Past Comments on Essay Two

The following comments are relative to any essay about poetry.

To summarize is not the same as to respond.  A summary is a neutral restatement of the primary points of a text; a response is an evaluation of a text.  You may or may not want to summarize the poem, but you must respond to the poem--that is, state whether you like or dislike the poem and provide reasons (grounds).  Furthermore, you must provide backing--specific phrases, clauses or lines that you quote and explicate.  When quoting use a slash to differentiate lines, and ensure there is a space before and after the slash.  Use two slashes to differentiate stanzas, and ensure there is a space before and after the slashes.

You must combine reader-response criticism with either New Criticism or deconstruction.  Consider the elements I wanted you to incorporate into your poem: figurative language, sonic texture, imagery, meter, and form.  A New Critic will regard those elements as necessary constituents of the poem.  They are necessary because they contribute to the definitive meaning of the poem.  Remove one of the elements, and you will create another unique poem.  A nonliterary example is the way a New Critic views a tree.  He/she analyzes the trunk, bark, branches, leaves, crown and height individually; then, he/she will analyze the tree as a whole, focusing on the way its trunk, bark, branches, leaves, crown and height create the tree's distinctiveness.  A deconstructionist, after careful analysis of the same elements and after consideration of each element's multiple meanings, agrees that the tree is a tree, but he/she also views the tree as his/her new book, bookcase, library, et cetera.  With respect to your poem, a deconstructionist will regard each element as having and creating multiple meanings.

Regardless of which approach you use, you must consider the structure of the poem, the way(s) it reflects or enhances the poem's central idea (New Criticism), the way(s) it creates ambiguity or multiple meanings (deconstruction), or the way(s) it detracts from the poem's content (deconstruction).  If you approach the work deconstructively, suggest another form.  For example, if the poem is about a former relationship between two people, and the poet relates the relationship in tercets, suggest the poet consider couplets.  Couplets connote unity (two lines with one sonically similar end rhyme), and with respect to the former relationship, the couplets will create irony.

State the title of the poem and the poet's name in the first paragraph.  If the poem does not have a title, the first line acts as one.

The poet is not necessarily the speaker, the one conversing, so use speaker rather than poet.

Speak about the poem in the present tense.  The poem exists now.

Deconstruction: Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead"

The following interpretation of Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead" is via deconstruction.

1.   Read the poem aloud.

2.   Scan the poem, using a dictionary.

      Line 1: u / / / u u / u u / (enjambment) = 10 syllables with 5 stresses
      Line 4: u / u / u / (end-stop) = 6 syllables with 3 stresses
      Line 7: u / u / u (enjambment) = 5 syllables with 2 stresses
      Line 10: u u / / u u / u / u / u (enjambment) = 13 syllables with 5 stresses
      Line 13: / u u / u / u u / u / (end-stop) = 11 syllables with 5 stresses
      Line 16: u / u / u / u / (end-stop) = 8 syllables with 4 stresses
      Line 35: u / u / u / u (end-stop) = 7 syllables with 3 stresses
      Line 40: u / u / u / or u / / u u / (end-stop) = 6 syllables with 3 stresses
      Line 45: u / / u u u / / / u / u (enjambment) = 12 syllables with 6 stresses
      Line 50: u / u / (end-stop) = 4 syllables with 2 stresses
      Line 55: u / u / u u / u / u / (enjambment) = 11 syllables with 5 stresses
      Line 60: u / / u u / u / / u / u u / (end-stop) = 14 syllables with 7 stresses
      Line 65: u u / u u u / / u / (end-stop) = 10 syllables with 4 stresses
      Line 68: / / u / (end-stop) = 4 syllables with 3 stresses 

      Dominant foot: iamb
      Number of feet per line: variable
      Form: quatrains (unrhymed)

3.   Determine the poetic techniques Lowell employs, and use a dictionary
      to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words.      

      Line 1: diction = "South Boston" (setting)
      Lines 1-2: dislocation = "Boston" and "Sahara"
                         oxymorons = "Aquarium" and "Sahara" and "snow"
      Line 2: metaphor = "Sahara of snow" (bleakness)
                   alliteration = "Sahara" and "snow" + "broken" and "boarded" and
                   "bronze" (line 3)
      Line 3: imagery = appeals to sense of sight ("bronze") and touch
                   ("scales")
      Line 4: extension of metaphor = "airy" and "dry"
      Line 5: personification = "nose crawled"
                   simile = "like a snail"
      Lines 6-7: synecdoche = "my hand tingled / to burst the bubbles" (He, as
                         a whole, wants to pop the air bubbles.)
      Line 7: alliteration = "burst the bubbles"
      Line 8: irony = "noses" (Fish breathe through gills.)
                   irony = "cowed" (Speaker means "coward.")
                   Cow means to frighten with threats or force.
                   alliteration = "cowed" and "compliant"
      Line 9: metaphor = "My hand draws back."  (Literally he stops writing,
                   but figuratively he is reflecting, and with respect to the figurative 
                   meaning, it is an example of synecdoche.)
                   pun = "still" ("sighs" to silence, without movement, or up to the 
                   time suggested)
      Lines 10-11: allusion to Theodore Roethke who wrote much about the 
                             regression of humanity to its primal state
      Line12: imagery = appeals to sense of touch ("barbed") and sight 
                    ("galvanized") That is in reverse order with respect to line 3.
      Line 13: assonance = "Boston Common"
                      metaphor = "cage" (a fence)
      Line 14: metaphor = "dinosaur" (gigantic and outmoded)
                      personification = "grunting"
      Line 15: personification = "cropped up"
      Line 16: metaphor = "underworld garage" (hell, for they are in a "cage" 
                      [line 13])
      Line 17: personification = "luxuriate"
      Lines 17-18: simile = "like civic / sandpiles" = metaphor (playgrounds
                             or parks)
      Line 18: dead metaphor = "heart of Boston" (downtown)
      Line 19: cacophony
                      alliteration = "girdle" and "girders" + "Puritan-pumpkin"
                      oxymoron = "Puritan-pumpkin" (Puritans were English  
                      Protestants, and we associate pumpkins with Halloween, a
                      secular celebration.)
      Line 20: personification = "tingling"
      Line 21: personification = "shaking" and "faces"
      Line 22: cacophony
      Line 23: wordplay = "shaking" (repetition)
      Line 24: cacophony (reflects "earthquake")
      Lines 25-26: historical reference
      Line 28: allusion = "William James," the American psychologist and 
                      philosopher, was a founder of pragmatism and the
                      psychological movement of functionalism.
                      litotes = "could almost hear" (James was dead at the time of
                      the dedication.)
                      alliteration = "bronze" and "breathe"
      Line 29: simile = "like a fishbone"
      Lines 29-30: metaphor = hard for the city to swallow (accept) Shaw's 
                            idealism
      Line 30: personification = "city's throat" = metaphor (internalization)
      Lines 31-32: alliteration = "Colonel" and "compass-needle"
                             simile = "as lean / as a compass-needle"
      Line 33: simile = "wrenlike"
      Line 34: analogy = the Colonel has "a greyhound's gentle tautness"
      Line 35: personification = "wince"
      Line 36: personification = "suffocate"
      Line 37: pun/irony = "He is out of bounds" (Shaw is, of course, a part of 
                     the monument, but he is no longer under moral obligation.)
                     irony = "now" (temporal dislocation = contemporary [lines 
                     37-38] and historical [lines 39-40] references)
                     personification = "rejoices"
      Line 38: alliteration = "peculiar power"
                      oxymoron = "to choose life and die"
      Line 39: wordplay = "black" and "death"
      Line 40: metaphor = "he cannot bend his back" (moves forward with 
                      rectitude [refer to line 37])
                      internal rhyme = "black" (line 39) and "back"
      Lines 41-42: imagery = appeal to sense of sight: "greens" and "white"
      Lines 42-43: dead metaphor = "air / of ... rebellion" (The people in New
                              England have a rebellious attitude.)
      Line 43: metaphor = "sparse, sincere rebellion" (They are against
                      European tradition.)
                      alliteration = "frayed flags"
      Lines 43-44: irony = "frayed flags / quilt the graveyards of the Grand
                             Army of the Republic" (The army is not large, noble in 
                             appearance, or of high rank.)
      Line 44: alliteration = "graveyards" and "Grand"
      Line 45: alliteration = "stone statues"
                      ambiguity = "abstract" (why?)
      Line 46: personification = "grow"
                      oxymoron = "grow slimmer"
                      metaphor = idealism of Shaw and his army is fading
      Line 47: alliteration = "wasp-wasted"
                      personification = "doze"
      Line 48: personification = "muse"
                      metonymy and synecdoche = "muse through their sideburns" 
                      (head)
      Line 50: metonymy = "ditch" (his son)
      Line 53: temporal dislocation
                      metaphor = "The ditch is nearer." (site of excavation)
      Line 54: metaphor = "the last war" (WWII, not an idealistic war)
      Line 56: metaphor = "Hiroshima boiling" (atomic bomb)
      Line 57: allusion = "Rock of Ages" (Christianity)
      Line 58: metaphor = "Space" (heaven)
      Line 59: wordplay = "crouch" (speaker moves downward)
      Line 60: wordplay = "faces ... rise"
                      oxymoron = "drained" and "balloons"
                      simile = "like balloons"
      Line 61: proper noun in isolation (refer to lines 37 and 64)
      Line 62: pun = "bubble" (a pocket of air in a solid and an illusion)
      Line 63: personification = "waits"
      Line 64: pun = "break" (physical separation and succumbing spiritually)
      Line 66: alliteration = "finned" and "forward" and "fish"
                      simile = "like fish"
      Line 67: oxymoron = "savage servility" (wild or barbaric submissiveness 
                      or servitude)
      Lines 67-68: alliteration = "savage servility / slides" 

4.   Summarize and interpret the poem via deconstructive criticism. 

      The title of the poem indicates it is for the Union's dead,
      suggesting the work honors the soldiers who died in the
      American Civil War.  However, by 1960, every soldier who had
      fought in the Civil War was dead.  After initially reading the
      poem, a reader may interpret it as speaking for the soldiers, as
      voicing their possible disgust at the loss of the aquarium, at the
      construction, and at the grease.  One may also interpret the title
      as meaning, "for the Union, which is now dead."  That
      multiplicity of meanings is, of course, a feature of deconstructive
      analysis. 

      One point to consider as you interpret the poem is how much the
      speaker devotes his stream of consciousness to the Civil War, in
      general, and to the soldiers, in particular.  Although the speaker
      focuses on Shaw, he only mentions his regiment.  Is the poem
      actually in honor of the soldiers who died in the Civil War?  The
      speaker celebrates the involvement of the Union's "black
      soldiers" (39), but the poem is more about the speaker, who is
      mourning the present attitude of Bostonians. 

      The poem was composed for and read at the Boston Arts
      Festival in June 1960.  It begins in the present, "now" (2), in
      which the "South Boston Aquarium stands / in a Sahara of
      snow" (1-2).  It ends with the "giant finned cars" (66) moving
      "forward like fish" (66) with a "savage servility" (67) that "slides
      by on grease" (68).  It seems that the poem's true subject appears
      in lines 59 and 60, in which the speaker says, "When I crouch to
      my television set, / the drained faces of Negro school-children
      rise like balloons."  That image echoes the earlier images in lines
      five through eight, when the speaker remembers himself viewing
      "the cowed, compliant fish" (8).  He then reveals, "I often sigh
      still / for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom / of the
      fish and reptile" (9-11).  Considering the poem is supposedly
      honoring the Union's dead, the description of the aquarium is a
      strange place to begin.  (Notice the "monument sticks like a
      fishbone / in the city's throat" [28-30].) 

      The connection between the "dark" (10) piscine and African
      American worlds may seem strange, but for the speaker, the loss
      of the aquarium, the monument, and the current ugliness of
      Boston are all relative.  The television (society in a figurative
      sense) traps the "Negro school-children" (60).  They are similar
      to the fish and reptiles in the aquarium.  Although the Civil War
      is over, who is free?  We have only a "savage servility" (67).

Deconstruction

In this essay I define deconstructive criticism, introduce the founder of deconstruction, and attempt to summarize Derrida's primary ideas that pertain to literary criticism.

Deconstruction is a theory and practice of reading which questions and subverts (or undermines) the assumption that the system of language provides adequate grounds to establish the boundaries, the coherence (or unity), and the determinate meanings of a literary text.  A deconstructive critic attempts to identify the conflictual elements in a text and to explain how those elements dissipate the definiteness of its structure and meanings into an indefinite array of incompatible possibilities.

The originator of deconstruction was the French thinker Jacques Derrida.  His precursors were Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger--German philosophers who questioned such fundamental philosophic concepts as knowledge, truth and identity--as well as Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalysis violated traditional concepts of a coherent individual consciousness and a unitary self.  Derrida presented his basic views in three books, all published in 1967: Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena.

Derrida's writings are complex and elusive, so my summary will only cover his primary ideas.  Derrida believes a reader cannot intuit beyond verbal signs to any things-in-themselves that, because they are independent of the system of language, may serve to anchor a determinable meaning.  The effort to erect foundations or to establish a philosophy on some self-evident truth or presence outside of discourse is an exercise in futility.  What makes it futile is the way language works.  The relation between a word (a signifier) and its associative concept (the signified) is arbitrary.  The word tree, for example, does not signify necessarily a perennial woody plant with a main trunk and a distinct crown.  There are no one-to-one relationships between words and concepts.  Furthermore, language functions diacritically, with the meaning of a word emerging from its relationship to all the other words in the system.  A phonological example may clarify how words depend on differential sounds.  The sound let functions as a meaningful word because it differentiates itself from bet, lot and led.  The traces of these other possible sounds in English allow for the articulation of the sound let with the effect that it can function as a signifier for a signified.  The same is true for signifieds.  We differentiate rice by the language code and not by any inherent, absolute qualities.

From such perspective Derrida evolves his radical claim that the features which serve to establish the meaning of a word are never present to us in their own positive identity, since both the features and their significations are nothing other than a network of differences.  On the other hand, the features are not entirely absent.  We simply are not aware of them.  The seeming meaning is the result of a trace of all the differences from other elements in the linguistic system that invest a word with an effect.  The consequence, according to Derrida, is that we can never, in any instance of speech or writing, have a demonstrably fixed and decidable meaning.  The differential play of language may produce the effects of decidable meanings in an utterance or text, but they are merely effects and lack grounds that justify certainty in interpretation.

Several of Derrida's skeptical procedures have been influential in literary criticism.  One is to subvert the innumerable binary oppositions (speech/writing, nature/culture, truth/falsity, male/female, et cetera) which are essential structural elements in logocentric (Western) languages.  Derrida shows that such oppositions constitute a tacit hierarchy in which the first term functions as privileged and superior and the second term as derivative and inferior.  Derrida's procedure is to invert the hierarchy, showing that the secondary term is a derivative from or a special case of the primary term, and to destabilize both hierarchies, leaving them in a condition of indeterminacy.  One such demonstration is to take the standard hierarchical opposition of literature/criticism, to invert it so as to make criticism primary and literature secondary, and to present, as an indefinite set of oppositions, the assertions that criticism is a species of literature and literature is a species of criticism.

The second influential operation in literary criticism is the analysis of rhetorical figures and figurative language in all uses of language, including in what philosophers have claimed to be the strictly literal and logical arguments of philosophy.  Derrida, for example, emphasizes the indispensable reliance in all modes of discourse on metaphors that we assume to be convenient substitutes for literal or proper meanings.  He explains that metaphors--sunshine, for example--cannot be reduced to literal meanings--love--and literal terms are themselves metaphors whose metaphoric natures have been forgotten.

Derrida did not propose deconstruction as a mode of literary criticism but as a way to read all kinds of texts in order to reveal and subvert the tacit metaphysical presuppositions of Western thought.  Derrida's views and procedures have been adopted by literary critics, especially in the United States, who have adapted his critical methods to the type of close reading of particular literary texts that earlier had been the familiar procedure of New Criticism.  The end results of the two kinds of close readings are completely diverse.  New Critical explications of texts show that literary works, in the internal relations of their figurative and paradoxical meanings, constitute freestanding, bounded and organic entities of multiplex yet determinate meanings.  Deconstructive close readings, however, show that literary works lack complete boundaries that make them unifiable, organic entities.  As a result, they have indefinite ranges of self-conflicting significations.  The claim is made by some deconstructive critics that literary texts are superior to nonliterary texts because, by their self-references, they show themselves to be more aware of the features all texts inescapably share: fictionality, instability, and rhetorical and figurative language.  Those features, according to deconstructive critics, make any correct reading of a text impossible.   

New Criticism: Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"

The following interpretation of Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" is via New Criticism.

1.   Read the poem aloud.

2.   Scan the poem, using a dictionary.

      Line 1: u / u u / / (enjambment) = six syllables with three stresses
      Line 2: u / u / / / u (end-stop) = seven syllables with four stresses
      Line 3: u u / u / / (end-stop) = six syllables with three stresses
      Line 4: u / u u / / u (end-stop) = seven syllables with three stresses

      Line 5: u / u / u / (enjambment) = six syllables with three stresses
      Line 6: / u u / u / (end-stop) = six syllables with three stresses
      Line 7: u / u / u u (enjambment) = six syllables with two stresses
      Line 8: u / u / u / (end-stop) = six syllables with three stresses

      Line 9: u / u / u / (enjambment) = six syllables with three stresses
      Line 10: u / u u / / u (end-stop) = seven syllables with three stresses
      Line 11: u / u / u / (enjambment) = six syllables with three stresses
      Line 12: u / / / u / u (end-stop) = seven syllables with four stresses 

      Line 13: u / / u u / (enjambment) = six syllables with three stresses
      Line 14: u u / / / u / (end-stop) = seven syllables with four stresses
      Line 15: u / u / u / (enjambment) = six syllables with three stresses
      Line 16: / / u / u / (end-stop) = six syllables with four stresses 

      Dominant foot: iamb
      Number of feet per line: three
      Prevailing meter (dominant foot + number of feet per line):
      iambic trimeter
      Primary variation on dominant foot: anapest then spondee
      Structure: quatrain
      Rhyme scheme: abab (imperfect, partial, near or slant rhyme)
      // cdc (imperfect) d // efef // ghgh 

3.   Determine the poetic techniques Roethke employs, and use a
      dictionary to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words.      

      Line1: diction = "whiskey" (suggests drunkenness)
      Line 2: diction = "small boy" (speaker is male)
      Line 3: diction = "hung" (past tense of "hang" so speaker is a
                   son reflecting on his childhood)
                   simile = "like death" (negative connotation)
      Line 4: metaphor = "waltzing" (the dance of life)
      Line 5: diction = "romped" (positive denotation = "to play or
                   frolic boisterously)
                   structural irony = meter is iambic trimeter
      Line 6: cacophony = "slid," "kitchen" and "shelf"
      Lines 7-8: alliteration = "countenance" and "could"
      Line 8: synecdoche = her "countenance / Could not unfrown
                   itself" (Her entire appearance signifies her face.)
      Line 9: alliteration = "hand" and "held"
      Line 10: diction = "battered" (connotes abuse = negative)
      Line 11: structural irony = meter is iambic trimeter
      Line 12: cacophony = "scraped" and "buckle" + extra stress
      Line 13: diction = "beat" (connotes abuse = negative)
                     metaphor = "beat time on my head"
                     (metronome = "a device used to mark time by means of
                     regularly recurring ticks or flashes at adjustable intervals")
      Line 14: cacophony = extra stress
      Line 15: euphony = meter is iambic trimeter
      Line 16: ambiguity = "clinging" (to escape death [line 3] or he
                     did not want to stop romping [line 5]?) 

4.   What is the significance of the poem's structure?  (Remember,
      New Critics do not use the term form because of its historical
      connotations.)  Your answer will affect your interpretation of the
      poem.  (Remember, do not separate the overall structure from
      the verbal meanings.)

      A waltz is a ballroom dance in triple time.  The prevailing meter
      mimics the rhythm of the dance.  Furthermore, the alternate
      rhymes metaphorically represent the two dancers and the two
      moods. 

5.   Summarize and interpret the poem via New Criticism. 

      The son, reflecting on his childhood, is the speaker.  His tone is
      crucial to the reader's interpretation of the poem.  With respect
      to "romped" (line 5) and "waltzed" (line 15), the event seems
      high-spirited.  However, the "whiskey" (line 1), "the pans" (line
      5), the mother's appearance (line 7), the "knuckle" (line 10), the
      "buckle" (line 12), and the metronome (line 13) all seem
      low-spirited.  The most significant negative connotations
      concern the son hanging on "like death" (line 3) and "clinging"
      (line 16) to his father's shirt.  The mother was frowning, but we
      do not know what her outlook was.  The son might have been
      grasping affectionately.

      Whether you choose to interpret the memory as an instance of
      affection or an instance of abuse simplifies the poem.  It is not
      an either/or situation.  One may unify the oppositions in two
      ways.  First, although the father's roughness may be
      troublesome, the son treasures his affection, clinging to his
      memory as he clung to his father's shirt.  Second, although the
      father was attentive and affectionate, his disregard for his son's
      safety and his wife's disapproval are troublesome.  But as New
      Critics we need to unite those two interpretations: the poem is an
      expression of the son's ambivalence (oppositional attitudes)
      toward his father. 

New Criticism

In this essay I introduce the founders of New Criticism, describe the theoretical origin of the movement, and describe three commonalities among New Critics.

The term New Criticism was established after the publication of John Crowe Ransom's The New Criticism in 1941.  It was applied to a theory and practice that was prominent in American literary criticism until late in the 1960's.  The movement derived from elements in I. A. Richards' Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929) and from the critical essays of T. S. Eliot.  In his book Ransom opposes the use of biographical information, the placement of a work in its social context, and the reference to literary history when interpreting a work.  Instead, he insists that the proper concern of a literary critic is his/her consideration of a work as an independent entity.  Notable critics in this mode were the southerners Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, whose textbooks Understanding Poetry (1938) and Understanding Fiction (1943) did much to make New Criticism the predominant method of teaching literature in American colleges and some high schools until the 1970's.

Although New Critics differ from one another in many ways, the following points of view and procedures are common to many of them.  First, a poem, for example, is a poem and not another thing.  A New Critic does not adopt a critical practice that may divert his/her attention from the poem itself.  When analyzing and evaluating a particular work, a New Critic ignores the biography and temperament of the author, the social conditions at the time of production, the psychological and moral effects the work has on him/her, and literary history (with respect to the work's form and subject matter).

Because of its critical focus on literary works in isolation from their attendant circumstances and effects, New Criticism is a type of critical formalism.  That type of formalism derives from the aesthetic philosophy of Immanuel Kant.  According to Kant, aesthetics concerns beauty, not truth or morality.  "Beauty" refers to the internal order of an object, not its function.  In other words, an aesthetic object has its own mode of being which separates it from the utilitarian considerations that inform our relationships to other human constructs.  The early New Critics preserved much of Kant's aesthetics, isolating literary knowledge from scientific knowledge and consigning literary truth to the internal world of a work.

The second commonality among New Critics is that they oppose literary truth both to the experimental truth of science and to the truth of everyday conversation.  Literature is a special kind of language and the explicative procedure is to analyze the meanings and interactions of words, figures of speech, and symbols.  New Critics emphasize the organic unity of overall structure and verbal meanings.  Do not separate the structure from the meanings.

Third, the distinctive procedure of a New Critic is explication or close reading: the thorough analysis of the complex interrelations and ambiguities (multiple meanings) of the verbal and figurative components within a work.

Finally, the distinction between literary genres does not have an essential role in New Criticism.  The essential components of any work of literature--lyric, narrative or dramatic--are words, images and symbols rather than characters, thoughts and plot.  Such linguistic elements create tension, irony and paradox--revealing a humanly significant theme (a reconciliation of diverse impulses or a stabilization of oppositional forces).  New Critics consider the form of a work as a structure of meanings that unify through the play and counterplay of thematic imagery and symbolic action.

Reader-Response Criticism: Robinson Jeffers' "Carmel Point"

The following interpretation of Robinson Jeffers' "Carmel Point" is via reader-response criticism.

1.   Read the poem aloud.  What are your initial reactions? 

2.   Scan the poem, using a dictionary. 

      Line 1: u u / u / u / u u / (end-stop) = 10 syllables with 4 stresses

      Line 2: u / u u / u / u u / u u / u / u (end-stop) = 16 syllables with
                   6 stresses

      Line 3: u / u u / u / u / / (end-stop) = 10 syllables with 5 stresses

      Line 4: u / u / u / u u / u / u / / (end-stop) = 14 syllables with 7
                   stresses

      Line 5: end-stop

      Line 6: end-stop

      Line 7: end-stop

      Line 8: u / u / u u / / / u / u u u / (enjambment) = 5 syllables with
                   7 stresses

                   or

                   u / u / u / / / / u / u u u / (enjambment) = 15 syllables with
                   8 stresses

      Line 9: enjambment

      Line 10: enjambment

      Line 11: end-stop

      Line 12: end-stop

      Line 13: end-stop

      Line 14: u / u / u / u / u / u u u / / u u (enjambment) = 17
                     syllables with 7 stresses

      Line 15: u u / u / u / u u / / (end-stop) = 11 syllables with 5
                     stresses 

      Prevailing meter: irregular, but iamb is dominant foot

      Primary variation on dominant foot: anapest

      Form: free verse 

3.   Determine the poetic techniques Jeffers employs, and use a
      dictionary to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words.      

      Line 1: pathetic fallacy = objects ("things") are patient

      Line 2: assonance = "place" and "defaced"

                   wordplay = "crop" (meaning "cultivated plants or
                   agricultural produce" and/or "a group, quantity or supply
                   appearing at one time")  "Crop" complicates the idea that
                   the suburban houses are defacing Carmel Point because a
                   crop is the result of cultivation, a process in which
                   humans and nature work together.  Furthermore, the
                   houses are no more durable than a crop of tomatoes or
                   artichokes.  The word also suggests that cultivation
                   momentarily defaces the landscape.

      Line 3: ambiguity = "it" ("It" is not a former beauty that has
                   been ruined by humans.)

      Line 4: Poppies are perennial plants with mostly single flowers
                   that have black centers.  They bloom for short periods in
                   early summer.

                   Lupines are perennial plants with tall spikes of pealike
                   flowers that bloom in middle to late spring above deeply
                   divided leaves.

                   wordplay = "walled" (nature is containing itself)

                   alliteration = "clean" and "cliffs"

      Line 5: "intrusion" refers to "walled" in previous line = horses
                   are a part of nature

      Line 6: "milch cows" provide milk

                   repetition of "crop" in "outcrop"

      Line 7: ambiguity = "spoiler has come" (referring to the "crop of
                   suburban houses" or to what follows the colon?)  The
                   present perfect tense, formed with the auxiliary have or
                   has and a verb's past participle, indicates an action that,
                   although begun at some past time, continues to have an
                   impact in the present.

                   pathetic fallacy = "it" (nature) does or does not "care"

      Line 8: metaphor = "people are a tide" (humanity is an ocean)

      Line 9: metaphor = "swells and in time will ebb" (population
                   growth and decline)

      Line 10: "Their works dissolve" = The speaker is shifting our
                     perspective to a different vantage point, moving us
                     beyond a merely human perspective and inviting us to
                     look at "their" houses from the outside.

      Line 11: metaphor = "grain of granite" (stands for the enduring
                     essence of nature)  What we see at Carmel Point is a
                     passing image, an illusion.  What we see in the granite is
                     an image of "pristine beauty" (line 10) that will return
                     after the human settlement is gone.  It is "pristine"
                     because humans cannot spoil it.

                     alliteration = "grain" and "granite"

      Line 12: "endless ocean" = The speaker's assertion that the
                     ocean is "endless" may not be accurate technically, for
                     the ocean and even the solar system will end someday,
                     but from a strictly human perspective, the oceans are
                     "endless" with respect to time (as are the perennial
                     plants in line 4).

                     personification = the "ocean ... climbs our cliff"

                     alliteration = "climbs" and "cliff"

      Line 13: In order to "uncenter our minds," we must first
                     disengage ourselves from our strictly human perspective
                     (line 10).

      Line 14: anaphora = "We must"

                     In order to "unhumanize our views," we must first
                     disengage ourselves from our strictly human perspective
                     (lines 10 and 13).

      Lines 14-15: pathetic fallacy = "the rock and ocean" are "confident" 

4.   Summarize and interpret the poem via reader-response criticism.

      Robinson Jeffers wanted us to experience the poem as the
      speaker experiences nature: hence the volta ("turn") at line
      eight.  Initially I thought the third line refers to a formerly
      beautiful landscape that has been ruined by humans, which led
      me to decide that humanity's deeds and misdeeds are important
      to the speaker.  But as I analyzed the poem, I discovered that
      humans are not significant.  The speaker's view of nature is
      much larger: "It has all time" (8).  All humanity's works,
      including the "suburban houses" that deface Carmel Point, will
      "dissolve" (2 and 10, respectively).  Does that suggest humans
      can spoil nature however we wish because our effects will not
      last?  Yes, one may draw that conclusion.  If a reader responds
      to the poem in that way, then our effects will not matter, for "the
      image of the pristine beauty / Lives in the very grain of the
      granite, / Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff"
      (10-12).  However, and this is the primary reason I like the
      poem, an inescapable conclusion is also that humanity must be
      more humble.  Nature is powerful and deserves our awe.  Thus,
      we must "uncenter our minds from ourselves" and "unhumanize
      our views a little" (13 and 14, respectively).  Those actions,
      according to the speaker, will transform the way we experience
      Carmel Point.

      The poem evokes a response that is deeply and powerfully
      environmental.  Humans are simply a small part of nature.
      Ultimately it does not matter what we do because we will not be
      here forever.  I think Jeffers hoped such insight would alter the
      way we live during our time on Earth.  Because decentering
      involves a loss of self and dehumanizing further displaces an
      individual within humanity--which, again, is part of something
      larger--the reader, according to the speaker, should strive for a
      humility that is spiritual.

5.   Use outside sources of information if you feel you have not
      achieved a valid interpretation.

      Robinson Jeffers' poetry exhibits influences of Friedrich
      Nietzsche and Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophies.  Jeffers
      agreed with Nietzsche that poetry must reclaim substance and
      sense, must contain physical and psychological realities--the
      reasons scientific and philosophic ideas are in his poetry.  Jeffers
      also agreed with Emerson's concept of reality--powerful enough
      to prevent possession of it--concept of beauty--greater than
      intellect--and concept of nature--a combination of power, reality
      and beauty.  Jeffers was not a humanist.  He believed humanity's
      existence will be short and will end tragically.  His primary
      concern was nature as a beautiful necessity.  He wanted his
      readers' souls to learn to love something that is not personal and
      not human.  Although there are religious undertones in his
      poetry, they are not Christian; rather, they are naturalistic, for
      God is equivalent to physical forces.

For more information on Robinson Jeffers, read Roy Harvey Pearce's The Continuity of American Poetry (1987), Hyatt Waggoner's American Poets (1984), or David Perkins' A History of Modern Poetry (1987).