Hello everyone,
Please write the name of the person that you're responding to and a rough idea of the topic that you're responding to as the first line of your response post. Then use the body of the post to write out your comment.
Ex. Jill Flanders/The Flaneur
Jill helped me understand the flaneur in this line of her post: "xxxx." Her interpretation of xxx, make me think of xxx. I disareed with her about xxx, however.
This is meant to simulate the kind of conversation that we would have in discussion--so please try to think of your responses as pieces in larger conversations that will continue over the course of the quarter.
Healthy debates are always good, although keep the disagreements civil as you would in a face to face converation please.
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25 comments:
Sadie/The Changing Light
Dana A. Campbell/Subverting the Tradition of Baseball Poetry
Nick Furnal/Bouncer's Bar
Dana A. Campbell/Subverting the Tradition of Baseball Poetry
Kelsey Cat McBride/Love Fest and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
SAM/EVANS: INNOCENCE AS DEFIANCE
Sam can you say more about the nature of the critique that you say is taking place in this part of your post?
“Judging by the continuous thread of defying authority and establishment that is present within the poem, I approach the dog looking like a Victorola advertisement as a tongue in cheek critique of big business and establishment possessing animalistic attributes.”
How exactly is the dog’s act defiant? (An important question and well worth working through).
I responded to diegosf's comment on Ferlinghetti's "Dog".
Alex Velasquez: living advertisements
I totally agree with your interpretation about advertising and how no matter what we do, and how hard we might try to strain away from that form of publicity, we are doing it everyday. Even if you were to make your own clothes and avert yourself from everything associated with a label or company, you are still advertising a lifestyle.
Lisa/San Fran Trip & Golden Gate Park.
Kelsey Cat McBride/Love Fest & Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
Lilja: indifference and commercialization of the dog
I agree with your describing the dog as being indifferent rather than innocent, and yet, when discussing the inquisitive nature of a child and relating it to the dog, you lose me. Children are innocent, and they view the world through inquisitive, curious eyes. The dog however, as you mentioned, is more passive and uninhibited by his view of the world. Moreover, your analysis of the last few lines left me thinking that the transformation of the dog "from the ultimate bohemian free spirit into one of the most iconic symbols of American mainstream media," could be an allusion to the fame of the beat poets and culture as well, especially since Ferlinghetti himself did not idenitfy as a beat poet, but rather an outside admirer of these poets. The are indifferent, like the dog, to the fears and restraints of society, but observe the simple beauty and amazement of the world around them like “moons on trees...fish on newsprint/ants in holes". And yet, despite their being bohemian spirits, they acquired fame and developed followings--becoming commercialized, as the dog also becomes commercialized in Ferlinghetti's final lines.
Sebastian Dario Fernandez/Dog poem
I agree with your interpretation of the dog in that he is living free, not just because he is dog who has no rules or limits but because does not allow things to get him down. Though the dog sees the everyday unfair realities (the symbolism of Congressman Doyle) he does not let these mean realities get to him. There is too much to experience in life and such little time to experience it that it is a bad idea to waste this precious time letting things get you down.
Alexandra Velasquez/walking advertisments
Emily Mott/Close Reading: Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful People in a Mercedes
Sadie/Discussion of the dog as being innocent and then becoming commodified.
Cat/Love Fest and Hardly Strictly Business
Dana A. Campbell / Ferlingetti Response
Dana did a great read of this poem. I totally agree about the dog being the everyman, and one who pratcially unknowingly falls into an advertisement. He thinks he's living freely, but he's more selling that idea to everyone else. He waits for his Master's Voice, commands on what to do and think. Great comments, Dana. Also, I hear you about tyring to resist commercials. I mute them.
Sadie/The Changing Light
Brittany Alyssa/ Freedom vs. Conformity
Sorry, forgot to post what I did here....
Heidi K.'s Chihuly at the De Young.
Nick Furnal / "Ginsberg and the Role of All Writers"
I agree that reading "Howl" really forces us to come into direct contact with those that are not the dominant majority; the opening lines of "Howl" throw us into the realities of individuals "looking for an angry fix" followed up with a description of these individuals as people "with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls." This statement is overflowing with what is negatively connoted imagery for the dominant American majority, and Ginsberg piles these words together to show that this is a reality for some Americans. His words force those who listen/read to understand that there is an entire group of individuals existing in a world comprised of drugs, sexuality, and poverty that is usually kept out of the public eye and mind all together.
I agree with you that Ginsberg experienced a quest to understand the world around him in conjunction with himself and vice-versa. Every line of "Howl" contains so much energy that whether I am listening to Ginsberg himself read it or if I am reading it myself there is a "motionless world of Time" that I experience. His words are not just shocking; they provoke feeling. In "Howl" he dares to go into the parts of society that most men try to stay away from or pass by without a turn of their head. I am forced to ask where my place is in all of this reading it now, and how things are now. Is the reality he is depicting better, worse, or is this reality still persistently the same? What is it that makes Americans value money and war over the natural world?
Ginsberg's language is anything but censored, which is necessary to get the truths of this reality across. In "Howl" one is continuously confronted with language such as "who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate / the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar / the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb... who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of / beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle / and fell off the bed, and continued along / the floor and down the hall and ended fainting / on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and / come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness." These words do not allow for any "passive" reading, by which I mean just blindly following the words on the page. His images are so loaded with actions, sounds, sights, and obscenity that it really does demand attention and questioning of how society functions.
Kelsey Cat McBride/Haight Ashbury Then & Now
Kelsey/ Love Fest and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
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