The poem "What is Written" by John Ashbery:What is written on the paper
on the table by the bed? Is there something there
or was that from another last night?
Why is that bird ignoring us,
pausing in mid-flight, to take another direction?
Is it feelings of guilt about the spool
it dropped on the bank of a stream,
into which it eventually rolled? Dark spool,
moving ocean ward now- what other fate could have been
yours?
You could have lived in a drawer
for many years, imprisoned, a ward of the state. Now you are
free
to call the shots pretty much as they come.
Poor, bald thing.
The poem "What is Written" has the same concept of sacrifice and suffering. This poem is about a bird who suffers but ends up being free. He does sacrifice himself. " You could have lived in a drawer for many years, imprisoned" (209). It starts out with this feeling of abandonment which later turns into guilt and lastly gets connected with fate. these feelings and emotions are obvious when reading the poem but the epiphany and the experience from it is hidden. The reader tries to find the epiphany and the realization of it through the feelings that the main character in the poem has. The bird at the end of the story is finally free after so much pain and suffering. Yet, the main character of the poem is not only a bird. It is also about a work of writing. The writing is like a bird. It was locked away in a drawer and it too was imprisoned. The feelings the bird is feeling is the same for the piece of paper with writing on it. Therefore, the feelings the bird and the paper have are the same: pain and suffering. This is the end is turned into happiness when they both become free and they can "call the shots".
Nice work, Agnes. Your thesis definitely works, and you make some nice connections to the things we read this semester. I wasn't entirely clear on the meaning of the poem, though, as it relates to your big idea. I mean, is the bird making the same sort of sacrifice as the other characters you've discussed, or is he simply feeling some sort of "shame" for dropping the thread? Does anything really change for the better as a result of this loss?
ReplyDeleteAlso, you probably could have cut down some of those longer entries a bit--for example, you re-told a lot of the Siddhartha story when you might have focused just on the final interactions between Siddhartha Sr. and Jr.
Nonetheless, as with all of your work this semester, you've done good work here. I've really enjoyed having you in class this semester, and I hope you'll keep me appraised of your studies in psychology, especially when your professor brings up, yes, that's right, The Metamorphosis! Your grade? A
Good luck!
~ Mr. L