ENG252Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Pathetic Fallacy, William Carlos Williams, Paperweight
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
ENG252 Lecture 12
Themes in SHP
-De-creation
-Un-inventing history
-Localism
•“local pride”
•William Carlos Williams
Stone Hammer Poem
-Can be seen as a found poem because it focuses around a found object
-or a lyric poem
•one of the most diverse modes of composing poetry
•articulated through a single person, focus on single persona
•focus on particular images; meditative, self-reflective
-Elegy
•a poem of serious reflection
•engages with a double history
•poem about inheritance
•see how how one history is embedded in the other
-Familial history/inheritance
-Notation
•makes full use of the page, takes advantage of all the space
•often the case with postmodern poetry
•explores the page as a space within which the poem moves
•uses upper and lowercase words, fragmented words, white space
!1
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Tuesday, January 12, 2016
•misuses question marks - places them before the question
-Found object goes through a journey
•from a weapon to a tool to a paperweight
-“no, bone is the colour of this stone maul”
•giving precedence to the stone
-Attempts to create a genealogy of the stone hammer
•tries to recount the history of the stone hammer as it belonged to the first nations
people
•focus on the process of gradual disappearance
•synonymous with the silence of history
-“the stone is shaped like the skull of a child”
•engages with the various processes of dislocation
-The voice in the poem is not reducible to the author
•but we can see that the speaker is a poet
-Stone hammer now used as a paperweight
•tension between “where i begin this poem” and clear caesura before “was”
•present moment equivalent to the present tense of our reading
-Paperweight isn’t even his
•disclaims ownership - it was “found in a wheatfield”
-Unreadability of the object
•there is something about it that resists full interpretation, resists a single way of
understanding who it belongs to
•different interpretations/histories/owners
•incredulity towards the richness of the single stone
•you cannot reduce what it means to a single thing
•polyphonic meaning
!2
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Localism: local pride , william carlos williams. Can be seen as a found poem because it focuses around a found object. Or a lyric poem: one of the most diverse modes of composing poetry, articulated through a single person, focus on single persona, focus on particular images; meditative, self-re ective. Elegy: a poem of serious re ection, engages with a double history, poem about inheritance, see how how one history is embedded in the other. Tuesday, january 12, 2016: misuses question marks - places them before the question. Found object goes through a journey: from a weapon to a tool to a paperweight. No, bone is the colour of this stone maul : giving precedence to the stone. The stone is shaped like the skull of a child : engages with the various processes of dislocation. The voice in the poem is not reducible to the author: but we can see that the speaker is a poet.
