Thursday, October 4, 2012
EllieChan221--Beachy Head
Beachy Head was definitely one of the toughest pieces I've read in class thus far. Her use of blank verse threw me in for a loop multiple times and I ended up finding myself reading a line over and over again without really understanding what it meant. From my understanding, however, this poem is supposed to represent Smith's views on events and the politics of her time, which is another reason why this poem was difficult to understand. Despite this, I did find it interesting how she used nature in correspondence to the turbulence during this period.
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I completely agree. I went into this class with a very slight knowledge of poetry. I used to be a bigger fan of poems in blank verse (to this day, I'm still not sure why). But now that we're a few weeks into this class, I've gotten a completely different view of poetry and now find blank verse completely confusing. The rhyme scheme of other poems, for some reason, makes them easier to follow? I don't know if it's the rhythm of the rhyme or something else, but I found Beachy Head extremely confusing. I too had to read it over and over again. I barely got the political read it was supposed to have. It took our class discussion for the poem to make some sort of sense. But I do really like Charlotte Smith. I looooooove her macabre style.
ReplyDeleteBlank verse can vary widely, and it makes a huge difference if the poet uses regular end stops or carries the thought over line breaks using enjambment. If a line is enjambed (or there are many lines in a row that are all enjambed), this can make the thought more difficult to follow. Think about the heroic couplets or conventional sonnet stanzas we've read: these are often easier to parse because the thoughts often are contained in two or four-line units.
ReplyDeleteAnother very important point comes up here: many Romantic poets, like Wordsworth and Smith, are writing obliquely about politics--and they are living through a moment in history when large scale political and social changes are happening. Things might very well look confusing and fragmented to them. Think of T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland"--the fragmentation of the poem reflects the fragmentation of the post-WW1 landscape and social reality--a reality of bombed buildings and soldiers who were never coming home. The same holds true here: the French revolution and Napoleonic wars were dramatic events, and they were happening just 40 miles away (the channel narrows to about 20 miles wide at Dover). Perhaps Smith's poem is difficult to read because she created it to convey the feeling of fragmentation and confusion that many experienced at the time?
Oh, now I get it. It makes perfect sense that the confusion portrayed in Smith's poetry on political events would be written in a confusing form. It definitely adds a certain feeling to the poetry itself. Furthermore, learning about the poet's historical background also helps to understand their poetry, which is why I was able to understand Beachy Head a little better after doing research on Charlotte Smith's life.
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