Spring break is just about over

oh the horror of spring break being just about over and not much to really show for it.

I did start my Masters class, and I guess that is probably a bigger thing than I am giving it credit for. Although, I didn't really like my answer to the Unit 2 discussion (see below). It's hard to maintain a writing intensity and always be "on."

I did read 200 pages in Dune. Yeah, I've read it before but I want to start the series anew and really look into it. I just can't seem to get into my wife's Robert Jordan books, the Wheel of Time series. That's a lot of reading for me. I've never been a fast reader.

I did read a couple dozen comic books and watch some tv and movies. I think Lost is finally growing on me. I also started that two week trial on Napster. I have DSL so I can download a ton before the two weeks are up. Today I downloaded Franz Ferdinand, two Coldplay albums, Jet, White Stripes, Ben Kweller, and a ton of Ben Folds. Anybody got any suggestions on what to download? What's good out there right now?

Here is my Unit 2 discussion for my class. The writing just isn't there, but it gets the job done.

"A Game Of Chess" by Gwen Harwood(1920-1995)
To John Brodie
Nightfall: the town's chromatic nocturne wakes
dark brilliance on the river; colours drift
and tremble as enormous shadows lift
Orion to his place. The heart remarks
that peace torn in the blaze of day. Inside
your room are music, warmth and wine, the board
with chessmen set fopr play. The harpsichord
begins a fugue; delight is multiplied.

A game: the heart's impossible ideal--
to choose among a host of paths, and know
that if the kingdom crumbles one can yield
and have the choice again. Abstract and real
joined in their trance of thought, two players show
the calm of gods above a troubled field.


The Sonnet in Harwood's “A Game of Chess”

The sonnet is one of the most common of the forms of poetry and probably the first form that comes to a layman's lips. It is the form immortalized by Francesco Petrarca and William Shakespeare and in that respect alone, every poet is in their shadows. Gwen Harwood, a twentieth-century Australian poet, has taken Petrarch's ideas on the sonnet form and made it her own in “A Game of Chess.”
Petrarch's sonnet is divided into two distinct sections. The first section is the octave, a “strong opening statement of eight lines” (56). This can encompass almost any material the author wishes. Eight lines is a short space to develop but enough to give the reader the setup. The final six lines, known as the sestet, is the “resolution to the emotional or intellectual question of the first part” (56). The resolution is the argument, the final altercation between the subject of the poem and the object of the poem. These two sections act as a point-counterpoint for the poem.
Harwood's sonnet also marks a clear distinction of octave and sestet, even to the point of breaking the poem into two stanzas at the designated division that Petrarch created. Harwood's octave clearly shows that love is to be involved with a nicely romantic setting of night in a private room with “music, warmth and wine” over a simple relaxing chess game. Harwood's sestet then helps to resolve the “game” that is being set up. Harwood creates a clear conceit comparing a game of chess to the game of love. The speaker knows that both games can be restarted, “if the kingdom crumbles one can yield/ and have the choice again.” In a way, the speaker resolves that this isn't the end, win or lose. It is in the playing that the fun is created.
Harwood clearly utilizes the octave to set up an emotional question and a clearly-divided sestet to answer that question. This form always seems to show the author setting up a problem and then solving it. Harwood does that using the Petrarchan form.

Works cited:
Strand, Mark and Eavan Boland, eds. The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: W.W. Norton. 2000.


I died for Beauty--but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room--

He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty," I replied--
"And I--for Truth--Themself are One--
We Brethren, are," He said--

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night--
We talked between the Rooms--
Until the Moss had reached our lips--
And covered up--our names--

Emily Dickinson's “I died for Beauty—but was scarce” utilizes the ballad form more than it probably admits to. This quick poem is a modern ballad. While it doesn't dwell on community as many of history's most famous ballads did, it does draw on something from community. It draws on a community's morals and attitudes but expresses how the author feels about those ideas.
Dickinson accomplishes this in three taut and lyric stanzas. Reading them aloud easily puts a lyrical beat to them. She utilizes three four-line stanzas, a classic component to the ballad. Another component from the ballad she uses is the meter, using four stresses for the first and third line and only three stresses for the second and fourth line.
Dickinson's subject matter come straight out of those communal ballads of supernatural happenings, like in the “The Cherry-tree Carol” (78) that tells a supernatural story behind a biblical reference. Dickinson talks about two idealized youths that apparently died protecting two important community constants, beauty and truth. This of itself is a visitation of Keats's established line, “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.” This shows a revisitation of the communal aspect in a famous line that most in the community know, as most in the community should understand dying for the ideals of truth and beauty.