Beyond the Poetic

Catherine Tate’s recitation of Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, “my mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” transforms its meaning by breaking the sonnet’s conventional form through a chaotic gender performance that opposes masculine order. The traditional situation of a sonnet involves a male speaker expressing his idealized love through poetic elements, but Shakespeare’s sonnet opposes this as the speaker refers to his “mistress” as lacking the emphasized beauty found in nature – “coral is far more red… no such roses see I in her cheeks” (Shakespeare 2, 6). The speaker brings realism by portraying how his love is incomparable to the romanticism that poetry tends to display, referring to them as a “false compare” in which the speaker provides his “mistress” with her own individuality (14). This is furthered from the volta in line 13 where the speaker shifts from presenting his love as potentially ugly, but then unveiling that true love to him is the beauty beyond the poetic metaphors or similes; it is her genuine self.

Cacophony also follows throughout the sonnet up to the 12th line, until the volta holds a change in sound and becomes euphonic, “and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare…” (13). Cacophony mimics the chaos prevalent throughout the ugliness of the twelve lines, preceding how the unpleasant sounds reflects the unpleasantness of how the speaker’s love is incomparable to anything beautiful. However, euphony ends the sonnet because it is through the identity beyond the poetic that is pleasant and beautiful.

Straightforwardly, this is a sonnet chaotically presenting itself through its ugliness by not providing the desired aestheticism expected by popular conventions. The sonnet’s chaotic imperfection orders its existence through its 14 lined, iambic pentameter that defines the identity of the sonnet/mistress. 

Catherine Tate’s gender performance is an expression of her character’s identity by embodying the chaotic mannerisms to rebel against her teacher played by David Tennant. Tate’s character opposes the order in which her teacher tries to enforce, but during her recitation does it show that the character is intelligent, despite the supposed belief that she was “dull.” Instead of a male speaker speaking in the voice of a woman, it is a female speaker. It is her femininity that creates the order of her identity, in which her chaotic manners structures who she is. She recites the sonnet in continuation without any pauses, embodying the chaos that she poses against her teacher. Thus, her “ugliness” – in terms of her personality as being perceived reprehensible by her teacher – is a definitive expression of Tate’s character reflected from the sonnet that defies conventions. 

-Phillip Gallo

The Soul Translated Self

Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self translates Walt Whitman’s I Sing the Body Electric by focusing on ethnicity, and how each Self in the world creates the whole identity of who we are as humans. 

Whitman focuses on how the anatomy of the body is constructed, using electricity galvanizing through the body into life. This is followed through how the poem is structured, the poem coursing through the body like electricity, “Mouth, tongue… ribs, belly… man-balls, man-root… the womb, the teats” (Whitman 7, 14-15, 24). The comma used in each line further dissects each area of the body, and there is a rhythmic pattern in the stressed, monosyllables that the poem itself holds a sharp sound that strikes like electricity to each part. The focus on the genitals are also affected and create a metaphor to “sexuality” that Waltman comments (22). Waltman expresses how this electricity gives life even to the soul, meaning that it isn’t the body itself but the innermost feelings such as the sexuality of a person that is affected by this electricity. The cacophony heard in those lines parallels the sound of this electricity, triumphantly expressing to the audience “these are the soul” (36). The anatomical pattern also shifts to actions performed by humans, “food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming” (26). A consonance can be heard between food and drink, with the “s” sound repeating among pulse, digestion, sweat, and sleep, and the suffix between walking and swimming. The cacophony continues to be heard, but this shift to human actions reflects how even human acts are a reflection of the soul itself, that movement is similarly powered by this cacophonic electricity. 

Ambroggio focuses not on the body, but on the ethnicity that defines the Self. Whitman’s poem that shifts around anatomy is changed from that of ethnicity in Ambroggio’s poem. His poem brims with diversity, filled with “multitudes” that constructs the poem as the “universal soul.” Ambroggio establishes this in his first stanza, “This Self – Hispanic, Latin, blond, black, olive-skinned, native and immigrant… was here with everyone” (Ambroggio 1-2, 4). The poem sets up its diversity, but the lines contain multitudes of assonances between the “a” and “o” sound and consonances between black and olive-skinned. The shifting between ethnicities returns later in the poem, “Contrasting to Whitman, Ambroggio includes the conflicts that the Self confronts, “This Self is Puerto Rican, Chicano, from Cuba free dancer of merengues, from Santo Domingo and all the Caribbean” (43-45). The cacophony parallels this loud expression of one’s identity, and the switch between different ethnicities can be seen translated from Whitman’s electrical course between different parts of the body. 

However, these identities become threatened “by propellers and shrapnel…” but ends positively, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself” (60, 118). The war-like imagery to me becomes reminiscent of the Israeli-Palestinian war, where the Self becomes threatened. But the conclusion of the poem, where the Self shall endure, is spoken in euphony that changes this cacophony of conflicts and various identities into an acceptance of the Self and everyone included. Thus, Ambroggio’s rhythmic enumeration can be seen from Whitman’s poem by its cacophony, consonances, and overall structure of poetry embodying the Self/soul.

Phillip Gallo

Identical Twins with Different Personalities

“Song of/to/My/Your/Self” and “I Sing the Body Electric” are like twins that look identical, but have small differences in their personality.They both talk about the same thing, yet they portray their subject in completely different ways. “Song of/to/My/Your/Self” talks about what a person does, while “I Sing the Body Electric” talks about what a person is. “Song of/to/My/Your/Self” uses the same rhythm all the way through, while “I Sing the Body Electric” varies more. “I Sing the Body Electric” also has shorter lines, and is read slower than “Song of/to/My/Your/Self” – it feels like you’re running through the stanzas. Even though both poems discuss the same subject, they portray it differently. This difference in description parallels how everyone has a relatively similar physical body, but on the inside we are drastically different. An interesting way to assess the rhythm and overall sound of both poems is looking at punctuation. “Song of/to/My/Your/Self” and “I Sing the Body Electric” both use a period at the end of each stanza, as well as commas to slow down and speed up each poem.

Anne K. Anderson

Translation

In Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric,” Whitman employs sound to hammer home his message. He begin euphonically before becoming more cacophonic when listing off the body parts. The cacophony creates a feeling of building energy that is then released when Whitman returns to euphony at the end. This is very similar to the idea in music of going from order, to disorder/chaos, then back to order at the end of a piece.

In Luis Alberto Ambroggia’s poem “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self,” he “sings” about his “soul” rather than about his physical body. He opens with a list of characteristics of “the self” to set the tone of the piece. Through the first two stanzas, Ambroggia doesn’t list as distinctly but uses punctuation to simulate the staccato, cacophonic rhythm of Whitman’s lists and building up that energy before releasing it with euphony at the end of the second stanza; unlike Whitman’s poem, Ambroggia’s version is split into sections. In the third stanza, he starts with a short but intense list of races before releasing the energy again. Ambroggia then goes into full list mode with the next two stanza listing characteristics, then places and builds up the energy to a climax before releasing in the fifth stanza. After this point, the tone of Ambroggia’s poem seems to shift markedly and become more euphonic when it begins to address more abstract ideas as opposed to describing things in the concrete. All in all, the sound of Ambroggia’s poem highlights how the body and the soul are and aren’t alike; the concrete aspects of the soul as listed like body parts while the less tangible aspects are illustrated in a more euphonic, lyrical way.

Evan He

Free Verse

Poetry is a delicate art; every poet has his own unique way in expressing his emotions. Each poet uses a different style of rhythm to help make his poem easier to understand. The poem at hand, “I Sing the Body Electric,” is written by Walt Whitman, where Whitman enrolls the use of free verse poetry to help deliver the message of the power of the body to the reader. The poet empowers a parabolic sense of rhythm that can be described as sound like.  Also, the detailed descriptive language used by the poet is a part of the rhythm as it contains some irony. To exemplify this, in line 14 the words, “inwards and outwards,” emphasize on the idea of the parabolic sense of rhythm. The use of a parabolic sense of rhythm used by Whitman helped deliver Whitman’s message to the reader.

On the other hand, the poet, Emily Dickinson, empowers the concept of rhythm to describe the beauty of the nature through her poem “A Bird came down the Walk.” Similar to Whitman, Dickinson uses a very detailed language that creates a parabolic sense of rhythm. However, the sense of the rhythm created is not as powerful as the other poem, but the rhyme in this poem is more ambient. For instance, rhyme is seen in line 4 and 2 through the words “saw and raw.” All in all, Dickinson uses an easier sense of rhyme to help deliver her message to the reader.

Ramsey Mogannam

Free Verse Rhythm & Sound

After reading and analyzing the poems both Walt Whitman and Luis Alberto Ambroggio incorporate free verse in order to thoroughly describe the human body as well as different ethnicities. Ambroggio imitates Whitman in the sense that when the reader is done reading both poems they will be out of breath. The exhaustively long lists in Ambroggio’s “We are all Whitman: #2 Song of/to/MyYou/Self” establish a fast-paced rhythm throughout the poem. The fast-paced rhythm gives the reader the impression that the certain lists in the poem sound longer than they actually are. For example, Ambroggio lists “This Self is Puerto Rican, Chicano, from Cuba free dancer of merengues, from Santo Domingo and all the Caribbean, from El Salvador and Nicaragua”.

Whitman originally followed this structure in his poem, however  instead of focusing on the body Ambroggio focused on the many different cultures that span Latin America and the Middle East. Ambroggio then transitions into a long list “It comes from Mexico, Central America, from Costa Rica, Tikal, Guatemala, from their rainforests, lakes of salt and honey..”. While reading this long list the reader will begin to speed through it in an attempt to hear every sound the author intended them to. Ambroggio followed the same pattern as Whitman did, for example “The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming, Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening..” Whitman used extensive list after list causing the reader to read faster just how they would in Ambroggio’s poetic translation.

Joseph Jordan

The Order in Chaos

In “I Sing the Body Electric”, Walt Whitman uses the elements of cacophony, sound emphasis, and juxtaposition to get across his message. He includes cadenced verse by not rhyming lines or allowing scansion to be possible in the poem. He spends his poem describing the body and its importance but yet at the end believes it to be less than the soul. And as though the body is APART of the soul, thus making it less significant. Although Whitman juxtaposes both the elements of feminine and masculine body parts in the poem, he shows later that while he sees that while there are similarities between them he sees them to be completely different. He describes women by saying, “This is the female form, A divine nimbus… It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction” and separates them to be seen as a gorgeous object to be worshipped. He also believes that “Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman, The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk,…” Whitman additionally places a hyperfocus on womanhood being about bearing children purely by mentioning the elements normally associated with nursing and birth. Whitman by placing emphasis on the sound of these labels in womanhood and manhood aims to show that he sees the two of them being nothing without their parts of the body. Like how he sees a woman to be nothing without bearing children. He finds them to be the most important. But by doing this, he objectifies more specifically that women seem to be nothing without what they have to offer physically or their assets. Whitman talks highly of men by using free verse to be much more than women. He uses cacophony making the lines hard to read thus creating chaos within his poem to create these feelings of liberation through expressing this passion. Yet at the same time, while creating this chaos, he has an order to how he approaches it. The order within the poem IS the chaos.

In contrast, within a similar poem in terms of methodology, “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self” by Luis Alberto Ambroggio, Ambroggio highlights chaos as well, but in a different light. He instead focuses more on the chaos within diversity and how within this chaos of being exposed to different people and ideologies, we are actually brought together. Through the highlighted differences between us, we become more than just ourselves. Ambroggio writes, “It is expressed and is not expressed by welcomes,/ the yowls of rejection and the sunless silence/ of indifference, every day, gray hands.” He wishes to remind us in the cacophony of these sentences being hard to pronounce that while everyday existence is hard, we go through the same struggles. We struggle through it and live on. Through both of these poems, we are exposed to varied points of view in life and two different viewpoints on humans. But it is important to remember that it is only through the meticulous work of each poem using rhyme and rhythm, experimenting with sound that we are able to stumble upon these messages.

Self Love

By Randy Hernandez

The poem ”Ode 487” by Hafez was the one I picked out of the three as it spoke to me the most. When first reading it, I was quite confused with it. It touches on many different aspects of life in general. Then reading it and analyzing it I got a greater standing of the purpose of the poem or what it was wanting to convey. This idea of the use of musical instruments to use auditory sounds in the poem. There is also the use of many metaphors describing the women and emotions within the poem. There is also an interesting ending as Hafez gets over the idea of being heartbroken instead just moves on with his life.

The first instance of running into the use auditory sounds is the first line “With last night wine still singing in my head,”(line 1). This expression gives the reader the idea of Hafiz had a very enjoyable night and feels the effects of being hungover. In the first stanza there isn’t any mention of a women or love. It all relates to the mans morning after waking up after a night of drinking. He even includes “ The harp and flute were up and in full swing And a most pleasant morning sound they made” (line 4-5) When Hafiz includes this it shows the reader the idea of how at peace hafiz feels at the moment. This before he is even rejected by the women this stanza has the purpose of showing his confidence of winning this women. It seems to be talking about him and he is experiencing in the morning as he wakes ups. It shows the self love he has for himself and doesn’t include the women he wants in his life. 

As one continues to the next second and third stanzas the use of metaphors to portray the emotions of the two people and to give a visual description occurs. The man catches the women attention as he states  “Atlas! She turned upon me, scornful-eyed, And mocked my foolish hopes of winning her” (line 14-15). The use of scornful eyes is really power as Hafez describes the women. It shows that the woman sees the man as unworthy of her. He isn’t to the women’s standards as she feels she is more worthy of the man that wises to win her over. Hadiz even shows the actions the women’s takes after the man tires to when win her she mocks the idea of him even thinking he was capable of having her as a lover. Then at the start of the third stanza it begins with “Then took I shelter from that stormy sea”(line 24). Hafez compares the woman to a stormy sea as she responds to him wanting to to win her as a lover. He sees her as a danger and at best a very chaotic woman as she responds to him. 

Towards the end the poem Hazef includes himself twice as he says “ Self, HAFIZ, self! That thou must over come!” (line 29 ) “Well, HAFIZ, life’s a riddle – give it up” (line 34) He talks to himself in the poem as a way to encourage himself to move on with his life. Hafez shows the reader how he must move on with his life it won’t be eaor to find a lover as he uses the metaphor of life is a riddle. It’s a trial and error idea that one needs to experience before one is successful. 

 I don’t believe I would have a different interpretation of the poem was written by a different poet who doesn’t have a Muslim background or Iranian background. I would have gotten the same emotions feeling the poem shows as one reads through it. I think a poet background is important in some instances but for this poem specifically I don’t see how I can get a different interpretation if the poem was from a non-Muslim or non-Iranian. 

The Human Body Sings

Arlyne Gonzalez

Scrutinizing Luis Ambroggio’s poem, it is safe to conclude that it translates the rhythmic enumeration of body parts in Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” since it also adopted a free and spirited mindset, in other words, both poems were composed as free verses. They both disregarded to write their poem with regular form and meter. “I Sing the Body Electric” makes one feel they are participating in physical activity, because when reading it aloud, one tends to take a breath after each line.  This poem abducts one’s body and uses it as an instrument that is being performed heavily. The poem incorporates run-on sentences that do not allow the reader to take a pause and catch a breath. Construing “I Sing the Body Electric” and pronouncing the words aloud, makes one feel as if they are in church listening to the preacher addressing a profoundly and zealous sermon, although, in this case, the intended audience is America. Whitman avoided the decorative diction and sentence organizations of traditional poetry of his age, but his tone was more of a formal speech. For instance, when he verbalizes, “O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, O I say now these are the soul!” (Whitman, 35-36). Whitman embedded a euphony and somewhat adopted a preacher embodiment to generate a rhythmic sound of the human body, as if the human body can sing and addressed the notion that the body and soul are not two distinct things, but are more two peas in a pot, meaning the body is the soul. This poem encompassed a spiritual atmosphere that sounded nearly biblical to the reader’s ear. Whitman entertained his readers by implementing a cadenced verse when he said, “eyes, eye-fingers, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids…” (Whitman, 5-4).  By doing so, Whitman is creating an image of how a heart is detected on a medical scanner. In other words, one’s voice is rising and falling as the words are being pronounced. He is utilizing poetry to study the human body and how it reacts to the free-verse modus.

 

Luis Ambroggio’s poem translates Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric” because the poem’s main focus is not choice of diction or the way meter was composed but much more the sound and rhythmic structure it unleashed and the imagery that is created. At the beginning of Luis Ambroggio’s poem, he immediately executed a euphony when he noted “today and tomorrow; does not stop, virginal atom of nakedness and dust…” (Ambroggio 5-6). He describes the morning and sunrise. He begins the poem with a luminous and crispness that happens in everyone’s beginning of their day. Both poems’ atmosphere consists of studying their being, meaning “I Sing the Body Electric” is about the human body and Ambroggio’s poem is about the deep microscopic look within one’s skin and exploring one’s whole self.

 

 

 

“Translation Means Population”

Jackeline Salazar

When you read both “I Sing The Body Electric” by Walt Whitman and “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self” by Luis Alberto Ambroggio they both have this same style of a free verse poem. They both seem to have the same set of rhythmic enumeration due to the amount of words and their values behind their poem. They both have so many words of value in their poem it’s insane how long both of these poems were when I first started reading them on my own. Just like how Luis Ambroggio mention in the video, that to him translation means population. Which kinda caught my attention while looking and reading the poems, that translation meant  population, especially when you are translating so many words in a line or stanza. 

For example when I read the poem “We Are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self” , there were some lines from the poem that stick out to me, “ This Self is Puerto Rican, Chicano, from Cuba free dancer of merengues, from Santo Domingo and all the Caribbean, from El Salvador and Nicaragua,” when Ambroggio talked about translating the poem he was mentioning how when we would translate it, that it will be with more value of words and meaning with population. When it comes to the rhythm of this poem it had a type where you just wanted to keep going. At some part of the poem you did wanted to just stop because there were specific commas and just periods that made you want to stop and then continue to go and keep going until you saw another comma or period. It’s like translating Walt Whitman’s “I Sing The Body Electric”, he had many commas and a few periods. So the rhythm of this poem was similar to Ambroggio’s poem too, you wanted to keep going and going until you saw a period or a comma and kind of pause for a few seconds and then keep going again.

 In that case Ambroggio’s poem also not just has a type of rhythm but also has a type of sound too just like how Whitman’s poem has some type of sound. For example, in one of Ambroggio’s lines, “It suffers now, and in the next gust of wind, the discriminating smoke of random breath, for good or bad of those who intoxicated breathe ignorance or haughtiness without clusters of stars, mountains, heavenly clouds, wellsprings of gifts and of meadows.” This line caught my attention when it came to hearing some specific sounds and it made me think of the sound just being very smooth but at the same time it had some sort of pauses of sound in this stanza due to the commas, at least when I read it aloud I heard some sort of pauses. Overall, there are many other sounds and rhythms in Ambroggio’s and Whitman’s poem. You just need to fugue out the meaning of the words or lines when it comes about the rhythmic enumeration.