Poetry and Poetics–Lit 204

When you think of your ancestry, how does it make you feel? Do you feel a strong connection to its culture and influences, or does it feel like a fleeting memory?

“I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move” has Louise Erdrich explore her ethnic background as the daughter of a German-American father and half-Ojibwa mother. Her poem features elements of her Native American heritage through imagery and the conceit of the heron and a flood.

For me, I feel a sense of heartbreak in this poem. Due to settlers coming and taking over Native American lands, the people who lived there were forced to find new lands to settle. The poem brings about that despair through its first two stanzas. It talks of a flood that swept through and destroyed the nests of the herons, a direct reference to the conquering of America and its impact on Native American lives. This is further emphasized with strong, forceful language like “Wrestling” (Line 5), “broken” (Line 6), and “dragged” (Line 8). And when the people walk among the branches, the branches whitened under the sun— a cleansing of Native American history.

Yet, the people still remember the herons’ dance above the sky. As the grandfather said: “These are the ghosts of the tree people/moving among us, unable to take their rest.” (Line 22–23) This restlessness of the herons and their ties to the tree people highlights the scarring aftermath of conquering territories and how the people yearn to reclaim their ancestral homes, emphasized in the final stanza as the herons dance around in the sky.

Emily Dickinson was a poet who never published her poems. Yet, her poetry recovered postmortem invokes heavy themes that relate to audiences today. One of these poems is “My Life Had Stood– a Loaded Gun,” a six-stanza four-quatrain poem describing a life being wielded like a gun by a male Master.

The gun is a profound image and symbol that permeates the poem. It’s a weapon associated with dominance, power, and death— an object that opposes whatever its Master points it at. The poem references the life being used to hunt a “Doe” (Line 6)– a female deer. The dashes strung throughout the lines create a sense of rhythmic pause, like the sound of a bullet being fired out of the gun. The repetition of words and phrases, like in lines 4–7, gives the poem some snappiness when read aloud as if the lines are prepped on the trigger.

To me, this feels like a metaphor for the stripping of one’s autonomy through the objectification of the speaker. This life, whoever’s life it is, is used to take another’s life. Its Master has possession and power over the life, able to wield it however he desires. The speaker does not have a free will. Instead, it is revolving itself around its Master, which makes the poem just as thought-provoking as it is terrifying.

I believe the speaker is Emily Dickinson herself, as she didn’t intend for her poems to be published. However, it could also be of the general female population since she lived during a male-dominated era. The audience is left ambiguous by the poet, bringing more intrigue to the poem and its message. I wonder why she decided to keep her poems a secret, considering the existence of famous female poets. Could there be more to her poems than meets the eye?

When I was in high school, I came across an animation on YouTube. It featured someone reading the poem as thematic scenes of a story were rhythmically played on the screen. At the time, I thought it was some cool poem or monologue someone read and another animated, similar to TED Ed’s poetry collection. But as I delved deeper into its significance, I became fascinated with this poem.

Ozymandias was one of the first poems I fell in love with. The poem recounts a story a speaker heard from a traveler about their discovery in an antique land: a statue of Ozymandias. To the people who are aware of the story of Moses, watched “The Prince of Egypt,” or know the Fate series by TYPE-MOON; Ozymandias is the Greek name of Ramses II (aka Ramses the Great). He was a ruler of Ancient Egypt well-known for his military exploits and being the most celebrated of the time. He had statues and monuments featuring his likeness. He won almost all of his military campaigns and was considered the “Great Ancestor” by his people. Who wouldn’t be envious of a legacy like that?

But not everything can last an eternity. If anyone is aware of the Hamilton musical, a key element of the musical is the importance of legacy and how history remembers and portrays that legacy. Ozymandias, on the other hand, is a poem about the nature of legacy and how time washes away that legacy. It uses grandiose diction while emphasizing the cold antiquity of what is left of the ruler’s legacy. The dialogue written on the plate of the statue tells the audience well what Ozymandias’s intentions were for these statues. He wanted to preserve a legacy, but that legacy will erode over time.

The poem is also a mixture of Petrarchian and Shakespearean sonnets— a combination of the original and its derivative. In the beginning and at the end, it follows an ABAB rhyme scheme. But in the middle, it bears cracks in its rhyme. The full rhyme scheme becomes ABABACDCEDEFEF.

I think it gave me so many chills because of the realization that nothing lasts forever. Though we may think that history and legacy will be passed on through the generations, imagine how many civilizations and stories we have lost due to the hands of time. Imagine how many more will be lost because we leave their mundanity behind. I think the reason why we live is because we want to leave an impression— a legacy for people to think and remember us by. Something that proves that we lived, and survived. But just as the lone and level desert sands had buried the broken statue of Ozymandias, so too will our existence be buried in the sands of time. Textbooks and biographies preserve only a fraction of our existence. Memory leaves a scenic dent in our minds. When the dream of college life and poetry ends, what imprint will we leave in our wake? And how will people remember that?

William Shakespeare is touted as the playwright who defined modern cliches and created nuanced plays that spat at the traditions of nobility. Behind closed doors, he wrote 154 sonnets for a mysterious W.H. figure. One of these sonnets is Sonnet 138: “When my love swears that she is made of truth[.]”

The poem seems to be written in iambic pentameter and follows the classic Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme (ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG). It features three 4-lined stanzas and one couplet with a volta in the middle. Typically, each line is written in 10 syllables except for line 4— though it could be assumed that the first word should be spoken as “Un-Learn-Èd” to keep the 10-syllable structure. These exceptions are sprinkled all around the poem. For example, lines 7 and 13 invert the rules of the Shakespearean sonnet by switching which syllables are stressed and unstressed at their beginnings.

I believe the poem is about the speaker’s relationship with his sweetheart and their relationship on a stack of falsehoods towards each other. It highlights that the speaker is aware of the fallacies their relationship is built upon, but he continues the lies as there is no point in stopping. As the speaker stated: “Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,/And age in love loves not to have years told.” (Shakespeare, Line 11–12) Love is about superficial trust, and age is not something that should be told with such strong feelings. These lines along with the previous rhetorical questions in lines 9–10 demonstrate a shift in the speaker’s mentality about his relationship with his mistress. Though he knows he is filled with lies by lying about how youthful he is, so is she with her menagerie of fraudulent truths. Yet, they can still love each other beyond the dishonesty because they flatter each other’s lies for the other’s sake.