The Mockery of Rules

The main manner in which Catherine Tate’s student character mirrors the format of Millay’s sonnet would be in the manner in which both seek to undermine an established power. In the case of Tate’s character, she rebels against the English teacher and recites Shakespeare’s poem in a rushed manner thus eliminating the rhythmic pattern which would typically be heard by the readers which is similar in the manner in which Millay’s poem disregards the need to keep a consistent flow, since in some lines, the manner in which one reads may be consistent, almost lyrical, but is then interrupted by the harsh pause of a break in the form of – or a period, most evidently in lines 6 through 8. Something else of note that also represent the going against established rules, would be found in the structure of the poem rhyming scheme, since the 14 lines would make a person think that Millay’s poem would be a sonnet, the scheme is not represented in the sonnet manner which follows a ABAB CDCD format, instead the poem went ABBC CDDA, this also alienates itself from the Italian sonnet form of ABBA ABBA. The clashing of rhythms and lack of question and therefore answer in I Will Put Chaos into Fourteen Lines parallels the manner of conduct that the student portrays since the student character, just like the poem, jumps from one thought to another without regards to any relation they may have. In addition to this thought, the only instance in which both the poem and student fall in line with the rules, it would only be done if there was some mockery going on, such as the student keeping the gag of Doctor Who going on, and the poem joke about how poem declares that chaos has finally been controlled via rape, thus giving it some shape.
Isaac Ruiz

The Chaos of Chaos

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote the sonnet “I will put Chaos into fourteen lines.” In the first eight lines, the speaker describes a personified Chaos and their efforts to contain it. In the final six lines, the speakers turns to musing on the true nature of Chaos after noting to have defeated it. Specifically, the speaker concludes that Chaos is “something simple not yet understood”and that the speaker holds no ill will towards it. This sonnet is also written in the Italian form with turn in line 9 beginning with “Past are the hours, the years of our duress.”

In the BBC Comic Relief video, Catherine Tate plays a student who behaves very obnoxiously towards her English teacher. She constantly interrupts him, mocks his Scottish-ness, mocks Shakespeare, and is ultimately zapped away sci-fi style. The speaker in Millay’s poem performs the student’s insolence by describing themselves as a wielder of Chaos and beholden to no one. The speaker in the first two lines says that “[He] will put Chaos in fourteen lines/And keep him there; and let him thence escape.” In other words, they are seeking to tame Chaos before releasing it for their own ends. The student in the video does just that in creating Chaos in the classroom. This is running theme in the poem culminating with the speaker talking about Chaos and order becoming one. Finally, the speaker’s description at the end of chaos being something misunderstood and saying that “[he] shall not even force [Chaos] to confess;/Or answer. [He] will only make him good” completes the speaker’s establishing of an alliance with Chaos and intending to make it the new order. As can be seen, the speaker of Millay’s poem is someone quite similar to Catherine Tate’s student character in the video. Both are flippant, both are chaotic.

Evan He

Cohesion and Neurosis

Millay’s sonnet performs a kind of insolence expressed by Catherine Tate’s student character in the Comic Relief video in many forms. Millay defines chaos and order in their most raw and naked dispositions as there needs to be a contrast between them. And the reader must acknowledge the irony that lingers in each line of this poem. In both the video and poem, I Will Put Chaos into fourteen lines by Edna St. Vincent Millay, there is discord. Millay’s Italian sonnet displays characteristics featured in the video due to its compulsive and neurotic nature. 

In the Comic Relief video, a new English teacher is presented to the class to which the student, played by Catherine Tate, is shown to carry expressions of confusion and distaste. Further into the video, the teacher, Mr. Logan, is expressing his interest in the infamous poet, William Shakespeare, as a segue into his poems. Tate’s character, Lauren, critiques Mr. Logan from his accent to the subject he teaches. The audience can see the tension build as well as the dissaray forming in the class caused by Tate’s character. The discourse between the particular teacher and student is the epitome of bickering and dissonance. Mr. Logan attempts to put a stop to his student’s damaging behavior, but is swiftly disregarded as Tate begins to speak in “old English” or rather a mockery of it. It is extremely humorous. In comparison to Millay’s poem, this video exemplifies it. In the beginning line, the speaker states, “I will put Chaos into fourteen lines” (1). The personification of chaos is shown through the capitalization of the word “Chaos” depicting a sense of confinement. The innate obsession order becomes explicit later in lines 6 and 7: “Of this sweet Order, where in pious rape,\ I hold his essence and amorphous shape,” (6-7). Millay personifies both Chaos and Order and continues to show how one overpowers the other, in particular Order must outshine Chaos as Chaos is currently confined to the fourteen lines. There is a certain dynamic between Mr. Logan and Lauren in a sense that parallels the sonnet. Similar to the video, there is Order, Mr. Logan, and Chaos, Lauren as well as an evident power dynamic occurring. Chaos seems to be extremely neurotic where Order is unable to control the situation, but is still leeching to the notion of discipline. The BBC Comic Relief video can be discerned as a simile, comparing itself to Millay’s poem. 

Emily Pu

The Free verse and the Chaotic

In the poems by Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric, and Luis Alberto’s Ambroggio’s “We Are All Whitman #2: Song/of/to My/Your/Self, ” we don’t see the very structured sides of poets. While last week our class was looking to fin d the very precise and coordinated rhythm and meter of he poem this time around we focus on how the unstructured devices of a poem allow for a better way of a message to get to the reader than the way a message would be conveyed by a very structured poem. Although this is tru and free verse poem can b e refreshing and a great form of writing, it allows for the meaning of the poem to be up to more interpretation that if it was structured like pros, in my opinion. The way that owe discussed Whitman’s poem last week allowed us to see two very different points of view, whether he was being misogynistic or whether he was being progressive for his time. I believe that he was being sexist but because of the intricate free verse someone else m might think of it in a different way, thus creating the chaos of what the poet is actually trying to convey and allowing us top have more discussion about our ideas.

Guadalupe Lemus

Beautiful Chaos

In the poems ‘I sing the Body electric’ and ‘Song/of/to/my/your/self’ they have the factor of listing in common. When one thinks of listing, they associate it with organization , yet in these poems, listing seems to create the sense and sound of chaos. By poems normally being something that flows by using rhyme and similar sounds, the listing of words, that have no sounds in common, creates the feeling of looking back and forth, trying to find anything you possibly can in common. Yet by listing such different sounding words together, it makes one feel like they all have something in common, and that is the feeling that the authors are trying to create from this method. The author is trying to convey the message that though they are different, they all have something in common and are not as different as one may think. Through these chaotic sounding poems, it creates and conveys a beautiful message that may not need to come from the rhythmic and normal style of poems.

Emily Mayo

There is chaos in enumeration

We are given two poems, one by Luis Alberto Ambroggio called “We are all Whitman: Song of/to/my/your/self” and one by Walt Whitman called “I sing the body in electric”. Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s poem translates the rhythmic enumeration of the body parts in Whitmans poem because Alberto uses the technique of listing things which creates chaos. You would think that listing makes something more simple and easy but these two poems give somewhat of a chaotic effect. However, Whitmans poem talks about the body parts of men and women. While Ambroggio’s poem talks about ethnicity and the experiences of some of the ethnicities. The poems are about different things but they are similar in the way that they using enumeration. When reading Whitmans poem out loud it had many moments where the poems sound escalated and times where it would deescalate which is what created the chaos. The irony in Whitmans poem was that when reading it out loud it could make you feel electrified which is in its title. The poems rhythm was almost like a heart’s pulse when someone is energetic. Ambroggio’s poem had a similar effect to his as well. However Ambroggio’s poem felt a little more calm and structured while Whitmans poems was everywhere. Luis Alberto Ambroggio translated a poem in different languages. It was interesting because there was three different translations and they all had the same effect on the poem the only difference was the translation itself. Ambroggio and Whitmans poem were similar due to enumeration however, they just had two different concepts.

Katherine Deras

Free Verse Rhythm and Sound

After analyzing both of the poems and their free verse forms it is clear that both were created with similar goals in mind. Ambroggio is clearly using Whitman’s style and rhythm within his own poem. However instead of talking about the different parts of the body Ambroggio focuses on the diversity of cultures and ethnicities. The poem “We are all Whitman: #2 Song of/to/MyYou/Self” may be made as a way for Ambroggio to challenge Whitman’s ideas, since it is quite clear in his writing that he believes that all people have the ability to be poets and that even famous poets can fail at their craft. The rhythm in both poems tends to have a fast pace, which in turn gives the reader a sense of urgency when reading both pieces of work. This then adds to the overall chaos that each poem exudes.

In the poem “I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman the author focuses much more on the visual aspects of the person and then brings the main point together at the end with the line “O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul”. This quote shows that Whitman believes in the interconnectivity between the body and the soul even when the rest of the poem seems somewhat contradictory due to it being centered around  physical aspects of a person. In Ambroggio’s poem he focuses more on the aspects of human life that more or less define us such as ethnicity and socioeconomic status. This is further supported by the quote “ I am large, I contain multitudes” which expresses how every person has so many different layers to themselves and that physical appearance is only the cover page of the human soul.

Jamey Cain

IX_/-1VI fRe E veR s E . L (we are who we are)

The works “I sing the body electric” by Walt Whitman, and “We are all Whitman, Song of/to/My/Your/Body” by Luis Alberto Ambroggio, are two very similar poems. Even before reading the short excerpt explaining how Luis Ambroggio was inspired by Walt Whitman’s writing, it’s easy to see just how much of a tribute “Song of/to/My/Your/Body” is to “I sing the body electric”. One of the most striking similarities is that both pieces entertain the same chaotic beat. Both Whitman’s and Ambroggio’s poems employ heavy use of commas, as they list off ideas in a rapid-fire-like manner, where they bombard you with things to consider from all different angles. Any line plucked from a body-stanza of either of these poems appears this way. Idea after idea spliced by nothing but a comma, uncomfortably jerking you through the message until you allow yourself to submit and just enjoy the rollercoaster ride for what it is- a crazy rollercoaster ride. Both poems read more like pros than lyrics, and bear no apparent rhyme scheme for you to lean on either. Additionally, both poems end with a more spiritual, “enhanced” conclusion sentence. “I sing the body electric” ends with “O I say now these are the soul!”, an emotionally charged sentence which drives home his narrative, enhanced to stand out against the rest of the poem with the use of an exclamation point. “Song of/to/My/Your/Body” uses the same tactic but puts it into play slightly differently, ending with “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” Derived to serve the same purpose as the ending line in Whitman’s work, this line instead uses italics to enhance it’s conclusion. And finally, both the poems drive home the same overall idea; all special and we must learn to appreciate and love ourselves.

There are, however, some key differences between these two poems which should not be overlooked. The most major difference is clearly the topic at hand in each respective poem, and how they navigate their separate ways to the aforementioned conclusion. Starting with Ambroggio’s “Song of/to/My/Your/Body”, we can see themes of ethnicity (“This Self is Puerto Rican, Chicano, from Cuba free dancer of merengues, from Santo Domingo and all the Caribbean, from El Salvador and Nicaragua”) and politics (“It is harassed and startled by propellers and shrapnel, by ashes and the hammer’s hard-won pennies. Boss and day laborer; still the job’s slave, painter of trenches, resourceful creator of roofs,…” and “They will not manage to deny me or ignore me or declare me undocumented”), coming together with the help of Ambroggio’s beautiful descriptions to show us that basically, we are who we are. Whitman’s “I sing the body electric” we see that the content of this poem revolves exclusively around different parts of the male and female body, and how they come together to help illustrate the fact that we are who we are. So even though the poems are addressing two totally different topics, they are still almost carbon copies of each other based off of their structure and final messages. It was funny, after reading them back to back I felt as if I had read the same poem, only a different story.

Hayden Namgostar

How tone and translation affect the rhythm of a poem

When reading the poem “I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman almost nothing made sense and everything was read in a very fast-paced beat it was very chaotic. In poetry when a poem is chaotic it is referred to as cacophony and that is when the lines of the poems are discordant and even the words become difficult to pronounce. During class, the professor read the poem to us out loud, and while reading it was visible how hard it was becoming for him to continue reading. In the end, he mentioned being out of breath and dizzy to the point where he used his inhaler. When listening to our professor read it the room had an electric feeling to it like we wanted to get up and move because of the way that the tone fluctuated through high and low points.
However, in the video that we watched about the translations of the poem “Song of Myself” by the author Walt Whitman, it was a shorter poem and it was accompanied by soft music in the background. In these interpretations, each poet had a different way of performing it and it was all based on their tone. As seen the original piece was read in English which was calm and flowing then it was read in Spanish this poet added a bit more spice and passion when reading it while the Persian poet’s translation had a lot more passion and even the music in the background picked up the pace.

• Sandra Landa-Sanchez

I Won’t Add Chaos in Fourteen Lines

Jackeline Salazar

I won’t add chaos in fourteen lines 

Instead I’ll have you keep them in your heart 

And make sure it never falls apart

To put them safe and deep down 

So that way I find it safe and sound 

Let you give it a taste 

Maybe let you keep it in case 

We find a way to makeup 

For the sake times we let it keep us up 

I never thought you would make it this far 

But I’ll let you take the lead to take me far 

Don’t waste this love that we have 

Or you’ll lose it all just to be free 

Till then lets enjoy, let it be

Review:

The review of this poem was inspired by “I Will Put Chaos in Fourteen Lines” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I chose this poem because it’s a sonnet and it is an iambic pentameter . I decided to start off kind of the same with a little twist instead of actually saying “I will put Chaos into fourteen lines” my poem just had a little twist due to the fact that I did not put Chaos into my own poem. The poet who wrote the original poem was basically that she did it as a sonnet as well so that is our similarity, except her meaning behind the poem was to tame the guy, she wanted to control him in some sort of way. Somehow her poem was that she was trying to make sure that the dude wouldn’t go anywhere so she would caged him up. She wanted to keep this man locked up for the damaged he did to her. So you can tell from reading her poem it may seem that she was hurt and wanted this man to be locked up for life. The form of this poem is in AABBAA type of poem.  So I decided to keep that way when it came to myself writing my own poem out. I also added a volta since most sonnets have a volta including Millay’s poem she added a volta into her poem. 

Overall hopefully you enjoy reading this poem as much as I enjoyed creating this poem.  I figured to switch it up a little since Millay’s was all about chaos and wanting to lock up the man that damaged her. I wanted my poem to have a theme of just enjoying life the way how it should be done with your significant other. I wrote this poem based on just having this relationship were everything could be all romantic and friendly. Just by living each day a happy day no matter what the circumstances were. My poem was in the form of AABBAA which is similar to Millay’s poem. I did the form in the beginning and then did the form again in the last two lines. The them of “I won’t add chaos into fourteen lines” was just a simple touch of happiness and a mixture of other themes: love, happiness, and attachment. I wanted to made sure it seem as if it was an attachment to this person and hopefully it will last for a long time. To conclude, this is my favorite poem that I have wrote in a while and hopefully the readers and other people who will read this poem will enjoy reading it. Thank you.