Parable of the Old Man and the Young by Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen is one of this courses assigned poets, but this work isn't on our assigned reading list, however I found it most interesting. I recognized the parable as Abraham and his son Isaac. (Owen poem http://goo.gl/5lwS4) (Bible verses http://goo.gl/TsiYZ)

In this case, the work is alluding to Genesis 22:1-18. Structure is important here as he paraphrases verses as lines in his poem, and very effectively too. From line 13-16, he deviates from the original anecdote to have his Abraham slaughter the son, rather than "the Ram of Pride" tangled by its horns. The final line, "And half the seed of Europe, one by one.", turns this anecdote into a haunting political metaphor of World War I. Representing the pride of great sovereign nations, the Ram is spared by "the Old Man", sending their "son" (soldiers, boys, countrymen, etc.)  to die in their prideful places. This puts depth to the idea of national pride in war time. The idea is that national leaders have passed their pride (knowingly or otherwise) into the hands of their sons who are willing (and unwilling) to die for their country (represented here by Abraham). From this vain of though, I re-read the work to find a completely different message from my first reading. The symbolism is extensive even though the tale is one so many know.

Personally, I found this bit remarkable, albeit hard to read from an emotional standpoint. Since Owen manages to take a single idea (pride) and stretch it from Parlament, to the soldiers of WWI, to the bible, makes this a feat of triangular word-smithing! I was stunned at how well he abbreviated the biblical text into clear lines of great poetry, and then he blew my mind in the last 4 lines. Needless to say, I enjoyed this one. :-)

On a different topic, this poem is one of nine that Benjamin Britten, a famous British composer of the mid 20th century,  used as a setting for his War Requiem (1962).

The Harbor by Carl Sandburg

I really enjoyed this shorter work by Sandburg.

Passing through huddled and ugly walls
By doorways where women
Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,
Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,
Out from the huddled and ugly walls,
I came sudden, at the city's edge,
On a blue burst of lake,
Long lake waves breaking under the sun
On a spray-flung curve of shore;
And a fluttering storm of gulls,
Masses of great gray wings
And flying white bellies
Veering and wheeling free in the open

I can get such a clear grasp of Chicago through his use of imagery. Words like "huddled, shadows, and haunted" present a stark representatn of the city in early 20th century Chicago. Everything feels muted, grey, and claustrophobic at times. In lines 7 we get the first use of color in "a blue burst of lake". From here, the work feels spacious, expressive, and less constrained. The "flying white bellies / Veering and wheeling free in the open" are almost coaxing him out further, as if to represent a separation from the natural inherent in urban life.

Personally, this made me appreciate the "wide open spaces" of west Texas a little more today. :-)

The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy

It has been years since I was asked to analyze a literary work, so I chose Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of Twain" as a jumping in point for the purpose of this blog. The setting of the sinking of The Titanic is familiar to me and was more accesible and easier to reason with than some of his other works.

I found the structure of the work to be important as it moves through XI stanzas, where in the final stanza it sounds on "the Spinner of the Years" as it "jars two hemispheres." This representation of fate or even Murphy's law is reduced to the "spinning" of time and the movements of planets and stars spinning in the sky. Moving backwards into stanza X, he asks the question whether this is meant to be or a mear coincidence that these two amazing feats, a monstrous iceberg and the greatest ocean-liner of its time, met on so specific a spot to such a specific and horrific end. In Stanza VIII he compares the two vessels as they both grow "In stature, grace, and hue" symbolically tying them to the same fate. As we move further back into stanza VI, Hardy calls on fate again as "the Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything" and the "sinister mate" prepared for her in stanza VII.

The opening stanzas reflect on the moments come to pass as the ship lays at the bottom of the ocean with sea creatures looking on in bemusement and "indifference". It shows the purposes of such "opulent" things and "Jewels in joy"and how skewed those purposes become in an environment as alien as the bottom of the Atlantic. And finally, in the opening stanza it shows how such opulence, when stripped away of its vanity, is nothing more or less than "the Pride of Life".

Again, I found this work easier to approach than the others because it dealt with something I could more closely relate historically than his others. However, I could see this piece as becoming a catalyst of understanding for his more challenging works.