Start Here--Bishop, Williams

 Hi All--

PLEASE NOTE: Post comments related to the poetry itself here. For practical concerns about the course, use the discussion board on Blackboard, or email me with questions.

You've reached the class blog for English 42. Always check here for announcements and updates.

Always read my posts before writing essays.

You may also add your own voice, by either posting a blog of your own, or choosing a blog from one of your fellow bloggers (list to left; more names will appear as blog URLs are submitted) and adding your two cents (or two bucks--adjusted for inflation--)

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Bishop and Williams:


Be sure to review the study sheet for Bishop and Williams, posted to BS, for insights into the themes/concerns of poems for both poets. The quotes on the study sheets are excerpted from articles on MAP and LRC (see course syllabus); search for the complete articles in these databases.

Look over the exercises on BS, as well, which can provide additional guidance and practice in literary analysis.

Katie Ford's essay on Bishop, "Visibility Is Poor..." (Poets.org), is also insightful (esp pars. 4, beginning "According to Bishop..." through 8, beginning "Bishop's challenge...),  esp. regarding the self-questioning tendency of much of her imagery and its "challenge to... fixity" (see par 8, esp. Michael Sells distinction between "apophatic" and kataphatic" imagery); several image modulations in "The Fish" demonstrate a lack of "fixity."  To find the essay, on poest.org [official site], enter the title of the essay in the search field, click the search icon, scroll down to find Katie Ford's essay (should be first on the list) then click on  the title.

For Williams, but also for image-based poetry in general including several of the poets we will read this semester: urthona.com, as noted on the Williams study sheet in assignments (scroll down to "Essays"); read the essays on the “Red Wheelbarrow” and on free verse—“The Nymphs Departed”

Again, for all poets we read this semester, always review my opening blog comments, as well as my comments on current and previous blogs before writing journals; the combination of blogs, study sheets, exercises and critical articles will provide an analytical framework for your journals.

Poets.org is also a good source of secondary sources. After entering a poet's name in "find poets," both essay about the poet and samples of their poetry will appear

Ready? Good blogging...or at least, reading....

A few random comments on Bishop's "The Fish" which can be (fish) food for thought:

The eiphany of interdependence is one aspect of the "victory" the speaker suggests; i.e.,  the collapse of subject/object, as the speaker projects elements of her past and her own experience onto it, while at the same time realizing the object's essential otherness; killing tthe fish would also be killing that "part of herself" she found in it (and perhaps was revalidated by it)? It has become part of her world, if not the other way round... the fish is about a relationship with the "other," if not a human other.

you all may also want to take a look at Bishop's "At the Fishouses," in Poets.org: the imagery in that poem will seem even more errant than in "The Fish"--is it? or, if it is, why is it?