EE On Cars?

she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

thoroughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

 up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back in neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg.    ing(my
lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good


                                  (it
was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on
the   
                                                                                                         

internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
brakes Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

stand-
;Still)

Celebrating the City Lights!

Joseph Stella, Battle of the Lights, Coney Island (1913) (American)



Italian Futurists paint the lightbulb!
Did they influence Stella?

So you think you can dada?

To Make A Dadist Poem

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

Tristan Tzara

The center image = portrait of a young american girl, nude 1915 (Picabia)

Cummings and the Ashcan?

“kitty”. sixteen,5′ 11″,white,prostitute.

ducking always the touch of must and shall,
whose slippery body is Death’s littlest pal,

skilled in quick softness.  Unspontaneous.  cute,

the signal perfume of whose unrepute
focusses in the sweet slow animal
bottomless eyes importantly banal,

Kitty. a whore. Sixteen
                            you corking brute
amused from time to time by clever drolls
fearsomely who do keep their sunday flower.
The babybreasted broad “kitty” twice eight

—beer nothing,the lady’ll have a whiskey-sour—

whose least amazing smile is the most great
common divisor of unequal souls.

************

#9

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly

   we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.

(So,when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to 
kiss me) 

Word on the Page: Cummings

l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness



********

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
                      who
  a)s w(e loo)k
  upnowgath
                  PPEGORHRASS
                                        eringint(o-
  aThe):l
             eA
                 !p:
S                                                         a
                          (r
  rIvInG                         .gRrEaPsPhOs)
                                                         to
  rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
  ,grasshopper;

EE Cummings

    III
 
Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully 
out of Nowhere)arranging 
a window,into which people look(while 
people stare
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here)and
 
changing everything carefully
 
spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things,while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps 
fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there)and
 
without breaking anything.

 ****

****

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee 

 

***

Modernist Poetry this week...

Last week we considered Imagism, the ghetto, and how Lola Ridge navigated her way through the new "forest of symbols" of the modern world (to use Baudelaire's phrase).

We saw that she introduced 

1) modern settings & content to poetry

2) merged poetry with a narrative arc (characters, portraits)

3) had a highly imagistic streak--exploring the metaphorical, connotative power of language, drawing imagery from industrial, natural, historical contexts.

This week we'll be considering two poets who followed her: 

William Carlos Williams and E.E. Cummings.

Reading them in light of her will teach us to look for differences and continuities.

Questions to have in mind: 

how did these "modernists" respond to the "forest of symbols"?

what happened to the metaphor and the image?

what happened to the social world so present in Ridge?

For Tues: please read WCW's poems below.  

For Thurs: read EEC's.

I'd like everyone to blog once this week (by tues or thurs) in response to one poem by wcw or eec.

Use the questions above as a guide.

William Carlos Williams

The Great Figure
by William Carlos Williams
Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city.

Untitled

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

To a Poor Old Woman
by William Carlos Williams
munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand   They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her   You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand   Comforted a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her Landscape With The Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring   a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry   of the year was awake tingling near   the edge of the sea concerned with itself   sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax   unsignificantly off the coast there was   a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning

Imagery of the Ghetto

We talked about the different registers of imagery in the 
opening scene of The Ghetto--what function imagery serves,
and what it communicates about the poet's vision.


Through section 2-4, locate more imagery (and imagery registers)--
identify and write on 2 or 3 different images and try to say 
something more broadly about how Ridge uses them to shape our 
understanding of the Ghetto and the immigrant experience.

Ex.

"The night - wide-opening crooked and comforting arms,
Hiding her as in a voluminous skirt...."

Cliff Dwellers (1913) / George Bellows

How do we read Ridge's Ghetto in light of Bellow's Ghetto?

Ghetto Poetry

The Ghetto by Lola Ridge

[read first three parts @ 
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/ghetto.html



Part I.

Cool, inaccessible air
Is floating in velvety blackness shot with steel-blue lights,
But no breath stirs the heat
Leaning its ponderous bulk upon the Ghetto
And most on Hester street...

The heat...
Nosing in the body's overflow,
Like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close,
Covering all avenues of air...

The heat in Hester street,
Heaped like a dray
With the garbage of the world.

Bodies dangle from the fire escapes
Or sprawl over the stoops...
Upturned faces glimmer pallidly -
Herring-yellow faces, spotted as with a mold,
And moist faces of girls
Like dank white lilies,
And infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air
as at empty teats.

Blogging Questions for Yekl

Public

We talked on Tuesday about the public scenes in American art. People are often outdoors, outside....Why is this important?

Look at Yekl's "Housetop Idyll" and consider how Cahan uses setting to construct the scene--keep in mind, too, the effect of keeping this affair in a public place... why important?


Ending
Yekl would have been controversial for its time because it is a novel essentially about divorce.  William Dean Howells, an American realist and champion of Cahan, had blazed that trail earlier with A Modern Instance.   How does Cahan handle the divorce in ch. 9/10--what does he stress, what strikes you as interesting/strange/notable about his handling of this very modern theme?

Ashcan Modernism!

 Election Night, John Sloan (1907)

We talked about the separation of pop culture and politics in Yekl--were they separated? Election night seems pretty fun.