but break my heart, for i must hold my tongue

Geez! It’s like every two second someone else is giving their “I am dying, forgive me!” speech. I mean, I know Hamlet is a pretty morbid play, and Hamlet himself is completely obsessed with death, but my goodness! I didn’t know that so many characters could die in one scene! First Gertrude, then Laertes, then Claudius, and then Hamlet. And then who’s left to rule the country? Fortinbras, the prince of freaking Norway. He’ll probably end up as king, and he’s not even Danish! Honestly, did Shakespeare just get bored and decide to end Hamlet once and for all? Not that I blame him, (the characters get annoying) but it wasn’t a very… classy ending. It had an evil scheme behind it, and the scheme didn’t work out the way it was supposed to, so I guess that’s something, but really. Four (no, six) deaths in one scene is a little much. I wonder if Hamlet  isn’t the story of Prince Hamlet after all, but of Horatio and his very crazy friend and “employers” (King and Queen). I just don’t understand why all of the main characters (except Horatio) had to die. It just seems to completely spoil the plot (for me, at least). Personally, I would have liked to see Claudius die a very slow and painful death, Hamlet and Ophelia get married, Gertrude live the rest of her life as a kindly widow, Horatio as Hamlet’s royal assistant (like what Polonius was), Laertes marry a french girl, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern become jesters, and Polonius die of natural causes. But I guess Shakespeare really doesn’t like happy endings (perhaps he is a little fixated on death himself).

Throughout the play, Hamlet feigns madness, though sometimes it is questionable whether he is only acting. Just like Hamlet’s madness, Ophelia’s madness, caused by the death of her father, is questionable. However, instead of wondering whether it is only an act, we are left wondering if Ophelia’s madness is only madness.

Is Ophelia covering up her own suicide to maintain her dignity after death? Is she mimicking Hamlet, thus revealing her devotion and love to him (and how he betrayed her)? Or is Ophelia truly crazy?

There is definitely a chance that Ophelia’s death was not accidental. The Queen tells of Ophelia’s death. Either Ophelia’s mental state was completely and utterly destroyed, or she did not mind death. It is far more likely that she was suicidal, because her mental state could not possibly have deteriorated that quickly. In addition, the herbs that she gives to the King, the Queen, and herself point to a stable mind (acting mad) and a sense fo guilt: she gives Claudius and herself the herb rue, which represents repentance. Obviously she knows Claudius has something to repent of, but the fact that she feels that she herself needs to repent is significant. Before this point, it is not at all evident that she feels guilty for anything other than hurting Hamlet. Is this what she needs to repent of? Or is it something much larger that is eating away at Ophelia?

I find it rather intriguing that the characters of Gertrude and Claudius openly admit their guilt. It is too obvious– was Shakespeare’s audience slow? I don’t think so– there are too many subtleties in the plot. So, why, then do the characters make these confessions? What does this reveal about them?

Claudius confesses that he sinned deeply (but only when he believes he is alone), and yet he is unable to pray. Though he is riddled with guilt, he still cannot pray. Why? Because he only regrets the means, not the end. In order to truly repent and ask for forgiveness from God, he must relinquish the things he achieved through King Hamlet’s death: his ambition, the crown, and Gertrude. This affirms the assumption that Claudius is selfish and self-pleasing, reinforcing the label of villain that Hamlet has placed upon him.

Gertrude, however, repents completely after Hamlet’s rebukement, begging his forgiveness. Originally seen as a villainess, she is now viewed as simply a weak woman, easily bendable to a man’s will, and yet seeking to please that which is good. Hopefully, Hamlet’s lecture will change Gertrude’s attitude toward Hamlet, to be more supportive than oppresively concerned.

In Act II, Hamlet designs an ingenious plot: he will have the actors perform a scene similar to King Hamlet’s death. The purpose of this is to reaffirm and/or prove Claudius’s guilt, since the ghost could have been a demon/devil in the guise of the dead king. However, throughout his soliloquy, it is extremely evident that Hamlet is not all there, so to speak. He wavers between action and inaction, whether he can actually go through with his plan of revenge. Hamlet wonders if he is a rogue, a peasant, a coward. The internal battle almost tears Hamlet apart.

The song “Lose It,” by Atreyu seems to fit Hamlet’s mental state at this time. Hamlet is “standing on the edge” between sanity and insanity or between action and inaction, with a “battle in [his] head”. He seems to be “dying to know” whether or not his uncle is guilty (and how Claudius will react, etc.). Hamlet is preparing to “take this leap, to fail or succeed” in seeking revenge, and he is “shaking,” nervous/apprehensive about the actual act of revenge. He”lose[s] [his] hold” on reality. There are “so many roads, filled with pitfalls of doubt” for Hamlet, as he doubts his ability to carry out his task. Finally, Hamlet gives up on doubting himself and decides to “let go” and just go on with his plan to reveal Claudius’s guilt.

Lose It

Lyrics:

Standing on the edge,
battle in my head,
I’m dying to know
I’m dying to know

If I take this leap,
to fail or succeed,
I’m dying to know
I’m dying to know

This is it, I’m shaking.
My body’s aching,
I lose my hold,
I will let go.
This is it, I’m falling.
My wings need to grow.
I lose my hold,
I will let go.

There’s so many roads,
pitfalls filled with doubt.
I’m dying to know,
I’m dying to know.

Grabbing what I need,
and rip it til it bleeds.
I’m dying to know,
I’m dying to know.

This is it, I’m shaking.
My body’s aching,
I lose my hold,
I will let go.
This is it, I’m falling.
My wings need to grow.
I lose my hold,
I will let go.

(Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum, Bum)

If I,
If I take this, this leap,
will I be broken?
I’m dying to…

This is it, I’m shaking.
My body’s aching,
I lose my hold,
I will let go.
I lose my hold,
this is it I’m falling.
I lose my hold,
my wings need to grow,
I lose my hold,
I will let go
I will let go.

I will let go!

The families in Hamlet have some serious issues. There seems to be just more than simple familial affection between Hamlet and his mother. Hey Jerry Springer, do I have a show for you!

Jerry: Hello and welcome to The Jerry Springer Show! Today’s episode of features Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark! So, Hamlet, what seems to be the issue?

Hamlet: Well, my dad just died. And then my mom married my uncle not two months after the wedding!

Jerry: So, let me get this straight, your mom married your uncle right after your dad died? Were you upset?

Hamlet: Well, yeah! And I’m pretty sure he only married her for… well, you know. I can’t believe the nerve of that [swears profusely about Claudius]! And my mom…. that little adulterous… argh!!

Jerry: Let’s bring in Hamlet’s mom, Gertrude, the Queen of Denmark! [Gertrude enters] So, Gertrude, how did you feel after your husband, King Hamlet, died?

Gertrude: Well, of course I was completely devastated. I mean, we’d been married for… well, I don’t really know how many years, but it was a really long time!

Jerry: But then you married your husband’s brother within two months, is that right?

Gertrude: He was a comfort to me in my sorrow. He understood my grief.

Jerry: Your grief didn’t seem to last very long.

Gertrude: Well, everyone dies in the end. I’m not going to stop living just because my husband did.

Hamlet: You little…! You could have at least waited a year before getting married. Dad was barely in the ground when you married Claudius! I mean, honestly, you could have used the same food at the wedding as at the funeral! Show some respect for the dead, mother!

Gertrude: I respected your father more than you know, you little brat!

Hamlet: [jumps out of chair, yelling] Then why are you so eager to jump into bed with that scumbag?!? It’s all about the physical with you, isn’t it, mother?!?

Gertrude: [stands up to defend herself, gets in Hamlet’s face] How is that any of your business, Hamlet? I’m your mother, not your wife or your girlfriend. You’re getting way too possessive!

Jerry: Hamlet, you do seem a bit possessive of your mother. What’s up with that?

Hamlet: [sits back down] I’m not possessive. I just don’t like my mother acting like a little promiscuous… I mean, honestly, sleeping with my uncle! That’s almost incest, mother!

Gertrude: No it’s not.

Hamlet: Don’t you think that sleeping with your dead husband’s brother is just a little bit inappropriate. I’m surprised you haven’t been dethroned for that adulterous behavious!

Gertrude: It’s not adultery! Your father is DEAD!

Hamlet: [yelling] Because you KILLED him! You and that dirty scumbag Claudius! You think that nobody knows, but I know! And I’m going to get my revenge on both of you, you… you… [pauses, thinks] No, better yet, I’ll get my revenge on Claudius. I’ll leave your guilt to haunt you, mother, and that’s even worse. [smirks, walks off of the stage, leaving Gertrude stunned]

 Jerry: Well, that’s all for this episode! Join me next week when Laertes confronts Ophelia about her relationship with Hamlet!

Overall, I liked this project. It was most certainly as academically challenging as a formal research paper. I liked the scholarly resource stuff, because I found several “scholarly sources” immediately after we chose our poets, and it was extremely helpful. Maybe in the future you could reccomend that students visit the library and find books about their poets. I know that it helped me more than anything I was able to find on the internet. It was rather difficult for me to find a blog analyzing my poet (although, eventually, I was able to find one). Perhaps my favorite part of this whole project was learning how to use a blog. I think I may continue to use it or start another one (who knows? anything can happen). Aside from the inevitable technical difficulties, I think this project was a success. It was a great idea, Mrs. Hazle, and you should definitely include it in the future.

http://mackenzieegr5.edublogs.org/2009/03/11/introduction-and-mini-biography-of-richard-wilbur/#comment-5

http://katieegr1.edublogs.org/2009/03/10/marianne-moore/#comment-5

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/010705.html

http://lewisturco.typepad.com/poetics/2009/02/elizabeth-bishop.html#comment-6a00d8345219e069e201156f575338970b

                     <Untitled>

Love’s the girl sat on the bus-stop bench

waiting for his return. Love’s the daughter

            sat counting minutes, hours

            while darkness the park surrounded.

Love’s the faithful girl, the park,

even the solitary passersby, who

would like a park bench, too,

           or someone to wait

           for. And love’s the abandoned girl.

My poem is a very poor imitation of Elizabeth Bishop’s “Casabianca”:

Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck

trying to recite: “The boy stood on

the burning deck.” Love’s the son

        stood stammering elocution

        while the poor ship in flames went down.

 

Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship,

even the swimming sailors, who

would like a schoolroom platform, too,

         or an excuse to stay

         on deck. And love’s the burning boy.

Basically what I did with my poem was take Bishop’s format and subject matter and simply alter it. Instead of a boy, the subject is a girl, and instead of a burning ship, the setting is a park at nightfall. I hope that I have captured the underlying meaning of Bishop’s “Casabianca” (parental love is an unavoidable trap) in my [pitiful] attempt at copying Bishop’s poetry.

Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop first met while Bishop was attending Vassar College. They were soon fast friends, and,

“Marianne Moore was without a doubt the most important single influence on Elizabeth Bishop’s poetic practice and career… what really changed for Elizabeth when she began reading Moore was her idea of what, among the objects and emotions in the world, was suitable for poetry. Her early (post college) poems reflect some fondness for Moore’s mannerisms, … but she never showed an inclination toward syllabics or strict metrical verse, which Moore used off and on throughout her life.” (Millier 67)

 Even though the influence of Moore on Bishop is so obvious, “Elizabeth does not, however, address the influence of Moore’s poetry on her own” (Mililer 69). Perhaps this is because Moore (and her mother) set moral “rules” for poetry, and Bishop grew to oppose these rules. Despite these rules, however, Bishop did enjoy the environment where Moore and her mother lived:

“I never left [Moore's house]… without feeling happier…” (Millier 69).

Bishop may have felt a bit ashamed of her work ethic becaus Moore was a chronic over-worker and over-achiever:

“Elizabeth tended to play down the achievement of her own writing, in part because she never seemed to herself to be working hard enough or as hard as Moore worked.” (Millier 70)

Though Bishop’s self-esteem may have been impacted by Moore’s work ethic, she and Moore were fast friends for most of their lives. Bishop frequently sent letters to Moore requesting opinions on her poetry, and Moore gave Bishop advice about publishing her works.

Marianne Moore was truly the greatest influence on Elizabeth Bishop.

Millier, Brett C. Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It. University of California:

Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993. 51. Print.

Elizabeth Bishop was influenced by only one major modern poet: Wallace Stevens. When asked about her influences by a journalist, Bishop replied, “…in college Wallace Stevens”.

“I think that Wallace Stevens was the contemporary who most affected my writing [during the 1930’s]” (Conversations 23)

Bishop’s poetry is impersonal and detached, obscure and abstract, especially in her earlier years. She learned these tendencies from Wallace Stevens’ early poetry. Even as Stevens’ poetry departed from the impersonal abstraction, Bishop remained true to what she learned from Stevens throughout much of her writing career. Despite Stevens’ poetry taking a different direction, Bishop continued to read his works throughout the rest of her life.

“After Hopkins’s, Stevens’s influence asserts itself most strongly in Bishop’s early poems. The comic masks and rhetorical poses Stevens donned in Harmonium helped legitimize for Elizabeth her own tendency toward impersonality in her poems…, and his early devotion to an idea of “pure poetry,” indeed, the uneasy detachment in Bishop’s early work. The tendency toward gorgeousness, the fondness for fanciful titles, and the “art for art’s sake” privileges of obscurity and abstraction she learned in part from the early Stevens. She clung to these even after the pressures of “reality” in the 1930s had driven the older poet to a more referential art. Elizabeth continued to read Stevens throughout her life but rarely mentioned him in letters or formal discussions of her poetic influences.” (Millier 51)

“I ask her about poets who have influenced her work. “George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins. And Stevens for a while. That rarifying of his rather pleased me, but later on he became too abstract for me”[Bishop]” (Conversations 67)

Bishop’s fondness for Stevens’ early poetry is evident. Stevens’ ”The Man on the Dump” is a perfect example of how similar some of their earlier works are:  

“She often named the poets who influenced her most as George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Marianne Moore, and Stevens, and a poem like “the Man on the Dump” represents the side of Stevens’ work most like her own. While the poem is pure Stevens in its central concerns, it is slightly uncharacteristic in style. The rhythms are freer and more unpredictable than the blank-verse poems it superficially resembles. The tone is wry and quiet, the organization smooth and conversational, not pseudodramatic. The catalogues of rubbish and flowers it contains are more typical of Bishop than of Stevens:

              Days pass like papers from a press.

The bouquets come here in the papers.

  So the sun,

And so the moon, both come, and the

  janitor’s poems

Of every day, the wrapper on the can

  of pears,

The cat in the paper-bag, the corset

  the box

From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea. ” (Conversations144-145)

 Stevens’ poem “The Man on the Dump” is very similar to Bishop’s style of writing; perhaps this is where Bishop first glimpsed what would eventually become her style of poetry. Stevens’ poetry directly influenced at least one of Bishop’s poems: the monument.  

““The Monument” seems born in some measure out of early dialogue with Eliot’s “monuments” in “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” yet Barbara Page finds another linkage more persuasive… she outlines the poem’s connection with Wallace Stevens’ Owl Clover:

Midway in the notebook that opens with commentary on Stevens’ Owl’s Clover (published in 1936), she produced a pen and ink sketch of the figure she would describe in her poem “The Monument,” in its setting at the shore, preceded by a lined-off text reading, “Take a frottage [rubbing] of this sea.”[…] In form and tone, Bishop’s “Monument” answers Stevens’ “Old Woman and the Statue” and “Mr. Burnshaw and the Statue,” in Owl’s Clover poems almost crushed by the burden of the past, in which mannered minds fend off the death of things in the impending night of cultural collapse. By contrast, Bishop’s seaside monument visually and verbally builds a figure of undetermined possibilities by insisting not on the pre-established meaning of the thing but on the activity of making it, like a child at the shore unconcerned with the source of the flotsam incorporated in her sand castle. (Spires)

As in the Paris poems, the monument, “a figure of undetermined possibilities,” remains ambiguous about where its inner space stops and where it starts. While in Page’s sense the symbol may not be culturally or aesthetically overdetermined, Bishop’s monument is difficult of access, and even more tellingly, the lines cannot locate for us whether the bones of the “artist-prince” being commemorated may reside “inside/or far away.” A childlike sand architect released from portentous prophecy may be freer than Stevens’ figure, yet the ramshackle puzzle of the monument’s connection to its maker and making may be less playful than Page’s metaphor suggests.” (Goldensohn 112)

Bishop’s major influence, at least among the modernists, was without a doubt Wallace Stevens.

Bernlef, J. “A Conversation with Elizabeth Bishop”. Conversations with Elizabeth

Bishop ed. George Montiero. University Press of Mississippi, 1996. 67. Print

Brown, Ashley. “An Interview with Elizabeth Bishop”. Conversations with Elizabeth

Bishop ed. George Montiero. University Press of Mississippi, 1996. 23. Print.

Gioia, Dana. “Studying with Miss Bishop”. Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop ed.

George Montiero. University Press of Mississippi, 1996. 144-146. Print.  

Goldensohn, Lorrie. Elizabeth Bishop: The Biography of a Poetry. Columbia University:

New York, 1992. 112. Print.

Millier, Brett C. Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It. University of California:

Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993. 51. Print.

Spires, Elizabeth. “The Art of Poetry, xxvii: Elizabeth Bishop.” Paris Review. 1981. No

80. 56-83. Print.

Quindlen, Anna. “Book and Author: Elizabeth Bishop”. Conversations with Elizabeth

Bishop ed. George Montiero. University Press of Mississippi, 1996. 58. Print.

The Weed

I dreamed that dead, and meditating,

I lay upon a grave, or bed,

(at least, some cold and close-built bower).

In the cold heart, its final thought

stood frozen, drawn immense and clear

stiff and idle as I was there;

and we remained unchanged together

for a year, a minute, an hour.

Suddenly there was a motion,

as startling, there, to every sense

as an explosion. Then it dropped

to insistent, cautious creeping

in the region of the heart,

prodding me from desperate sleep.

I raised my head. A slight young weed

had pushed up through the heart and its

green head was nodding on the breast.

(All this was in the dark.)

It grew an inch like a blade of grass;

next, one leaf shot out of its side

a twisting, waving flag, and then

two leaves moved like a semaphore.

The stem grew thick. The nervous roots

reached to each side; the graceful head

changed its position mysteriously,

since there was neither sun nor moon

to catch its young attention.

The rooted heart began to change

(not beat) and then it split apart

and from it broke a flood of water.

two rivers glanced off from the sides,

one to the right, one to the left,

two rushing, half-clear streams,

(the ribs made of them two cascades)

which assuredly, smooth as glass,

went off through the fine black grains of earth.

The weed was almost swept away;

it struggled with its leaves,

lifting them fringed with heavy drops.

A few drops fell upon my face

and in my eyes, so I could see

(or, in that black place, thought I saw)

that each drop contained a light,

a small, illuminated scene;

the weed-deflected stream was made

itself of racing images.

(As if a river should carry all

the scenes that it had once reflected

shut in its waters, and not floating

on momentary surfaces.)

The weed stood in the severed heart.

“What are you doing there?” I asked.

It lifted its head all dripping wet

(with my own thoughts?)

and answered then: “I grow,” it said,

“but to divide your heart again.”

In this poem, the narrator (Bishop) has a dream where she lays dead (very tranquilly). Suddenly, a weed shoots up through her heart, and grows until it splits her heart. From the heart rushes a flood of water (made of the contents of her heart), which is split by the weed into two rivers. She then realizes what the rivers are made of (the contents of her heart) and asks the weed why it grows in her heart. The weed answers that its purpose is to divide her heart. According to Brett Millier,

“The poem argues that a divided heart is necessary for creation; from a violent split flows the stream of racing images. That it is a weed that enforces the split—a weed being a common plant growing out of place—suggests that the dream reveals as well Elizabeth’s view of her poetic gift as foundling or illegitimate”.

Taking into consideration Elizabeth Bishop’s background and character, this may be a legitimate point, however, I disagree. I think that any plant worth more than a weed, such as a rose, would have completely diminished the worth of the poem. By using a worthless weed to represent that which divides her heart, Bishop is saying that her heart is divided over silly, worthless matters. This does not mean that she believes that her poetic gift is “foundling or illegitimate;” it merely means that her poetry is sometimes about things that are sometimes considered worthless. The river of images is her poetry, and the weed is the subject of it. Many may consider the subjects of Bishop’s poetry to be silly or worthless, but she values them (thus the use of the weed). And though the weed divides her heart, it is not her own judgment dividing it; it is the judgment of others which attempts to break her poetry. In the end, her poetry simply bends to avoid the judgments of others (instead of breaking, for flowing water cannot break or fracture). I do not believe that Bishop sees her poetry as that weak and insubstantial, rather that she sees the truth: her poetry is strong, flowing, and versatile, unable to be broken or fractured by the judgments of others.

Millier, Brett. Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It. Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1993. Print.