “Mules” ponders the possibilities of the divine being combined with the earthly, and it is a common theme throughout the collection.  While maintaining a similar style of writing to his previous work, Mules covers different topics ranging from politics, love, and death.  Mules had developed while a series of violent internal conflicts in North Ireland called the Troubles were escalating.  “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” is a good example of the mingling of Muldoon’s classic style of multiple layers of meaning with his new interest in political and social affairs.  It depicts a Japanese solider who has come out of hiding after World War II and finds he is in a different world.  There are subtle comparisons between the shell-shocked soldier and the state of the Irish citizens during the Troubles.  Mules helped to solidify Muldoon’s place among the group of Northern Irish poets who were growing ever more popular.  While Muldoon gained a following in Ireland and England with his initial works, it wasn’t until his eighth collection Quoof that he gained much attention in America (“Paul Muldoon” 2).

            As was the case with Mules after New Weather, most critics felt each new collection of Muldoon’s was an example of his increased sophistication as a writer.  He didn’t become any more structured by form, but he wrote with a greater sense of what his personal style was.  Roger Eder in a New York Times Book Review (June 10, 2001) felt "It is as if the universe were no longer there to be grasped. Some vast catastrophe has exploded it and Muldoon, from this side of the postmodern divide; sifts shards, sorts them, tries them out in pleasing patterns."  Muldoon’s works were trying to make sense of the world as a whole, and also of his homeland of Ireland.  Muldoon emigrated from Ireland to America in 1987, and has taught at Princeton University ever since.  Muldoon continues to write in his sly style that requires multiple readings and prompts readers to catch sometimes obscure allusions.  Muldoon won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for his collection Moy Sand and Gravel and continues to publish collections of poetry.

Bibliography of Paul Muldoon’s Individual Poetry Books

            • Knowing My Place. Belfast: Ulsterman Publications, 1971

            • New Weather. London: Faber and Faber, 1973

            • Spirit of Dawn. Belfast: Ulsterman Publications, 1975

            • Mules. London: Faber and Faber, 1977

            • Names and Addresses. Belfast: Ulsterman Publications, 1978

            • Immram. Loughcrew: Gallery Press, 1980

            • Why Brownlee Left. London: Faber and Faber, 1980

            • Out of Siberia. Loughcrew: Gallery Press, 1982

            • Quoof. London: Faber and Faber, 1983

            • The Wishbone. Loughcrew: Gallery Press, 1984

            • Meeting the British. London: Faber and Faber, 1987

            • Madoc: A Mystery. London: Faber and Faber, 1990

            • The Prince of the Quotidian. Loughcrew: Gallery Press, 1994

            • The Annals of Chile. London: Faber and Faber, 1994

            • Kerry Slides. Loughcrew: Gallery Press, 1996

            • Hay. London: Faber and Faber, 1998

            • Moy Sand And Gravel. London: Faber and Faber, 2002

            • Horse Latitudes. London: Faber and Faber, 2006

            • Plan B. London: Enitharmon, 2009

            • Wayside Shrines. Loughcrew: Gallery Press, 2009

            • Maggot. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

           

Works Cited

Conover, Roger. Review of New Weather. Eire-Ireland, summer, 1975 p. 127

Eder, Roger. “To Understand Is to Be Perplexed.” New York Times Book Review, June

10, 2001.

Kendall, Tim, and Peter McDonald. Paul Muldoon: Critical Essays. Liverpool: Liverpool

UP, 2003. Google Books. Web. 26 Mar. 2011.

"Paul Muldoon." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Gale

Biography In Context. Web. 6 Feb. 2011.

“Paul Muldoon.” The Poetry Archive. Web. 6 Feb 2011.

Potts, Robert. “The Poet at Play.” The Guardian, May 12, 2001

The Duality of Heaven and Earth Hidden In Mules - Revised

The Duality of Heaven and Earth Hidden In Mules

Paul Muldoon is very adept at hiding different layers of meaning and imagery in his poetry.  A tennis match can be two boys exploring each other’s physical prowess, while also being a simple game of tennis.  “Mules” can also be read on multiple levels.  The most basic level of the poem is a child’s recounting of the conception and birth of a mule.  The form of the poem works well to take the reader full circle from asking a question, to explaining a position, and finally pondering an answer.  The poem is an extended metaphor that compares lowly barnyard animals to biblical figures.  The poem poses a question about duality of the worldly and divine in the first line, and then illustrates the narrator’s opinion through the depiction of a mule’s conception and birth.  Muldoon’s simple form succinctly contains a great deal to reflect on.

            Muldoon begins by posing a question.  The rest of the poem is organized in four quatrains.  The stanzas have line counts of four, four, three, and four.  Most sentences in the poem use enjambment.  Enjambment is used to keep the stanzas evenly spaced, and subtly indicate the comparison between the earthly and divine.  The two sentences of the first stanza both use enjambment, and are split between the parts of the sentence that depicts earthly things, and the part that depicts divine.  “Her feet of clay gave the lie/To the star burned in our mare’s brow,” and “Would Parsons’ jackass not rest more assured/That cross wrenched from his shoulders?”  The order of events in the poem is also of note.  The poem moves linearly in time after the question is asked, and Muldoon makes a point of changing tenses as the poem progresses.  The poem begins in the past tense, “We had loosed them…” “They had shuddered…” and ends in the present, “dropped tonight in the cowshed.”  By first posing the question and then ending with the narrator pointing out the farmers’ reflection on the mule’s origins, Muldoon makes the reader reflect on the events in the same order they happened for the narrator.  Each line of the poem has a meaning that relates to the theme of duality between the divine and the earthly.

            Starting with the question asked in the first line, Muldoon introduces his technique of using common phrases to get at meanings of greater importance than initially expected.  While phrases such as “best of both worlds,”  “below their belts,” and “dropped tonight” can just be thought of as their everyday meanings, Muldoon is using them for more than expected.  By asking “Should they not have the best of both worlds?” Muldoon could really be saying “why shouldn’t a mule be of both God and the earth?”  A mule is a combination of two completely different species, and the result is a creature both like and unlike both.  The horse in the story has “feet of clay,” which is an allusion to when a hero appears almost god-like, but ultimately ends up being human.  Continuing the theme of combining the earthly with the heavenly, Muldoon marks the horse in a way that evokes the Virgin Mary.  Both the horse and the Virgin have a “star burned” overhead.  A similar allusion can be made for the donkey that bears the mark of God on his back.  The metaphor of the mule as a combination of earth and heaven is continued in the final stanza. “We might yet claim that it sprang from earth…” “That we would know from what heights it fell.”  Muldoon has the farmers contemplate the mule’s origins so that the duality is highlighted to the reader.

            In the same way Modernists were making the old new, Muldoon takes the simple, everyday mule, and gives it new meaning.  While one could take his rough writing at face value as plain, he always hides much greater meaning beneath the surface.  The mule could be thought of as simply a combination of donkey and horse, but Muldoon makes it out to be much more by referencing the earthly and divine in the first stanza.  Concluding his extended metaphor in the final quatrain, Muldoon provides one last image of the combination of Heaven and Earth, “We might yet claim that it sprang from earth / Were it not for the afterbirth / Trailed like some fine, silk parachute, / That we would know from what heights it fell.”  The mule is birthed like a normal barnyard creature, and yet Muldoon points out that trailing the earthly mule is its “fine, silk parachute.”  The mule is an earthly creature that’s descent is aided by a heaven-sent provision.  In his characteristic style and reminiscent of the Modernists making the old new, Muldoon fills his poem with much more than the birth of a mule.

            Muldoon’s “Mules” is a simple narrative that works as a large metaphor for the duality of earth and the heavens.  He introduces the theme by stating a question at the beginning of the poem that asks about having the best of both worlds.  The two worlds are then implied to be the earth and the heavens.  The poem is organized to take the reader through a reflective process on the conception and birth of a mule.  Muldoon includes allusions to the worldly and divine in almost every line of the poem. The poem introduces a question about duality of the worldly and divine in the first line, and then illustrates the narrator’s opinion through the depiction of a mule’s conception and birth.

On the "Recordings" section of his website, Paul Muldoon has a reading of "Mules."
Paul Muldoon reading "Mules"


http://www.paulmuldoon.net

New Posts!

Hello all,


I will be posting revised versions of some of the papers I've written for English so far.  I thought Daniel over at Too New to Handle? explained the assignment well, so I decided to quote him.


- John

From "Individual Poetry Project: Intro" on Too New to Handle?:

Over the past month or so, our class has been working on a variety of poetry-themed projects. One of these      
was the Individual Poet Project, in which each of us as students selected a contemporary American poet 
and basically immersed ourselves in his/her life and work, focusing specifically on one (non-
compilation/"selected works"-type) book by that author.
The project evolved in its details as we progressed, and ended up consisting of four papers:
1. An analysis of a shorter poem from the selected volume of poetry
2. A biography of our chosen author.
3. Another poem analysis, this time focusing on the poem relates to the overall book and its themes.
4. A final, more detailed review of the volume.

To fulfill the details of this assignment, I'll be posting slightly revised versions of all four papers on this blog        
for your reading pleasure. Enjoy! (Driver 1)

Works Cited

Driver, Daniel. "Individual Poetry Project: Intro." Too New to Handle?. 1. Blogger. Web. 24 Mar. 2011.

Poetry and Music

Hey gang,

I don't have a lot of time to write out a full post, but I wanted to share an example of a beautiful combination of poetry and music.  In 1965 the Jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, released an historic album titled A Love Supreme.  The last track consists of John Coltrane "playing" the words of a poem he wrote that is a praise of God.  There's too much to say about it right now, but it's a beautiful piece of music and poetry, and deserves your attention.

John Coltrane - "Psalm"