So, now we're talking about Rae Armantrout's poem, The Way.
It's, in some ways, the most difficult poem we've studied so far.
Although, I think Dickinson's, Dickinson is just as challenging.
And we know from the various conversations.
We know from Armantrout's method of writing that she's taking pieces,
overheard snippets. Four of them, Card in pew pocket is one.
I made only one statement because of the bad winter is two, greases the word,
greases the way I am feeling, which is from the song, and for real life
emergencies is flooding behind the scene, which seems to be a reality TV show
reference. Four piece is, and then, the fifth part
seems to be a memory. Okay, so we have that.
This is the first time we're seeing, we're moving way forward to the twenty-first
century here. This is the first time we're seeing true
collage, we're seeing an I come from somewhere else.
The I of the second stanza is someone. I think she said someone who's a little
unstable, she overheard. Okay, so what do we do as readers.
Patient, smart, willing open minded readers to accommodate a poem in which the
I is this unstable. First of all, what do we do?
Max what's a what do you suggest someone whose never read a poem in which the I is
coming from everywhere. >> We have to maybe reckon with the fact
that it's different speakers. And that's not so hard to do if you're
told to do it. If you don't know what to do, the I of the
first stanza which seems to be a card in a church that seems to be a quote from
Jesus. And then the second seems to be, could be
the same, could be the speaker, but it turns out to be someone else.
This is very confusing. How do we get through that confusion?
>> Well, we have some strategies. We could, we could accept that.
>> It's different statements that are being made and that they don't all, they
have quotation marks but we sort of have. In the first one here, the I am here, so
[inaudible]. >> Because it's in quotation marks so that
one's a little easier to manage. >> Sure.
>> Molly, what, what are some strategies that we use to deal with this, this
Dickinsonian but also post modern aesthetic?
Where the I is really nomadic. >> We have to sort of look at it as a
whole rather than focusing on what each voice is saying.
I think of what it means to have all these voices put together.
>> What does it mean to have so many different voices appear in the same short
poem? >> Well it's the way hat she's telling the
story from experience from things that she sees and she reads.
>> It's a new kind of story though what kind of story, why is it new?
>> Cuz nobody has done it before. Cuz it's, it's a collage made from sort of
real life experience rather than one person's thoughts.
>> So she's not, she's not got a notebook that.
It's a diary for feelings and in recording for the I.
She's got a notebook of overheard statements, or curious locutions, which
she then reports to us from different subjectivities.
Anna, how do you deal with this? >> Well, I, I guess I sort of had to come
at this as, as a twenty-first century, you're gonna hate me for this, Whitman.
Because if you think about Whitman doing the Blab of the Pave, there's the I but
he's observing everything. And what she's done is she's an I
observing everything, but she's internalized it.
And then, remade it so that it's all unified in, in an I that the I is coming
from many different angles. >> Well yes and no.
I mean what's Whitmanian here is the. >> Is the inclusivity.
>> Allowance of. Right, inclusivity.
But what's different is that Walt is not going to use the I in such a way.
>> I agree. So it's.
That's the. She's the kind of twenty-first century.
>> Okay. >> I think almost version of that I think.
>> Fair enough. I mean I, I just have to point out.
>> Sure. >> That Walt is not gonna use a collage
style or. >> No he's not.
>> He's not gonna do this at all. But he.
Okay. He certainly.
>> Walt does come back, he does come back, not so much in Armantrout, I would say,
but in, but in, conceptual poets. So Kristen how do you deal with a poem
like this? >> I guess, what I would do is.
>> And does it bother, does it annoy you to be so [inaudible]?
>> It doesn't annoy me because what you have, the way I go into it is, knowing
that there is no narrative and so, I am not looking for a threat to carry me
through the whole poem, treating it in the chunks, that it is in.
>> Hm. >> So, I am not saying that the I am here
in the first, that it's going to be the same as, as a child I was abandoned.
>> When you get to the second part of the poem.
So it's not a continuous matter. >> So Emily what, we've heard comments on
the religious aspect to this thing. Card in the pew pocket announces I am
here. How does that, what a way to start a poem.
What do we do with that? Alright the speaker is reminding us of the
presence of the son of God, the savior. The speaker is speaking to us from a card
in the pew pocket. >> How does that lead us into the rest of
the poem? What an unusual start.
What a displacement. >> Well it establishes the fact that the
location of the I sort of physically or existentially is contested in like every
possible way. Is that I the speaker of the poem?
Is it God? Is it whoever else authored that line?
Is it I think that we can assume that it wasn't actually authored by God and that
it's not, I don't think it's so much we have to reconcile with the I could be in
this poem but the fact that the poet doesn't want there to be an eye.
>> That I think she's trying to undermine and discard that notion.
And complicate it as much as possible. >> That's great.
So how would you, if you were forced to, characterize the I of the first stanza?
What would you say, what kind of I, I mean, almost in a grammatical way where is
this I coming from? It's a, it's a tough question.
>> Try to see where you're trying to lead in here.
>> What, somebody characterize the I of the first, we're gonna get to characterize
the I of the second, but what's the? How do we characterize the I of the first?
>> Give it a name, a character, as if it's Jesus.
>> How does the I function in the first, it doesn't speak for the speaker.
Because it's in quotes, it doesn't seem to speak for an other.
It's from somewhere else, it's a kind of general presence.
Alright. And the second one.
Emily back to you. I made only one statement because of a bad
winter. What does, what does I seem to come from,
not necessarily knowing what Ray told us? >> It would seem to come from, at this
point in the poem, from the disembodied. Voice that is narrating finding that card
in the pew pocket possibly. >> So it would seem to be.
Then knowing that there is a dislocation between the first stanza and the second,
where did your mind go to produce the I of the second.
What, what happened? Dave what happens, what's different?
Emily was describing what in a normal consistent I what we would do.
We would see okay, so Jesus or the person who created the card only made one
statement. And in fact I am here is only one
statement. But, we know that the I is moving around.
So what do we do with the second one. >> Well.
>> Well, the way I read it, starting out with being in a church, as the setting.
I am here being Jesus. I made only one statement because of a bad
winter, to me, seems like it was stepping back and being God and God who has made
the statement of Jesus. >> But if we want that not to be
continuous, where is the seed to come from?
When we think of this as coming from somewhere else, what kind of statement is
it? What kind of statement is it?
Where's it coming from? What sort of statement is being made?
Where do we hear this kind of statement? >> Well, he talked about dislocation as,
as far as, you know, dividing these different statements into coming from
different locales. Not just within the.
>> Right, right. >> Like, you know, cause a writer could
have different, you know, say I'm gonna write about this, I'm gonna write about
that. And the voices may be different, but I
think they're coming from completely different people.
>> Completely different. >> Altogether.
And, and you get that dislocation from, from the line breaks and this lovely white
space. >> So you.
>> That. >> Who would say such a thing, where is
this coming from, the statement about a bad winter?
>> It sounds like Hamlet to me almost. >> [laugh] >> Or like a line from a book.
Like it sounds very dramatic very sort of vague or foreboding.
>> So we have one kind of I in the first, we have a very different kind of I in the
second, what about the third one Max? What kind of I is this?
>> This is a. >> Grease is the word.
Where's that coming from? >> Well we know that that's coming from
Grease. >> From the, from the musical.
>> From the musical, sure. But here in this case it's.
>> It's describing if, if we remove it from that context.
The I here is, is, is describing a, a, a person.
