The Language of Violence, Language of the Heart
Our world is not a pleasant one. Our everyday lives are punctured with graphic images of sex, violence and apathy. Unfortunately, people tend to ignore the holes in the social fabric all around them. As Bukowski wrote the poems that were compiled into Betting on the Muse, he realized this, and incorporated it into his poetry. In his narrative works he creates a living, breathing world. He tends to concentrate on the low points of life, though. The world is a dark one, where personal rotting begins with an all-too-early maturation. Bukowski's collection should be read by those who want to experience the lives of people in a decaying, violent world.
Being young in Bukowski's world is not a pleasant experience. Even youth is full of violence, sex and self-delusion. The simple concept of a playground friendship with another kid in school is turned into a materialistic affair in Bukowski's "those marvelous lunches". The speaker (Henry) talks of being poor and making a "friend" who gave him parts of his lunch every day. It seems that throughout the course of the poem, Henry manages to delude himself into thinking that he truly was friends with Richardson, when it slowly becomes quite obvious that it's the lunch he truly loves. There is a striking difference in the descriptions of Richardson himself and Richardson's lunch. "Richardson was/fat,/he had a big/belly/and fleshy/thighs" the speaker states of his "friend", as compared to "his potato chips looked/so good-/large and crisp as the/sun blazed upon/them". This difference lets us see where the preference really lies. At a certain point, Richardson is violently accosted in front of Henry, and Henry does nothing but pick up his lunch pail afterward and carry it home. Yet throughout the course of the poem, almost obsessively, the speaker repeats the phrase "he was the only/friend I had" in one form or another, seemingly trying to convince himself of it as much as try to convince us.
The concept of this sort of delusion is also present in Bukowski's "to hell and back in a buggy carriage". Speaking of himself in retrospect the speaker recalls standing with his friends on a street corner during the Depression. The speaker talks of his friends hating the collective view of their fathers. "They couldn't find work, their guts hanging/out and their lives hanging out dried dead useless" he speaks of the fathers, yet he is slowly turning into someone as "useless" as they are.
Poetry is a part of literature that writers used to inform, educate, warn, or entertain the society. Although the field has developed over the years, the authenticity of poetry remains in its ability to produce a meaning using metaphors and allusions. In most cases, poems are a puzzle that the reader has to solve by applying rhetoric analysis to extract the meaning. Accordingly, poems are interesting pieces that activate the mind and explore the reader’s critical and analytical skills. In the poem “There are Delicacies,” Earle Birney utilizes a figurative language to express the theme and perfect the poem. Specifically, the poem addresses the frangibility of the human life by equating it to the flimsy of a watch. Precisely, the poet argues that a human life is short, and, therefore, everyone should complete his duties in perfection because once he or she dies, the chance is unavailable forever.
Shepperd, Simon. "Basic Human Psychology 1: Neurosis, Projection and Freudian Projection." The Heretical Press Directory. 20 Apr. 2009
In literature, themes shape and characterize an author’s writing making each work unique as different points of view are expressed within a writing’s words and sentences. This is the case, for example, of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” and Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death.” Both poems focus on the same theme of death, but while Poe’s poem reflects that death is an atrocious event because of the suffering and struggle that it provokes, Dickinson’s poem reflects that death is humane and that it should not be feared as it is inevitable. The two poems have both similarities and differences, and the themes and characteristics of each poem can be explained by the author’s influences and lives.
The ethical life of the poem, then, depends upon the propositions that evil. . . that is part of this life is too much for the preeminent man. . . . that after all our efforts doom is there for all of us” (48).
Ferguson, Margaret W., Salter, Mary J., and Stallworthy, Jon. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. fifth ed. N.p.: W.W. Norton, 2005. 2120-2121. 2 Print.
Throughout his villanelle, “Saturday at the Border,” Hayden Carruth continuously mentions the “death-knell” (Carruth 3) to reveal his aged narrator’s anticipation of his upcoming death. The poem written in conversation with Carruth’s villanelle, “Monday at the River,” assures the narrator that despite his age, he still possesses the expertise to write a well structured poem. Additionally, the poem offers Carruth’s narrator a different attitude with which to approach his writing, as well as his death, to alleviate his feelings of distress and encourage him to write with confidence.
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
¡§Constantly risking absurdity and death¡¨ by Lawrence Ferlinghetti talks about what a poet is. The author compares poet to acrobat to reveal the difficulty and complexity of being a poet, because sometimes the poet has to take the risk of failure (another form of death) and of being absurdity just like the acrobat.
Strand, Mark and Evan Boland. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New
What is true in the eyes of one, can be seen as a delusion in another.
The creation of a stressful psychological state of mind is prevalent in the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Ophelia’s struggles in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, and the self-inflicted sickness seen in William Blake’s “Mad Song”. All the characters, in these stories and poems, are subjected to external forces that plant the seed of irrationality into their minds; thus, creating an adverse intellectual reaction, that from an outsider’s point of view, could be misconstrued as being in an altered state due to the introduction of a drug, prescribed or otherwise, furthering the percep...
Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous writers in the American literary world. His stories and poems are known for their gothic style and having the common theme of death. This is certainly seen in his short story “The Cask of Amontillado.” It is speculated by many that Poe suffered from the mental illness known as bipolar disorder. In a letter to James Russell Lowell, Poe said, “I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious — by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but solitary communion with the “mountains & the woods” — the “altars” of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures.” In “The Cask of Amontillado” he presents two very different characters, Montresor the spiteful, revenge seeking killer, and Furtunato the impulsive, pleasure-seeking victim. The two opposing personality types in these two characters fit the mania and mixed state characteristics of those suffering with type one bipolar disorder. Poe used the characters in “The Cask of Amontillado” to express the feelings of madness he dealt with during his lifetime.
Henry Charles Bukowski Poetry is the art of rhythmical composition written or spoken for pleasure, by beauty, imaginative or elevated thought. It is also a literary work in metrical form. By definition, a poet is a person who composes poetry. The relationship between poetry and the late Henry Charles Bukowski is equivalent to that of a professional ice skater and the ice that he skates on. By the same token, compared to something a bit less governed, although a pro ice skater is free to graze the ice at his own expense, the roots of professional ice skating are indeed restricted.
Kierston Wareing once said, “If someone tells you often enough you’re worthless, you start to believe it.” This is often true especially if the negativity comes from family. Franz Kafka supports this idea of negative influence in his novella Metamorphosis. Gregor Samsa, the main character, turns into a life-sized bug and is isolated from his family, because of his transformation. Since Gregor can no longer be of any use to his family, he is separated from them in his locked room. In Metamorphosis, Kafka shows that the moment a person becomes worthless, society casts them aside.
It is this moment of recollection that he wonders about the contrast between the world of shadows and the world of the Ideal. It is in this moment of wonder that man struggles to reach the world of Forms through the use of reason. Anything that does not serve reason is the enemy of man. Given this, it is only logical that poetry should be eradicated from society. Poetry shifts man’s focus away from reason by presenting man with imitations of objects from the concrete world.