The Folio: English Academic Journal (Spring 2017)

T H I ES F O L I O

S U E v i i i

english undergraduate journal ••• issue viii ••• the folio •••

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Published by the University of California at Berkeley Cover art by Sydney Moss. Featured image of Urban Light. by Chris Burden (2008) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

CopyrightŠ 2017 by The Folio

The Folio: English Academic Journal is a free academic resource for the benefit of all University of California, Berkeley students interested in literary analysis. The Folio is an Associated Students of the University of California-sponsored, undergraduate-run, non-profit publication.

Inquiries and submissions should be directed to thefolioucb@gmail.com http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~thefolio Metro Publishing

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table of contents Thanks to the English Department • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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Letter from the Executive Editor • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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“A State of Wonder in Underwater Worlds” by Wai Ho • • • • • • • • • • • • • • [7] “‘The Play’s the Thing:’ Meta-Theatricality in Hamlet by Kennedy Peterson • • • [15] “The Dear Object” by Sheryl Barbera • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • [20] “On Being and Nothingness: Keats and the Suspension of Temporality • • • • • • [25]

by Elizabeth Erwin “The Music of ‘Henry Purcell’” by Kara Stephens • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • [31] “The Grand Mechanism” by Natasha Symons • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • [37] “Lydia Cheng is Not Pregnant: How Mapplethorpe Queered the • • • • • • • • • • [46] Nude” by Sarah Adler “A Nameless Ship: Couching Poetry After the Titanic” • • • • • • • • • • • • • • [55]

by Chloe Chan “Forwards, Backwards, and Bloom: Linearity and the Desire • • • • • • • • •• • [61] for Return in ‘Lestrygonians’” by Brion Drake “Narcissus and the Diver: Adrienne Rich and the Poem of the • • • • • • • • • • [69] (Me) Decade” by Tessa Rissacher “Gender, sex, and syntactical construction: The failure • • • • • • • • • • • • • • [77] of binary language in Beast Feast” by Taylor Follett “Soul Speech: Finding Unspoken Modes of Communication • • • • • • • • • • • • [85] in Nora Okha Keller’s ‘Comfort Woman’” by Brittany Nareau Credits to the staff • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • [94]

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the folio would like to thank the english department and its faculty sponsor, eric falci, for their continued support of this ASUCsponsored undergraduate journal! we would also like to extend thanks to our strong readership: students, graduate student instructors, professors, and members of the community, we could not do this without you.

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TO OUR READERS:

The Folio is proud to present to you its eighth issue in this spring semester of 2017. We on The Folio staff spent countless hours laboriously examining exemplary undergraduate essays, and we can confidently say that these twelve essays are outstanding examples of the UC Berkeley English Department’s wide variety of academic interests and phenomenal prose.

This year, we expanded both our staff and the amount of published submissions to pack our journals with more essays than ever before: twelve! Through our process of pairing editors with writers one-on-one to perfect the accepted submissions, we ourselves have gained some valuable insight: for instance, theater can be posed as a cure for Hamlet’s madness, poetry can be used to question and then undo the gender binary, and this undergraduate journal can indeed publish nude photographs for the sake of literary analysis as long as we are within copyright law!

In all seriousness, both our carefully-chosen writers and our experienced staff have put enormous amounts of work into polishing these papers for publication. As a graduating senior in English and Executive Editor of The Folio, I am inspired by the amount of thought and effort each and every person involved in this journal invested in this year’s issue. However, we never publish this journal alone; we would also like to thank our faculty sponsor, Professor Eric Falci, and the ASUC for their guidance and sponsorship, without which this journal would not exist. We would also like to thank you, our loyal readers — without you, this celebration of undergraduate writing would be lackluster, if not impossible.

Sincerely,

Alison Lafferty Executive Editor 2015-2017

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Wai Ho

••• A State of Wonder in Underwater Worlds

There is no mode in literature like the hexameral poem, which allows a writer to replicate the sensational phenomena that is the world, or to attain something beyond our comprehension and experience as human beings through a defective yet elevated language. Wai Ho’s engaging and insightful essay, “Divine Weeks and Works” identifies such an attempt made by the English poet Josuah Sylvester, a contemporary of Shakespeare. Ho addresses Divine Weeks, a translated version of Semaines (Weeks) (1578) by the poet Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas. Sylvester’s Divine Weeks, published in 1605, is a biblical narrative on the accounts written in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Both Divine Weeks and Semaines contain two epic poems, La Sapmaine ou creation du Monde (The Week, of Creation of the World) and La Seconde Semaine (The Second Week). The first epic poem retells the Creation story in seven parts; each part represents a day of the week. The second epic poem relates to the stories after the Book of Genesis. Ho focuses on the former epic poem and concentrates her argument in the section, “The Fifth day of the First Week.” She argues that the sound form of the hexameral poem and heroic couplets helps Sylvester create a certain rhythm and imagery that will contain the reader in a submarine-type of state, perusing the deep ocean and all its creatures to simply understand God’s divine work. Through this description, the reader may procure a sense of a perfect nature that humans once dwelled. It is an attempt for the postlapsarian poet and reader “to reconcile human technology with the prelapsarian animal world in the bodies of animals and poetic perception,” as Ho writes. Wai Ho does not stop there, but delves further with her literary analysis and confronts the issues that arise within the poem concerning technology and theology. Through her arresting prose and delightful rhetoric, Wai Ho’s essay holds constructs a beautifullydevised and controversial argument.

[Introduction by Romario Leyva, Editor] The etymology of the word “perfection” reveals that for the majority of its lifetime in the English language, “perfection” was not just an elusive marker of performance; it referred rather to something intrinsically complete or whole (“Perfection,” OED). For Joshuah Sylvester, the ideology of perfection revolved around the Genesis act of creation, when “the heavens and the earth were finished” (Geneva, Genesis 2:1). Divine Weeks and Works Vol I. is a poetic dilation of Genesis, capturing the unfolding of the natural world at the moment of creation. Yet to Sylvester, the natural world was also an irrevocably tarnished version of what was once perfect, tainted by human sin and bearing the curse of all nations after the fateful expulsion from Eden. Understanding and admiring the natural world was a devotional practice, so it is no surprise that Sylvester’s Divine Weeks and Works was written in a

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hexameric form to follow the six days of creation. Sylvester re-enacts a sense of divine completion again and again through the couplet form, creating a continued sense of satisfaction, a continued symmetry. Though the couplet promises to bring readers to a full consciousness of Adam’s first experience of an unfallen, pristine earth, the symmetrical form alone cannot account for the chasm between the prelapsarian and postlapsarian divide. Rather, the poem works to reconcile human technology with the prelapsarian animal world in the bodies of animals and poetic perception.

In the “The Fifth Day of the First Week,” Sylvester extols the creation of marine animals, and takes his reader through the oceans in a submarine-like expedition to plumb the depths. However, the heroic couplet may not simply be mimetic of the ocean. According to Hugh Kenner, rhymes appeal to the “wisdom of our vanished ancestors” because they seem to carry intrinsic associative relationships for the things they signify (Kenner 76). For instance, natural rhymes are immensely satisfying not only because of the sonic parity between “sail” and “gale,” but also because the image of a sail is conceptually linked to winds blowing. Using natural rhyme to his advantage, Sylvester describes what seems natural and self-evident with unexpected word pairs, such as describing a whirlpool as a “monstrous Whirle-about/ Which in the Sea another Sea doth spout” (233). If Sylvester is attempting to recover any kind of wisdom from our vanished ancestors through heroic couplets, it would be the language and perspective of Adam, who upon seeing the animals, began to name them—ostensibly by names that represented their true characters.

To reach such a sublime perspective, however, our poet does not ascend into the heavens, nor does he mine the depths of the earth like Dante following Virgil. Our poet, the diver, claims that “in the Waters one may see all Creatures; / And all that in this All is to be found,” as though the fathoms below the water’s surface were not only a mysterious realm waiting to be divested of its secrets, but a glass reflecting the macrocosm of the world above (34-35). The repetition of “all” is not only emphatic— the change from the lower-case “all” to a capitalized “All” suggests a type of lovely tautology between the sea and terrestrial realms. The poet claims that there are “Rammes, Calfes, Horses, Hares...Men and Maydes” etc. in the sea; potentially, to see all sea creatures is to see all terrestrial creatures too (232). When Sylvester writes that “All is to be found” in the Waters, he claims that seeing the ocean is enough to understand the entire pantheon of creation. The capitalization of all in the second line

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hints that we move from a generic definition of “all” to the idea that each species or organism is actually a complement to another creature that has similar features, like the Golden-eye fish which “chews the cud” of the seas as though a cow. By completing the heroic couplet with “As if the world within the Deepes were drown’d,” Sylvester produces a sense that the sublime hidden within Creation can be revealed by entering into a poetic exploration of the depths (36). The couplets provide a perfect sense of symmetry through inversion. Between the completed actions of “found” and “drown’d,” the sea is turned inside out, revealing the earth a second time, and as Sylvester claims, more clearly.

In many of the couplets, the rhymes create a momentum that moves the reader through the interim space from the end of one heroic couplet toward the next couplet.

The following passage demonstrates one such form of cradle to cradle movement through enjambment: [Some] love the cleare streames of swift tumbling Torrents Which throgh the rocks straining their strugling corrents Breake Banks and Bridges; and doo never stop Till thirstie Sommer come to drinke them up: Some almost alwaies pudder in the mudd Of sleepie Pooles, and never brooke the flood Of Cristall streames that in continuall motion Bend towards the bosome of their Mother Ocean: (157-164) The sonic qualities of this passage abound as though each word were frolicking in the foamy waves of a couplet riptide. The alliteration of the initial “str” sound and the terminal “s” consonants profuse in the first two lines sound like the waters splashing and swirling. These voiceless consonants crash against the solidity of the full-stop consonant “b” in “Breake Banks and Bridges; and doo never stop” (159). The round internal vowel sounds fill words with voicing, as in phrases like “bosome of their Mother Ocean,” reflecting at the level of phonology the way the Ocean is figured as a wide and open expanse (164). Sylvester’s play with assonance and alliteration, on the reader’s auditory senses, as well as his use of steep enjambments, produce a rhythm in its reading that continues pursuing the ends of the couplets unrelentingly and spilling onto the next. By converging upon Mother Ocean as a way to end all “motion,” and then catapulting the reader forward into the next set of couplets through the colon, Sylvester focalizes animal diversity into understanding nature’s

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interconnectedness. His poetry enacts the content it seeks to represent, reaching beyond the margins of the page into the natural world.

Sylvester’s claim that in “Forming this mighty Frame, he every Kind / With divers and peculiar Signet sign’d” reveals his understanding of creation through the doctrine of signatures, which held that the structure and form of organisms declare their true nature (73-74). The word “Signet” suggests that each creature has a seal of divinity that connects each organism to the next, even though the signature of God is signed uniquely for every type (74). When our poet fixes on specific creatures, he emphasizes anatomical differentiae, particularly in the eyes. Vision is important in Sylvester’s explication of creation because in his poem, lavish description does the traditional work of plot; readers are asked to see as the poet sees and inhabit the creatures described. One of the more eccentric-looking creatures in Divine Weeks and

Works is the Uranno-scope, a fish with both eyes on one side of its flat body that lives on the ocean floor. The Uranno-scope is an example of a natural epithet, signed with its own features. Urano-, from the Greek word “Ouranus,” literally means heaven, the sky, while -scope is a common root word for a viewing instrument (“Uranus”). So the Uranno-scope is a fish that looks up toward the sky, itself already invested with the proper instrument of a telescope. With its eyes on top of its head, the Uranno-scope offers a unique perspective for the reader as we join Sylvester and the fish on the sandy bottom of the ocean floor. In his description of the Uranno-scope’s “glistering eyes [which] aspire/ Still toward Heav’n,” the light from the skies diffuses downward and meets the Uranno-scope’s vision halfway, suspended in weightless depth (214215). In its lowly position, the fish beholds the heavens; in fact this is the perfect position to understand divine nature. This kind of seeing, Sylvester implies, can only be experienced by placing oneself in the body of the creature.

Sylvester’s stress on inhabiting the creatures’ bodies suggests that he wants the reader to experience an ecstatic wonder about the whole project of Creation through animal perspectives. One challenge to the couplet’s ability to yoke differentiae with the rest of Creation is the coupling of “confused” with “diffused” in the anatomy of the Oyster: “And heat-full Oyster in a heape confused/ Their parts unparted, in themselves diffused” (79-80). The heroic couplet is strangely divided into two parts as the “heape” splits into two modifying phrases: having unparted parts and yet being simultaneously diffused. The oyster’s lack of discrete organs is precisely what makes

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it unique, but the apophatic phrase also makes it difficult to inhabit the oyster in the way that we inhabit the Uranno-scope’s eyes. The reference to “themselves” moves the deictic center from the narrator to the oyster. In order to embody the oyster’s perspective, the readers must also move. While diffused could refer to being confused or obscured in meaning, it could also refer to spatial dispersion (“Diffused”). If the plural Oyster are in themselves scattered and dissolved, it suggests an entropic movement from uniform heap to an outward diaspora. This irreversible act is like the chasm between a prelapsarian state of Nature—a pristine, perfectly self-contained— and the fallen state of the reader, because readers cannot embody, and thus cannot understand, the nature of the oyster except through diaspora and negation.

Although some rhymes appear to widen the gap between the reader and the animal world, this contrastive portrayal is also tempered by how Sylvester’s portrayal of sea creatures as autonomous and self-sufficient remains strangely dependent on the terminology of human civilization. For instance, in the description of the squid, “Calamarie/ Who ready Pen-knife, Pen and Inke doth carie,” Sylvester inscribes human writing systems into the squid’s natural defense system, as though to say that this sea creature encapsulates everything that the human needs to invent. The most fitting description of the Calamarie can be found in terms of writing instruments and thus in terms of human technology, if we consider “technology” loosely to refer to any type of human innovation (61-62). With a certain irony, the verb “Carie” highlights the fact that for the Calamarie, these accoutrements are not spear and shield to be carried by appendages. Through the couplet, Sylvester infuses the artificial into the natural anatomy of animals. He suggests that animals need no education or improvement, but the human endeavors to advance himself through writing, a mediated form of communication. When this interacts with the doctrine of signatures, the conceit of Nature as a book may suggest that the text of Scripture is a mediated form of this book, and it contains more than the self-contained understanding of Creation. The Bible’s revelation certainly does move beyond the creation account to the story of humanity and then redemption. One way to interpret this apparent excess is to see Sylvester’s epic poem as a primitivist endeavor, to return to the state of innocence in which Adam could empathize perfectly with animals. On the other hand, the superfluity may signal a progressive project, to use technology to aspire to heavenly understanding or compensate for man’s lack.

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In the conceit of Nature as the original revelation, human technology helps us understand the intrinsic spirituality of animal’s lifestyles. As he asks “What Loadstone, Steele and Starre/ Measures your course in your Adventures farre?”

Sylvester is simultaneously trying to understand how it is that “waterie Citizens” can live in harmony underwater with every species. (189-190). Loadstone, which is naturally magnetized, was used to reorient one’s direction. In English history, the development of the magnetic compass was essential because of its consequences for naval commerce. But Sylvester claims here that the animal has preceded all invention. While this could simply point again to the effortless instinct of animals and human want of it, some irony enters the couplet here because the “Adventures farre” for the creature will only be limited to its habitats and to the native hunting grounds.

In contrast, the poet, seeker and explorer of all these animal realms, is the prime Adventurer who has the privilege of seeing “All in all” in both terrestrial and marine worlds. In Sylvester’s ambition to magnify God’s handiwork, there are internal issues with his description of the discovery process as recovering “spoiles,” and with positing the seeker as a hero. The consequentialist argument, which criticizes a rapacious and arguably sinful consumption of animals and earth’s resources, also assumes that these phrases anticipate the Fall even as Sylvester imagines the prelapsarian world first coming into fruition. This constant vacillation between the anticipatory Fall and a potential source of redemption in human technology is smothered by the rhymes, which seem to occur so naturally, and the iambic pentameter, which establishes a continuous rhythm propelling the reader through the poem. The formal symmetry hides contradictions within his project of trying to embody animal perspectives.

Sylvester’s longing for a prelapsarian state manifests itself in his dream of a time when beasts would simply bow to man as if he carried intrinsic authority, “the fiercest Beasts, would at his word, or beck,/ Bow to his yoake their self-obedient neck” (268). He has previously described animals at length to be self-sufficient, more instinctive, and more content than the human creature. Yet in this couplet on the sixth day, Sylvester uses the “fiercest Beasts” to portray all animals prostrate before the human—the “sacred animal.” Between “beck” and “neck,” the will of Adam produces a gesture of surrender as an animal like the lofty lion bares the nape of his neck in a display of vulnerability and submission. Throughout such representations of beasts, Sylvester associates an instinctual nature with a prelapsarian state, and the

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instinctual nature of animals with their technological uses. Sylvester points out in

Divine Weeks and Works that man seems singularly bereft of natural covering and defense. He seriously entertains the idea of technology successfully being a means for the wretched man to attain the state of perfection. When he writes, “Who in your Nature some Ideas wrought/ Of Good and Evill,” Sylvester combines the idea that the fish naturally know where to go during their migrations with the idea that God imbued them with a sense of moral direction as well (192-193). If Sylvester is portraying Nature’s original nature as possessing instinctual knowledge of Good and Evil, it may suggest that part of Adam’s fall has to do with an anxiety about being imperfect or incomplete. According to Francis Bacon, the temptation to believe that God is withholding some knowledge is precisely the one in Genesis 3 that causes Adam and Eve to doubt. He argues that the pursuit of knowledge is not sinful, but the method they used was. However, using technology to compensate for Man’s lack of completeness seems like a junior mistake, a rather obvious misconception of the Christian view of grace and sanctification, by which redemption comes from faith alone. Far more insidious is the lurking insecurity of Adam that perhaps—just perhaps—God had created him too differently from the other creatures.

Despite vacillating between problematic ideologies about the relationship between technology and theology, the couplet’s natural rhythmic motion cradles us through the poem as on the cresting waves of an ocean. The narrator propels us through the couplets as though swimming through each scene, revealing the plethora and plenitude of teeming life. The poem retains its momentum based on enjambments that link each couplet to the next. It holds the poetic journey together, despite spanning both the terrestrial and underwater realms. This momentum might be due to not only the couplets’ symmetry, but also the repetition of these heroic couplets ceaselessly. By discovering Nature’s bounty and its secrets, Sylvester suggests that humans can peer into and inhabit an unfallen world as the rhyme and couplet form helps readers imagine a fulfillment of an Adamic language. At the same time, his decision to provide this perspective through “fallen” modifiers suggests that there is no turning back. In some ways, the couplet evokes the numerology of Genesis and the ability of pairs of animals to replicate and produce generations of its kind. Similarly, the couplets in Sylvester’s poem multiply and produce a profusion of couplets one after another. The emphasis on the perfect pair in the couplets may conceal

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suggestions of a different type of pairing, a duality rather than a binary between technological progressivism and primitivism as the answer to the theological question of how to return to that elusive state of paradise.

Works Cited “Diffused, adj." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2016. Web. 17 March 2016.

Geneva Bible. 1599 Ed. Published by Tolle Lege Press. Bible Gateway. Web. 17 March 2016.

Kenner, Hugh. “Pope’s Reasonable Rhymes.” ELH, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Spring, 1974), pp.

74-88. Web. 13 March 2016.

“Perfection, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, March 2016. Web. 17 March 2016.

Sylvester, Josuah. Divine Weeks and Works. Ed. Susan Snyder. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1979. Print.

“Uranus.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, n.d. Web. 17 March 2016.

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Kennedy Petersen ••• “The Play’s the Thing”: Meta-theatricality in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” In her essay on Shakespeare’s most famous--or infamous--play, Kennedy Petersen (sophomore English major) elucidates the most notorious aspect of the Danish prince: Hamlet’s madness. However, Petersen explores instances of this madness, from his interactions with Ophelia to the final duel with Laertes, and concludes that Hamlet’s ostensibly performed madness allows him to act to separate his emotions much as an actor separates his true self from the role he plays.

Petersen believes that “While theater professionals are able to clearly distinguish between multiple facets of their personalities, Hamlet lacks this symbiosis” before realizing how the theater would allow him this duality when witnessing the Player’s lament to Hecuba in Act 2.

According to Petersen, Hamlet’s embrace of various aspects of the theatre-acting, directing, and writing--permits him to organize his feelings through displays of madness, effectively allowing him control over his life. Petersen deftly moves between structural analysis of certain passages and her interpretation of that structure. She goes so far as to claim that shifts in rhyme scheme reflect specific moments where Hamlet actually rewrites his own plot. Of the madness that is Hamlet, Petersen succeeds in finding a method.

[Introduction by Alison Lafferty, Executive Editor] If anything can definitively be said of the famously elusive Danish Prince, it is that Hamlet’s inner thoughts consistently collide with one another. Despite his constant musings and soliloquies, Hamlet cannot seem to decipher how he feels about his father’s death, his mother, Ophelia, and almost everything else in his life.

Polonius’s famous line in Act 1 bids one “to thine own self be true” (1.3.77), yet Hamlet cannot seem to distinguish between what is his “true self” and what is not.

This internal fragmentation generates Hamlet’s fatal flaw: he chooses to think rather than act. The stage, contrastingly, provides a way for one to remain both fragmented and cohesive by utilizing the duality of the theater: onstage, an actor may fully exist both as themselves and the character they portray. Hamlet realizes this and spends much of the play acting in, directing, and writing the script of his life in an attempt to reconcile the splintered facets of his personality and to correctly distinguish between reality and fiction. The Prince’s famous fits of madness become coping mechanisms through which he harmonizes his dissonant emotions.

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Hamlet first appears to acknowledge this theatrical duality during the player’s speech lamenting Hecuba’s grief in Act 2. Though seemingly unimportant to Hamlet’s narrative, the monologue reveals to the prince the power and self-awareness that comes with the theater. The Player astonishes Hamlet by his ability to affect real grief and tears over the death of Hecuba’s husband Priam, “Forc[ing] his soul to his own conceit” (2.2.488), though both Hecuba and Priam remain merely fictional characters.

The player, then, exhibits a peculiar form of duality between his actual self, and the character he transforms into on stage. Both appear to be completely separate entities, yet may coexist within the same physical body. Therefore the beauty of the stage resides in its ability to create a definite distinction between reality and fiction (the character and the actors that play them), while allowing a symbiosis to exist between them.

Hamlet, however, possesses no such symbiosis. In fact, for most of the play he agonizes over the contrasting facets of his personality. Hamlet respects and admires his father, “So excellent a king” (1.2.140), so much that he outwardly mourns his death long after even his mother has shed her final tear for her lost husband.

Conversely, Hamlet also appears to harbor ill feelings towards his father. He laments to Horatio as they wait for the ghost to appear that “nature cannot choose his origin” (1.2.26), and, a scene after comparing his father to the great Hercules, describes his arteries each “as hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve” (1.4.83-84). The Nemean lion represents one of the twelve labors of Hercules, and therefore a natural enemy of the hero; perhaps Hamlet views himself as instinctually at odds with the dead king.

Lastly, when the ghost proclaims “List, list, O list,/ If thou didst ever thy dear father love--”, Hamlet interjects with an “O God!”(1.5.22-25), before the spectre can finish the sentence. For Hamlet to interrupt the ghost’s discourse so suddenly, and without any apparent cause, seems strange. This interjection occurs not as a response to the ghost, but, rather, as an unintentional visceral cry on Hamlet’s part. For the notion of loving his father to affect Hamlet with such gripping guilt-like emotions, suggests that perhaps Hamlet never truly loved his father at all. These contrasting and dissonant emotions put Hamlet at odds with himself as he struggles to distinguish between them and to discover his “true” self.

Hamlet houses an increasingly complex and conflicting set of emotions within him. This fact continually haunts him, as he can see the difference between illusion

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and reality in other people, yet not in himself. For example, in one of the opening scenes Hamlet chastises Gertrude for not possessing true grief and for instead merely pretending grief as “actions that a man might play” (1.2.83-84). Yet, when it comes to his own thoughts, he cannot distinguish between the real and the pretended. He reflects that unlike Gertrude, he possesses the “trappings and suits of woe” (1.2.87), where “trapping” both suggests outward signs and the act of being entrapped. Hamlet becomes a prisoner to his own muddled emotions. His first monologue opens as he cries for his “too too sullied flesh would melt” (1.2.129). “Sullied”, in this passage, means contaminated-- just as Hamlet’s false emotions seep into his reality and take away his coherent sense of self. Where the player displayed genuine, clear heartache over Hecuba (though it was in fiction), Hamlet refers to himself as a “dull and muddymettled rascal” (2.2.502), unable to clearly separate his true from his counterfeit emotions. Thus, Hamlet lacks the inherent duality of the theater: the ability to easily distinguish between reality and fiction, while at the same time existing in each. For Hamlet, there exists no distinction.

Madness, then, provides a way for Hamlet to theatrically separate reality from fiction within himself. Through “put[ting] on an antic disposition” (1.5.173), Hamlet becomes an actor. He can then distinguish between his two distinct selves in his own mind: The mad-character of Hamlet, and the true Hamlet, rather than continually being mixed up by his own contradictory nature. The scene in which Hamlet appears most erratic and mad, Act 2 Scene 2 with Polonius, occurs directly after Hamlet’s startling encounter with his father’s ghost, a scene which places Hamlet’s conflicting emotions and motives along vastly divisive lines. In Act 2 Scene 2, Hamlet’s madness appears at its height: from one of his very first lines the prince calls Polonius a “fishmonger” (2.2.171), compare’s Ophelia’s fertility to maggots breeding in a dead dog (2.2.178-79), and explains to Polonius that he reads “words, words, words” (2.2.189). Such heightened madness demonstrates that, immediately after agreeing to perform his dead father’s bidding, Hamlet grows more internally conflicted than ever. He therefore creates the difference between his “normal” and “mad” self as far more pronounced than other scenes, in an effort to distinguish between his conflicted thoughts. Through becoming an actor in his mind, Hamlet can mimic the cohesive duality inherent in players of the theater.

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Yet the Prince does not stop there--in an ever-growing frenzy to take control of his own life and to separate truth from falsehood, Hamlet then assumes the role of a playwright and director. Prior to The Murder of Gonzago, Hamlet spends a monologue describing to the players how exactly he wishes them to act. He exhorts them to pronounce their lines “trippingly on the tongue” (3.2.190), and to avoid either melodramaticism or blandness. Such particularity illustrates Hamlet’s attempts to control the line between reality and fiction in his own life, and to assign “good” and “evil” roles to the members in his own tragedy. By creating The Murder of Gonzago as an allegory for Claudius’s crime, Hamlet can avoid any internal confusion as to who is the villain in his family’s tragedy. Staging the play-within-a-play provides a way for Hamlet to coat his tumultuous world in a black-and-white morality, erasing his private moral discrepancies.

The Prince literally takes on the hat of the playwright when writing extra lines for The Murder of Gonzago, altering a fixed script into something which illuminates real life while remaining within the bounds of fiction. The other most notable evidence of Hamlet taking on the role of the playwright lies in the moments when he directs a scene to switch abruptly from verse into prose. This occurs when Hamlet feels particularly powerless, such as the scene with Ophelia where the King, Queen, and Polonius view from secrecy. During this scene, every character possesses some theatrical role with the exception of Hamlet: Ophelia plays as an actor, and the rest act as audience members to the unfolding drama. Hamlet, possessing no clear role in the moment, assumes the role of the playwright and switches the scene abruptly from verse to prose with an irreverent “Ha, ha! Are you honest!” (3.1.104). Similarly, Hamlet directs the scene into prose during the climactic dueling scene: “Hamlet: I’ll be your foil Laertes. In mine ignorance/ Your skill shall like a star i’th’ darkest night/ Stick fiery off indeed.”

Laertes: You mock me sir Hamlet: No! By this hand.” (5.2.233-235) Though Hamlet realizes his imminent death approaches, he still asserts power through this change from verse to prose. Playwriting for Hamlet reveals itself both as

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a way to manipulate reality and fiction in an effort to better make sense of his world, and as a medium to assert power in moments which he feels particularly powerless.

Throughout Hamlet, the prince utilizes meta-theatricality to distinguish between the truth and fiction in his own life. Through this severance of truth and fiction through madness, Hamlet can better understand his own identity and feelings towards others. In the last scene of the novel, Fortinbras arrives and discovers the scattering of corpses around the room. He quickly orders his men to carry out the bodies and “high on a stage be placed to view” (5.2.389). Though done most likely as a political move to convince Denmark’s citizens of the royal deaths, Fortinbras’s orders finally grant Hamlet the theatrical ascension he longs for. Hamlet’s body remains on the stage, at last possessing the duality of the stage and a cohesive self.

Works Cited Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, edited by Thompson, Ann and Tayor, Neil. vol. 3, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006.

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Sheryl Barbera ••• “The Dear Object” The “dear object” is what Oroonoko calls his wife Imoinda in the aptly titled novel Oroonoko by Aphra Behn. Sheryl Barbera, junior English major, explores this term in the many ways Imoinda is objectified and commodified by plantation life in Surinam. Barbera argues that both the commercial world of Surinam and the aristocratic kingdom of Coramantien where Oroonoko and Imoinda previously lived as part of the ruling class oppress Imoinda due to her gender.

Barbera grapples with many of the obviously problematic aspects of life in Surinam--Oroonoko and Imoinda are enslaved, and Imoinda’s bodily autonomy is void under the slave trade system which makes her subservient first to the plantation masters and then to her husband. The author deconstructs this “heroic romance of star-crossed lovers” by detailing Imoinda’s oppression, only to reveal that Imoinda has endured this oppression long before becoming enslaved. Barbera moves deftly from Surinam back to Coramantien, close reading Imoinda’s life in an aging king’s harem to demonstrate how Imoinda lacked bodily autonomy even in the place for which she and her husband now ostensibly feel nostalgia.

Encompassing analysis of intersectional modes of oppression--both race and gender--Barbera provides a nuanced reading of the role of women in both pre-colonial aristocracy and colonial slave systems in Behn’s novel.

[Introduction by Alison Lafferty, Executive Editor]

Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko was written and popularized during a time of immense social change, during the simultaneous birth of the commercial marketplace for literary works and the onset of the Atlantic slave trade. The growth of the commercial, contractualized world clashed against an older, aristocratic tradition. The construction of the novel itself echoes this shift between aristocracy and commercialization, with the novel being torn between the travel log and heroic romance. The cultural shift from aristocracy to commercialization ensnares the two main characters: the titular Oroonoko and his love Imoinda. Both are taken from a world where the right of kings and nobility is honored and then sold into a world where everyone has a price. Imoinda, Oroonoko’s beloved, suffers in both worlds, as both the aristocratic world and the commercialized world commodify her body as a woman. The treatment of Imoinda within both worlds demonstrates that both worlds are inherently flawed in the treatment of women, whether free in nobility or enslaved in the New World.

At its heart, Oroonoko is a romance of star-crossed lovers, and thereby addresses how the story attempts to pull away from an older, aristocratic tradition.

The eponymous character, an enslaved African prince, falls in love with the beautiful 20

Imoinda, who is sold into slavery without his knowledge from their home country of Coramantien and sent to the then-British colony of Surinam. Later, when Oroonoko is also enslaved in Surinam, he befriends overseer Mr. Trefry. Together, they discuss a beautiful slave who enchants all who see her; Trefry is one such admirer. This female slave, however, “denys [them] all with such noble disdain” and leaves her admirers in want (38). Oroonoko inquires why then, if she is so beautiful, Trefry does not “oblige her to yield,” being her owner and therefore able to use Imoinda sexually at his whim (38). Trefry admits without guilt that he had at many times been willing to rape her with “those advantages of strength and force nature has given” him (38). This female slave is in fact Oroonoko’s lost love Imoinda. The two lovers are separated and then united by the physical displacement from old world to new world. Not only does this displacement induce the “star-crossed” aspect to the two, it also acts to represent the movement from aristocratic to commercial. Moreover, the power dynamics as illustrated through the slave and Trefy represents how women are treated as objects in the New World. On the plantation, male owners reduce women to objects for their own use as possible providers of more slaves via the bearing of children. It is the law in Surinam that any children born to slaves are “theirs to whom the parents belong,” and provide an additional, free source of slave labor (41). When Imoinda becomes pregnant with his child, Oroonoko becomes “more impatient of liberty,” as the thought that their owners would “make a slave of that too” and continue to deny them freedom (40-41). Oroonoko fears that the fruits of Imoinda’s body will be (as Imoinda originally was in Coramantien) taken from him unlawfully due to slavery. Additionally, it is the ownership of Imoinda’s body--and the fruits of her body--that drive out the final, bloody confrontations between the slaves and the slave owners. However, in both worlds, it is apparent the men determine Imoinda’s choice. As the birth of their child grows closer, Oroonoko grows more apprehensive and finally plans a slave revolt in an attempt to reach freedom before the child can be born.

This slave revolt inevitably fails because of the women’s subservience, which is present even in freedom, as the women’s efforts in getting the men to surrender succeed. Oroonoko postulates when the revolt begins that if any woman were to choose “slavery before the pursuit of her husband” then she, “with the hazard of her life, [chooses] to share with him in his fortunes (53-54). Likewise, Behn observes that the wives “pay an intire [sic] obedience to their husbands” (53-54). As slaves, the

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women belong to their slave owners, and as freedmen, the women belong to their husbands. If they do not obey their husbands, they are only fit to be left behind in the wilderness. When the female slaves turn the tide of the revolt, Behn condemns them as “being of fearful and cowardly disposition,” because they would rather live as slaves than die in free servitude and thus convince their husbands to yield (55). The imbalance in marital relations fits with a classical view of marriage, but in the end, it is simply another form of slavery in which the women are subservient under the control of men. When the slave revolt fails, Oroonoko is tortured and brutally punished. Although Imoinda is spared from having to witness his public torture, it is not out of sympathy for her emotional well-being, but rather because the overseers fear that she might “miscarry; and then they shou’d lose a young slave, and perhaps the mother” as well (57). The concern is not for Imoinda and her child as people, but as valuable property that might be lost. Oroonoko, meanwhile, vows revenge against Byam, the overseer who had reneged on his promises of freedom, but he must face the question of Imoinda and their still unborn child.

Oroonoko resolves that he must kill Imoinda in order to save her from any possible retributive violence following his failed revolt, and Imoinda’s fate becomes subject to Oroonoko’s will. Behn claims that this is a habit of their people: when “a man finds any occasion to quit his wife, if he love her, she dyes [sic] by his hand” and Imoinda herself is “faster pleading for death,” than Oroonoko is to propose it (60-61).

Imoinda, Oroonoko, and by extension, the people of Coramantien, believe that a woman is the object of her husband’s ownership which he can then dispose of at will.

Thus Oroonoko kills his wife and her unborn child with her consent. He leaves her body, and takes only her face as a grisly token to remind him of his wife. He lies for several days, gazing on Imoinda’s face and weeping at “the sight of this dear object,” and in the end this long bout of sorrow stops him from gaining his revenge against Byam that had so concerned him when he killed Imoinda (61). Even in her death, she is nothing but an “object,” which, while “dear” to Oroonoko, is still his to do with as he pleases, without concern for her continued life.

Despite this dark and violent end, Imoinda and Oroonoko’s romance began in their youth in the far-off African country of Coramantien, where they were both noble and anything seemed possible. While Coramantien draws back to the aristocratic tradition and far away from Surinam, Imoinda still is subject to the control of men

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around her. Oroonoko opens with a description of this kingdom, the birthplace of Oroonoko and Imoinda, which Behn paints in the manner of an exotic, far-off fantasy headed by an aging and hedonistic king, Oroonoko’s grandfather. This fantastical location would appear to be a mythic haven for Imoinda and Oroonoko, befitting their status, but Imoinda’s treatment within Coramantien reveals that as a woman, she cannot afford the same freedoms as Oroonoko within the aristocratic structure.

Unfortunately for the young lovers, Imoinda’s beauty is noticed by the King, who describes Imoinda “as the most charming he had ever possess’d in all the long race of his numerous years” on the throne, having “possessed” many women as wives and concubines in his opulent harem (16). The only female characters that are mentioned or seen in Coramantien are women that are commodified and “owned” by the King as his sex slaves in the locked harem. While Oroonoko is away on a war campaign, the King sends Imoinda “the Veil,” a ceremonial gift “with which she is cover’d, and secur’d for the King’s use;” her use is as a member of his harem and her implied value as a sex slave (16). This action is described as the king “[using] his power to call her to court,” and Imoinda has no power with which to disobey him, although she weeps and is legally already married to Oroonoko (16). So even in this idealized romantic world, Imoinda has no ownership over her own body and no sexual agency of her own to act upon, unable to make a choice as to whom she will wed--still a “dear object” to be owned.

After Imoinda has been taken in by the king, Oroonoko is noted as having a case to sue, because prior to the sending of the veil, Imoinda was made his wife “by solemn contract,” giving him a preeminent legal claim to Imoinda’s body before the king (18).

This maxim is presented in legal terms as if Oroonoko’s rights to personal property have been transgressed. The king in his actions even acknowledges that he had “[robbed] his son of a treasure” in taking Imoinda into his harem, again with loaded language implying her status as an object similar to a crown or jewel that can change hands (18). Imoinda’s own sorrow is not an aspect of guilt for the king; it is that he has taken something valuable, like an object, that already legally belonged to Oroonoko by means of his preexisting private marriage to Imoinda. Oroonoko, as well, describes Imoinda as “the object of his soul;” dehumanizing her and literally rendering her a commodity that can be owned, a “dear object” once again (23). Even when there is romantic love, Imoinda is still a commodity.

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Within the aristocratic culture of Coramantien, Imoinda is valued for her chastity, an aspect of her body and sexuality. In addition, her virginity “belongs” to Oroonoko, as he had married her in a contract prior to the king claiming her with the Veil. But, her virginity is especially noted as intact despite the usurpation of her marriage to Oroonoko. Behn notes that the old king, while having her locked in his harem, had not managed to “have” her, and had “robb’d [Oroonoko] no part of her virgin-honor” (24). Her virginity remains “for [Oroonoko], to whom of right it belong’d” (24). Her virginity is commodified and identified to which man it “belongs” and is not within her own ownership; she is not the owner of this ostensibly important aspect of her body and is unable to express herself sexually, until Oroonoko sneaks in at night to visit her. The King then responds in kind by selling Imoinda into slavery.

Therefore, for Imoinda, Coramantien and the lost aristocratic world was as oppressive a society as Surinam. Imoinda is sent from one form of slavery to another, which leads to her eventual death at Oroonoko’s hands.

Although Coramantien is meant to be a fantastical precursor to Oroonoko’s journey as a slave, Imoinda is already a slave in Coramantien and the aristocratic system. Imoinda lived and died a virtual and literal slave, and her last moments are spent subservient to Oroonoko, placing his need for revenge above her own life.

Whether she is in Coramantien or in Surinam, Imoinda is less a human and more an object. She is confined both by the aristocratic structure of the old world and the newly commercialized colonies of the new world. Yet in the end, Behn comes back to the classic plot of the star-crossed lovers; Imoinda’s death spells the end of Oroonoko, and he is soon killed as well. Behn’s last paragraph of the narrative returns the two lovers to the heroic romance, where they will be forever remembered, ensconced in glory and love, and the last word of the text is Imoinda’s name.

Works Cited Behn, Aphra, and Joanna Lipking. Oroonoko: An Authoritative Text, Historical Backgrounds, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997. Print.

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Elizabeth Erwin ••• “On Being and Nothingness: Keats and the Suspension of Temporality” John Keats, one of the most prominent figures of English Romantic poetry, was not a well-received poet in his lifetime. Bad reviews and harsh criticisms plagued Keats's career; his prestige did not grow until after his death. Keats's 14-line Elizabethan sonnet, "When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be" was published posthumously in 1848 and depicts the constraints of life and death. As the title implies, Keats explores the mortality of a human body by contrasting it against the immortality of art. In the following paper, Elizabeth Erwin draws upon this tension and focuses on Keats's attempt "to articulate the inarticulable.” She constructs her arguments through the poem's paradoxical imagery, its role of agency, and its structure in order to prove temporality's effect on the progression of the poem.

Erwin's essay, "Keats and the Suspension of Temporality," analyzes Keats' illustration of time as both a linear and nonlinear construct and, consequentially, how Keats uses this framework to create a divide between the artist and art: one will eventually cease to be while the other may endure.

[Introduction by Carrie Gao, Editor]

The poet is the being that frames. He attempts to construct life both inside and outside of his own perspective, and yet he always remains caught in the space in between. For John Keats, to frame the finiteness of the human perspective is to transcend it. With “When I have fears that I may cease to be” (1818), Keats does not simply present the limitations of perspective, temporality, and art: he plays with them. While the poem adheres to the traditional parameters of the Elizabethan sonnet, the imaginative extensiveness of its content overcomes the rigidity of its structure. As such, the poem works within canonical constraints so as to break from them. The result is a nonlinear portrait of worldly experience as both cyclical and finite, expressible and elusive, and preservable as well as ephemeral. Within this framework of generative paradoxes, Keats poeticizes life in order to transcend it. As an artist, he– –like the speaker of the poem–– prolongs the finite course of human existence by

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framing it with verse. The result is a fluid kind of permeance––one that figuratively grants immortality by preserving the artist through his work.

While “Ceas[ing] to be” and dying seem to share meanings, the former phrase presents, to paraphrase Keats, a kind of “negative existability.” The individual setting down his “fears” in verse may die, but the poem will not. Accordingly, the poem’s speaker does not merely express anxiety toward the phenomenon of death; instead, his fears center around the possibility that his verse will never truly capture and therefore immortalize his sense of self. In the sonnet’s inaugural verse, Keats immediately links an unceasing present with an uncertain future. In so doing, the poet condenses the divide between human experience and human speculation, but he cannot fully erase it. And yet he can try, for such is the task of the artist who seeks to versify life while also trying to overcome its inevitable conclusion. The clause, “when I have fears” (line 1) suggests a state of recurrence in which linearity has ceased to be.

Grammatically, Keats imparts a sense of this continuity by placing the conjunction “when” before the present indicative “have,” creating a continuous, progressive tense out of the present. The poem thus immediately ties the speaker’s fear of worldly cessation to life, for his existence turns out to be a continual state of reflection upon the end of existence. Following the relative pronoun, “that,” Keats shifts to the realm of possibility with the modal auxiliary verb, “may.” On its own, the second half of the verse characterizes death not as inevitable but as conditional. By using the intransitive verb “cease” to negate the infinitive “to be,” Keats figures death in terms of life. In this sense, death does not exist alone; rather, it acts as life’s complement. As a whole, the clause “I may cease to be” toys subtly with the notion of immortality, effectively upsetting the fundamental principle of cessation itself.

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Structurally, the ambiguity of the sonnet’s first verse stems from the enjambment Keats inserts between “to be” and the first word of the next verse. The effect is a microcosmic version of the poem’s general conceit––of the ability to at once capture finality while pushing past the finite and into the unceasing influence of art.

The speaker fears dying “Before [his] pen has glean’d [his] teeming brain” (2). With this line, Keats at once resolves the ambiguity of the first verse and emphasizes the constraints of life, death, and the speaker’s ability to capture the two in a simultaneous, encompassing manner. As in the opening line of the poem, Keats begins the second verse with a marker of time, adding a sense of urgency to the preexisting temporal frames of the poem. The synecdotal “my pen” (2) substitutes the artist’s instrument for the artist himself. This ensuing product is one of sublimation; the artist is not present insofar as he is not an originator but as a passive, negatively capable conveyor of verse. The proceeding verb construction, “has glean’d” (2), continues the intersection of temporal zones as well as the passivity of the poet, for the past perfect tense here serves to capture an event that has not yet occurred, while the pen rather than the poet serves as the phrase’s subject. Also worth noting are the varying denotative values of the verb “gleaned,” which according to the OED include “to gather or pick up ears of corn which have been left by reapers” (“glean” 1), “to strip of the produce left by gatherers” (“glean” 2b), and “to gather or pick up in small quantities; to scrape together” (“glean” 3a). Common to each definition, the idea of gathering imparts a sense of hasty assembly. In this context, the adjective “teeming” emphasizes the constraints inherent to the artist’s period of creative productivity. For the speaker, attempting to capture thought through art can only ever be a cursory endeavor.

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In the following two lines, Keats delegates the mind’s “full ripen’d grain” (4) to the “charactry” of “high-piled books” (3), resulting in an image of experience confined to stagnation and otiosity. The compound adjective “high-piled” suggests not an involved relationship with life set down in “charactry,” but a lifeless, unattainable experience. Like the first and second verses, the third line of the poem begins with the adverbial signifier of time, “Before,” as if to remind the reader that there will never be enough of it. Even the modifier “full-ripen’d” paints temporal progress as finite and yet cyclical, for ripeness marks the end of one cycle but also the beginning of another. The speaker’s fear, then, is not simply that his life will end, but that it will end before he can plant the kind of poetic harvest that will grant him symbolic immortality.

In light of the poet’s fear of total sublimation, lines five through eight of the sonnet present a paradox between the poet’s desire for poetic immortality and his tendency to obscure himself as an active force within the work. In the second quatrain of the sonnet, the speaker “Behold[s]” (5) “Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” (6), but he can only ever “trace / Their shadows” (7-8). Although “I” serves as the subject of lines five and seven, the speaker seems to identify more with the objects he encounters than with the being who can give voice to them through poetry. The poet’s “pen” of the first quatrain has become the “magic hand of chance” (8) –– an entity removed to the point of completely obliterating the presence of the artist. In this sense, the self who fears cessation has already ceased to be. Instead, he exists only in relation to works that could potentially “live” past the span of his own life.

By the sonnet’s final quatrain, the poet ceases his contemplation of “cloudy symbols” and instead turns to reflect upon the reality of death in human terms.

Although it serves as the volta of the poem, the speaker’s focal shift maintains the enchantment of the second quatrain. In an almost Spenserian tradition, the poet casts

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his lover as a “fair creature” (9), and her company a type of “fairy power” (11). By characterizing the realm of human interactions with hints of the sublime, Keats once again suspends and reshapes the linear timeline of experience. To him, the lover is truly “of an hour” (9), for he cannot both “relish” (11) and poetically capture any sort of romantic connection. As a result, theirs is an “unreflecting love” (12) abruptly separated from the poet’s solitary self by a semicolon and a mid-line dash (12).

After the fears, the insufficiency of time, the love, and the poetry, the subject of the sonnet’s closing couplet portrays himself as alone at the edge of an infinitely “wide world” (13). In these final moments of the poem, Keats employs only the present tense. In so doing, he suspends the dually recurrent and finite course of time, effectively echoing the first quatrain’s uncertain, nonlinear conception of being. In this state, both “Love” and “fame” sink “to nothingness” (14). Although the speaker “stand[s] alone, and think[s]” (14), Keats does not convey the direction of these thoughts. The individual wishes to evade or at least transcend the finiteness of human existence, and yet he is always confined to the limits of his own frame. The poet therefore strives not only to capture but to inhabit dual states of being. The artist, as Keats presents him, is a being capable of bridging the divide between “to be or not to be” by creating a scenario in which it is possible to both be and not. The “shore / Of the wild world” (13-14) upon which the speaker stands is thus a tangible manifestation of that which lies outside of his own perspective and understanding. He cannot explain the vastness of the world as it exists apart from him––as it continues to exist even when he does not, for to explain it would be to explain it away. The narrator uses his ability to “think” (13) as a way to cognitively insert himself into a cessation he can neither experience nor articulate. In this way, he inhabits the space of his own death, not just as a human agent, but as an artist subsumed by the art he creates. The

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“nothingness” is all-consuming, and in this way, it is at once comforting and unsettling. The course of time is no longer rushed but endlessly extended. The “fears” of the sonnet’s first verse are, for this moment of suspended time, silent.

Works Cited "glean, v." OED Online. Oxford University Press, February 2016. Web. Accessed 15: February 2016.

Keats, John. Complete Poems. Ed. Jack Stillinger. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. Page 166. Print.

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Karen Stephens ••• “The Music of ‘Henry Purcell’” Gerard Manley Hopkins was a prominent 19th-century English poet; Henry Purcell, a brilliant 17th-century English composer. A poem that the former wrote about the latter, then, affords insights into not only the artistic community forged across time, but also a hybrid art form where poetics and musicality intersect. In this sophisticated yet wonderfully lucid essay, Karen explores just that aspect: figuring out how exactly the poem is formed when there appears to be no form—despite Hopkins’ insistence on the poem’s metric structure. Weaving pieces of insightful observation into coherent arguments based on close reading, Karen helps us realize that to truly appreciate the poem’s form, we must read it in a synthesis of three ways: traditional poetic scansion, musical scoring, and Hopkins’ explanation of his own rhythms. Such a trinity illuminates how one ought to approach transboundary art pieces just as much as it does our own understanding of “Henry Purcell” and G.M. Hopkins’ repertoire.

[Introduction by Eleanor Duan, Editor] Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Henry Purcell” does not fall comfortably into the conventional rhythmic patterns of a sonnet, and so at first glance, it does not seem to have a consistent metrical structure. Despite its idiosyncrasies, however, the poem is not irregularly structured if it is read in the context of Hopkins’ “Author’s Preface,” in which Hopkins details his poetic methods. Functioning not simply as a poem, “Henry Purcell” also demands to be scored as if it were a piece of music. In light of Hopkins’ notes, as well as his notations, there emerge three interconnected ways to approach the poem: in conventional poetic terms; in conventional musical terms; and, in terms of Hopkins’ innovative “Sprung Rhythm.” Because Hopkins requires that his readers act as conductors able to interpret the music of his poetry, each approach informs the others. With this tripartite approach in place, Hopkins’ musicality becomes clear, and the complex system of paeonic, dactylic, trochaic, and monosyllabic rhythms that he hoped his readers would hear becomes evident.

“Henry Purcell” resists convention, yet it can be analyzed with classical poetic scansion in mind. Visually, the poem seems to function as an Italian sonnet, with the characteristic form of the octave and sextet and the ABBA/ABBA/CDC/DCD rhyme

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scheme. The eye therefore expects the regular stresses of a sonnet; but Hopkins departs from the more typical iambic pentameter and notes beneath the title that his poem is an alexandrine, with six stresses to the line. At its most straightforward, the poetic meter of “Henry Purcell” falls roughly into trochaic hexameter: The | thunder | purple | seabeach, | plumed | purple-of- | thunder U / U / U / U / U / U U / U As if to compensate for its uncomplicated construction, the line combines alliteration and assonance with a chiasmus. The interdental sound th contrasts with the bilabial p, as if replicating the sound of the “wuthering” wings; the u sound is repeated in the vowel “u” and in schwas (as found in the words “the” and “of”), tying the line together; and the words “thunder” and “purple” mirror each other across the caesura created by the comma. The rest of the lines, while no less intricately crafted, do not maintain a similar pattern of trochees, and so the poem reads more like free verse than like the systematically structured poetry that it is.

Hopkins is not insensible to the metered poet’s responsibility to establish an identifiable rhythm. In his “Author’s Preface,” he criticizes Milton for not doing so, saying, “He does not let the reader clearly know what the ground-rhythm is meant to be and so they have struck most readers as merely irregular” (Hopkins 9). Since the opening line of “Henry Purcell” features arbitrarily alternating iambs, trochees, and monosyllabic stresses, a skeptical reader might suspect Hopkins of inconsistency.

Furthermore, Hopkins says that “it is a great convenience to follow the example of music and take the stress always first, as the accent or the chief accent always comes first in a musical bar” (Hopkins 7). This presents another apparent discrepancy between Hopkins’ “Author’s Preface” and his poetry, because despite his stated desire for his poetry to replicate the trochaic condition of music, each line of “Henry Purcell” begins with an iamb or with a series of unstressed syllables. The answer to these

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contradictions can be found in the language of the aforementioned quotation; Hopkins’ conception of the stressed syllable aligns much more closely with beats of music than with the stressed syllables of iambs and trochees. Far from being “merely irregular,” therefore, Hopkins’ lines function as musical phrases.

In musical terms, “Henry Purcell” can be read in 6/4 time, with each line representing one measure. The accented first line establishes the “ground-beat” for the rest of the poem: Have | fair | fallen, O | fair, | fair have | fallen, so | dear U / / U U / / U / U U / Just as the first notes of a piece of music do not necessarily fall on the downbeat, or beat one, of the music, the word “have” should not be considered the first “beat” of “Henry Purcell.” The poem begins with an iamb, but Hopkins does not require that his readers use the syllables of the first word or words to establish the rhythm of the poem, as the readers of a traditional sonnet would. Instead, he says that readers should “[put] aside the imperfect feet at the beginning and end of lines” and treat the opening syllables as if they were musical notes (Hopkins 7). In “Henry Purcell,” monosyllabic feet function as quarter notes, trochaic feet as eighth notes, dactylic feet as triplets, and paeonic feet as sixteenth notes. The word “have” acts as an eighth note anacrusis to the downbeat of the stressed syllable “fair,” and thus, the words “have fair” do not function as an iamb, but as a monosyllabic foot preceded by an introductory syllable. The last syllables continue their triplet rhythm to the next line, “in one long strain, though written in lines asunder” (Hopkins 10). The beats of Hopkins’ opening line, then, fall neatly into a simple musical rhythm:

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Without a score, the stresses fall regularly to the ear, if not to the eye. With a score, Hopkins’ rhythm can be visualized readily, and the consistency of his poetic structure is revealed.

“Henry Purcell” is written in what Hopkins calls “Sprung Rhythm,” a technique that combines some of the language of poetic metrical structure with the rhythm of subdivided beats of music. In Sprung Rhythm, Hopkins says that the stress “falls on the only syllable, if there is only one, or, if there are more, then … on the first, and so gives rise to four sorts of feet, a monosyllable and the so-called accentual Trochee, Dactyl, and the First Paeon” (Hopkins 9). Although Sprung Rhythm uses falling meter, it is not restricted to a pattern of trochees, dactyls, or paeons. Similarly, although “Henry Purcell” contains six stresses to a line, it is not restricted to the conventional twelve syllables of hexameter. Instead, Hopkins combines syllables into groups and marks them with “slurs, that is loops over syllables, to tie them together into the time of one” (Hopkins 10, original emphasis). In Sprung Rhythm, multisyllabic words or phrases act as one-beat musical runs. Hopkins’ line “If a wuthering of his palmy snow pinions scatter a colossal smile” has a full eighteen syllables, half again the twelve syllables a reader would expect from hexameter.

However, Hopkins combines the syllables of “wuthering of his” into one beat, as if it were a sixteenth note run:

What seems at first to be a highly irregular line in fact maintains the same beat structure as the rest of the poem. The line serves as a complex and representative

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example of Sprung Rhythm, incorporating each type of foot within a given number of musical beats.

With the regular rhythm of the poem established—four falling feet of one to four syllables, in any order, within six beats—it is then possible to identify sections of “Henry Purcell” that depart from that structure. In Hopkins’ manuscript, he marks his first and eighth line with colons. Unlike the colon in the tenth line (“under/Wings: so some great stormfowl”), these colon markings apparently do not function as punctuation marks. In Robert Bridges’ transcribed manuscript and in the Penguin edition, Hopkins’ colons are replaced with accent marks in the first and eighth lines, respectively. It therefore appears that his colons are intended to call attention to heavily accented stresses. In the first line, the accents establish the beat of the poem.

In the eighth line, scansion is less intuitive, and Hopkins’ colons guide the reader: Of own, | of abrupt: | self | there so | thrusts | on, | so throngs: | the ear.

U U U U / / U / / / U / U U Of the lines in “Henry Purcell,” this line is arguably the most irregular, not only poetically and musically, but also/even in the context of Sprung Rhythm. The beats seem chaotic, shifting between repeated stressed and unstressed syllables, and between falling and rising meter. The line’s irregularity, however, is carefully and intricately crafted. First, the rhythmic variation reinforces the word “abrupt,” with a sudden shift to the anapestic phrase “of abrupt” followed by the monosyllabic foot “self.” Second, three accented monosyllables in a row echo the word “thrusts” and replicate the pulsed feeling of a thrusting motion. Third, the chaos of the eighth line gives way to a turn in the ninth line, a return to the familiar conventions of the sonnet form. The angelic and feathered imagery of the ninth line incorporates the alliterations of long o and a vowel sounds that continue into the eleventh line, as if the

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poem is joining its song with a celestial choir: “Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me, lay me! only I’ll/Have an eye to the sakes of him.” Both the content and the structure of the eighth and ninth lines express the hope of the poem: that Henry Purcell may leave the chaos of whatever Hell or Purgatory he might be in and conjoin his transcendent music, his “self” and “sakes,” with that of Heaven.

To analyze Hopkins’ “Henry Purcell” solely in terms of poetic meter would make the poem seem simply irregular, a sonnet that refuses to follow convention. To analyze it as a piece of music is impossible because it has neither score nor tune. Moreover, to do so would negate Hopkins’ artistic intentions; he did not write a song for the composer Henry Purcell, but a poem. Yet to analyze the poem according to Hopkins’ “Author’s Preface,” without a musical score, is a difficult exercise because his rhythms are designed more for the ear than for the eye. When these three approaches are combined, however, the reader can both hear and see Hopkins’ uniquely complex craftsmanship. The poem itself makes an argument for the interconnectivity of sound and poetry: that visual and auditory dissonance can reach resolution, and that the gap between poetry and music—and between Gerard Hopkins and Henry Purcell—is indeed narrow.

Works Cited Hopkins, Gerard Manley. “Author’s Preface.” Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose. London: Penguin. 1985. 7-11. Print.

Hopkins, Gerard Manley. “Henry Purcell.” Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose.

London: Penguin. 1985. 41. Print.

Hopkins, Gerard Manley. “Henry Purcell.” Manuscript. Circa 1883. Web. 11 February 2016.

Hopkins, Gerard Manley. “Henry Purcell.” Ed. Robert Bridges. Manuscript. Circa 1883. Web. 11 February 2016.

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Natasha Symons ••• “The Grand Mechanism” When a published poem undergoes revision, how do we reconcile the difference in content between the first and the later publication? Do we simply elevate the later version’s meaning and discard the first? In the following essay, “The Grand Mechanism,” Natasha Symons offers one possibility in examining the two different publications of Emily Dickinson’s “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” (1859, 1861).

Symons delves into Dickinson’s revisions—examining her substitution of punctuations and her complete alteration of the second stanza—to further understand the disparity between the two poems. And in the process of taking the publications as separate works, Symons discovers a relationship between the revisions and the different issues (mortality and loss, the human and the universal) that pervade both versions.

Symons’s analysis is cogent and thoughtful. She navigates carefully and precisely through Dickinson’s complexities and explores her poems with subtle and perceptive textual investigation, all of which culminate to a conclusion that rings true and poetic.

[Introduction by Miko Batino, Editor]

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers (216) Version of 1861

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Safe in their Alabaster Chambers— Untouched by Morning And untouched by Noon— Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection— Rafter of satin, And Roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze In her Castle above them— Babbles the Bee in a stolid Ear, Pipe the Sweet Birds in ignorant cadence— Ah, what sagacity perished here!

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Version of 1859 Safe in their Alabaster Chambers— Untouched by Morning And untouched by Noon— Lie the meek members of the Resurrection— Rafter of Satin—and Roof of Stone!

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Grand go the Years—in the Crescent—above them— Worlds scoop their Arcs— And Firmaments—row— Diadems—drop—and Doges—surrender— Soundless as dots—on a Disc of Snow—

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Just two years after writing “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” (1859), Emily Dickinson revisited and revised her own work. The earlier version describes the “meek members of the Resurrection” (i.4) followed aptly by a vision of the world they left behind. However, while the second version keeps the first stanza relatively unchanged, it deviates remarkably from the original in the second half. In an apparent digression from the meek as the poem’s focus, the second stanza describes the motion of other “Worlds” and the grand passage of “the Years… above them” (ii.6-7). This essay does not attempt to divine Dickinson’s reasons for making these changes but rather accepts that both versions now exist simultaneously. As such, they can be contrasted to help illuminate their discrepant philosophies on mortality, and the ways in which they attempt to reconcile the permanence of death with the loss it incurs.

Two important revisions made to the first stanza indicate major shifts in both perspective and tone. First, Dickinson’s substitution of the word “lie” for “sleep” (i.4) erases the first version’s hope for the revival of the dead. In both versions, she utilizes a biblical reference to establish that the people lying in their resting chambers are “the meek members of the Resurrection” (i.4): “blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth” (New International Version, Matt. 5.5). She thus connects “the meek” to the deceased awaiting the return of Christ – at which time they will be brought back to life, per Christian lore. To reinforce this, Dickinson employs the metaphor of sleep—a temporary, reversible condition—to imply a future awakening.

Conversely, the second version depicts the meek simply lying “in their Alabaster Chambers” (ii.1, 4), which does not suggest any such awakening, and does nothing to undermine the assumption that death is a permanent state. Dickinson also appeals to the verb’s alternate meaning to suggest that the meek “lie” in more than the literal sense. “To lie,” meaning “to be dishonest,” implies that they have already lied—or been

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lied to—about their resurrection. Such ambiguity reappears in the next stanza: “Pipe the Sweet Birds in ignorant cadence— / Ah, what sagacity perished here!” (i.10-11).

The birds’ song is deemed ignorant; however, whether this is for thinking that the meek have truly perished or for believing them astute is unclear. As a result, the earlier poem’s stance on the veracity of their claim to resurrection is also not certain.

If the claim is true, then the meek have not truly perished; if false, the meek were not sagacious, because they did not discern the truth. The meek’s foolishness and the lie of resurrection reappear in the second important revision, where Dickinson changes the period at the end of the first stanza (i.6) to an exclamation point (ii.5). Her exchange emphasizes the disparity between the meek’s belief and their reality. The exclamation point accentuates the fact that these so-called members of the resurrection are no more than dead bodies lying beneath a “Roof of Stone!” (ii.5). The revised punctuation also reinforces the image of the stone roof, symbolizing the impenetrable layer preventing them from escaping their entrapment. With this change, Dickinson creates a tone of disdain for those who believe in the absurd lie of resurrection and discards the uncertainty of the previous version. Therefore, while the earlier poem entertains the prospect of a return to life, with the loss of ambiguity the second accepts the permanence of the death.

Though Dickinson makes only a few alterations to the first stanza of the poem, she completely rewrites the second, resulting in a sharp contrast between the final stanzas of the original and revised versions. By using more abstract language, celestial imagery, and an increasingly distant viewpoint from the deceased, she establishes a far grander scale in the revised version. The distancing effect begins in the first line, where “grand go the Years” (ii.6) replaces “light laughs the breeze” (i.7) syllable for syllable to incite comparison between these disparate images. Here

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Dickinson exchanges connotations of levity and brightness for ones of great status and gravity, an expression of joy for a functional verb of motion, and a physical force for a metaphysical one. Her selective distortion of other lines contributes to this detached effect. For example, the line “in her Castle above them” (i.8) becomes “in the Crescent—above them” (ii.6), which not only trades a physical object (castle) for a geometric shape (crescent) but also removes the possessive pronoun “her” to depersonalize the line. Dickinson makes the stanza even more impersonal by exchanging playful, musical verbs such as “babble” and “pipe” (i.9-10) for imposing, stately ones like “grand go” (ii.6) and “surrender” (ii.9). Moreover, this distance belongs not just from the physical domain, but from the earthly one in particular.

Organic nouns, such as “Birds” (i.10) and “Bee” (i.9), become measurements and shapes: “Years” (ii.6), “Arcs” (ii.7), and “Firmaments” (ii.8). The first is an obvious reference to time, which in turn alludes to the permanence of death: the years continue to pass but they bring no change to the dead on Earth. Arcs seemingly refers to planetary orbits beyond the Earth (“Worlds scoop their Arcs”), while firmament means “the arch or vault of heaven overhead” (OED). With these references to space and time, the two final stanzas have very different principal subjects: the earlier version depicts the Earth and the second a greater universe. Dickinson’s alterations to the second stanza thus separate the terrestrial from the cosmic, showing the disconnect between the meek on Earth and infinite space.

In addition to creating a drastic difference between the two poems’ final stanzas, Dickinson’s alterations also establish a disparity between earthly and grander concerns. Whereas the first version maintains its focus on the meek and the world they left behind, the second version shifts its focus between its two stanzas from the human to the universal. For instance, in the original version, the stanzas combine

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to show the deceased futilely wishing to return to Earth. They appear only obliquely in the ultimate stanza, where the breeze laughs “above them” (i.8), even though they still believe in their promised resurrection. At the end though, they continue to be deprived of life, song, and laughter. In the later version, Dickinson maintains their failure to reawaken; however, she transposes their failure onto a grander scale. The dead still lie in their chambers hoping to return to Earth, but both they and the Earth are overshadowed by objects far greater in magnitude. Since the term firmament denotes both a sphere that contains “fixed stars [or] other celestial spheres” and “a firm support or foundation” (OED), Dickinson seemingly alludes to the structure of the universe itself. With its rows of firmaments (ii.8)—a framework of stars and celestial spaces—, worlds that scoop their arcs in orbits (ii.7), and time traveling in a crescent above the static meek (ii.6), the stanza evokes an image of a great machine. Its circular components move around each other in clean, orderly shapes like gears and cogs in service of time – suggesting a vast, celestial clock. Unlike this universe in motion, the first stanza contains a pervasive stillness. Its only verb, “lie,” depicts the meek as motionless and passive. In addition, the stanza’s stillness extends to its depiction of time. Since the meek are “untouched by Morning / And untouched by Noon” (ii.2-3), time itself is suspended. On the other hand, images of mobility dominate the later version’s second stanza: years “go,” worlds “scoop,” firmaments “row,” and diadems “drop” (ii.9). Dickinson’s imagery also becomes highly abstract in the second half of the poem. In the first stanza, minerals (alabaster and stone) and human architecture (rafters and roofs) are tangible and earthly, but in the second Dickinson describes time and the explicitly cosmic (worlds and firmaments). These comprehensive differences between the stanzas demonstrate the lesser scale of the first and the astronomical magnitude of the second. As a result, the subjects of the

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first stanza, the meek and the Earth, are proportionately unimportant with respect to the grand mechanism of the second. Since time and the universe both overshadow the dead in their alabaster chambers, the later version’s perception of death conflicts with that of the first. The earlier version focuses on the dead, employing a finite, human conception of time by suggesting that death is impermanent via the idea of resurrection. Meanwhile, the second version’s images of temporal infinity and the existence of other worlds void the meek of their central importance, implying that even considering the possibility of their resurrection betrays a mistakenly limited perspective. The meek desire a return to a world that is only one of many scooping planets (ii.7), the arc of the sky and the space beyond the Earth, and infinite time progressing “in the Crescent—above them” (ii.6). Against the backdrop of the perpetual motion of celestial bodies and the infinite span of time itself, the earthly concerns of these deceased lose all sense of significance in the grand scheme of reality.

Furthermore, Dickinson’s reframing of the deceased as insignificant eliminates the gravity of their loss. In the first version, the meek have earthly pleasures to miss; they leave behind light, laughter, creatures, and music. The poem’s insistent focus on the natural world above the dead mimics a return to earthly life. Because these pleasures remain, the poem implies that the dead still belong on Earth, not in their alabaster chambers. But that natural life yields to a cold, ordered reality in the second version. The sounds of the laughing breeze, babbling insects, and sweet songbirds become “soundless as dots” (ii.10). Instead, the revised poem puts the meek in perspective by concentrating on the greater powers and forces that continue on without them. The meek are still dead, still separated from their former lives on Earth, but the tragedy of their death loses its impact and importance when contrasted with the grandeur of time and space. Therefore, the first version attempts to dismiss

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the permanence of death in order to make sense of the loss it incurs, but the second takes an alternate approach. Instead of dismissing the reality of death, it diminishes the gravity of the loss death incurs by changing the focus from humanity to a more holistic reality.

The final two lines of the poem continue the poem’s escalating depiction of man’s insignificance when compared to the grand mechanism. Because the objects deemed “soundless as dots—on a Disc of Snow” (ii.10) are two metonyms for human elites’ power and authority, soundlessness also represents humanity’s unimportance.

The first metonym is the “diadem” (ii.9), a crown or band “worn round the head... as a badge of royalty,” which symbolizes authority and glory (OED). However, such symbolic value exists only because human society encodes the object with this meaning. In this poem, the grand mechanism curtails mankind’s importance, disregards human society, and thus voids the diadem of its meaning. The regal authority the word once represented has disappeared both literally and figuratively, as the grand mechanism renounces the power of the human elites and their symbols.

Furthermore, the word itself has practically vanished from the modern vernacular, as has the second elite metonym, doge (once “the holder of the highest civil office of the republic of Venice”) (OED). The line states that doges surrender (ii.9) because they too cannot withstand the mechanism of time, just as they and the diadems as words and symbols are no longer relevant in the modern world. In the penultimate line, “Diadems—drop—and Doges—surrender—” (ii.9), the final word is striking as a break in the alliteration of the letter “d,” and calls attention to the surrender of these symbols of human power. The way Dickinson punctuates this line lifts the diadems and doges for inspection, pausing, before abruptly discarding them. The final simile calls them, and the authority they represent, soundless as dots on a disc of snow,

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creating the idea that mortality is an inevitability. A dot is one-dimensional and incapable of producing sound, so the line implies that death is as intrinsic to human nature as soundlessness is to dots, not a thing to be grieved or evaded. Treating death in this way, the second version deems it not only a natural part of human reality but also a component of the mechanism which the poem imagines as a pure, pristine disc of snow. Far from being something to be feared or escaped, death becomes an integral feature of the universe’s harmonious mechanism.

It is clear that the differences between these two versions denote a drastic shift in perspective. While Dickinson’s first version explores the nature of mortality from an insular, human perspective, her later version addresses the same basic concept but subsumes the human and focuses on the greater mechanism of reality. Though this sense of infinity and futility could be frightening, the serene pace of the poem, the beauty of the machinery described, and even the security of inevitability create a sense of calm reassurance. Finally, the revised poem itself embodies a sort of endlessness. As opposed to its original exclamatory ending, the poem ends on a final dash in a stanza saturated with them, which suggests just another transition rather than a conclusion. Hence, just as the universe advances infinitely, the poem, too, lacks a sense of completion. It mirrors the mechanism it describes. Likewise, death is only one part of a greater system, not a true end, and not something to mourn. Instead of a mere vehicle of loss, death is something as constant as the machinery of time that goes on grandly “in the Crescent – above them” (ii.6).

Works Cited Dickinson, Emily. “Safe in their alabaster chambers (216).” Poets.org, 11 Sep. 2015, www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/safe-their-alabaster-chambers-216

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“Matthew 5.” Bible Gateway.com. 2011. www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+5&version=NIV. Accessed 11 Feb. 2017.

“Revelation 20.” Bible Gateway.com. 2011. www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation+20&version=NIV. Accessed 3 Mar. 2017.

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Sarah Adler ••• “Lydia Cheng is Not Pregnant” Robert Mapplethorpe — transgressive, sado-masochistic, enamored of bodies, queer — is one of the best-known photographers of the twentieth century. His unapologetic representation of black, brown, queer, and sexual bodies shocked the world and made him famous: in a delightful twist of fate, the very photographs most news outlets are unwilling to print are the very ones for which he is known. This quality of Mapplethorpe’s life and work is wonderfully explained by punk rocker Patti Smith, who (quoting Jean Cocteau’s description of Jean Genet) once wrote of her roommate and long-time friend, “‘His obscenity is never obscene’” (Just Kids). Sarah Adler explores this seeming contradiction between excess and moderation, breach of boundaries and obedient submission, in her essay, “Lydia Cheng is Not Pregnant: How Mapplethorpe Queered the Female Nude.” Drawing upon queer theory developed by Lee Edelman and José Esteban Muñoz, Adler contends that Lydia Cheng (1987) and Lisa Lyon (1980) simultaneously invite and reject the viewer’s gaze, inhabiting a liminal space wherein the female body refuses the demands made upon it even as outwardly appeals to the male viewer. Planting female figures in harsh black and white settings, accentuating flesh at the same time he downplays sex, Mapplethorpe removes the nude feminine body from a biological, child-rearing context. Adler consequently argues that Mapplethorpe, in garnishing the photographs with futureleaning flourishes, then replaces the futurity commonly associated with the figure of the child with queer utopianism, insisting upon the legitimacy of queerness as a collective identity. Though he died young as a result of HIV/AIDS complications, Robert Mapplethorpe’s legacy lives on, not only in the hearts and minds of his admirers, but in the queer identities acted out again and again in his work.

[Introdcution by Sarah Elisabeth Coduto, Editor]

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Robert Mapplethorpe, Lydia Cheng (1987). Reproduced with permission.

Robert Mapplethorpe queered the nude. In particular, he queered the female nude, and did so by a duality — that is, adopting photographic techniques that embraced both an antisocial as well as a social approach to queerness. Using the photograph Lydia Cheng as a vantage point, this essay will illuminate this dual approach, making use of the theory of reproductive futurity, an antisocial queer theory formulated by Lee Edelman, as well as that of queer utopianism, a social queer theory posed by scholar José Esteban Muñoz. The essay will show how Lydia Cheng resists reproductive futurity through its representation of an inherently sterile female body that is uninviting to the male gaze, and also how it embraces a queer utopianism through smaller flourishes of the model’s pose and its inherent quotidian nature.

Ultimately, though, this paper will seek to show how Mapplethorpe further resisted structural confines even within queer theory itself by refusing to adopt a singular approach to queerness, in essence, queering the queered.

In his book, No Future, Lee Edelman theorizes an antisocial view of queerness, claiming that modern society is so obsessed with the idea of the child as a sacred object that a hierarchy within socio-political dialogue forms, placing the child always at the top. In other words, that which supports the future of the hypothetical child claims precedence over dialogue that does not. As Edelman points out, many popular pro-choice campaigns find justification in protecting children in exactly the same way popular pro-life campaigns do: in the ultimate protection of the well-being of the unborn child. Edelman coins this phenomenon reproductive futurism, the “terms that impose an ideological limit on political discourse as such, preserving in the process the absolute privilege of heteronormativity by rendering unthinkable…the possibility of a queer resistance to this organizing principle of communal relations” (No Future 2). In

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other words, by setting the child at the top of a moral hierarchy in social and political issues, society reinforces a heteronormative state, for it is heterosexuality, not homosexuality, that is inherently connected to the idea of the child. This obsession with the child is evident in many famous nude portraits of women, in which artists almost uniformly strive to accentuate the reproductive capabilities of the women. The works of Amedeo Modigliani, an early 1900s Italian painter, are excellent examples of this. His popular painting, Nude on a Blue Cushion, showcases a woman with supple breasts, curvy hips, and a full vulva — all traits commonly associated with fertility.

Amadeo Modigliani, Nude on a Blue Cushion (1917).

In response to reproductive futurity, Edelman proposes an antisocial approach to the heterosexual world, one in which the queer inhabits a space that resists futurity and embraces the present. Mapplethorpe acts out this antisocial queer space by representing female bodies as sterile, uninviting to the male, and existing outside of a space of reproduction. Despite focusing exclusively on the female reproductive organs, the image of Lydia Cheng is overwhelmingly barren. Mapplethorpe violently cuts off the model’s face and lower legs with neat, sharp lines at her shoulders and knees, and narrows in on the breasts and torso — which, in other cases, would create a sexual

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image with its aggressive attention to the sexual aspects of the body. However, Mapplethorpe characterizes the model’s reproductive organs as far from titillating; her breasts lay flat and pulled back, off-limits to both the mouth of the child, or perhaps the groping hands of a horny husband. Her vulva is covered, not scantily and suggestively, but by a thick, totally unmoving leg. The only body part suggesting potentiality of penetration is the non-reproductive anus, and it has been omitted from the front-body image, existing only in the imagination of a voyeuristic viewer.

Furthermore, the model’s hips and stomach are narrow, toned, and certainly not suggestive of any potential human nestling within them. She does not live solely for her perceived biological purpose; rather, her naked body is able to exist in a space beyond the sexual. This sterilization of the female body can also be seen in Mapplethorpe’s Lisa Lyon, an image in which the model rests on craggy rocks while awkwardly raising one leg above the other.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyon (1980). Reproduced with permission.

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Lyon, a famous bodybuilder, is not the ideal vision of reproductivity, yet she evokes a type of reproductivity in her stance. While the model seems to open herself to intercourse (and therefore reproduction), the harsh surface of the rocks, in combination with her muscular form, is more evocative of impenetrability.

Mapplethorpe makes the composition of Lydia Cheng sterile and impenetrable as well. He combines this sterility with an intense sharpness of focus, which exacerbates the uninviting quality of the photograph — and by extension, the uninviting nature of the womb — in an ultimate attempt to repel the male gaze. He works in gray scale, portraying the model’s breasts, stomach, and upper legs in its various shades. Saturated, pregnant color is consigned to the back of the photograph, a figureless black detached from the body, blurring what would be the model’s robust curves. The shadow the body casts on the forefront of the image is amorphous, sharply contrasting the harsh focus of the rest of the photograph. The viewer can see each crevice of the model’s body, as well as the sharp lines that cut across her stomach and pelvis. In comparison to the softness of Modigliani’s portraits, consisting of globs of color differentiated by fuzzy lines, Lydia Cheng ostensibly rejects the gaze of the viewer, or at least makes the view somewhat harsh. In no way is the image of the body particularly pleasing or sexually compelling to the male viewer. Through an aesthetic of sterility, in combination with sharp inhospitality, Mapplethorpe embraces a queer antisocial space rejecting reproduction, and by association, the reproductive futurity that characterizes heteronormative sociality.

However, Robert Mapplethorpe also emulates a social approach to queerness, which is a theory proposed by José Esteban Muñoz in his book Cruising Utopia. Muñoz directly rejects Edelman’s antisocial approach to queerness, positing the abstract idea of utopia — which exists on the horizon of society in the form of continual yearning for

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improvement and perfection — as an inherent part of queerness. That is, he highlights how queer forms of artwork and writing often strongly embody aspects of hope and yearning for the future in the same way utopia does, and, therefore, suggests that queerness has an inherently utopian nature. In his own words, “Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility of another world” (Cruising Utopia 1). He refers to these small moments of utopic queerness in artwork as moments of “anticipatory illumination” — moments that, instead of being intensely focused in the present, hold within them promises of the future. Furthermore, he emphasizes how both queerness and utopia focus on the collective, as utopia is a hope for the future of an entire population, and queerness (especially at the time Muñoz was writing) embraces a collective identity (2).

Mapplethorpe’s Lydia Cheng is decorated with certain utopic flourishes — moments that hint at potential future excitement or promise, especially in the model’s pose and in the quotidian and therefore collectively accessible nature of the photograph. The upper half of the model’s body is illuminated in contrast to the stark darkness of the lower half as she reaches up with taut upper muscles toward a mysterious light source, the armpit and an inch of an arm grasping for something at which the viewer can only wonder. The utopic exists at the possibilities of what the model is reaching for, as well as the fact that her reaching is temporary — she cannot keep her muscles so taut and unnatural for long — and she will have to change her body pose in the future. This will give us a completely new view of her body; the utopic exists in this exciting potential. Her lower leg as well, resting across her vulva, does not lay directly in front of her body, but off to the side, and although mentioned earlier that this is certainly not suggestive, there does exist the possibility of her lowing the

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leg to match the other one in a far more symmetrical pose. Although this would not mean sex (her legs would still be closed), this too holds the potential of a new view of her body — in particular, an exciting chance to see her vulva. On the note of the quotidian, the image embraces the collectivity of utopia in its basic nature. It is simply a naked body, a concept accessible and relatable to all human beings. It is also not exclusively relatable to one type of human — in fact, due to the shading as well as the lack of genitalia and de-emphasis on the breasts, the image is more ambiguous about its race and gender — and could serve as a generalized archetype of the human body.

This generalized representation of the body can also be seen in many of Mapplethorpe’s nude portraits, such as Dan S., an image that makes the race of the subject completely unclear, and hence more relatable.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Dan S. (1980). Reproduced with permission.

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Through the small promises of Lydia Cheng’s pose, as well as the banal yet collectively relatable nature of the photograph, Mapplethorpe has achieved in embracing queer utopia, and with it a social approach to queerness.

This essay has displayed the ways in which Mapplethorpe creates a queer image, one that rejects heteronormative societal standards through an embrace of both an antisocial approach to queerness as well as a social approach. At the same time, by highlighting the way he incorporates two extraordinarily different approaches — one obsessed with the present and the other obsessed with the future — in one photograph, it also has shown the ways in which Mapplethorpe resists the limitations of queer approaches. Therefore, although Mapplethorpe was confined to the limits of the photographic frame, he has, by contemporaneously acting out transgressive natures in both straight and queer spaces, extended well beyond any type of societal or theoretical framework.

Works Cited Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Print.

Mapplethorpe, Robert. Dan S. 1980, photograph, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

Reproduced with permission.

Mapplethorpe, Robert. Lisa Lyon. 1980, photograph, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Reproduced with permission.

Mapplethorpe, Robert. Lydia Cheng, 1987, photograph, Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Reproduced with permission.

Modigliani, Amadeo. Nude on a Blue Cushion. 1917, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Smith, Patti. Just Kids. New York: Harper Collins, 2010. Web.

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All Mapplethorpe Works Š Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used with permission from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc.

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Chloe Chen ••• “A Nameless Ship: Couching Poetry After the Titanic” Chloe Chan is a sophomore at UC Berkeley, currently pursuing a degree in English literature, but has been interested in literature for far longer. Growing up in the Bay Area, Chan always had a passion for sci-fi and fantasy novels. As time and tastes progressed she began to take interest in what she deems “boring, plotless books.”

However, her essay, “A Nameless Ship," on Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Convergence of the Twain,” is anything but boring. In it, she analyzes the void that is left in literature when tragedy strikes. After the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, the newspapers put out a call for poets to send in their work to help the public mourn and make sense of what was lost. Thomas Hardy answers the call, but not in the way one might expect. Chan argues that making sense of tragedy is the last thing Hardy believes poetry can do. Instead, Hardy writes this poem to point out the hollowness of this attempt and instead, he uses the platform to critique man’s own vanity. By refusing to create a simplistic answer as to why tragedy strikes, Chan argues that Hardy makes room for the possibility of meaning.

[Introduction by Emmalyn Aviet, Editor]

On April 18, three days after the loss of the Titanic, The New York Times gently reminded amateur poets that being “sincerely moved … is far from being the only requisite” to writing “an adequate and fitting poem on the loss of the Titanic.” On April 30, as submissions continued to pour in, the editor clarified: “… to write about the Titanic a poem worth printing requires … more than paper, pencil, and a strong feeling that the disaster was a terrible one … a large majority of these offerings have been worthless.” Unlike its contemporaries, Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain” does not attempt to be an “adequate and fitting” poem. His text wants to leave its readers dissatisfied and refuses to mourn, instead methodically engaging and critiquing every expression it finds of human vanity — including poetry itself. Yet as the poem gives up understanding and embraces its hollowness, it becomes more than mere parody. For Hardy, this hollowness is the very quality that offers poetry a new way to speak.

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Hardy begins his project by inverting syntax, inviting readers to peer closer at the sentences’ structures and trace the fall of human ambition and egocentrism.

Instead of beginning with a depiction of the Titanic above the surface in all her grandeur, the first sentence buries her “deep” under the sea, both explicitly and syntactically (l.2). The reader must navigate down through clauses and grammatical inversions (“stilly couches she,” instead of “she couches stilly”) that deliberately push the subject of human pride to the bottom of the section (l.3). Hardy offers humans a sense of recovered standing as he introduces the next apparent subjects, the manmade “Steel chambers,” at the beginning of their section (l.4). Yet further navigation knocks the reader down again, as after a clause the “Cold currents” emerge as the true subjects (l.3). Hardy capsizes man’s delusion of subjecthood, stranding him in the chain of being and the architecture of the sentence. The fourth section finally begins with a manmade subject, “Jewels,” but pushes a clause between subject and verb (l.10). This distance points to a disparity between human intention and actual outcome, as the creations “designed / To ravish the sensuous mind” now “Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind” (l.11-12). Despite their creators’ grand designs, when the works of man finally attain subjecthood, the grammatical spotlight merely exposes them lying stunned and filthy on the ocean floor.

In combing through Hardy’s syntax and images, the reader unwittingly enacts man’s vain search for meaning after the Titanic. Each of the beginning four sections examines the Titanic from a different angle, first standing back, then cutting to individual parts. When Hardy’s subversions resolve into syntactic clarity in the fifth section, with subjects quickly followed by their verbs, it follows that Hardy’s gaze should settle on a final significant image. But the subjects of the sentence are “Dim moon-eyed fishes,” perpetually gawping creatures starved for light, who “Gaze” and

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“query” with no one to answer them (l.13-15); and the image of the “gilded gear” returns us to a frustratingly distant view of the Titanic, unable to penetrate the surface and perceive any significance (l.14). Hardy draws the reader to search for philosophical and syntactical understanding, only to position us with the dull-eyed fish unable to find meaning in the wreckage or see any greater purpose beyond our gilded creation. We return to the question already present in the reader’s mind: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” (l.15). After forcing readers to orient themselves amidst his grammatical feints and quick cut scenes, Hardy’s moment of piercing clarity displays the wreck as static and incomprehensible as ever. Numerous quests arrive only at the same false epiphany, recalling the “hundred or so” “worthless” poems submitted daily to The New York Times (Apr. 30)—a hundred naive quests for meaning, and a hundred dumb echoes of the fishes’ question.

The second half of the poem offers a parodic reply, mocking the empty comfort of faith in the supernatural. As though confident it can answer the poem’s question, the sixth section begins: “Well: while was fashioning / This creature of cleaving wing, / The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything…” (l.16-18). “Fashioning” seems to act at first as a reflexive verb, performed by the ship itself, but tracing the sentence out reveals the proper noun following the clause, the “Immanent Will,” to be the agent.

Each previous section is a discrete sentence, but as this Will invisibly fashions the

Titanic in the section above and “prepare[s]” her “mate” below (l.19), Hardy weaves two sections into one sentence. Even through syntax, the Will works simultaneously in different directions for the “intimate welding” of “Alien” parts (l.27, l.25), recalling the sovereign Christian God, in whom all things hold together and who works all things for our good (Col 1:17, Rom 8:28). This belief is aesthetically pleasing, flattering man’s vanity by arranging the universe to benefit him even if he cannot see

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how. But the Will’s “august” display of power was a violent collision resulting in 1500 deaths (Hardy l.29), and the being who dictates “Now!” at the moment of “consummation” oversees a rape (l.32-33). Hardy’s parody exposes the perverse emptiness of human explanations of the divine. If there is a god, in Hardy’s mythology he is a supernatural psychopath, and the universe remains senseless.

Hardy’s parody of the Christian God extends to a parody of poetry itself. The first half of Hardy’s poem poses the question of what man’s creation is doing at the bottom of the sea, but the second half fails, or refuses, to give an answer that would make the Titanic’s destruction and the poem’s halves fit into a coherent totality. This disjunction exemplifies the failure of Hardy’s apparent project, announced in his title: “The Convergence of the Twain.” Notably, the poem is subtitled “Lines on the Loss of the Titanic.” The New York Times refused to flatter amateur submissions with the title of “poem” (Apr. 30), and Hardy extends this critique — in the aftermath of tragedy, every poet is an amateur, blindly scrawling worthless lines. Even Hardy’s contribution fails to fill the gap in human understanding, and can only circle pathetically around the edge of loss; he sees his petty offering as a handful of alienated lines, incapable of converging to earn the title of “poem” or build anything meaningful out of the merely “gilded gear” of standard poetic artifice. Hardy builds up his text only to accuse it of the same empty pride he finds in everything, sinking the medium of verse as it fails to create meaning.

Yet as Hardy hollows out every formulation of human vanity, it is worth examining the structures he allows to survive. Hardy’s Immanent Will wastes the beauty of mirrors and jewels, symbols of human vanity made to flatter the “opulent” and “sensuous mind” (l.8, l.11); but an opposite process converts the ship’s chambers, “thrid” by “Cold currents,” into “rhythmic tidal lyres” (l.6). What sets these chambers

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apart? Literally, it is their hollowness which allows the currents to sing through them.

Perhaps their figurative hollowness enables them to survive Hardy’s critique, as the chambers are merely functional, lacking the vain human estimations of beauty that characterize the mirrors and jewels. This positive conception of hollowness emerges again in Hardy’s anonymization of his poem’s subject. The first stanza simply calls the

Titanic “she,” and depicts her not as wounded or ravaged, but “stilly couch[ing]” on the ocean floor (l.3). Comfortably “lying … as on a couch” (OED 1b), cradled in the soft alliteration of the “solitude of the sea” (l.1), she rests in contentment “Deep from human vanity / And the Pride of Life that planned her” (ll.2-3; emphasis added).

“From” denotes departure, separation, abandonment or exchange (OED). At the same time as the iceberg destroys the “titan” of human accomplishment, it frees her from the fatal ambition embedded in her name. In its place is a hollowness of identity that preserves her from man’s self-destructive folly.

This conception of hollowness opens up an alternate reading of Hardy’s poem. If anonymizing the ship relieves her of the vanity of her name, denying his work the lofty character of a “poem” may allow Hardy to free the medium of its fatal flaw. The Immanent Will finds in these lines no ornate sentiment to disfigure and no grand moral to pervert. Humbled by and divested of its poetic ambitions, the work survives undetected. Accompanying his thematic declaration of hollowness, Hardy deliberately inserts numbers between the stanzas, drawing attention to the separation between them — the hollow spaces that perforate the poem’s form. Thus Hardy’s unsentimental work mimics the steel chambers, whose emptiness allows for the music of “tidal lyres.”

This is not the vain song of man, which would be choked by the currents, but the lyric poetry of the currents themselves. Perhaps even the ship’s still “couch[ing]” can take on a second meaning, as in return for acceptance of her humbled state, she retains the

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ability “to express in language, put into words” (OED 15a). By formally encoding hollowness, Hardy carves out human vanity and preserves the poem’s ability to speak, though it knows not what it says.

Tragedy on the scale of the Titanic defies the poet’s capacity to understand. The senselessness of the event frustrates every attempt to put the pieces together, and lyric poetry finds its aesthetics laughably inadequate. But by refusing to force things together or impose a clear meaning — by cutting his work through with hollow spaces — Hardy clears space for the possibility of some meaning to arise. To name it would be to curse it to the fate of the Titanic, but naming or containing things is no longer the poem’s job. The modern poem, no longer sustainable as an artificially enclosed totality, must lay itself open to forces outside its control. These forces may take the form of the universal Will, or the unfolding of history, or readerly interpretation — I take a cue from Hardy and refrain from claiming an answer. But whatever these forces are, in passing through the poem they may draw out something beautiful.

Works Cited "couch, v.1." OED Online. Oxford University Press, Sept. 2016. Web. 20 Sept. 2016. “from, prep., adv., and conj.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, Sept. 2016.

Web. 22 Sept. 2016.

Hardy, Thomas. “The Convergence of the Twain.” The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, edited by Jahan Ramazani, Norton, 2003.

“No Subject for the Inexperienced.” The New York Times, 18 Apr. 2016. Accessed 19 Sept. 2016.

“Only Poets Should Write Verse.” The New York Times, 30 Apr. 2016. Accessed 19 Sept. 2016.

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Brion Drake ••• “Forwards, Backwards, and Bloom: Linearity and the Desire for Return in Lestrygonians” “Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch…” thus begin Leopold Bloom’s wanderings through the streets of noontime Dublin on June 16th, 1904. With his literal wanderings come wave after wave of contemplations about the consumption food and drink, the morals and appetites of Greek Goddesses, the cycles of planetary birth and death, his deteriorating marriage, and everything else in between. So begins a literary luncheon of food for thought.

Episode eight of James Joyce’s Ulysses, entitled “Lestrygonians,” fixates on eating and digesting food and explores the relationship between the remembered past and present lived experience. In his essay, Brion Drake examines these general themes and shows us that while the world of the episode itself may be cyclical, it is invariably characterized by linearity. Brion’s deft handling of Bloom’s most intellectually provocative moments situates Bloom and other Dubliners in both a cyclical world where they are free, and a larger scheme in which they are trapped.

Brion’s reading of the episode also clarifies its relationship with the rest of the novel. In Ulysses, Joyce demonstrates that the language or mode of writing used to tell the story ultimately shapes the reader’s experience and response. Such changes in mode are often obvious; for instance, “Circe” is written as a play script. Yet, some episodes use a language or mode that is more difficult to identify than others; “Lestrygonians” is arguably one such episode. Brion’s observations about the linear nature of a macrocosmic existence go so far as to suggest that this episode’s language distances its reader from that of the previous episode - much in the same way that Bloom (or any human being) is distanced from his or her remembered past by the present. As readers, we cannot return to the familiar language of earlier experiences any more than Bloom can return to the best of his days with Molly. Brion’s sharp insights and careful formulations transform the text of Ulysses into a model for a world governed by linearity - one that is at once strange or familiar, and ultimately sublime.

[Introduction by Adam Aucoin, Editor]

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” thinks Bloom (U 8: 498). When we read this thought decontextualized, we instantiate its meaning. We create a vacuum in which it is isolated, severed from a larger story or narrative. Providing the missing context clarifies the point: In the “Lestrygonians” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the main character Leopold Bloom walks the streets of Dublin in search for lunch, ruminating on his place within the world in his wandering. He concludes in the above thought that

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nature avoids isolated events in favor of cyclical patterns. The episode largely agrees with Bloom in its abundance of cyclicality, where Bloom and his fellow Dubliners seek renewal through the ingestion and digestion of food. Indeed, renewal of the body is one’s singular mode of staving off inevitable entropy. The mind, however, achieves no homeostatic return when confronted with experiential change, as Bloom will demonstrate throughout the episode. Thus, in tension with the episode’s pronounced cyclical themes is an underlying, linear system that pulls the narrative forward and connects it to the novel’s larger story. Engendered through its narrative structure, the episode sets in diametric opposition the interplay between these two systems. The unknown, unavoidable, and macrocosmic presents the episode’s linearity, while its more accessible cyclical patterns manifest through Bloom’s sensual relationship to its local microcosms, providing him an intimate but limited knowledge of his story on June 16, 1904.

Bloom senses the undercurrents of this tension early in the episode through poetic analogy. Not a poet himself, he ponders on the difference between rhymed poetical lines and the internal rhythms of blank verse. First illustrating a rhymed couplet, he ponders: “The hungry famished gull / Flaps o’er the waters dull” (U 8: 623). The rhymed couplet is explicit and understood visually by the sensualist Bloom. It has a comfortable tangibility in its simplicity and predictability; he knows there will be a return to the first line at the end of the second from the rhymed connection of “gull” and “dull.” In cyclical fashion, it returns to its beginning. However, he is forced to examine the lyrical quality of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to clarify his intuition. He quotes, “Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit / Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth” (U 8: 66-7). Despite the errors in his quotation, he concludes that poetic quality is in “The flow of the language,” and he translates the analogy to his external conceptions of

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phenomena (U 8: 65). The underlying rhythms of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter parallel the linearity of the natural world, a rhythm that is intuited but eludes the grasping hand. Here, the episode defines its terms: the accessibility of cyclical patterns to human perception, sight in this instance, and the unseen rhythmical flow of linearity to which all life is subject.

The episode employs these two systems formally to rethink textual narrative as they relate to lived experience. Traditional narrative follows a linear progression, with a beginning, middle, and end, but if we return to Bloom’s vacuum it is understood that “Lestrygonians” experiments with the possibilities of linear form to trace its further reaching conclusions. In Bloom’s typical fashion, he reasons through cliché: “It’s always flowing in a stream, never the same, which is the stream of life we trace.

Because life is a stream” (U 8: 92-3). Echoing Heraclitus, who noted in his fragments that one may never step twice into the same river, Bloom introduces time into his equation to complicate his understanding of natural cycles. By his definition, lived experience is a conglomeration of fragmentary events because of time’s immutable progression. That is, a moment becomes lost unto itself over time. The collection of lost moments erodes one’s understanding of what was and what now is. Bloom’s inability to grasp experiential stability articulates his conception, whereby his knowledge of Molly’s adultery disallows a true return to home. Rather, his home is forever altered.

Accordingly, he wrestles with the notion that life is eternally unfolding within a greater macrocosmic scope. Conceiving of an entropic view of the universe focalizes his understanding of the difference between the local experience of life and its accompanying global unpredictability. He thinks of planets as “Gassballs spinning about, crossing each other, passing…Gas: then solid: then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock” (U 8: 581-3). In the episode’s sharpest contrast to

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its emphasis on renewal, Bloom describes the birth and death of a planet. Each stage transforms its materiality, forever disallowing its reversion to a prior state. Instead of a millennia, Bloom grapples with the alteration to his narrative at Molly’s adultery in the span of a day. Alongside Bloom’s evolution, each episode of Ulysses similarly transforms the novel’s textuality, and, although the episodes communicate referentially backwards and forwards, the discourse changes while the story remains unchanged. Accordingly, “Lestrygonians” presents linearity as a kind of macrocosmic, grand mover. It both fragments the story’s textual uniformity, like the materiality of a dying planet, and maintains a common thread to prevent the narrative’s chaotic dissolution. It maintains a beginning and an end.

Though futile, Bloom wills to resist this inevitable progression towards a certain end. He recalls a memory of Molly, and, through reverie, he longs for its reification.

Although substantiating the memory enacts its physical revival, its province is Bloom’s fragmented narrative. He seeks a renewal not of the body but of the mind, and the narrative’s linear progression halts in apparent solidarity with his desire. The narrative frames its pause with an image of “Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck” (U 8: 896). The two mating flies mirror the intimate memory of Bloom and Molly in the passage before it, but the repetition of “stuck” denotes immobilization— that the passage has entered into a temporal stasis from the episode’s progression.

Drawing the effect into focus, Bloom’s gaze at the flies blurs the periphery of both his vision and the surrounding text.

Different from mere flashback, Bloom’s memory is brought to bear on the present through its sensual description to provide him an intimate relationship to the past. He fantasizes, “Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed” (U 8: 144). At the end of the memory, the tense of his inner monologue shifts from past to present,

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suggesting the memory’s action occurs in his tangible present. Ending his reverie and closing the paragraph, he emphatically states “[she kissed] Me. And me now” (U 8: 916-17). The tense shift informs Bloom’s memory as an internal speech act: a ritual incantation of the past. The emphatic now suggests a literal return to the past—or the past made present—whereby Bloom defies linearity by rite of the memory’s renewal.

However, the episode fails to reconcile the static moment with the rest of the narrative. The image of the stuck flies returns after Bloom wakes from his reverie, which brackets the paragraph from the rest of the narrative (U 8: 918). To visually demonstrate: Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.

[The memory of Molly] Me. And me now.

Stuck, the flies buzzed.

As he wakes, the periphery comes once again into focus, and the narrative resumes.

The memory remains isolated, a fragment of what once was. The narrative’s failure to assimilate the static paragraph with the rest of the episode strengthens the thematic futility of renewal in Ulysses. Bloom’s recollections recur throughout the novel, but the onward march of the present taints the memories: he is different, the world is different.

Awake from his reverie, he juxtaposes Roman sculptures with human mortality to contemplate existential timelessness. While admiring the statues he thinks, “Lovely forms of women sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine” (U 8: 928-30). A lamentation, Bloom grapples with the reality that statues are largely impervious to time’s corrosion. They are the effigies of a lost history, their creator imbuing them with the fragmentary moments of the life they embody. Yet, the

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marble knows only the moment of its creation. In comparison to their nigh perpetuity, he considers the necessity of organic cycles to sustain life. Referring back to his contemplation of planetary lifecycles, he lands upon a truism: a human, too, is subject to inevitable decomposition. Unlike timeless marble statues, people subsist through consumption: we eat, digest, and produce waste that is reabsorbed by the very ground from which we harvest its offerings. Bloom equates this process to stoking an engine.

The assimilation of matter into one’s being resists, on a micro scale, linearity’s determination. It is a system of destruction and creation in the continual transformation of energy into new forms, a microcosmic renewal. Food, then, presents itself within “Lestrygonians” as the human’s marriage to cyclicality as a means to swim against the riptide of the greater macrocosm.

With food as its medium, a logic of ingestion and digestion focalizes the episode.

It is humanly understood—an intimate exchange with nature. In “Lestrygonians,” it is the site at which the narrative vacillates between the micro and the macro. In less abstract terms, the episode functions like a jigsaw puzzle, each individual piece comprising a complete, macrocosmic picture when properly arranged. Thus, the accretion of the episode’s microcosmic elements permits its understanding—food’s role in organic cycles, in this case. The logic is particularly true for Bloom, who understands the world not by his capacity for abstract thought, but through his physical body. Intimate descriptions of ingestion and digestion pervade the episode with intense familiarity, even to the nauseating scene of a dog eating his regurgitated “sick knuckly cud” with “new zest” (U 8: 1031-2). For example, Bloom watches a fellow Dubliner eat “as if his life depended on it” (U 8: 682-3). The image is voracious, visceral, felt as though the food is passing through his own body. However, he employs the idiom without understanding its inherent truth, illustrating his inability to clarify

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his larger musings. Similar to his intuition about the rhythmical qualities of poetry, he plays with language to constellate around larger maxims of human experience. Like his reverie, he utilizes language to activate his sensual connection to the world, attempting to grasp something known, concrete, static. Here, we return to the explicitness of rhymed poetry: the visuality of the text offering a return to something familiar, while the underlying current or rhythm moves the narrative inexorably forward.

Ulysses is a simple story that tells of one day in Dublin, yet it pulls at the seams of narrative cohesion. As we obtain an understanding of one episode’s terms, the narrative transforms the following episode’s language into something entirely unfamiliar. In “Lestrygonians,” the core tension between the narrative’s linear progression and the human desire for certainty, something to which we may return, illustrates the estrangement. To best understand this anxiety we revisit Bloom’s inner monologue: “Please tell me what is the meaning. Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world” (U 8: 328-9). He couches the microcosmic, sensual smell of perfume between greater, macrocosmic questions of meaning and creation. Pleading, he attempts to harmonize the reality of linear progression with his human desire for return. In his roundabout, sensualist way, Leopold Bloom attempts to reconcile the past and present, his memory of Molly with her present adultery. He longs for renewal but finds not an answer.

Works Cited Heraclitus, of Ephesus, and T. M. Robinson. Heraclitus: Fragments: A Text and Translation with a Commentary. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter Gabler, New York: Random House, 1986.

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Shakespeare, William, Burton Raffel, and Harold Bloom. Hamlet. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

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Tessa Rissacher ••• “Narcissus and the Diver: Adrienne Rich and the Poem of the (Me) Decade” Narcissus and the Diver, by Tessa Rissacher, offers a contemplative reading of Adrienne Rich’s seminal “Diving into the Wreck” as a free form poem that might also be read as an instructional document for self-discovery. Lest this seem vastly reductive of both Rich and Rissacher’s artful work, the term self-discovery must be clarified. Written in 1973, the poem reflects a tumultuous moment of American culture that saw to the rise of the self-help genre, whether that be on book-shelves, in exercise studios, or through group therapy classes. By contrast, Rissacher argues, Rich’s vision of self-discovery is conducted through sustained, personal reflection, and the poem enacts this as much as it explains it. Using a vivid metaphor of excavating a shipwreck in relation to examining oneself, the poem immerses the reader in a sea of fluctuating images.

Rissacher’s essay reflects the fruits of close reading and authentic engagement with Rich’s poem in both its content and form. She offers an apt reading, explicating both the rhythmic ingenuity and the multifarious images of the poem, while using Michel Foucault’s ideas of historicity to point to the poem’s simultaneous distrust of language and history and its effort to pave a path anew. Rissacher’s essay shows similar sensibilities. It exhibits a playfulness with the essay as a medium, toying with possibilities of narrative and the fluctuation of pronouns in reference to the reader.

Her experiments are justified by resonance with Rich’s poem, perhaps best characterized by Rich’s own words. Both Rissacher’s essay and Rich’s poem are “the thing itself and not the myth.”

[Introduction by JS Wu, Editor] Tom Wolfe called it the “Me Decade,” Christopher Lasch, the beginning of the “Culture of Narcissism.” Regardless of its branding, the 1970s represented a time of major shift in the American mindset. Coming off the post-war boom of the fifties and the radicalism of the sixties while facing stagflation, the quagmire of Vietnam, and a Watergate-induced collapse of faith in government, many people, frustrated with their lack of agency in the external world, instead turned their attention inward and began to focus on what Wolfe called, “the new alchemical dream: changing one’s personality– –remaking, remodeling, elevating and polishing one’s very self…and observing, studying and doting on it. (Me!)” (277). Through all manner of methods, Americans began their quest for self-improvement. The 1970s saw the birth of new fitness crazes

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like jogging and the Nautilus machine, the rise of diet and health foods, and the establishment of Spirituality/Self-Help as a genre on bookstore shelves. Gurus and philosophies were imported from various global locales as Westerners began experimenting with yoga, tantra, EST, group therapy, and a wide variety of other personal-growth-based activities. In The Culture of Narcissism, Lasch proposes that while “harmless in themselves, these pursuits, elevated to a program and wrapped in the rhetoric of authenticity and awareness, signify a retreat from politics and a repudiation of the recent past” (5). It is amidst this milieu that the poet Adrienne Rich was crafting what would become her best-known work. Her 1972 poem, “Diving into the Wreck,” demonstrates an alternative form of self-discovery, one in many ways “deeper” than that proffered by the burgeoning culture of self-help. In dramatizing a moment of introspection suspended between representation and reality, her diver suggests that the primary experience of one’s own interior life, examined unflinchingly, with willingness and curiosity, unlocks transformative possibilities.

And this, significantly, requires no special shoes, no gear, no guru.

On a surface level, “Diving into the Wreck” relates images and experiences connected to a scuba trip, but all this works as an extended metaphor for introspection. Here, diving is a figuration for the process of self-examination–diving into one’s life, so to speak. In the poem, the speaker prepares, descends, explores, and returns to a shipwreck. It opens: “First having read the book of myths, / and loaded the camera, / and checked the edge of knife-blade” (ll.1-3). The items in these three lines are charged with many possible meanings. “The book of myths” calls up the past: written and subjective history–– the handbook of knowledge; “the camera” indicates the future: blank slides, the capacity to observe and record new knowledge, objectivity; and “the knife-blade” suggests the razor sharp point of the present:

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awareness, and the capacity to “cut-away” or “cut-through” with analysis and critical thought. Armed with these objects, and all they symbolise, the speaker of the poem suits up and descends into the deep.

Rich clearly delineates the difference between this expedition and others of its kind. At the bottom of the first stanza she writes: I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. (ll.8-12) The diver’s solitude is made more ponderous by the minimalistic four syllable, roundvowelled line, “but here alone,” resting above a white space and standing in contrast to what came before it: the sibilant consonance of “Cousteau with his / assiduous,” and the joyful, almost flippant music of “aboard the sun-flooded schooner.” As the diver goes down, they say, “there is no one / to tell me when the ocean/ will begin” (ll.3133). Unlike the team from The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, the diver has no guide, no instructor, no leader: there is no one to warn them, or explain phenomena to them. Instead, the diver later declares, “I have to learn alone / to turn my body without force / in the deep element” (ll.41-43). These multiple mentions of solitude indicate it is vital for the reader to understand that the diver is unaccompanied.

Additionally, the way in which the speaker uses the construction “I have to” sets up solitude not only as fact but as essence.

Perhaps here, the poem is disclosing an esteem for self-directed introspection as opposed to the newly commodified and cultish self-help trends of the era. The phrase “I have to” can be used to indicate an odious requirement, as in: “I have to take out the trash,” but it can also, as in this poem, be used to assert a sense of responsibility and self-reliance, a refusal of outside help: “this, I have to do myself.” In a sea of

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professional opinions and programs, there is value and honor in diving alone, in simply noting what you feel. In the sixth stanza, Rich establishes the diver’s yearning for firsthand experience: “I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps” (ll.52-54). Several lines later she continues: “the thing I came for: / the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth” (ll.61-63). Beginning her short, rhythmic lines with repetition of “the words” and “the thing,” the stories and the wreck, Rich underscores the contrast between them. The diver has already read the book of myths––now they want to see for themselves, since, importantly, the thing and the representation of the thing are not the same. As Rene Magritte put it, slyly scrawled beneath his painting of a pipe, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”

While the words are “purposes” and “maps” they are only that: signposts, directives.

Moreover, as Michel Foucault points out, language itself is a product of history and can never be objective: Language as the spontaneous tabula, the primary grid of things, as an indispensable link between representation and things, is eclipsed [...] a profound historicity penetrates into the heart of things, isolates and defines them in their own coherence...above all language loses its privileged position and becomes in turn, a historical form coherent with the density of its own past. (xi) Recognizing that all language carries with it an inherent bias, one’s own direct experience becomes paramount in the search for the genuine.

As the diver descends toward the wreck and examines the figurehead, observing the “evidence of damage / worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty” (ll.66-67), the poem begins to elicit a shift in awareness; not only is the shipwreck affected by forces of “salt and sway” but so too is the diver. So too, in fact, is everyone. The very water is full of “implicit philosophies” that work upon us (Foucault, xi). For one to disengage from this “profound historicity” is possible only in

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fleeting moments, through a peripheral awareness of the body in time, as a subject and object immersed in and a part of space. As we, through the speaker of the poem, feel this “salt and sway,” this defamiliarization, and a sudden apperception that all the knowledge we possess is arbitrary, our primary experience takes on new dimension.

The “I” of the diver becomes a “we” as “we circle silently / about the wreck” (ll.74-75).

It then splits again into two “I”’s, both masculine and feminine, in “I am she: I am he” (l.77), then becomes the figurehead, then becomes the wreck entire, then the “halfdestroyed” (l.83) navigational equipment, and finally in the last stanza, a “you” that includes the reader: “we are, I am, you are” (l.87). These shifting pronouns create a telescoping of perspective congruent with the experience of ego-dissolution described by many spiritual modalities: feelings of expansiveness and androgyny concomitant with the process of introspection and meditation. With the rising awareness of this “salt and sway” around us comes a deep questioning of the action of these forces within us. Rich writes, “I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail” (ll.55-56). The phrase “came to see” indicates both a purpose and a revelation. How might one discover what part of oneself exists before the conditioning? What part is the damage and what is the treasure?

This question of personal archeology fuels the self-help movement to this day: promising the way to Get back to your best self! or Build a better you! Just like the self-split diver in Rich’s poem, we circle “about the wreck” of our own damaged self.

Her choice of the word “about” as opposed to the word “around” is significant. The poem is not titled “Diving Around the Wreck.” To circle around, to talk around something is to avoid it. The process of self-examining that Rich dramatizes is about going to the center. Right before the diver realizes that “I am she: I am he,” they say, “we dive into the hold” (l.76). The hold is the innermost chamber of a ship used to

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carry cargo, but the word in metaphorical context evokes that which is held closest to the self, the most protected and vulnerable cache of identity-building material. In this hold, we encounter “the damage that was done.” An axial difference, however, between the type of introspection Rich presents and that associated with many a selfhelp system is that she does not propose to fix anything. The poem is also not called, “Diving into the Wreck: Repair.” Throughout, she only describes exploration and contemplation. By dismissing the end result of a “better” self, the diver is allowed a legitimate experience of awareness. In view of the expanding market of selfbetterment schemes, Rich’s poem attests to the power of simple self-reflection.

Furthermore, the process may not be completed once over a weekend workshop and never revisited, but is explicitly a present participle ongoing action of “Diving.”

She writes, “I am having to do this,” implying that which is continuous. The final stanza reads: We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear. (ll.87-99) Suddenly we are repositioned in the boat, with the book in our hands, ready to dive again. This will happen, “by cowardice or courage,” such as to say, whether we want it to or not. The curious syntax of “the one who find our way” strikes the ear. Neither fully present tense or future, it appears to exist in both, reminding us again of history– – not only what has come before, but also what unrolls ahead of us. Again, we have the book, the camera and the knife: the past, future and present, subjectivity, objectivity and critical awareness. Yet it is now revealed that in this book of myths “our names do

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not appear,” that history is a hegemonic narrative whose effects are not relegated to the past, and that all components of present social reality exist as a manifestation of the promulgated myths of history. To shift one’s own perspective to acknowledge this, even momentarily, is a radical act. Only by continually returning to the dive, knife in hand, may we “find our way” toward changing the future.

Perhaps, at last, one might imagine Adrienne Rich composing this poem.

Perhaps it was night, one lamp glowing above the desk, one cup of tea grown half-cold, maybe her lover sleeping in the next room, but she, absolutely in her own space, alone.

The poem in its conception––the making of it, was the diving act. Once written, it became something else, became a literary work to be analyzed, became in fact, a seminal poem of the era, but before all that, it was the pitch into the deep: the mind’s immersion in itself and the questioning of all the damage and treasure there submerged. Surrounded by the growing clamour of commodified spirituality and selfdiscovery leaflets, Rich creates an artifact of startling power, evincing the need for private and unaffiliated self-study. It does not offer a “repudiation of the recent past,” as Lasch opined of the narcissist; rather, it invites an awareness of the immersive tides of history. Once the poem was written, perhaps she paused, and looked down at the thing, knowing she had done something big. Maybe there was a sigh too, realizing it could never be repeated, but must always be done again.

Works Cited Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books; Random House, 1970. Print.

Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1978. Print.

Rich, Adrienne. “Diving into the Wreck.” The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984. New York; London: W.W. Norton & Co. 1972. Print.

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Wolfe, Tom. “The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening.” The Purple Decades: A Reader. New York: Berkley Books. 1982. Pdf file.

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Taylor Follett ••• “Gender, sex, and syntactical construction: The failure of binary language in Beast Feast” Cody-Rose Clevidence’s Beast Feast is a 2014 collection of poetry invested in ecological issues, nature, landscapes, the barbarism of human beings, and uses of language, including non-human and non-verbal language. Alongside issues of the environment, Clevidence also includes an examination of gender and language used in relation to it. Both Clevidence and my author, Taylor Follett, tackle the issue of the gender binary and the language that complicates it. Paying attention to Clevidence’s use of language that imbues nouns with gender and gender concepts, gender neutral pronouns, and semi-biological jargon, Follett exposes the complications of language that Clevidence unearths in Beast Feast.

As Taylor and I read Beast Feast for the same contemporary literature course, it was especially interesting to work on her paper and watch her parse meaning and signification from such a confusing, disorienting, and inaccessible read. A big part of the experience of reading Beast Feast is simply pulling it apart and trying to understand its many little meanings, from the use of special textual characters to the sequences of random letters to the unorthodox formatting. Helping Taylor further examine Clevidence’s exploration of gendered language was a rewarding experience that expanded my own understanding and interests in the poems as they question the role that language plays in our treatment and expression of gender.

[Introduction by Courtney McGrosso, Editor]

According to Max Black’s essay “The Radical Ambiguity of a Poem,” radical ambiguity, a concept usually associated with works of literature, occurs when every expert reader finds at least one semantic feature of the work to be ambiguous. In Black’s construction, radical ambiguity incorporates the inability to choose between one reading of a work and another, making it impossible to create a binary of accepted interpretations of said work. In their poetry collection Beast Feast, Cody-Rose Clevidence applies the concept of radical ambiguity to the gendered construction of the world in order to demonstrate the insufficiency of inherited gendered language and definitions. Instead, they allude to an alternate conception of the world where concepts of non-binary genders and gender neutrality are both more valid and more natural than artificial concepts of binary gender. While doing this, Clevidence works against the mainstream conception of sex and gender as essentialist and binary,

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suggesting instead that biological sex, as determined by genitalia, is not synonymous with gender. When applied to a work of fiction, radical ambiguity renders the reader incapable of reaching a decisive reading of the text. Applied to gender, radical ambiguity renders impossible precise and gendered definitions and divisions within the world, thereby opening the possibility of a more flexible and ultimately more accurate construction of the language surrounding concepts such as gender. Using a combination of semantic references and abstract allusions to social and biological constructs, Clevidence works backward through Black’s theory by criticizing the inaccuracy of the gender binary and therefore demonstrating the semantic ambiguity that renders language structured around the concept of the gender binary insufficient.

Clevidence begins by utilizing gender and genitalia-coded allusions in order to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of one aspect of binary language. In the poem “Stud in New Antler,” they begin with “AS STAG STEER,” with the word “steer” written above the crossed-out stag (Clevidence 29). With this opening line they replace the concept of a large male deer with a castrated male cow. They then write, “STAG BULLOCK {TULIP} : CUNT” (29), a combination which places language evocative of both male and female genitalia together. Bullock, which also refers to a castrated male cow, appears in juxtaposition to “{TULIP},” which combines the conventional floral metaphor for female genitalia with a typographical symbol often used colloquially to denote the vulva, followed by the explicitly referential “cunt.” It appears as if Clevidence is using binary juxtaposition of these concepts, especially given the societal assumption of the binary. Further examination indicates that they are instead pointing out the fallacy in portraying these ideas as fundamentally opposite to one another in this poem. The discussion of genitalia then raises a question when they

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write, “AS STAG STEER BECOMES {

XEMPT” (29). If there is only femininity and

masculinity, as defined by the genitalia which they are referencing, then must the castrated “steer” or “bullock” be feminine? According to the binary definition of gender and sex in which both are defined by genitalia, the steer’s castration makes it exempt from having a gender. However, steers are still seen as male despite their partial lack of male genitals. This demonstrates the failure of the particular genitalbased definition of the gender binary; the language used is insufficient and does not address the multifaceted nature of gender.

Clevidence continues their interrogation of binary language in the poem “OZ | ARC,” structured as a series of dictionary entries, examining syntax and critiquing language within these entries as they discuss the failure of binary perceptions of gender and gendered pronouns as a whole. “OZ | ARC” opens with “(noumen)…xchanged the stars 4 imaginary genitalia” (45). The word “noumen” appears to be a derivative of noumenon, a Kantian concept describing something which exists without sense perception. Kant described the noumenal world as unknowable through human sensation, although it exists. Because it cannot be observed by sensory perception and is only discussed theoretically, the noumenon has no material appearance, existing solely psychologically. The apparent association between the noumenon and Clevidence’s use of “(noumen)” can then suggest the existence of gender as a purely intellectual construct versus the physical characteristics that are used to assign gender. By using the word “noumen,” Clevidence suggests a failure of language to grasp an intellectual concept that is not attached to a physical or distinctive appearance. When attached to the phrase “xchanged the stars 4 imaginary genitalia,” the usage suggests that the intellectual concept in question is gender. It is perhaps not the physical genitalia itself which is

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imaginary, but the perceived significance of the genitalia: the gender assignment.

Language therefore misconstrues gender as both precise and binary due to an imagined meaning of genitalia.

Clevidence begins the next stanza, again structured as a dictionary entry, with “ZERO | SUM” (45), seemingly as a result of the “xchanged” items in the previous entry. In a zero sum game, whatever is lost by one side of the binary is gained by the other. “ZERO | SUM” therefore implies a negatively defined and absolute binary. The following entry further discusses these concepts, beginning with the phrase “[alleged junk]” (45). If read colloquially, the “alleged junk” can be seen as synonymous to the “imaginary genitalia” of the first dictionary entry, further referencing the social construct of binarism, in which a person’s “alleged junk” determines their gender identity. With this phrase, Clevidence again acknowledges the ambiguity within binary definitions of gender. Just as the “imaginary genitalia” may refer to existing reproductive organs with artificial significance, the “alleged junk” may be physically present, but the gender assigned by it is merely an assumption. This entry continues by saying “streams ‘r’ all ‘asunder’ w. pronominal excess” (45). This line suggests that in using unnecessary pronouns, or “pronominal excess,” aspects of nature, “streams,” are falsely divided. The only pronouns used enough to be considered excessive are “he” and “she.” Clevidence is therefore suggesting that in subscribing to solely the pronouns “he” and “she,” one is semantically limited. The pronominal excess creates an artificial linguistic division; the usage of only “he” and “she” pronouns does not allow for linguistic flexibility and insists on only recognizing binary genders, even though male and female are not the only genders in a post-binary construction of the world. Clevidence provides a solution to this pronominal excess when they write, “[Xer] & [zilch]” (45). Xer can serve as a direct response to binary pronouns, as it is

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one of the more frequently used non-binary pronouns. Xer therefore opens the semantic possibility of acknowledging the spectral nature of gender within language, giving linguistic validity to non-binary genders. Zilch, structured in the same way, means “nothing,” or the absence of pronouns and, ultimately, of gender. Zilch, with this suggestion of agenderism, can therefore be read as an acknowledgment of the complete artificially constructed nature of gender as a whole. Xer and zilch draw attention to the flexibility of language when working outside the problematic preexisting binary pronouns. Clevidence shows in this entry the way that the current linguistic structures are insufficient, as well as the ways that language could be adapted to allow for greater possibilities.

Toward the end of the collection, Clevidence shifts their focus to the way semantic language as a whole and the gender binary operate in tandem with one another. In “[‘Let us inquire, to what end is nature?’],” they assert that “ALL GENDER IS PERFORMANCE” (83), followed by several sequences that appear to be a parody of DNA coding. They then continue, “AN ORGANISMS PHENOTYPE IS NOT DICTATED

BY ITS GENOTYPE” (84). This statement suggests that a person’s characteristics, identity, and behavior is not prescribed by their genetic makeup. These three phrases, combined with the DNA-styled letter collection, indicates a parallel between gender, sex, and syntactical construction. DNA is syntactically constructed as a combination of letters and determines biological sex. According to a binary and essentialist perception of the world, biological sex determines one’s gender. However, as Clevidence has repeatedly suggested, gender is an intellectual and therefore syntactic construct. They are constructing an analogy between the biological concepts of DNA, phenotype, and genotype with the semi-biological concept of sex and the social idea of gender. The genetic construction of the individual does not dictate the way that they

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interact with the environment. Genotype influences phenotype, but the environment also has a significant impact in the development of fundamental characteristics.

Similarly, the biological construct of sex may play a part in an individual’s gender, but it is not the sole factor; gender is not dictated by sex. Clevidence then claims that gender is performance. The random assortments of letters associated with DNA suggest that linguistic definitions of the world fail because they are also abstract structural forms which do not relate to all physical objects. The linguistic structures of the world are analogous to the genetic structures of the world; they are significant but do not fully dictate the phenotype, the actual meaning of the language. These abstract statements combine to illustrate Clevidence’s refutation of the gender binary. In examining biological and social constructs in conjunction with one another, Clevidence argues that the language selected to discuss them as well as the concepts themselves are almost entirely artificial and therefore meaningless.

Clevidence concludes by proposing a solution to the semantic failure of gendered language as a whole, leaning upon ideas they have been circulating throughout their collection to culminate into a final statement in the second to last poem, “[WHAT A WASTE IS MADE].” The first three pages of the poem consist largely of extended and dissonant statements that alternate between claims, questions, and incongruous details. They write, “what a waste is made of uncontrollable things” (95) and “is it grief? Is it a winged thing?” (96), before adding “but seriously, would you kiss a dude?” (97). There is seemingly “no logic” (95) in this poem, but the wide variety of ideas that these pages investigate seem to provide a brief summary of a multitude of the concepts explored throughout the collection. It is fitting, then, that the final few stanzas of this poem seem to propose a resolution to not only the vast dissonance present throughout the poem, but also that within the entire collection.

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They argue, “radical ambiguity if taken seriously would dissolve ‘rationalist’ structures of division like…‘he/she’ …‘syntax/semantics’” (98). Their use of the phrase “radical ambiguity” directly incorporates Max Black’s theory. If one “rationalist [structure] of division” in the world is ambiguous, then a binary reading of the social world is impossible, therefore dissolving the concept of the gender binary. Similarly, the binary divisions between concepts such as “he/she” and “right/wrong” (98) are flawed, creating an artificial dichotomy between concepts that are part of a variable spectrum.

In the next stanza, they state, “necessary & [sic] insufficient anatomy, what essentialist hides behind a pseudo-linguistic fallacy” (98). They are acknowledging the function and necessity of anatomy, specifically reproductive organs. They further say that this anatomy is inadequate and does not determine identity, an idea they have been propagating throughout the collection. Their reference to an “essentialist” calls forth the theory of gender essentialism, the belief that men and women are inherently different. Essentialism is a belief that Clevidence has spent the majority of their collection pushing against, although not in name. Now, they are able to directly disprove the ideas behind essentialism. The essentialist uses the “pseudo-linguistic fallacy” of the binary in order to assert essentialism, but as Clevidence has proven, the binary itself is a linguistic failure. This failure therefore dismisses the argument of the essentialist. Clevidence concludes the poem by reemphasizing arguments they have made throughout the course of their collection. They decree, “let’s cast aside these castrated lilies, slip out of this graceful masculinity” (98). The phrase “castrated lilies” recalls the “BOLLOCK {TULIP}” of “Stud in New Antler” (29), but instead of being placed in binary juxtaposition, there is now a reconciliation. In this, Clevidence suggests a freedom from the binary concepts imposed by “rationalist structures of

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divisions,” a freedom which can be found in the acceptance of radical ambiguity. In this encapsulation of their ideas, Clevidence presents a finalized and compelling argument against binary structure in language.

Through emphasizing the inadequacies of the gender binary, Clevidence proves that the binary structures within language are ultimately constricting, rendering gendered language semantically incapable of capturing the depth of experience and of the world as a whole. The gender binary falls in the face of concepts such as agenderism and non-binary identities, and because the world cannot be divided into a binary, the world as a whole is radically ambiguous. This radical ambiguity suggests that it may not only be the language surrounding the gender binary that is unsuccessful in defining the world, but perhaps binary language as a structure.

Clevidence’s argument for greater possibility within linguistic structures regarding gender suggests that a binary approach to language is an inadequate way of addressing complexities of identity and experience.

Works Cited Black, Max. “The Radical Ambiguity of a Poem.” Synthese, vol. 59, no. 1, Apr. 1984, pp. 89–107. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/20115988?ref=searchgateway:34107d1f35c20079b926a9e548261c24.

Clevidence, Cody-Rose. Beast Feast. Ashanta Press, 2014.

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Brittany Nareau ••• “Soul Speech: Finding Unspoken Modes of Communication in Nora Okja Kelle’ss Comfort Woman” Nora Okja Keller’s breakthrough novel Comfort Woman centers on the complex relationship between mother and daughter. The chapters alternate between accounts of Akiko’s experiences as a "comfort woman” forced into sexual slavery by Japanese imperial forces during WWII and Beccah’s experiences growing up with her mother in Hawaii. The novel reflects Keller’s own exploration of her identity as a Korean American. Brittney Nareau’s essay illustrates the problem of communication between Akiko and Beccah. She reveals that mother and daughter communicate most effectively through forms of ritual rather than traditional spoken language. Nareau concludes that Beccah only truly understands her mother after her death, when Beccah realizes the powerful connection between the material and the spiritual.

[Introduction by Lizzie Arnett] My grandma always had the softest hands. Every night she would take off her rings and rub on hand cream, massaging it into the silk of her skin with smooth, rhythmic motions. She didn’t speak English very well, and I didn’t speak Korean, but her touch on my cheek was so gentle that I knew how much she loved me. Nora Okja Keller illustrates the significance of these unspoken emotions in her novel, Comfort

Woman. Throughout the text, Akiko and her daughter Beccah have difficulty understanding each other when using spoken language. Keller reveals how the generational rupture between language and experience can be spanned through alternative forms of communication from the body and spirit, and shows how silence can have as much meaning as words. When she was young, Akiko was a “comfort woman” in a Korean recreation camp, forced into sexual slavery and systematically raped by Japanese troops during World War II and the imperial occupation. Beccah, however, grew up as an American girl in Hawaii with no knowledge of her mother’s past. Due to their different life experiences, their discourse contains many misunderstandings, and they communicate most effectively through ritual, when they are more open to receiving the other, be it through touch, blood, or song. Although

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they share a connection through major life events, including birth, menstruation, sex, and death, Beccah only truly understands her mother after Akiko’s passing, when mother and daughter discover how to connect through language that transcends speech.

Akiko views speech as an oppressive way in which men seek to inflict violence upon her. At the comfort station, in addition to rape and torture, the Japanese soldiers prevent the women from speaking. The women lose their voices but remain defiant, talking to each other “through eye movements, body posture, tilts of the head, or . . . rhythmic rustlings between [their] stalls” (Keller 16). Akiko’s husband, the American minister, also uses language as a weapon against her. She remembers, “I watched him searching for words that would split open my silence” (94). Her husband believes that by controlling her voice, he can also control her spirit. Silence becomes her own form of resistance to the institutional violence imposed upon her body. After the traumatic rape of Akiko’s body and land, she struggles to recover her voice. Akiko ultimately escapes the camps, right after a violent abortion leaves her delirious from blood loss and probable shock (23). She makes it to the river, to the water that represents the connectivity of her matrilineage, and buries the remains of her fetus “nestled in the crook of the river’s elbow, nursing at its breast” (41). By staying alive, by putting her blood back into the soil, by maintaining ritual, Akiko’s language of survival becomes a seminal act of rebellion against the attempts of the imperial patriarchy trying to irreparably penetrate her body and mind.

Although Akiko successfully passes down the survival of Korea to Beccah, the inheritance seems fragile at first glance. Beccah does not appear to take much interest in her heritage, often feeling embarrassed by her mother and her mother’s connections to the spirit world that have strong roots in Korean culture. However,

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Akiko persists, using alternate forms of communication to infuse meaning into gesture for Beccah. Akiko tries to protect Beccah from her father, who can “quiet her with his voice, the same voice that lulled and lured girls from the Pyongyang mission” (69).

She uses a feminine touch to combat the violent male voice, because “this is the language she understands: the cool caresses of my fingers across her tiny eyelids, her smooth tummy, her fat toes” (18). Akiko cannot give Beccah her ‘mother tongue,’ but she tries to give her the security of a cradling touch. Unfortunately, Akiko cannot protect her daughter forever, but she can teach her the art of silence. Silvia Schultermandl suggests that the trauma of Beccah’s sexual abuse remains unspoken in the novel (85). In fact, even when addressed, the characters mention the sexual abuse indirectly; Akiko has perhaps taught Beccah how to use silence too well. Beccah describes her molestation subtly, early in the narrative: "My daddy, I knew, would save my mother and me, burning with his blue eyes the Korean ghosts and demons that fed off our lives.

But when he rolled me into the sweater, binding my arms behind me, my father opened his eyes not on the demons but on me. And the blue light from his eyes grew so bright it burned me, each night, into nothingness” (Keller 2).

Here, Beccah looks for a protector, one who can take away the burden of caring for her mother. In reality, her father, who she imagines as a hero coming to save the day, is the one from whom she needs protection. Beccah describes his blue eyes as both part of the otherness that separates him from her world and a weapon that burns her life away. In this case, the miscommunication from parent to child comes not from a break between language and experience, but rather from hypocrisy and deliberate deception.

Akiko breaks her silence with a formidable voice, telling the minister that she will “never, never again lay down for any man” (195). He prays for her aloud, trying

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to combat her words, but Akiko refuses to cede ground. She shoots back, “I know what I speak, for that is my given name. Soon Hyo, the true voice, the pure tongue. I speak of laying down for a hundred men — and each one of them Saja, Death’s Demon Soldier — over and over, until I died” (195), finally taking back the name ripped from her in the recreation camps. After revealing that all of her rapists were Saja, Akiko invokes this spirit, the Death Messenger and Guardian of Hell, to counter her husband’s pleas to Jesus (43). Interestingly, Beccah imagines Saja in the guise of her father, “young and handsome, a dark soldier, alluring and virile” (46). Akiko may also believe that the minister was like Saja, a manifestation of her rapists one hundredfold, with whom she is forced to live for years on end.

After her father’s death, Beccah hopes that she and her mother can escape the grasp of the spirit world. While Beccah associates the ghosts that haunt her mother with mental illness, they actually provide a psychic barrier against more evil memories waiting to invade. Akiko often channels Induk, the woman from whom she inherited her name and station in the camp. She refers to her as the Birth Grandmother, an avatar of her female ancestors and the spirit Beccah was taught to call on for protection (49). Induk and Akiko form an intense connection, at times all encompassing, as the two souls fight for spiritual territory in Akiko’s body. In many ways, Induk represents the voices of womanhood and of nationhood that Akiko wishes she could embody. Induk performed the ultimate defiant act in the comfort station, eschewing silence for loud declarations of sovereignty. Akiko describes the night: “In Korean and Japanese, she denounced the soldiers, yelling at them to stop their invasion of her country and her body.

Even as they mounted her, she shouted: I am Korea, I am a woman, I am alive. I am seventeen, I had a family just like you do, I am a daughter, I am a sister “(Keller 20).

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In this scene, Induk becomes human, an unacceptable condition for the soldiers.

Keller describes how the soldiers violently take Induk into the woods and “[bring] her back skewered from her vagina to her mouth, like a pig ready for roasting,” in a manner reminiscent of how the Japanese “cut the body of [Akiko’s] country in two” (20-21, 105). With her proclamation, Induk not only reclaims her name, but also recovers her independence and identity, just as Akiko finds freedom from her husband later in the novel. After Induk’s death, Akiko draws on the spirit’s strength, using it to shield her humanity when confronting the horrors she must face.

As the novel progresses, Akiko continues to use the spirit world to gain knowledge that cannot be accessed through the material world. Although Akiko’s interactions with the spirit world allow her to protect her daughter, they also create havoc in their relationship, as Beccah cannot communicate with the spirit world.

When Beccah enters puberty, Akiko attempts to protect her from the Red Disaster, which hangs about Beccah in a “contagious and sometimes deadly” (Keller 75) cloud called honyaek. Akiko fears that the honyaek will stimulate sal, the male energy that entered Beccah at birth when the doctors put it “into the air with their male eyes and breath” (73). Akiko also blames the minister for passing on the signs of sal, many of which she associates with whiteness, such as body hair and odor (82). Ultimately, the Red Disaster transforms into the Red Death, as sal infects Beccah’s foot and makes her dangerously feverish. Akiko calls upon the spirit world save her daughter, performing rituals and appealing to the Birth Grandmother and her sisters, the Seven Stars (78-80). Keller illustrates the lack of understanding between mother and daughter when Akiko extracts the arrow of sal from Beccah’s foot. Beccah tells her mother that it is not sal, but rather a piece of coral that got stuck in her foot after an unsanctioned field trip she took to Hanauma Bay, explaining that coral is “like stones

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from the sea” (81). Akiko replies, “‘Yes,’ . . . her words measured, as if she were talking to someone mentally slow. ‘Sal is like stones from the sea’” (81). Akiko and Beccah describe coral and sal using the same words, but they remain unable and unwilling to understand one another because of the distance between the material world and the spirit world. The sal episode not only emphasizes the physical and cultural differences between Akiko and Beccah, but also serves as a reminder that Beccah is not completely her mother’s daughter, no matter how much Akiko desires them to be one again, like they were before Beccah’s birth and subsequent pollution.

After suffering abuse at the hands of the minister, perhaps it is natural that Beccah and Akiko want to eradicate any signs of inheritance from Beccah’s body, even if neither articulates the precise reason for wanting to do so.

When Beccah begins menstruating, Akiko explains that all of the “major transitions in a woman’s life — birth, puberty, childbirth, and death — involved the free flowing of blood and the freeing of the spirit. Slipping out of the body along pathways forged by blood, the spirit traveled and roamed free, giving the body permission to transform itself” (185). Beccah does not understand the meaning behind Akiko’s words, replying, “I’m not a baby anymore that you can fool me with this stuff, you know” (188). In an effort to cement feminine ties between mother and daughter, Akiko takes Beccah down to the stream, and begins to dance to the music of the water. She cuts the tip of Beccah’s finger, and then mingles the blood with the water of the stream (191). Beccah gets to physically experience the connection to her foremothers, all of whom are linked by the water; she begins to understand that the ritual is larger than herself. The ritual allows them to heal their feelings of isolation and alienation, as Akiko and Beccah realize that their blood will always connect them to the spirits of their family and ancestral land.

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Akiko and Beccah communicate most effectively when they are worlds away from one another. After Akiko dies, Beccah finds a tape addressed to her in her mother’s belongings. When she first listens to it, she finds it difficult to understand, but she eventually realizes that Akiko is “singing words, calling out names, telling a story” (191). Beccah turns the volume all the way up, taking the chance to break her mother’s silence for her. In her death song, Akiko sings for all the women and men who were brutalized by the Japanese. In the recording, Beccah hears the story of the comfort women, where Akiko recites “accounts of crimes made against each woman she could remember, so many crimes and so many names” (194). Beccah finally glimpses a piece of the trials her mother experienced, and develops a new understanding of her mother’s strength. She admits, “I could not view my mother, whom I had always seen as weak and vulnerable, as one of the ‘comfort women’ she described . . . I could not imagine her surviving what she described, for I cannot imagine myself surviving” (194). Before listening to the tape, Beccah infantilizes her mother in many ways, not acknowledging her mother's agency and power. She views Akiko as an embarrassment, a backward woman from an old country with no understanding of the way the world really operates. Only after listening to the recording does Beccah realize just how wrong she was and how little she actually understood her mother.

Armed with the beginnings of understanding, Beccah starts to execute her own rituals, perpetuating the spirit of Akiko and Korea in ways that do not require verbal communication, such as the preparation of the dead, the ceremony that Akiko could not carry out for her own mother or for Induk. Beccah symbolically performs this for all three women, all of whom inhabit Akiko’s body in some way. Beccah puts ginger, representing purity and rebirth, into the water for cleansing her mother’s body, the

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same healing root that the spirit Induk told Akiko to eat by the river after her abortion (39, 208). Beccah wraps Akiko’s body in the purifying strips of sheet detailing her mother’s “spiritual address,” the information about her life that “tied her spirit to this body and bound her to this life;” Akiko uses a similar ritual to save Beccah from the Red Disaster earlier in the book (78, 209). She tells her mother, “I will massage your arms with perfumed water blessed by the running river. I will massage your legs until they are strong enough to swim you to heaven” (209). Beccah’s loving touch at the end of life reflects the care that Akiko takes when Beccah is born to establish that her body is her own, “before language dissects her into pieces that can be swallowed and digested by others not herself” (22). Through these death rites, Beccah transform the material into the spiritual, bridging the gap that mother and daughter had always felt in life.

Akiko and Beccah's exploration of various forms of conversation and understanding throughout the novel connect to larger questions in the history of comfort women. While Korean survivors of the recreation camps have spoken out about their treatment at the hands of the Japanese, the Japanese government has given and retracted a number of apologies, mostly blaming the policies of an extinct imperial past (Gilbert 492). The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan continues to lobby for acknowledgment of the war crimes inflicted upon so many women, encouraging the Japanese government to take responsibility for their actions. In Comfort Woman, Akiko dies before she was able to receive sincere reparations for being put through the camps, but her daughter continues to bear witness for her, creating a true chain of understanding between generations. Once established, their connection not only transcends differences among language, experience, and national identity, but also tells a story of survival.

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Like my grandmother’s, Akiko’s silken hands cover fists with the strength of steel, ready to fight for justice, even if it takes time for someone to understand their language.

Works Cited Gilbert, Paula Ruth. “The Violated Female Body as Nation: Cultural, Familial, and Spiritual Identity in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman.” Journal of Human Rights 11.4 (2012): 486-504. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 April 2016.

Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort Woman. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print.

Portes, Alejandro, and Lingxin Hao. “E Pluribus Unum: Bilingualism and Loss of Language in the Second Generation.” Sociology of Education 71.4 (1998):269294. Web. 1 May 2016.

Schultrmandl, Silvia. “Writing Rape, Trauma, and Transnationality onto the Female Body: Matrilineal Em-body-ment in Nora Okja Keller’s Comfort Woman.”

Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 7.2 (2007): 71-100. Academic Search Complete. Web. 20 April 2016.

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credits to staff & writers Executive Editor Alison Lafferty

Marketing Director Courtney McGrosso

Production Manager Sarah Coduto

Executive Design Sydney Moss

Editors Adam Aucoin Carrie Gao Miko Barcelona Batino Lizzie Arnet Emma Aviet JS Wu Anna Cheng Romario Leyva Eleanor Duan

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Sydney Moss ©

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