This week's blog post was a bit challenging for me because the poems were dense to say the least. Most of the poems had a "dark magic" feel. A lot of the language, words, and phrases reminded me of the land of the tortured from the movie "The One". They almost had a demonic sense like they were written from the lairs of evil powers and witches. It confused me though, because I often felt like I was misreading or misunderstanding them. I believe in some poems like "Lagoonal Calendar" and "The Verb To Be" it was written in a similar fashion of the way Maleficent's story was told. It is always to hear the Dark Magic's side of the story, because I feel as an audience it is easy for us to fall in love with the good side/heroes. We tend to totally disregard the other end of the spectrum simply because our perception of it as evil.
The poem "Lagoonal Calendar"was one of those thought provoking poems that made me rethink my life and what type of society we live in. The most moving line is, "I inhabit from time to time one of my wounds (new line) each minute I change apartments (new line) and an peace frightens me." The magic in living in our wounds is that we tend to dwell on painful memories more and let them often consume us. They have the most impact on how we live our lives and makes us paranoid. That paranoia causes us to always be on guard for potential danger which is why we are hesitant to accept peace. I believe there is continuous theme that even the "dark magic" has a disturbing effect on those who are formed from it.
I like your mention of Maleficent; it is a strong image to pair with Breton's "The Verb To Be". After you said that, it was that image that stuck with me as we reread the poem in class. With lines so specific and haunting like, "I despair of the cigarette smoked by men on death row" that make me question him. Really, you only know the general outline of despair? I imagine Maleficent saying this after her wings are taken; surely she knew more than the outline. But then again, I suppose to the despair that is really out there, this stuff is chump change. I took then the outline to be a silhouette rather than an adjective of severity. I saw the boats and pearls as if painted in a dark silhouette-fashion. (Magical?) It certainly adds to the poem for me.
ReplyDeleteLamar,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the comparison to Maleficent because I too felt some sort of connection a mystical evil creature when reading the poem the Verb to Be. The concept of "dark magic" has not really been something I have thought about but when you mentioned it in class it got me thinking about how poets use magic to create their sets. As we have discussed, I feel that poets use illusions at times to enhance the plot by simply "pulling out a rabbit out of a hat." Now, with the concept of dark magic, I feel that poets have a variety of tricks they use, as they dont have to be as simple as a card trick nor as complicated as a master illusion. I encourage you to think about the other types of magic poets use, and whether the way they use this magic make the poem as effective (if not more effective) than the techniques we have discussed.
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