Dec 6th , 2014

Topic nr:1
1. Read the following poem carefully. How do the principles of New Criticism apply (a. the poem as a free-standing
object, b. the poem as a motionless, timeless object existing within and outside of time , c. the poem as organized
entity.) in each case? How do the poems objective correlatives structure its ideas? In order to account for the above
try to answer these questions:
a) What complexities (or tensions, ironies, paradoxes, oppositions, ambiguities) can you find in the poem?
b) What idea unifies the poem, resolving these ambiguities?
c) What details or images support this resolution (that is, connect the parts to the whole)?

Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea

A poem should not mean

But be.

a) What complexities (or tensions, ironies, paradoxes, oppositions, ambiguities) can you find in the poem?
Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute

 As a globed fruit,

The analyze
I would start to analyze the poem from the first two verses , when the author says: A poem should be
palpable and mute. So ,there is a opposition between two words : expressive and silent. It is something
denying what is before. Moreover, if we look carefully to the first line we will realize that there is a paradox
when the author says: A poem should be mute. What? This cant be true because a poem should be
expressive in the point of view of emotions, feelings and so on, and mute is something abstract for poem.
Then he says : As a globed fruit. There is a comparison in itself as he compares the poem as a globed fruit.
But if we pay attention to the intention of that verse, we will realize that fruit is a object, a real object and
also expresses a image on itself. Let me say a complex image. What is it about? Let me take in consideration
the globe as it is used, (globed).It is a object in a oval shape and we cant get in it as something which a
human being has never been succeed in analyzing with a further information . So there is a kind of analogy,
because he says how a poem should be? As something that we will never ever get in it, but we can only
analyze it by the outside point of view. The last thing I would like to pay attention is something, which we
in 90% of cases find it used in a poem, which is rhyme. Here the author comes with a free style as he doesnt
create verses which rhyme each other as mute and fruit, so he also from that kind of structure is making
us a bit confused (Intentional Fallacy).
.
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

The second stanza is something, which in fact starts different form the first one. The author starts the stanza
with a only word as Dumb. This is a word which we can interpret in two point of views: As a person who is
dumb so cant speak , or as the poetry which is dumb , so cant express anything . This is a kind of ambiguity
because if we only pay attention to that word and not to the verses which precede or follow, we will take it as
in two different aspects. Moreover, he starts the poem with a paradox because if we follow the order from the
very beginning line, we will understand that he sees the poem as dumb. What? This cant be real, a poetry
isnt dumb, but it is expressive as I mentioned before and very smart. Then, the author continues with
comparison as in the case when he says As old medallions to the thumb. Here, he tries to makes a
comparison between the poem and the medallion. A medallion is considered to be something valuable and in
this way he gives the poetry the name medallion something very good. But then he gives the
medallion(poem) a surname
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone which is old. This is a opposition because we have the idea of something
Of casement
special ledges where
of medallion andthe mossyou
when has grown
say old than it changes your thought of it. Moreover, the author uses the
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
old medallion
Of casement towhere
ledges say that is something
the moss old, relic, maybe historical, whose qualities are just over or not so
has grown
interesting. This is a kind of ambiguity also. And then he ends the verse with thumb. What is that game? In
the first stanza he didnt use the rhyme, while in the second stanza he do uses the rhyme dumb and thumb
this is also a kind of confusion he tries to transmit to us. Here we have the regular meter according to that
stanza.
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown

It is the second case, when the author says silent after saying mute. So, he stills continues with his
paradox of considering the poem as silent, because why that isnt true, I mentioned twice above. But
here we have a kind of tension expression when he is trying to ascend the situation from : Silent Stone
casement ledge moss. But here, is clear also a use of opposition as he says, stone and moss which
are contrary because stone is something, rigid and white colored, while moss is soft and in a darker
 A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

A poem should be wordless What? This is something abstract because a poem is always written and
interpreted with a lot of words, so we deal with a paradox here. As the flight of birds ,here we have till
another comparison, so he compares the wordlessness with the flights of birds. He goes into descending
drama from wordless (some), to flight of birds (few) and this is a kind of tensions solution. Here he
still goes with different ending words for both lines, that is that there is no rhyme.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

A paradox is still used at this stanza as he says A poem should be motionless in time. This is impossible
because a poem should treat a lot of social problems according to different written time, and this time should
be expressed in a poem. Moreover, here is a opposition as he says motionless and climbs, so one is
inactive, the other one is active. There is a paradox related to poems structure as one or two stanzas rhyme
each other, while another one do not rhyme. That is, that it breaks the poems rule of having or not
rhyme(repetition).
 Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

The author started the stanza with a present participle leaving in order to show the continuation of the
action, referring to the poem surely. Then, he continues writing with the same structure, as the comparison
as the moon releases and then he says twig by twig the night entangled trees. If we pay attention to the
whole stanza, we will understand the idea of the author, which is: To confuse the reader! So, he uses the
affective fallacy to make us feel a bit confused and not to see the real world as he says moon releases and
night-entangled. Moreover, here is the use of opposition as he says releases and then says entangled
trees .So the second phrase maybe refers to a kind of limitation which the night that might be referring to
something outside the poem as a person or the poem itself, seems to be limited by those trees who never let it
to see the right way to freedom. Again we have the use of ending-verse repetition called as rhyme releases
and trees which is a contradiction on the poems structure.

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind

It is again the present participle. The intention of the author would be to say that poem is a continuing
action that will never end as the moon releases or leaves. And that is also a opposition referring to the
first line of previous stanza as in the first one he says releases while in the second stanza he says leaves.
The author of poem writes memory by memory. It is like twig by twig it is a kind of similarity but a
contradiction too because the first one might be referring to the mind while the second one refers to
something not as lively as mind is too. The mind can be a ambiguity because we dont know whether it
refer to the poems mind or the authors mind, so we can have two different sorts of interpretations.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

This is the repetition of the fourth stanza which means that the author emphasizes how a poem should be.
So he emphasizes the motionless in time and as the moon climbs.( Thats all about the new critics view
because if we would look from Russian or any other sort of criticism there would be too much to say)

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

According to what author has written, there is a clear paradox as he says a statement and then denies it as
it was something unimportant. So not true denies the statement A poem should be equal to. It says
that there is no equality. But there is a ambiguity on itself as it is written would be interpreted as the
second verse refuses the first one. The other point of view would be to see it as:A poem should be: Not
true which would be interpreted as the only one sentence with the meaning that poem should not be
true but false with the implication that it is all second-meaning poem.
 For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

In this stanza it is elegantly shown the tension describing the nouns and their transmission grief
doorway maple leaf. The author tries to put the poem to the highest contradiction of the words of the
whole poem, so the opposition between the history of grief and then goes to a maple leaf. In order to
understand the opposition I am going to explain the clearest ambiguity of the poem, which is a maple
leaf. This phrase might be interpreted as a leaf of a certain kind of tree usually found in northern places
such as: Canada, Russia etc. The other interpretation would be that, this phrase is a symbol for Canadians,
because is the symbol of freedom, of democracy of richness and the most important thing the symbol of the
flag. Referring to the explanation we can say that the opposition is that, he says a grief which is the
lowest or darkest part of people and then the maple leaf which is the highest degree of democracy,
since we are used to identify the Canadas flag by the leaf. Another opposition is the fact that he says the
history of grief which is thought to be full of events, stories, histories and so on. After the first verse he
immediately writes an empty doorway from history to empty. Something interesting in that stanza is
the missing of verbs. There is not even a single verb which is a unusual structure for poems.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea

The author uses the irony as in case the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea because he relates
both of them to love . In fact there is a opposition at the use of adjective leaning near of the noun
grasses as we know that leaning means to be following an belief. Grasse is referred to a person
usually criminal so that is impossible.

A poem should not mean

But be.

The author says that a poem should be rather than mean. What? This cant be true because a poem is all
made of meaning and then of being. So here the author deals with a paradox because it is in contrary to
what in fact it is. The paradox is even clear at the structure A poem should not. Huh? The author was
till the previous stanza saying A poem should be while at the end he says A poem should not be . It
seems like a paradox, because usually we say the negative aspects then at the end the positive ones or the
solution.
b) What idea unifies the poem, resolving these ambiguities?

I will base my answer to the repetition of a word, phrase or sentence. In that poem we can easily see the
repetition of the same phrase A poem should be. And it is repeated about six times. The poem unifies
the idea that how should a poem be, so the central idea is about a poem.

c) What details or images support this resolution (that is, connect the parts to the whole)?

We will have to find the parts or details related to the main idea of poem. The list of details can
be also coherent showing the poems coherence too. So referring to the whole as a poem should
be, we can start with different details. So A poem should be: Palpable, mute, globed fruit,
wordless, motionless, equal; should not: mean but be. These were the details related to the
central idea of the poem that is poem. According to images, we can list the scenes or the
describing atmosphere that the author uses in the poem related to the idea ,but also in their
coherent way. So A poem should be as : a globed fruit, old medallions to the thumb, the
sleeve-worn stone, the flight of birds, the moon climbs, the moon releases, the moon behind the
winter leaves, an empty doorway and a maple leaf.