Poetry and Poetics–Lit 204

“The Bean Eaters”, published by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a poem about an elderly couple who are doing nothing but reminisce in their squalid house. One of the themes I think what the poem illustrates is sheer hopelessness, which reminded me of the “As I Walked Out One Evening” poem. The old couple may love each other and share good and bad memories, but in time, they (and their memories) will be lost to it, alongside everything in their home. Their home is in a sorry state itself, being a “rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes” (11-12). The memories they have of their home is one of complete neglect and insignificance. Really? After all these years and those are the times you can come up with in your head? It’s kind of heartbreaking to see two people so poor be unable to do anything in their condition at all. The second stanza now comes across as more haunting than before considering they don’t seem to have much emotion as to their current and future states. Most of their waking hours appear to acknowledge that they “have lived their day, / But keep on putting on their clothes / And putting things away” (6-8). Thinking about old age is quite depressing, since by this point a person is hardly capable of doing things a young or middle-aged person would do, and it just serves as a reminder that the end of their lives are near. I think it was an interesting poem to read, it’s just hard to read again because it’s glum and there’s no positive outlook for the main characters (or the things around them).

Who would’ve thought? Wallace Stevens really was a sweet tooth in real life, and he may have given himself that title of the poem. The two stanzas were…bizarre, to say the least. From what I’ve read, I think it goes from calling a muscular scooper who smokes cigars to make ice cream, transitioning to a funeral for a dead woman. I had a bunch of questions that came into my head when reading this. Why was ice cream being juxtaposed with literal death? Who was the “only emperor of ice cream”? And is the author saying ice cream is a more fitting eulogy over flowers and paid respects?

Up until the last two lines, I was curious as to why it was written to have children get ice cream They’re (not the scooper) experiencing the joys of tasting a sweet treat. Then there’s other objects like “flowers in last month’s newspapers (6)” being brought in for something. How are they related to each other? I thought first stanza made no sense until the second stanza – I think all of them are being brought as eulogies to a deceased woman in a casket. The reason why ice cream is given more focus is that flowers and newspapers don’t provide the same kind of emotion – they’re nice to look at, but ice cream is not only nice to look at, but also tastes good. This also applied in the mid 1900s, where ice cream was used as comfort food during the Great Depression and immigrants also had ice cream as a meal. The quality of food was a way to compare people’s lifestyles. 

The biggest thing I observed was the repetition of the last lines (and to an extent, the second-to-last) of both stanzas: “The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream (8, 16)”. I think a lot of the meaning is highlighted in the second stanza, where there’s justification as to why ice cream is being used as a juxtaposition between life and death. Ice cream is meant as a subtle metaphor for sweetness: it’s a positive moment in life. In this sense, the “emperor” of ice cream is death. All good things must come to an end. All the innocence, all the beauty, all the joys of our life will melt away. And the corpse is an example of a life that is spent.  The “emperor” of ice cream is essentially watching people live and die. This is why the children brought ice cream to her: it was a way to remember all the good times in life. There will be people to share these moments, and there will be scoopers that will make these moments possible. 

With this mind, I say that this poem was quite a treat to read.

Initially, when reading A Description of a City Shower, I thought the poem was basically a double entendre based on the second half of the poem. Lines like “While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope / Such is that sprinkling which some carless quean / Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean (Swift 18-20)” and “And wafted with its foe by violent gust, / Twas doubtful which was rain and which was dust (Swift 25-26)”. I believed this poem was going to just be another conceit on a person’s beauty before comparing it with a storm…

…then I realized I’ve only read the poem once and then I immediately drew conclusions from that. In all seriousness, while his humor is still stirring, his message is a lot less dramatic – it’s the poor weather in a poor town. Each of the caesura lines makes it even easier to understand what’s going on in a second read (“But, aided by the wind, fought still for life…”(Swift 24)). Swift wants to bring up how storms rain on everybody’s parade in this dingy town. Everybody is scurrying to get inside, but the winds and rain make the environment so grimy and dusty it’s a challenge to not complain about it. I think the author is basing his poem based on how the sanitation standards of his time were incredibly low, and is that the people are merely referencing and not directly stating what’s going is what makes it so funny.

This is my first blog post, feel free to give me feedback on what I can improve on!

Of the poems this week, my favorite was “Stand Whoso List” by Sir Thomas Wyatt. The overarching theme of the poem is living a peaceful life to earn a peaceful death. He paints busyness as an enemy to this ideal, as the more occupied a person is with things in mind, the further away he is from achieving this goal. He desires to die as himself, happy and his own goals achieved. He believes that thinking as another person and wishing to be them causes one to be completely unhealthy and unhappy, driving them into a miserable life:  “For him death gripeth / right hard by the crope / That is much known of other; and of himself alas, / Ooth die unknown, dazed with dreadful face (6-10, Wyatt)”. The “Ooth die unknown” line felt like a simple yet chilling message – it’s understandable to admire a person, but you need to come to terms with your own character to find happiness – even if they’re flawed.  

When I was reading it, I thought the poem emphasized more on a trochee meter, given how many times the poem would go from stressed to unstressed (brackish, stand, whoso); I think it provides a nice theme of a pendulum between harmony and chaos. The oxymorons between phrases like “brackish joys” and “dazed with dreadful face” help darken the mood of the story and make the narrator’s words more urgent and dramatic.