The last poem we're going to consider in chapter two is a, is a poem called A Recollection by John Peale Bishop. And here it is. Is it a, what's the form of the poem? Anybody recognize this form? It's a traditional form. >> It's a Petrarchan sonnet. >> It's a sonnet. There's two kinds of sonnet. There's the Shakespearean sonnet which ends in a couplet and then there's the Petrarchan which has more of an interlocking rhyme scheme. Is it a perfect Petrarchan sonnet? >> No. >> Why isn't it perfect? >> The rhyme. I'm not, I'm not entirely sure about the rhyme scheme. Maybe someone else can help me out. >> I think it is perfect. >> Isn't it, yeah. >> Air, taut, taut, air. A, B, B, A were ought, thought, there. A B, B A. >> Okay, yeah. >> Cloud, ease, proud, sees, could, bees. >> Okay. >> It's perfectly rhymed and perfectly rhythm, rhythmic, metric. >> Although I guess normally it would be like in an octave and a sestet, right? >> Yes, that's right. >> Yes. >> The stanzas are a little different. >> The stanzas are [crosstalk]. >> Let me read the first couple lines, and you tell me what the tone is and the diction. Famously, she descended her red hair, Unbound and bronzed by sea reflections. Caught crinkled with sea pearls the fine slender taut knees that let down, it's a nude descending a staircase almost, although she's not nude. The fine slender taut knees that let down her feet upon the air, young breasts, slim flanks, and golden quarries were odder than. What's the tone? Or what's the diction? >> Very high poetic diction. >> High poetic diction, fancy words, overstatement, floweriness. Wait a minute, guys, what's this doing here? What's this doing here? This isn't a modern poem. What's going on? >> Seems like a satire. It's mocking him, because it's going so over the top with its loftiness. >> Give me some, other than what I've read, give me an example of a phrase that seems to be deliberately over the top. >> Golden quarry. >> Yes, what, what is a golden quarry? >> I don't think I wanna know. >> It's sort of gloopy, it's the sort of thing that the imagists hated. >> And, and made them want to do free verse but this isn't free verse this is a traditional sonnet. And the setting art historian? >> Well we have Venice which is traditionally a kind of high seat of renaissance painting and you have the reference to the Barbarini who were the wealthy Italian family who commissioned a lot of art. >> And we have, essentially a, Botticellian woman figure. >> Mm hm. >> There. So it's, it's, deli, it's an Italian sonnet set in Italy in a renaissance mode, in, in ... >> In renaissance form. So why. So maybe this is, this got into our course by mistake. We have to find are there two ways to be modern. It, it, with respect to form, one is to abandon form. Right? To do what Williams did sometimes. Right? To abandon form, to embrace free, free verse and to find your own form. But there's another way to do it. And that is to ironize or satirize form. Right? And that's a common strategy. So how, so we must find evidence in the poem. We must find evidence that it is ironizing the traditional form. We must look, and you must look. And you'll never pass on to chapter three unless you figure out. >> Your're, you're looking at words on a page. And you're. Ally, do you see it yet? Look, you have to look. On the page, for evidence that John Peale Bishop is saying, I'm not. I don't believe what I'm saying. That I would never use such a tone. That we are in the modern era. That difference has spread. >> Does anybody see? You have to look hard. You have to be, the implicit instruction from Stein is to think as if you're learning a language again from the start. What is the first thing they teach you about language? >> The alphabet. >> The alphabet. Don't think by the phrase. Don't think by the word. Think by the letter. Look hard. If you see it, raise your hand. If you see the challenge. If you see the satire. If you see the muck. If you see the modernism. You, you're trying to look, you're trying to, remember, modernism is about thinking how language gets constituted. It's about how we read. It's back to basics. Aright? So, if you, if you're, look, look at it. Look at it. Words are words, they're not thoughts, they're beautiful things. They're words. We must find in every poem, we must think about every poem, how is this poem saying, saying am I art? Am I conscious of my form? We have to look. Has anybody, has anybody seen a way of reading this against the grain, anybody see it? Molly, do you see something? You have to look, we have to learn to look, we have to learn to read as if we're starting it over again, Emily doesn't have it. >> So Dave was hinting at looking at, but you're not saying that we should do what Dave was hinting at, looking at all the kind of satirical. >> Oh my God. >> Over the topness. >> You've seen something? I'm sorry Anna, you've seen something, don't tell us what it is. You've seen it, is it embarrassing? >> Yeah. [laugh]. >> It is embarrassing. It's so simple, you know. >> Oh, [laugh]. >> I do this, I can do this poems, Molly's got it. >> [laugh] >> I can do this poem for fourth graders and the fourth graders will get it right away, although it's kind of not fair to the fourth graders. >> [laugh] >> What were you going to say, Anna? Do you see it? >> I see it. >> [laugh] >> We have to, modernism makes us think. Gertrude Stein makes us think. How is language organized? How is it deployed to make the meaning that it does? John Peale Bishop, there's got to be some evidence that he is providing an alternative to the front, he's got to ironize traditional form. Dave? >> I got it. >> You got it? Do you feel superior? >> [laugh] >> Can you give us a hint as to what it teaches us? >> I think it's the same thing as reading it as a satire, making fun of the whole tradition. Like you said. >> Now that's enough of a hint. Amaris and you're still not there yet? >> No I did I was looking at the alliteration. I was wondering why there's such an excess of alliteration and. >> All loving is the man are courtesy since she was dead I praised for as I could. Silently among the Barberini bees. I mean what a loaded piece of love crap this is. >> [laugh] >> [laugh] >> But that's not it. It's got to be. It's. It's got to teach us how to read. Emily Harnett. It's got to teach how to read. Look. >> Look what do you see. >> I see words. >> See the words as words, see the words as letters. How would you naturalize to read with the naturalize to read how? Molly. >> Well left to right. >> Would you naturalize to read left to right, and also across. >> We need to read as if we're looking at the language for the first time. Did you see it? >> Mm-hm. >> Amaris? You've found it. We've all found it. It's so simple. >> I'm not even sure if we should say it. >> [laugh] >> [laugh] >> You made us do this much work. We should say it. [laugh]. >> Go ahead and say it. >> Well, why do I have to? >> Because you are not a person who uses, uses obscenities. >> [laugh] >> [laugh] >> Fuck you, half ass. >> [laugh] >> F-u-c-k-y-o-u-h-a-l-f-a-s-s down the side. It's kind of a trick. It's not really modernism at extremes. Not like Zara or the baroness. But it gives us something important, which is that we should never again read naturally. We should try to read as unnaturally as we possibly can. We need to read every which way. We need to read as if every naturalized standard looking sonnet is actually a concrete poem. We need to think about how language is deployed as paint on a canvas. We need to think about how language gets constantly ironized by many different ways of reading it. And so, John Peale Bishop is saying to the sonnet tradition that elevates the portrait, the enportraited, woman, the woman who's in the portrait here, the traditional sentiments of love. The way in which a sonnet can be so conventional and cliche that it no longer thinks of love. One way is to say it with bolts, and the other way is to say fuck you half ass, to any one, who would write a standard song in this twentieth century to express their feelings of love.
